This morning I awoke at around 7 and got out of bed, stretching yawning. I threw my bathing suit and a towel in my backpack and strolled down the street to the YMCA and took my morning laps. As I walked home, way more tired than I should be, I thought, “My body is the temple of the Holy Spirit” and then VERY NEARLY got a bacon, egg and cheese on a long roll from the 49 Stop. We’re in the shaky early stages here of a phenomenon I call “Healthy Charlie”. This is day two in a row of me waking up before work and taking a swim, and I’m loving it, but it could go either way.

You missed a pretty damn busy couple of weeks, old friend. I’ll just tell you its component parts and let you fill in the gaps: aerialist, prenup, Ringling Bros., novel, YMCA, auto mechanic, skateboard. Curious to hear how close your interpretation of theses people/events/vehicles gets to reality.

It’s getting dark so soon these days, friend. But I still feel pretty good. I think this winter’s gonna be okay. On Sunday, we’ll destroy that infernal time machine. On Sunday, we’ll put a glorious summer to rest.

-Charlie

I don’t want to get into an argument with you about raw milk versus pasteurized milk or grass-fed as opposed to grain-fed and all that. Life’s too short.

Nevermind. I was going to write to you about this secret Amish dairy pick I went to last night. Black market raw dairy. I was going to pretend that there was an Amish guy named Ebenezer who had sunglasses on when really it was just some local woman with an accent. I was going to describe how you tell them your name and they give you a number and you go find a box with that number on it and inside are the goods – which is true. I was going to refer to the goods as a “half gallon of raw Pennsylvania dutch.”

Unfortunately, I’m too scatterbrained for that right now. I just found out I got into Columbia for the spring to become a scientist. We’ll see how this plays out.

Go Phils!

-Ben

Today feels weird already. I’m not sure why, I figured it would start off great. Firstly: my underwear. If you’ve been following my bi-secondly status update tweets, you’d know that I ordered some basic socks and underwear recently from an internet store, like some old widower from Florida. Anyhow, they came yesterday, so I’m wearing them today, and I dunno, I won’t whiten your hair with gruesome details, but I feel sharp. Despite that, though, it wasn’t the usual ride to work. Where I see how many times I can listen to “Brandy” before I get to my usual parking space. I actually didn’t listen to any music at all. I guess I’m just having some buyer’s remorse with Autumn.

It was an interesting summer, all told. Lots of ins and outs, lots of what-have-yous. In general, it’s been a real happy one, but now it’s over and it went so fast. It’s a bit hard to see past the California trip I have planned starting next Tuesday. Somehow, though, I’m feeling a little too old for soul-searching trips across the winding Pacific roads of California. Like I’m worried I’ll just sorta drive and price out cheap gas and stop and eat at McDonalds but I’ll get the grilled chicken meal so I can feel okay about me. Hopefully I’ll get proven wrong this time. Again. Always and forever.

That’s so weird!  I have that same, exact dream!

The one where I wake up in a turn-of-the-century mansion and through the window see the girl of my dreams (literally) wearing a sheer white dress, twirling in the garden, almost glowing.  But when I walk out the doors I find myself in a tent-city, a shantytown if you will, and instead of the girl of my dreams, there are only gorillas… with guns… pointed at me.  Before I can put my hands up and in gorilla-speak (which somehow I know in the dream!) say, “Please don’t shoot, I come in peace,” they unload on me.  Luckily they are only shooting fecal bullets and not lead bullets.

I realize later that they’d done this as an initiation, no harm meant.  They explain to me that there is a war going on, a war with the zombies.  The zombies live over the hill in a shantytown of their own, built out of gorilla bones.  I’m told it’s my mission to go, disguised as a zombie, and kill their leader.  I’m put in zombie make-up, but I don’t feel it looks real.  “No,” the gorilla make-up artist tells me, “it’s gonna look real.”

And she was right, I slip into the main headquarters of zombie-town unnoticed, approach the leader’s throne from behind, quickly rotate it around (since it’s an Aeron chair of course), and what do I find!?!  It’s my mother!!

Wake up.

Man, what a hoot!  Two guys, one dream.

