Begs Ennedict was once (and hopefully will soon once again be) a friend of mine. I met him after the turning point in his life where he legally changed his name to resemble the popular breakfast dish. To this day, I’m still not sure if he meant it to be a statement, a joke, or a cross of the two. I may never get the chance to find out, either. He moved away one day without telling anyone. He left his things behind in the apartment. He must have gone off the grid too, because he broke his lease with seven months to go.
Of all the people he let into his life, I was likely closest to him. He didn’t even talk to his parents, and they seemed to just understand and accept the circumstance. When Begs left, I called up his mother. She didn’t know he left, nor had she spoken to him since her birthday from a few years back. She didn’t seem surprised to hear it, and, frankly, I wasn’t surprised by that lack of surprise.
The only surprise I got as a result of Mr. Ennedict taking an indefinite leave was the letter he left to me on the kitchen counter in his apartment. He’d given me a spare key for emergencies, and knew I would be visiting his pig sty once he left. Oddly, he left it much cleaner than I’d ever seen it, a la boy scout camp. He was always a strange sort of gentleman.
I could go on about my various impressions of the man, nut I’ll just read you this letter. It will resonate his voice more strongly than I ever could.
——
Dear Chippy,
I’ve given her all I’ve got, and I can’t take her no more. It is now time to uproot and look at myself in this world, weigh my flaws against the flaws of our esteemed brethren. I can’t say what brought about this sudden consciousness shift and grinding conscience. Honestly, this has been an unwieldy last several years, and all I can do at this point is thank you for your thankless work. I will leave it at that, in case anyone reads this before you.
You know I’m not one to express fondness, so I choose instead to share with you my state of being at the time of writing this. I can only tolerate city living for so long, and I’ve reached my long-overdue breaking point. It’s a marvel that I held it together for as long a period as I did without having multiple meltdowns, and I’m cashing in my chips while I’m still beating the house.
So what does that mean for my immediate future? I can only say so many things without incriminating myself of betraying my new location, so I will instead give you my impression of what I hope will transpire (and indeed what mind frame will put me there) in my coming passage of time on this planet, written as a monologue filled with non-sequitur. You know as well as I do that I am best able to express my purest intentions and subconscious developments through this medium. Frankly, that is the reason why I’ve always trusted you so much.
-
The Dew Drops of May
Heaven told me one day, “It’s as clear as a rose in an egret’s beak that you may fly away from here, and returning will be dictated by the phases of the moon.”
So I packed up my bindle and planned my marching orders, step by step. I accumulated about seven pages of detailed itinerary, then ripped it all up into incomprehensible shreds and sprinkled them out the window, victorious. No road map can exist; you may only bring your conscious mind with you wherever you go, and the great floating consciousness in the sky will take care of you.
All of this pondering brought me back to that famous God question again, but I chose to drink a liter of water instead. We are as we have been and will be, built from the fungus that made life possible, designed by accident over billions of years, a happy mistake that somehow pushed itself along, defying extinction with nothing but separatist intentions.
Now that we (myself specifically) have reached our peak of evolution by default, I must do something new, something that will impart to you and the rest of our peculiar species a glimpse of that purest form, a streamlined vision of the cosmos translated into abstract symbols as a means of enlightening as many as possible. You may choose to share this, or you may choose to destroy it (after all, it’s only paper), but you would likely regret its destruction.
Sheik shrieks siphon belly aches through tubes of transient melon baller coordination, and the audience stands in confusion. Has the performance already begun, or are we still just warming up? Will there ever be a time when our instruments will be perfectly-tuned, or is that a futile concept altogether? We’ve roughed it and toughed it out through epochs of predetermined insignificance, assuming a finish line exists just over that next horizon of indeterminate luminescence. I may say with utmost confidence that stellar inoculations numb us from the pointlessness, and indeed create determination, an invention that will allow us (eventually) to sample the infinite wares the cosmos has to offer. We are living, but have reached a collective bargaining agreement with fate. We sold our souls at the railroad tracks to pretend we call the shots, and have been met with mixed results. On the one hand we have art, and on the other we have genocide. Out hubris causes confidence that exists nowhere else in Nature, and we never stop to think how that’s even possible. Thus, we continue improvising with untuned instruments, hoping to one day strike a chord that rings with harmony in perpetuity across all of existence itself. We’ll never make it with that attitude, boy.
Chippy, please join me on my solitary journey. You know what I mean. It has been a pleasure spending time and space with you, and I will think of you often (and for you, if necessary).
Love,
Begs Ennedict
(AKA Begsy, Begs-E)
——
I still have not shared this letter with anybody (well, until now), but I have vowed to accompany Begs on his journey across time and space, to be a good steward of evolution and, most importantly, to honor his wishes to the best of my ability.
I do not know who Begs Ennedict is, and I’m not sure if I believe in reincarnation. Would a more sentimental person call him a great spiritual leader? Would a more conspiratorial person call him a changeling? Begs would discourage any labeling anyway, but I enjoy pondering those intangibles nevertheless.
WHARVED 