A Correspondence

Dear stupid, so this is your stupid blog your pathetic effert at intellegence. What a LOSSER!! you suck dude. u cant write worth shit. u think you ar so smart but your a MORON!!! do you think your funny"? your not at all!!! just a hater sick suckhead winer . u are so PATHETIC i just feel sorry for you is all. i hope you DIE and lie rotting in your 12 x 8 room over the stripbar on skidrow. u should b e eaten BY raoches until they vacum up your dry corpse like a mumy! u should keep your idoiot OPINIOUN to uour self and not write idiot blogs that no one wnats you anyway. how invited you to say an opinion? noone is who SO shut the hell up or i will find you and give you something to realy worry about for real!!! you think U are so big and tough but you are nothing at all just a wannabe fag pretending TO be all that. always talking abou your dick and how BIG it is we see right thourhg you don't WE people right?? you bet we do LOSEER!!!. no wonder no one cares what you live or die poor little crying baby fagot! so shut the hell up and drip dead!
signed, Eddie Editor

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Dear E --

I'm not sure you actually found the blog you were looking for. I'm flattered by the sincerity of your interest, but it seems a little imbalanced, and I cannot see what could have elicited the passion you obviously feel. Ignoring the necessary exaggeration that an agitated state of emotion might cause, your particular complaints against me are troublesome, since they have the curious quality of being both vague, and eerily specific to me. I do indeed explore such themes as loss and gender confusion, and the clear position I take on certain political issues have been known to evoke such epithets as "hater".

I think though that your remarks are only coincidentally apposite, an implausibility made more likely by the universal application of my themes. The posts and personas I adduce here are merely guises of Everyman and his existential dilemma, of how to find meaning, how to live honorably, how to maintain courage, in a world that exhibits so little of rationality or love. This being the case, you may do well to go through this blog with more care than you might otherwise have been inclined to do, and examine your conscience to see if what you have written against me has anything of justice in it.

I am a deeply flawed man, and an artist of limited appeal. That I use the instances of my life and the foibles of my character as the colours of my canvass most certainly makes me vulnerable to the barbs of those who are inclined to be critics rather than patrons. But it hardly seems just, that the man should be attacked, rather than his work. If I fall short as an artist, it is not for want of effort. I bring my best here, every day. If I fall short, it is not malice that makes it so. If I am a plodding amateur, an artless hack, a graceless middlebrow, well, I have made no serious claim on fame or success, that would suggest I think myself worthy of more notice than I have attained. Surely no thoughtful person could have mistaken my opéra bouffe Falstaff, my pantomime egotist as anything more than a humble and perhaps inept attempt at irony?

I appreciate your candor and passion, and the purity of your attempt to communicate. I value all sincere efforts of self-expression, and I like to think that I try diligently to understand the deepest meaning behind the words. If there is anything I have left undone in this regard, please understand that you are most welcome here, and I look forward to hearing any additional thoughts you might wish to share. Until such time, I remain, with highest regards,

Very Truly Yours,


J