* * * * *
Boise, Idaho
July 15
Dear Joe:
A great deal has happened to me since I wrote to you last.
Systematically, I have tested each emotion and sensation listed in
our catalog. I have been, as has been said in this world, like a reed
bending before the winds of passion. In fact, I'm rather badly bent
indeed. Ah! You'll pardon me, but I just took time for what is known
quaintly in this tongue as a "hooker of red-eye." Ha! I've mastered
even the vagaries of slang in the not-language.... Ahhh! Pardon me
again. I feel much better now.
You see, Joe, as I attuned myself to the various impressions that
constantly assaulted my mind through this body, I conditioned myself to
react exactly as our information catalog instructed me to.
Now it is all automatic, pure reflex. A sensation comes to me when I am
burned; then I experience a burning pain. If the sensation is a tickle,
I experience a tickle.
This morning I have what is known medically as a syndrome ... a group
of symptoms popularly referred to as a hangover ... Ahhh! Pardon me
again. Strangely ... now what was I saying? Oh, yes. Ha, ha. Strangely
enough, the reactions that come easiest to the people in this world
came most difficult to me. Money-love, for example. It is a great thing
here, both among those who haven't got it and those who have.
I went out and got plenty of money. I walked invisible into a bank and
carried away piles of it. Then I sat and looked at it. I took the money
to a remote room of the twenty room suite I have rented in the best
hotel here in--no, sorry--and stared at it for hours.
Nothing happened. I didn't love the stuff or feel one way or the other
about it. Yet all around me people are actually killing one another for
the love of it.
Anyway.... Ahhh. Pardon me. I got myself enough money to fill ten or
fifteen rooms. By the end of the week I should have all eighteen spare
rooms filled with money. If I don't love it then, I'll feel I have
failed. This alcohol is taking effect now.
Blgftury has been goading me for reports. To hell with his reports!
I've got a lot more emotions to try, such as romantic love. I've been
studying this phenomenon, along with other racial characteristics of
these people, in the movies. This is the best place to see these
people as they really are. They all go into the movie houses and there
do homage to their own images. Very quaint type of idolatry.
Love. Ha! What an adventure this is becoming.
By the way, Joe, I'm forwarding that five dollars. You see, it won't
cost me anything. It'll come out of the pocket of the idiot who's
writing this letter. Pretty shrewd of me, eh?
I'm going out and look at that money again. I think I'm at last
learning to love it, though not as much as I admire liquor. Well, one
simply must persevere, I always say.