So, I know you hate cats so I think you’ll love this.  T and I are integrating our cats, which involves first sequestering the cats from each other, and then systematically desensitizing them to the others’ presence.  After Arthur became accustomed to the new living space, I took little towels and rubbed each cat down and then put the towels in the others’ room.  Eventually, they were fed just on the opposite sides of a door.  Little by little I revealed the cats to each other.

As of yesterday we introduced them completely.  Full access.  At first it seemed to be going well.  They sniffed each other and seemed to be arranging some sort of hierarchy with Slurpee on top.  But after a half or so, things started to get a bit heated so we split them up.  We’ll see if they’ll ever be friends, or at least not enemies.  If they can’t resolve their differences, Arthur has to go.

That’s all for now, how was your weekend in Plymouth?

-Ben

I need to tell you about my dream. There’s very little left of the narrative, so I’m just going to list out the various elements, and you can piece them together at random, much as my brain did:

• gorillas
• zombies
• guns
• tent city
• my mom

Yeah, that’s about it. I know the gorillas threw crap at me at one point. And luckily nobody was bitten by a zombie carrying the solanum virus. I’ve gotta find solace where I can.

I wonder if my brain is working overtime because I’m an artist now. As you — and most of Eastern Europe and the Lesser Antilles — know, my new EP dropped over the weekend. Reviews have been generally positive, but you know, it’s pretty avant-garde. I’m not going for radio friendly, Ben. I don’t have to. I’m bigger than Jesus.

If you’ll excuse me, I need to do work. I’m trying to get a bunch of work done ahead of time so I can leave my laptop at home while I’m exploring the hippie-infested west coast of our republic at the end of September. Don’t worry, I’m going to get all my inoculations.

-C

First off, I have no idea what you’re talking about.  Nuclear reactors?  Used on a consumer level?  Metaphor?  I’ll be honest, if I know you, and to be fair, I really don’t, I’d say you’re trying to to tell me something about eating a really good hot dog, but one that is very old.  But like I said, I don’t know, I’ve never been able to parse your science-is-poetry nonsense.  That isn’t to say I don’t like it.  To be sure, I steal a lot of it to help pick up chicks; but understanding it, well, that’s beyond me.  I’m a nuts-and-bolts kind of guy.  If I want to talk about hot dogs, I talk about hot dogs, not sliding rods and German precision.

That being said, it hit me pretty hard the other day when you wrote [in our other textual correspondence: face tattoos, written backwards as to be read in a mirror] this to me:  “Ben, I don’t even know you anymore.”  Well, Charlie, fret not, for I shall now give you a glimpse into my recent daily life, revealing the idiosyncratic whimsy that makes Ben… Ben.

I’ve been starting my days promptly at 7 am.  I’ll lay in bed for a few minutes perfectly still staring at the ceiling reviewing the schedule for the day then in exactly 78 milliseconds I’m sitting perfectly upright taking in a deep breath.  I glance over my shoulder at T who is sleeping in her own precious way, snoring loudly and flailing her arms.  Once content I slip into my running attire and jog over to Central Park and do a few loops around Harlem Meer.  There are three solar panels in the middle of the meer, and I can’t figure out what they could possibly be powering… perhaps it’s a feeding station for the electric eels that infest most of New York’s bodies of water.  None can say.

After my run I take somewhere close to ten gallons of water from our third floor apartment to the our container vegetable garden out back.  Every few weeks I will infuse this water with fish and seaweed oils to help fertilize the plants.  Our tomatoes are just coming in, the eggplant are getting plump, and soon enough we will have some habaneros, not too mention the herbs and bluebonnets and nasturtium (an edible flower that tastes peppery).  I make sure to inspect the tomato plants for Late Blight - the same fungus that caused the infamous Irish Potato Famine and which is now rapidly spreading through the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic states.  So far, we’ve been lucky.  I’ll more than likely pick some parsley and basil to put in scrambled eggs for breakfast.

After breakfast, I’ll take some time and read my latest neuroscience book or do some calculus problems.  I’ve been refreshing my math skills in case this whole going back to college thing works out.  At this point, perhaps I’ll organize my video cables or do some other home improvement task around the apartment like hanging my projection screen from our concrete ceilings using a rented hammer drill and the 3D glasses from seeing Up as eye protection.  T will probably be involved and we will complete the task like a good couple:  fighting passive-aggressively.  If it’s Sunday or Tuesday I will pick up our veggies from the CSA and when I return we will make Kale chips since belonging to a CSA means you will receive tons of kale and you can only make kale-potato soup every so often.

