I left my Self on the street outside my window, on the dirty sidewalk where one streetlamp burned orange in the night. For a moment it just stood there, being all Jungian; then it started walking, and the time changed. First just like Daylight Savings Time, then the day, then the year. It walked all the way to 1912, and there it stopped. It was only twilight there, instead of 3 a.m., and it was April. We could see the stars, millions of them in a deep blue sky. I was worried about my Self, being out alone at night, but immediately it went up the stairs of a nearby brownstone, took out a key, and went in. It had a mother there, who scolded it and fussed over it. Their silhouettes showed through the window.

I left my Self waiting in a line for gas in 1979. It seemed quite content to stay there. There were other people in the car with it. It has a home, and a family. It brought back a few LP’s and some 8-track tapes, as a gift. A peace offering. It knows I like music. I smiled and ran my finger down the smooth, digital edge of my cheek. It can be so ineffectual sometimes. Analog and digital media are incompatible.

Is that the long and the short of it?

I hate this.

I like the part where you stop in the middle of Park Avenue in the spring, right in front of the garden of enormous tulips that encompass the world, and there is nothing else to think about/ remember/ record. I like the part where you walk back from the deli with a cup of coffee, the winter wind scorching your raw hands, smiling anyway because you have a friend. I do, I have a friend. I like the part where I am sure of this. I like the part where I am laughing.

Do you know that soul-searching is exhausting?

All those Romantic poets must never have gotten any sleep, either.

I like the part in Boulder, Colorado, where you are running down the hill with a striped sheet flying behind you as a cape, and you don’t give a damn what anyone thinks. I like the part where you stop worrying about whether your hands are dirty, because the whole world has ceased to be dirty, just of its own accord, and

it’s not that you forget; it’s that

you don’t need to remember.

I left my Self there, in the middle of Park Avenue with the tulips.

Sometimes I try to figure out the difference between us. We’re about the same height. Our faces are the same. We walk the same way, and speak in the same voice. We both look broken. That is, we have lonely eyes, and a nervous mouth, and a shrinking posture. We both have my long brown hair. I’ve always been proud of my hair.

But her hair is prettier than mine.

I’m jealous of her.

And I wonder when I stopped calling my Self “it” and started calling her “she”. Does it make a difference?  

One day she came to me looking battered and bleeding, pieces of her face burning and shriveling into her as she stood there helpless. She seemed almost to be decaying from the inside. I tried to speak to her, but she was crumbling too fast. As she broke and bled she mumbled something about a part of her dying every minute we were no longer merged. But I only saw her like that the one time. In the end I couldn’t help her, because she couldn’t explain to me why she was hurting.

I’m not one of those people who don’t care for their Selves. Who put them in plastic boxes and go off to a party, putting on makeup so they hardly resemble their Selves at all. I’m not cruel like that. I make sure my Self is happy. She’s happier than me, in fact.

I left my Self in outer space. I put her in a space suit, left her to tumble freely through the infinite stars. She’s still out there, somewhere between the Kuiper Belt and the rest of the Universe. Looking for aliens. If she finds any, she’s promised to tell me.

I left my Self a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away. She wanted to go there. So did I, but there was only really room for one of us. She’s visited Endor, now, and she showed me an Ewok. We’ve always liked Ewoks, us both. She was going to give me one, but I told her that was silly: there’s no sense in bringing an Ewok to Earth.

I brought my Self back up to the spring of 2005. She had a birthday party, and she ate my cake and ice cream. That’s okay, though; they might have upset my stomach. She let herself like Maroon 5. Me, I’m suspicious of them. It probably isn’t wise to like anything that’s part of popular culture.

But she’s listening to it. She Will Be Loved.  

She is loved. Doesn’t she know that?

I am living in a world where people have begun to say to me that there is nothing more important than romantic love. And I, unlike my Self, have begun to believe them. Almost.

But if romantic love is the most important thing in the world, then what the hell am I doing here? What is all the rest of it for? Friendship and acceptance, tulips and cherry trees and the Boulder wind; the search for the aliens, out among the stars; those LP’s, my pet rock and the gas shortage; even that whole other galaxy, thrown away with a whisper out of someone’s mouth. All the things I care about: are they only supplementary?

She stands before me again, whole. Smiling. My pet rock in her hand. She’s taking care of him. The wind blows strands of her hair around her face. I recognize her. I’m ashamed that I do. Why is this such an act of cowardice, to recognize her? What would it do to me if I reached out and took her hand?

What if she is still bleeding inside? Is there any way she could heal?

I left my Self here and now, in 2006. She knows the answer. The answer is 42. Where did she learn that? She is on the subway coming into the 42nd street station, standing in the middle of a crush of people. She hasn’t been kidnapped, not yet. She’s no longer so afraid of the subway, like I am.

I wander. Far away from her, very near, it doesn’t matter. We are separate, she and I. I am safe in my bed, and she is out there on the cold night sidewalk – the streetlamp casts its dull glow. It burns my eyes.

I left my Self –

Or did my Self leave me?