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Elsewhere | May 25 2002

I once rode a bus into the Berkeley Hills, to the state park up there, while tripping, mildly, on mushrooms. It was a resplendent day, a day much like this one, and I was the only person on the bus besides the driver. With my journal open on my lap, I was scribbling statements on the subject on lostness, the sort of things I always think when I’m tripping—“you can only be lost when you wish to be elsewhere,” “to be lost is to lack a story for where you are,” etc.—when I struck on the idea of addressing my future self, the one who would return to these words one day, in pursuit of wisdom or some such, whatever compels one to return to one’s old journals.

It’s now been nine years. Here’s what I wrote, using giant, child-like letters:

HELLO, MICHAEL-READING-THIS-IN-THE-FUTURE. WHY DON’T YOU GO OUTSIDE AND LOOK AT THINGS FOR A CHANGE? YOU HAVE AN INTERESTING MIND BUT WHERE DOES IT GET YOU?