this is presumably a very anti-climactic email as it does not announce my upcoming arrival in new york. i do wish that i could have been with you as you experiece a proper cold winter for the second time in your life, but i hope max has been good company in my place.
i remember you telling me that you read a book as a child that made you want to run away and live in the met. unfortunately, i can't make that happen yet, but i can send you on one final adventure before you head back to reality.
follow the clues and decipher the message, you clever thing.
still images pieced together to tell a story, so realistic, you think you can see them move. a man in the future so haunted by a memory of the past that it allows him to survive the complexities of time travel. he falls in love with a woman from his past, met only during his voyage, and in his final act, he asks to return to her rather than live in a future paradise without her.
twenty years from now, when we've forgotten everything else about what we were, what memory of us would you go back to?
when i was nine, i told my parents that i was going to run away and live in the country
- the proper country, not someplace just outside of the city as our house was. i made it as far as the back garden of one of the neighbour's houses. they were away for the summer, which allowed me to hop over their fence and set up my poorly-constructed tent in the grass. as i had yet to perfect my buglary skills, i couldn't break in when i got hungry, but i did try my hand at pilfering from their vegetable garden.
most of it was not yet ready to eat, too small and too bitter, but i did replant what i could, remembering what my nana did in her own garden at home, knowing that one day, i'd have one of my own. i look forwards, to spring, with hope for new things: in my tiny window garden, with you, with the band - and the simplicity of peace.
And I was thinking about leaving again
It all depends, are we just friends?
For you, babe, it's anobrain.
Clue #4:
Are these things really better than the things I already have?
i think about the things that i want and what i am willing to do to achieve them, and the warnings against unrestrained ambition. in another life, i would have gone to university like the son they needed me to be, following in the footsteps of the rest of the well-educated bourgeoisie.
instead i will fly too close to the sun. i burn out at my peak and i will know that i lived.
Clue #5:
Gods die. And when they truly die they are unmourned and unremembered.
what is the true nature of humanity? are we created in the image of a god, or is the god created in our image? existence, consciousness, bliss?
before i went to los angeles last year, i had a dream about drinking tea.
i drink it often in real life, so it shouldn't be shocking to see reality bleed in, but it was the first time i could remember it. i don't believe in spiritual nonsense, but someone once told me that dreaming of drinking tea alone means that you're going to be strong, and drinking it with someone means you'll make new friends, but also that you should take time to abandon work and focus on your social life.
all of ours were plain, and i blame them for holding back your tea making ability. with a proper teapot, we'll have you making a perfect cuppa in no time at all.
Clue #7:
For saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch, And palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss.
we've reached the end of our game, but there is one more tiny puzzle to solve, no rearrangement of letters necessary.
