Dear Zooey,

We've never spoken. I did not know you until tonight when I made you in my mind. I need you to listen to me; to listen to my questions. I don't expect answers from you. Just hear me out. I've had a satisfactory night. I heard music, I played pool, I met some new people and saw an invocative movie. Now I'm filled with thoughts and emotions. It's interesting to me how such a string of events can bring about how I feel. I couldn't explain to you exactly how I felt. I feel constrained, not knowing how to elaborate, stuck on my thoughts. I feel a certain calm, a sort of depressive contentedness. Where are my thoughts leading me?

Zooey, if I may name you that, have you ever felt that everything you're doing is just wrong? Everything is so dissatisfying. It's all wrong. You know I've long had no direction. I know what my interests are.. I love to write. I love music. I love art. I love doing all these things and yet... They are not right. Ahhh! There's also this terrible desire to achieve spectacular things... but I don't know what they are.. Hah! It's true.. No one knows what the spectacular things they achieve are until they do so.. I don't know. What I'm doing.. What I'm not doing.. It's all not correct.. When will I act on this instinct? Zooey, I wish you'd push me more..

.. And Zooey..

How come when I look at myself in a mirror I don't see what I expect to see? The way I see myself in my mind always shatters upon seeing my reflection. I feel a certain way. I think I appear in some way other than what I find when I look up, over the sink into the mirror. Have you ever made eye contact with yourself, Zooey? What did you see? I see myself staring back at me, but it's not as simple as it sounds.

With a smile on my face, I shed tears as I write to you. My words are difficult to see in front of me. Don't you find it amazing how experiences shape our emotions? It's so simple yet beautiful in a way. A series of events each releasing different chemicals in our heads. I've experienced many events, like any other. I've experienced many chemicals these events released in my brain and always they are striking. The most stimulating of our experiences are the ideas we gain. The ideas we share. We are our ideas.

Zooey. I hope one day I can meet you. I'd tell you, "Hey, you. Thank you.. and I love you." But you know this. I'd put my arms around you and as we hugged the world would break apart around us. The blue sky would shatter into pieces like broken glass, falling all around us like rain. The ground beneath us would vaporize into little droplets and slowly disperse. And then it would all make sense. I'd see what I've sought. I'd find what I seek. Just like that, in as simple a thing as simple can bring, the world would come to stand still and then there'd be nothing. There's be nothing. Zooey, close your eyes as I do now while I write these words. It'll be like this, but we'll feel each others breaths on our necks as we slowly break our embrace. And as we do so, we'll look into each others eyes. There you'd be, staring back at me, and it would be as simple as it sounds.

So few of us really understand the world we live in. It's so embarrassingly clear! Zooey.. Look around and see. We all seek. We should be more cognizant of how our brain controls us more than we control it. It's so terribly obvious how we are slaves to our minds. We release seratonin in our brains and feel good. We can introduce things into our bodies that overload our brains with the stuff such that we are tricked into seeing things which do not appear, to feel extraordinary. Some of us follow a belief, attend church and partake in theology which releases the same chemicals in our minds such that we see things which do not appear, and feel extraordinary, again. We experience such powerful things in our lives, perhaps so frightening in their meaning that we cannot fully comprehend.

Zooey.. I must admit to you, that I don't really understand what I'm writing. Bits and pieces of thoughts and ideas which float in my mind. I would very much like to see me from your perspective. We don't appreciate enough.. Blah! I really hate when I use the word "we" Everyone... everything.. is so different, how could I possibly know everything about "we"? Zooey.. I know I told you I didn't expect answers from you, but I wish you had them for me anyway.

I'm falling asleep as I write this to you. Perhaps we are most truthful with ourselves when we are really tired. Do you know what I mean, Zooey? I'm sure you've experienced that kind of tired where it feels the world around you is falling all around you.. That tired where you're so exhausted all those emotions you keep spill forth but you just don't have the energy to bottle them back up.. We are indeed....... Zooey, you don't know what I'd give for you to be here to complete these sentences and my thoughts for me.

Yours,