You have been on my mind - or in my mind - since we first met, for the second time, or actually I think it was the third. The first time there was too much distance to see you or be seen by you, the second time may or may not really have happened because I was so little aware of it that I can hardly remember where or when it happened or if it happened, but the third meeting seared holes into my solar plexus sending shivers down to the core of my being. I think it's strange how these collisions happen with so much intention and so much chaos that may or may not be factored and all these varying degrees of awareness. I choose not to think too much about the details because I'm not a specialist, only a foolish philosopher-artist obsessed with his own gray navel, but I also can't help myself from thinking rigorously about such things in general, as I am generally predisposed to think rigorously about everything I encounter, in general, for I cannot find any reason not to. So... I've been thinking about you - a lot - and trying to decide how to feel about it, how to feel about you, how to feel about thinking about you so much, and how to feel about thinking so much about feeling in general.

I know that probably sounds confusing, or obfuse, or obtuse, but this is honestly how I think and feel my way through the world. So, besides trying to tell you that I've been thinking about you a lot, which I have, I'm also trying to show you a bit more about how I have been thinking about you, and thinking in general. What I can tell you is that it's tedious, that I'm tedious, which is to say that I can make very simple things seem very complicated and make complicated things even more complicated than they need to be and in general feel like making my whole universe to be as complicated as possible because it makes me feel like I am linked to a long complex human history of trials by fire and fireside mythologies and fire baked vessels and fire fueled creation from steaming mud pool minds and white hot inspiration. I rely on this fire to keep me burning, I rely on the power of destruction to open up new avenues of thinking and feeling, and I try to keep the embers as hot as fucking possible because my only real fear is stillness, coldness, slowness, making the world so simple that we lose track of all of the details that make it work, and becoming a cold static object in the process.

I once told you that I keep people at a distance, and later you repeated to me that I seem to keep you at a distance, so I have been thinking about what this means to me and what I think it means to others and what kind of distance that we are talking about exactly... I'm tempted to write something about how I think other people might deal with their loneliness, but honestly I can't really pretend to know and all of my attempts to describe what I see happening in other lives seems instantly false. I can only speak for myself, and what I can tell you is that I have chosen to live in (relative) isolation because I don't agree with how people seem to be relating, and I have chosen to be more complicated because the simplicity seems to cause more harm than good, and I have crafted the person that I have become (and that I'm still active in becoming) with a lot of intention and concentration. What I mean to say is that I agree that I maintain distance, and it's an intentional distance, and a necessary distance, and a useful creative distance to the extent that I believe I am seeking a new way of living that will grow out of a new way of relating which is based in a new way of thinking which might only be possible by removing myself from the current conditions of the world. To most people this probably sounds like an extremely stupid proposition, or at least an unnatural idea, or at the very least a kind of hypocritical notion - because how can one pretend to be inventing a new kind of relation through not relating, hmm? Well, it's a long story... but what I can tell you is that it's bound to an idea that art should be a tool for us to expand our consciousness, and that life is a dynamic process which become more beautiful when we live it with all of our intention and awareness, and also that each of us has a unique role to play in this existential theater and it seems like my role is currently behind the scenes, hidden from plain view, building the settings for the next aria which may never come.

One of my favorite writers is George Bataille, a French librarian of archaic mythologies and a powerful surrealist poet and a destroyer of taboos. Bataille started a secret society of radical intellectuals to create new kinds of rituals and invent new forms of art - among other things - and based his ideas on a kind of anti-logic or "non-knowledge" leveraged against the commonly accepted ideas of his day. One idea that was very important for him - and now for me - is the notion of a potlach society opposed to the traditional gifting society that we live in... The idea is like this:

I want to do something nice for you so I give you a small gift. The nature of the gift or of gift-giving is for the receiver to acknowledge that the gift has been given which returns some satisfaction back to the giver, as in "giving thanks." Maybe a small gift only implies a small thank you, but certainly a larger gift would require a proportionately larger gratitude, such as another gift. If the returned gift is too small the receiver might seem unappreciative, and likewise if the gift is too big the response might seem excessive or be rejected or require yet another gift being exchanged to compensate, so there is a pressure put on the receiver to understand exactly what the gift means and exactly how it should be responded too. All of this is a very real economy of material things passing through various hands, but of course there is also a symbolic exchange occurring, with the emotional investment in the giver and the psychological awareness of the receiver, etc. It's an economy that's based on being in debt, on being obliged to give and receive gifts that are not necessarily desired but are exchanged out of social obligation, and ties our emotional awareness to a world of things rather than letting them flow freely between sensitive persons.

Potlach is another system of exchange, a much more ancient system found in tribal societies, and is rooted in sacrifice. I want to do something nice for you without you feeling like you need to give me anything in return, so I can't give you anything material. Instead I choose something that is very important to me, something that couldn't be given or exchanged because it's so meaningful, something very precious, and I sacrifice it. This is not a gift, not an additive activity, but rather a negation, a taking away from my world of precious things as a symbolic proof of how I feel for you. The sacrifice leaves me with less, but also fills me with a powerful sensation of satisfaction (depending on the thing being sacrificed and the reason for doing so) that could never be given to me because it is based on my own private awareness of the importance of the sacrifice. Also, you cannot return this act like a gift because you were not given anything, only witness to my own willingness to give up something in order to strengthen our relationship and (hopefully) also filled with a powerful sensation in knowing that someone was willing to sacrifice themselves in your honor. The potlach should be received delicately and humbly, received with sensitive attention, and not as merely a gift. The only way to respond would be to make an even greater sacrifice in return, of something even more precious to you. As you can see, if we continue in this way we would both eventually sacrifice everything until we had nothing except ourselves, but since this is so obvious from the beginning there is not point in destroying everything, only in making the first potlach and reminding each other that it can and will be made forever, so long as we are willing. The real sacrifice is everything for everything without anything passing between us except "ourselves themselves."

This is the kind of relationship that I am looking for in other people, all or nothing. It's not black and white, but it is extremely subtle and delicate: to be able to lay down everything held as precious and become completely vulnerable as a symbolic sacrifice that will create a space to be able to recognize and receive the symbolic sacrifice of others. I don't know if this makes any sense to you, but to me it's completely natural - not easy and effortless, but totally sensible, sensuous, and realistic. Everyday I ask myself what is truly important, and everyday I realize that there is so much that I can so easily do without. I am always realizing how I want to live with even less, that I need so very little, and that the most precious resources are space, time, silence, and solitude.... until I encounter someone that is able to recognize my own sacrifices and acknowledge them through even greater sacrifices in themselves. It's all very abstract perhaps, but so is anything and everything, from a certain point of view.

I offer you this letter as a small sacrifice, a tiny potlach, an attempt to sacrifice some small part of my own mystery and become vulnerable for no reason other than to see what can happen if I make myself vulnerable. I hope these words find you well and resonate softly in your world.