What else, Charlie?  Oh, nothing terribly exciting I suppose.  Maybe reserving a Zipcar and running some errands or browsing craigslist for a new stereo receiver.  This is real life.  This is growing up, and I love it.  I enjoy switching the little magnet on the dishwasher from signaling clean to dirty or vice-versa.  I enjoy negotiating which pillows are allowed on the bed and which are not.  And I enjoy the meager amount of closet space allocated for my belongs.

Perhaps I’ll see you in the next few days while you’re in town.  We’d love to have you over for some enchiladas or homemade ice cream, at the moment we have peach.   I’ll show you our new tupperware set or the tomato sauce we’ve made and canned (note that canning is still called canning even if you are using jars… trust me, I didn’t want to believe it either).  It’ll be fun!  Real, adult fun.

Cheers and be well, Charlie.

-Ben

It is a violating feeling to have your shit stolen. My cars have never been taken, of course, unless you count the one that was taken by god. Once a Frenchman stole my sunglasses in Nice, but I didn’t speak French, and my 5′ tall 90lb girlfriend wasn’t that threatening — even to a Frenchman — when she confronted the suspect.

What have I been up to, you seem to ask? Oh, nothing. I’m practicing restraint. I’m sitting here with a solid sense of proportion and perspective. Also, I’m playing with an old nuclear reactor. Turns out it still works, control rods sliding into place with German precision, dials and levers protected from time’s ravages by dust. After some initial calibration, I looked up from my control panel, its warm glow reflecting off my goggles. Energy began to arc in crisp bolts, old light bulbs flickered and then burned brightly. Turns out it still pumps out electricity. But how safely? And at what cost?

You have 48 hours to unravel my metaphor,
-Charlie

I had a whole letter worked out for you about this weekend, my sister’s new baby, meeting T’s parents, my imminent move uptown, the strange off brand soda machine I found in Austin, but no, that will have to wait, because this morning as I strutted out my door, a shimmering silver helmet under my arm, I saw something that stopped me in my tracks.  Well, to be more accurate, it was what I didn’t see that surprised me.  My scooter, gone.

You know me, Charlie, I’m not one to panic.  Maybe it was towed.  Maybe it was stolen.  Both are possible explanations.  It wasn’t parked illegally, but it was right between two driveways, and the scooter, being little more than a glorified chair on wheels, could have been carted off easily by even the most motley of crews.  I took a few snapshots of the scene in case it was stolen and turned to go back inside.  But as I was crossing the street I saw something about halfway down the block.  A familiar form leaning against a telephone pole.  I squinted.  Could it be?  I hurried to see if it was her.

Go ahead and exhale, Charlie, indeed it was her.  You’d think a wave of cool relief would have washed over me, but no, there was still something unsettling about the situation.  How did she get down there?  Whose grubby hands were all over her!?  At first I thought it could have been the guys who work at the that shop she was parked out front of, but no, they all own scooters or motorcycles and would have known how to use the kickstand and not left her clumsily propped against a pole.  She wasn’t damaged, though a small piece of cosmetic plastic was missing and the left side-view was loose and twisted grotesquely one hundred eighty degrees.  No one had ridden her either since the steering column was in the locked position.  Any joyriders would only have been able to scoot in futile circles.

I realigned the mirror and wondered if I should still ride her to work.  Was it safe?  She had been tampered with, her seal had been broken.  I checked her vitals:  gas, oil, tire pressure - all tip-top - and went for a test drive around the neighborhood.  I tell you, Charlie, she purred like she always has.  What ever had happened left no noticeable impression on her behavior.

As we barreled over the Brooklyn Bridge, that brave little scooter pushed to her mechanical limits and the wind blowing tears across my temples, I faced the cold existential fact that there are somethings we can never know, somethings with no purpose, some hows and whys unanswerable.  But doesn’t this take the beauty out of life, you ask.  No, Charlie, quite the contrary.  Just ask Richard Dawkins.

