Rex's Voicemail

Redirected from the filled-to-capacity voice mailbox of Rick Vigorous to the formerly-empty voice mailbox of Lenore Beadsman via the filled-to-capacity Switchboard catch-all voice mailbox:
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Rex: Ricks, it’s Reck. I was just reading—by the way, where are you? Hold on a sec [muffled pencil-tip-softly-scraping-paper sounds]. And so yeah I was just reading Kierkegaard and it occurred to me that pseudonymity—hold on a sec [muffled pencil-tip-softly-scraping-paper sounds]—that pseudonymity is going to be the next revolution in the publishing world. I recognize, by the way, that “revolution” and “world” form a fairly imprecise metaphor but and that’s why I prefer writing over speaking, you know, because you can revise it all … and avoid … cytoplasm-like fillers like “you know” and “like” and—although if someone were to transcribe everything into a posthumous, Norton anthology of… [muffled pencil-tip-softly-scraping-paper sounds].

But yeah, so pseudonymity: if, as we once semi-drunkenly discussed, the plague of modern writing is authorial self-consciousness (or at least I think it was you who I—whom I ... you with whom I discussed it)—um, so if the plague of modern writing is the writer’s awareness of himself as the writer, the writer need only divorce himself from his self in order to completely avoid the potentiality of … of, um, being self-conscious. Right. And the pseudonym is the key to the—the cure for the ... the pseudonym is the solution to the problem insofar as it allows the writer to, um—ok, I’m just going to write all this down and send it to you in a memo. One day society will advance to the point where speaking becomes obsolete and all communication is mediated through written words [muffled pencil-tip-softly-scraping-paper sounds].

Also, something came up suddenly—a manuscript review for that client who lives in Miami Beach—so I have to skip town for a week or so. And my cellphone is broken so just have Lenore forward my calls to the catch-all voicebox thing.

Ok, yeah, that’s all. Fin.

To: Diary@email

Dear Diary et al.,

Read some Kierkegaard today to try to remember how to make sense of paradoxes. After a few sentences I became distracted by my sex drive and began work on a treatment for a film about a writer who reads Kierkegaard in order to pick up women but ultimately becomes distracted from his sex drive by Kierkegaard’s sensual treatment of paradoxes and begins using women to justify his obsession with Kierkegaard. But that isn’t true; I thought about reading Kierkegaard today in order to inspire some ideas for a literary diary entry but instead I read and reread Lenore’s messages over and over again. Tomorrow I’ll ask Dr. Jay why I felt compelled to lie to my diary (myself?) about my feelings for a woman. I’m pretty sure that I don’t care about women.

Finally got in contact with Alejandro Amoretti after a month-long, multi-hemispheric, sextalingual game of phone-tag/hide-and-go-seek. I’m not entirely convinced that he exists. Even so, I arranged a trip to Brooklyn, NY in April to review his progress on the first m.s. (but really to browse through fashionable bars in Chelsea and play seek-and-buy-drinks-for-and-fuck-and-go-hide with insecurely attractive FIT students).

I’m not going to call Lenore. I’ll tell myself (you?) that I’m not calling her because she said that she would leave me (i.e. not have sex with me, I think) if she knew that I wanted her; but I’m really not going to call her because I can’t think of anything insightful to say about the etymology of conflict. And I can’t bear to acknowledge having feelings for a woman whose etymological reach overextends mine. Or maybe it is just about the sex.

Thought: A philosophical man is as complicated to understand as an hormonal woman. Or/and a philosophical woman is as simple to understand as an hormonal man.

In her letter, Lenore mentioned something about her mother telling her something that she thought was a cruel thing to say to a little girl. Is there really such a thing as a cruel thing to say to a little girl? Perhaps the cruelty of her mother’s statement, the cruelty of Leon’s sudden departure, the cruelty of me (although I don’t recall ever being cruel), the cruelty of everyone and everything—perhaps it is all just the occasion for learning, a prompting for Lenore’s soul to uncover some new piece in the puzzle of the … and maybe—yes, I think this is it—maybe Lenore’s letters are just the occasion for me to learn that

Thought: Consult with Garner on punctuational standard for a non-sequiturial, sentence-breaking segue between thoughts within the semi-informal context of a literary diary. Also, consult with Jones & Sidwell to verify that ial is the correct adjectivizing suffix for non-sequitur. Also, consider working up a treatment for a film about a writer who compulsively corrects his lovers’ grammar/syntax during love-making to the extent that he is unable to —}{— Reminder: Tomorrow, ask Dr. Jay why I wrote love-making in my diary instead of sex or fucking.

I think I will call Lenore. I’ll tell her that Dr. Jay told me that I should spend time mending my relationship with the truth and then use that pretense to explain to her the “I have known the truth from eternity without knowing it” passage from Kierkegaard. I’ll suggest that we have sex without offering to have dinner with her in order to sustain her fear that I am not afraid of her leaving me which will ensure that she will have sex with me, I think. Good. Paradox solved.