Dear Neil,
So since my last letter, I've been thinking about how an individual defines themselves herself. How am I an individual? What does that mean? Can I change who I am, even if I wanted to? It's a pretty fundamental questions to people raised in the Western Romantic tradition, who am I anyway?

Last night, I stayed up until 5AM rereading Slaughterhouse Five. My brother checked it out at my recommendation, but never really opened it. He took it to both New Jersey and Belize without looking at it really. I renewed it and renewed it until I could renew it no more. All this after he enjoyed Breakfast of Champions…. Kids today! So, I went from halfway through the introduction to the end last night (morning?), since I didn't want the book (checked out on my card!) to be out for so long for no good reason.

I think cars make up a good chunk of how Americans think of themselves. Sporty, Luxurious, Pimped out, Bumper stickers. My (sorta mine anyhow) car is practical. That's about all that it has going for it. But I'm growing fond of it anyhow. I secretly like it more than my brother's car, to which I have an equally justifiable claim.

So after I returned the book, I went to Waffle House, just cause it had been I while since I had been there, and I ordered a double cheeseburger, to see how it compared to Jack in the Box's incomparable "Ultimate Cheeseburger." This kind of late night journey is brought to me by my driving independence.

I have a private life. A secret, shadowy life. In the wee hours of the night, I'm the only one awake in the house. My brother goes to bed at one and my one sister stays out of the way after two. I mostly poke around the internet and play Click-o-mania late at night, but I also do all my writing then, so as not to be disturbedobserved.

My day is definitely not on a normal sleep schedule. I go to bed around 6AM most nights (mornings?) and don't wake up until after 2PM. This pattern puts me on Hawaii time (badoomching).

These days, the only way to build who you are is to base it on what you as a consumer buy and where you buy. Walmart v. Target. JC Pennies v. Abercrombie and GAP. Blink 182 v. Gorillaz. Windows v. Mac. And on and on.

I'd like to think that I'm not becoming bipolar so much as I'm building an alter ego. Like Batman, I come out at night and fight the crime of having an unrecorded thought, some brain fart not preserved on paper. Striking fear in the heart of the unwritten sentence. And so forth.

My CD collection was for a while a very cohesive thing. Beck -> Sean Lennon -> Buffalo Daughter -> … -> Takako Minekawa. Lately, I'm afraid I'm getting to sidetracked by flash (Common) and ignoring my core labels (Grand Royal, Emperor Norton), but it's still a pretty defining thing. I am what records I consume.

So, my waitress at Waffle House, her name was Chastity with a heart over the i. Talk about building a brand! How do you forget a waitress like that? I'm sorry, but Jack in the Box may have lower prices, but I have no where near the love for their cooking staff and drive through people.

On the way to and from New Jersey my second sister was disagreeing with us about music, as I've said. So she'd scan around looking for music we could all appreciate. We were also looking for Bootylicious, on accounta it's a song her husband likes and I had never heard. We never found it during the trip, but we did find music that we could all appreciate–urban radio. It appealed at once to our sense of Other, my sister's love of the commercialized, my sense of the untamed, and my brother's love of well I don't know, something. Anyhow, we all liked it.

Now that I'm back home, I have two presets for my car's radio: NPR and Charlotte's station for R&B and Hip Hop 92.7.

I wore camouflage pants all last year at school. The other day my first brother was wearing some camo shorts since my first sister's boyfriend says they're cool. Now, that little rebel part of me says, keep moving, find something new. How can I dress uniquely if everyone else copies me?

I'd like to think that I'm not becoming bipolar so much as I'm building a new life, in parallel with my current one. Hours of "Smash Brothers" and Arts and Letters Daily in an alternate universe. As a kid, I thought I'd be a good spy 'cause I was good at keeping meaningless secrets and enjoyed sneaking around the house. I guess I'm still working on that.

During the school year, I'd go to bed around one and wake up around seven thirty. I'm getting twice that much sleep now, easily. Even then though, I went to bed after my dorkimus maximus roommate who went to bed before 10 or 11PM with only rare exception. Even in high school, I always stayed up at least until my roommate went to sleep. I can't seem to go to bed while there's life left on the planet.

The penultimate bite of my double cheeseburger was rough. It was too close to my bedtime for such rich food. I had to burp some vanilla coke vapor before I could convince myself to swallow it. Then I ate the last bite without much trouble. (No matter how bad eating feels, wasting food feels worse.) I left a dollar tip and headed back home at 6AM, where I sat in bed for a while. Then I heard the invisible sounds of my first sister's boyfriend coming out of her room, going home before my parents wake up. I don't doubt his intentions, he's a good kid, I'd be surprised if he went past second, and he says as much too. Still it seems kinda bad, the parallel life they're doing. But who am I to judge?

My sister left for college a couple hours after that, as I slept, one month before I do (lucky her). The last I heard of her was her making water. I guess I should have not faked sleep, but I don't like for people to know how late I'm up. I don't want people to know that I've read the comics in our driveway at 3AM. That's personal stuff. I don't like how my brother and sisters tell other people about it, make jokes. Hey, that's my life! If I want someone to know that about me, I'll tell them!

My brother follows my non-moon dust footprints to Governor's School soon enough. I think about what I was like at his age, how much younger I was. I guess I lost that bit of uniqueness from within my family. I'm the smart one; he's the athletic and smart one.

Well, damn.

He has a diary he keeps pretty thoroughly on computer, but I'm not tempted to read it. I'm sure it doesn't have much in it but the surface of life, what has actually happened. I imagined he isn't much interested in my past either. But still, I keep my privacy.

I'd like to think that I'm not becoming bipolar so much as I'm orbiting the Earth geosynchronously. It seems like I'm in the same place all the time, but I'm 22,241 miles over the earth, moving at high speed, passing silently in the void.

Neil, you have something on which to base your identity: You're an American Hero, first man on the moon.

I've got nothing to show for myself. I've hardly even written much this summer. I haven't shown my writings to anyone at college. I'm not accomplishing anything, just orbiting, in a holding pattern, private, alone.

I bought the Sean Lennon album, because I saw a video in which he was in the subway in a space suit, cut off from all human contact. And thought, that's it right there. That's the whole heart of the matter. We are all astronots. Over the Earth, cut off in our own private spacesuits breathing stale air, waiting for the infinity around us to subsume us. Desperately screaming, "I am here! I am an individual! I am I! "

But in space, screaming doesn't work out so much.

This summer for the first time in a long time, I felt that awful burning void that is knowing that time moves forward, toward the end, toward whatever's afterlife, heaven, hell or nothing at all. Each prospect just as gizzly. Knowing that the years beyond tomorrow won’t be like today. The terrible static from life's counterpoint drowning me. It's been years since I've felt it, middle school maybe. But endure it I did. And now talking about it, I invite it to return. So maybe it will. That's the risk you run, living another life.

Now, I wish life were like Slaughterhouse Five in which time was all laid out, like a range of mountains. And you are made of infinite moments, each separate yet distinct, unique and sublime with an individuality of their own. And the trick to life is just concentrating on the better moments and enduring the others. And maybe it isn't so bad after all.

Well, I guess I'm glad I read that after all.