-Ben

Seeing as I hadn’t left the house in the past couple days, I vowed to do that today. I rolled out of bed and put the kettle on while I showered. Just a touch of Head & Shoulders. Fresh Dove bar. Now we’re cooking.

I made some oatmeal in that star bowl that K made for me, like I do every morning, while I read a book about programming. After I had some food in me, I took my magnesium supplement, the one that’s supposed to stop my heart palpitations [see attached EKG]. I pop it in my mouth and do Gary Oldman’s trademark head-tilt and eye-glaze, just before swallowing it, looking to the ceiling as 58% of my daily magnesium plows into my stomach, my pupils widening. Then it’s off to the supermarket, Carl Kassel’s voice thumping out of my dual trunk woofers, a green index card in my back pocket with a list of ingredients I need for the meatloaf I might make later.

As I strolled into the supermarket, the automatic door dinged as I looked ahead to the sleeping security guard, and couldn’t help thinking how filmic it was. For a moment, I imagined the camera behind me, close up on my hand grabbing the basket, panning shot of the security guard, medium closeup in front of me as I walked. Then, were this a movie, something would happen. There would be an action scene.

But this is real life, Ben. Real life isn’t so scripted or so dense with excitement. I just paid in gold Krugerrand, judo chopped the security guard, and back flipped all the way out to my Aston Martin Submarine Car, leaving a cloud of smoke and an oil slick to delay the Libyans pursuing me. Same as I do every Friday.

-Charlie

There are certain things that upset the balance of the universe, and apparently those things are me having a full time job and breaking up with T.  Shaking things up seemed like a good idea.  I’d been freelancing for almost two years, which is the longest I’ve done any one thing, and well, the T-situation… I don’t even know what to say about that.  But in any case, I switched things around and the universe began to fall apart, literally.  A building one block away from me crumbled to the ground less than a week ago.  So what, you say, what’s one building collapse?  Oh, Charlie, if that were all.  Protests in Iran, growing tensions with North Korea, the deaths of David Carradine and Farrah Fawcett, constant depressing rain for months!  But last night took it to a whole new level.  As I’m sure you know, the King of Pop passed on.  I’m sorry.  I really am.  I’m trying to right the cosmic balance and end this season of political unrest and celebrity death.  I’ve already talked to my new company and T about reverting to a better time.  At first both parties were uncertain if they should let me go or take me back, respectively, but after I explained that I am in fact the center of the universe and that my choices have caused global catastrophe they began to relent.  Neither deal is done, but I think in at most a few weeks the sun will be back out.

But yeah, MJ.  Man.  It’s like Elvis level death.  Which makes me think that perhaps there will be rumors, conspiracies, endless marathons.  It already started last night as cars rolling down Myrtle Ave. blasted the King’s endless catalog of hits.  The handball court had Thriller going on repeat.  And somehow all the networks had fairly well put together retrospectives of his life.  (I can imagine the scene now:  a producer runs into the editing room, “Stop! Stop the Farrah piece.  Michael Jackson is dead!”)  I also wonder how big the boost in his sales and popularity will be.  I just heard on WNYC that his albums and merchandise are currently holding the top fifteen best sellers spots on Amazon.  How long do you think it will last?  Also, regarding rumors surrounding his death, I’m starting one now, so feel free to spread it.  As we all know, MJ loved childhood.  He claimed he related most to Peter Pan.  It makes sense, he looked so happy as a little boy, wearing strange jumpsuits and singing motown.  Life was probably easy.  But eventually he became the world’s biggest superstar.  I’m sure everything became more complicated.  Corporations, agents, tons of money, living constantly under the spotlight.  Maybe he longed for the easier years of his life and perhaps the childhood he never totally had.  Well, last year he turned 50, and his life wasn’t going all that well.  Maybe he decided this is as far from childhood as he ever wanted to be, and maybe he took his own life.  Anyway, there will be an autopsy today, so we’ll see what happens.  If that rumor doesn’t work for you, then just go with the he’s still alive conspiracy theory.

Anyway, sorry I haven’t written you, for what, over a year?  I don’t even remember.  Looking forward to going up to MA with you next weekend, hopefully T will come along.  Oh, and obviously I’ll see you tomorrow for Time Party II Lite.

What’s going on with you?

- Ben