there's a letter today sent to friends by someone i knew from the time before as i think of it 
now, and it calls up the trauma of then for me. it didn't come directly to me, but it came to me directly. i felt the echoes. then i felt all the words adding to themselves and yet the crucial thing being unsaid. it isn't an authentic letter, though it's a cry, it's a cry from the center of someone who abandons herself. it wasn't to anyone in particular. it was an advertisement. it relates to a chaos of advertisements, like swarming individuals with no center and no community. it's a massive letter, and has several echoes: a breakup, rising rent, money woes, wanting to die. i was in a dire place, in continual breakdown, til i was exhausted, i had a sort of epiphany, after struggling desperately downward, and knew that i didn't know how to live but wasn't ready to die, realistically, i was just too scared to do it, but that was a start and an admission that i was in a crisis and that was a start, the fear of dying was greater than the fear of life. i knew i wasn't done, and i would miss life. and that i could get out. my sister offered me a lift down from my third floor to her basement, under the stairs, a place i chose that was like a cave or a sarcophagus, but with the underside of stairs going up, with glow stars just above my head, pulsing. 

i knew i was too tired but i did this anyway. there's more i could say, there may be salient things left unsaid, here too, i sometimes write to see my own silent voice, and then think, well, i'll try again later. maybe i'll meditate and realize i have nothing that urgent to say. maybe i realize that anyway. the thing i feel here now is that we want to be authentic. and that is not easy, but we want to try.