The piper asked me the other day, in the midst of finding our way out of the maze of one-way Lancaster streets, whether I would rather be a stalker or the one stalked. It was somewhat related to our discussion; I was telling him about my love song tapes, the first two of which we had been listening to during the drive, and the third entitled Stalking and Other Obsessions. I said, actually, I always wanted to stalk somebody-- not in the creepy sort of way, of course-- but like a shadow, re-ordering his life. Only, being me, I feel like I would have to ask permission first, and that would rather defeat the purpose.

It's a strange dream, I suppose, to wish to lose yourself in someone who has never seen you, who will never know who you are. Or rather, not even in the person himself, but in a dream of him that you create. To make yourself into a mirror of someone who never knows your name, who can never be completely sure that you exist outside his own dream. To leave messages wherever he will go: a flower left on a desk, a snatch of song played hauntingly from a distance, a bit of poetry in a hand that he will come to recognize...

...to come to know him better than he knows himself; to create him into a dream of your devising; to become yourself a mere shadow of his dream...

I don't know if it can be done. I am fairly certain that I could not properly do it. Perhaps if I had dreampt this at fifteen, had convinced myself to need someone as a focus, but only from a distance, demanding nothing of him but his existence, his notice of my work but not myself, perhaps I could have done such a thing. But we are so needy at fifteen, half-mad in a demanding way, desperate to be touched. And I, selfish child that I was, took someone else to be my own dream, and he didn't really want anything that I could give him. Now, I have outgrown that kind of singlemindedness. Now I have been taught that I cannot afford to lose myself so fully in someone who will give me nothing in return, that I must live my own life and make my own committments. (and the piper is talking about traveling next year, from ireland, through europe, to somewhere in mongolia... and a friend tells me, you should follow him around europe; it would be more fun than working. and I say, probably I should. but I know that I won't. I'm too much of a coward to give up my hard-won, bitterly-fought-against security, my place in corporate america that I never wanted to begin with, even to follow a man I may soon love, might someday marry... I would follow him to the ends of the earth if I had no ties but him, but what I have is a mass of little promises: a lease signed with Virtue, an assurace to my boss that I'm not planning on quitting this year or next, an intention of working faire again next year... and these hold me back like chains, however unimportant they may really be)

It is a dream whose time has passed. Or which never really had a time to begin with, which was always too early or too late. There isn't much to salvage from it, perhaps-- a desire someday to pack a note (a line of poetry, a cheerful thought) in with my child's lunchbox, a wish to know where my love is at any moment-- and then strangely, it is a dream akin to writing, tied in with the thought that you create your character's world, even if you cannot quite lose yourself in him and become his surreality.

I don't know if it's important. Probably it isn't; this is not a dream I have ever really expected to fulfil. It goes in the box of things I would half like to have done, along with growing wings, or living in times and places other than my own, becoming a biologist, or a fashion designer. It's probably about that important anyway. But then, I still collect stalker songs with a strange fascination, and regard the archetypal killer-stalker of fiction with a certain scorn, because he's doing it wrong.

...or so says Thanate,
owner of a brand new Toyota Matrix, with less than 70 miles on it,
back to working a normal five day week, no faire, no training, no being sick,
who would rather be in the piper's arms than anywhere.