MK: Hello, Katie Getting Ready For Bed in Her Bathroom! It's me, Mirror Katie! Hello from Mirrorworld! Look at my shirt! The letters are backwards I think. Look! I'm all muggy and grimy and gross!
KGRFBIHB: ..
MK: Don't worry! I'm not Shadow Katie, and you're not Sonic Katie. I'm just the one that's going to ask questions, and you'll just be the one that'll answer them. Nothing new. No need to trip over ourselves questioning the mechanics.
KGRFBIHB: ...
MK: So how are you???
KGRFBIHB: ...
MK: Can you stop looking angry, please?
KGRFBIHB: ...
MK: ...
KGRFBIHB: I don't know why I always do this to myself. I always have to go back to making up conversations in my head, and I can never just...Like, I can never simply talk about these big intellectual ideas with other people.
MK: I just thought this would be a fun thing to do for class...
KGRFBIHB: And why do I always have to divide myself? Why can't I just be one person?
MK: It's easier if we talk like this.
KGRFBIHB: It's less lonely. And it's sad. And it's distracting.
MK: I'm sorry you feel that way, Bathroom Me.
KGRFBIHB: I want to talk to another person.
MK: No, you don't. I can super-tell that you don't. But because I love you, I'll check real quick. Give me a sec. Or a min. Or like, five mins.
KGRFBIHB: ...
KD: I couldn't find anyone else in Mirrorworld. Except for your mirror roommates, who are all busy right now. And I don't think they'd be down for an interview about social reclusion. For some reason, I thought you would. Isn't this kind of a nice way to spend our time?
KGRFBIHB: Spider Solitaire is a nice way to spend my time. This is just me acting creepy in my bathroom, looking at myself for too long and talking to myself for too long until I need water because my throat hurts. And I pour myself a drink and go to bed, and I feel all dizzy and in-the-dark.
MK: We get dizzy and sad because you always want to argue. You're arguing now.
KGRFBIHB: This isn't an argument! You need two people to argue!
MK: Oh my god, whatever! What! Ever! I don't care. We're not doing this right now. We're doing my interview. I'm not going to talk to another dead person or another animal or something equally lame like the darkness of a well or sannyasa or whatever. If we're not two people, then you should understand that.
KGRFBIHB: I do understand, actually. I am friggin I. I'm just conflicted. I still want to say I shouldn't do this.
MK: You just told me you didn't argue!
KGRFBIHB: I'm not arguing, I'm conflicted! I can be self-indulgent and self-obsessive, and this feels very self-indulgent and self-obsessed.
MK: Why do you always make me evil for wanting to talk to you?
KGRFBIHB: Don't be stupid.
MK: ...
You're stupid. You think you don't need two people to be conflicted. You think I'm not real.
KGRFBIHB: I never said I didn't think you were real. I just didn't want to start this interview without pointing out how many holes there are to it. And how sad it makes me feel. And how much I wish I could think up something better to do.
MK: Besides indulge in the fantasy that there's always someone to talk to?
KGRFBIHB: Yeah.
MK: ...
KGRFBIHB: ...
MK: Do you want to get out of the bathroom? You could lie on the couch? There's that pineapple juice Izzy gave us. You can drink that. Or just water.
KGRFBIHB: Yeah, okay.
MK: And we have like, a telepathic mindlink, so we wouldn't have to talk outloud and annoy the house.
KGRFBIHB: Okay.
MK: And you could play Spider Solitaire while we talk. I wouldn't mind! The whole thing should only take a few minutes. A few minutes max! And afterwards you can text Ricky or Am or Andrew or whoever, and go back to being in other people's lives. Or just fall asleep.
KGRFBIHB: ...
MK: And you won't ever have to talk to me ever again.
KGRFBIHB: ....................................................................................Okay.
MK: Yippee!
KGRFBIHB: ...
MK: Now you're Katie Lying Down on The Couch Playing Spider Solitaire!
KLDOTCPSS: Sure. Whatever.
MK: But I'm still Mirror Katie! I live here permanently and can never leave!
KLDOTCPSS: Okay.
MK: Are you settled?
KLDOTCPSS: Yeah.
MK: Okay! First question: uhhhhh...buh buh buh....I'm just gonna scroll through the...my mirror archive.
KLDOTCPSS: You don't have any questions prepared?
MK: This was very last minute.
KLDOTCPSS: ...
MK: First question: What are your actual thoughts on "A Hermit in Prayer in the Ruins of a Roman Temple?"
KLDOTCPSS: It's boring. All paintings are boring. The painters are always more interesting then what they paint. Robert made Marie Antoinette's getaway cottage. He nearly got his head cut off. Four of his children died. I could talk forever about his life. I could talk maybe twenty minutes max about his painting.
MK: That's a very contentious stance, and I don't believe you.
KLDOTCPSS: Well I'm in a crummy, contentious mood and I don't like old paintings.
MK: Sometimes I don't like talking about old things because they just remind me of the impenatrable wall between me and the people who came before me. Is it like that?
KLDOTCPSS: Maybe? Old things are boring because I don't understand them. "A Hermit in Prayer" was made in a far-off time and place, unfortunately. So it's far-off. So I don't want to talk about it.
MK: Well maybe it's not as far-off as you think. Maybe you're not trying hard enough to walk in the shoes of a 18th century French dude, you know?
KLDOTCPSS: Can we please move on?
MK: Hee hee hee. You don't want to do the work anymore. But that's okay. Do you want to talk about the Diderot quote instead? "The ideas that ruins awaken within me are grandiose. Everything is annihilated, everything perishes, everything passes out of existence; the world alone remains, time alone endures. How old the world is. I walk between eternities. Wherever I cast my eyes, the objects surrounding me speak of an end and make me resided to that which awaits me."
KLDOTCPSS: That's easier, thank you. I'm happy that someone also wanted his identity sandblasted a hundred years ago.
MK: Elaborate.
KLDOTCPSS: Like, anything human about me is going to be immensely useless and...Like I don't know, metaphorically itchy. And wouldn't it be awesome if the enormity and inhumanity of a world without people could just be my personality instead? Everything gets dead and quiet and less stupid that way. Like, I'd be so much more badass if I was always walking between eternities instead of doing all the other stuff I'm stuck twirling my thumbs with.
MK: Well--
KLDOTCPSS: And I'm not saying I actually want that. I like parties. I like calling my parents. I don't want those things to be dead at all. I just recognize the appeal.
MK: Yeah--
KLDOTCPSS: Like...Like this feeling that I'm feeling right now. This feeling like I'm the stupidest person alive. I want that sandblasted.
MK: Sure.
KLDOTCPSS: Sure and...I can feel this becoming a conversation with a very shallow bedrock.
MK: I think I'm confused.
KLDOTCPSS: I don't know how I can make it any plainer.
MK: Do we have a mental block when it comes to our place in the order of all things?
KLDOTCPSS: I don't know. Can we move on, please?
MK: Uhhhh...Would you want to be a ornamental hermit?
KLDOTCPSS: For sure. I think there's a part of me that wants to be a zoo animal. But not for the rest of my life. Maybe a year. It would give me time to think. It would be cool to be a symbol for somebody else.
MK: Ick!
KLDOTCPSS: Not ick! Fun! Walk into the past and walk into intrigue.
MK: Not intriguing. Sweaty and boring. There'd be small things to uphold day after day. You keep forgetting we suck at that. We have no endurance.
KLDOTCPSS: ...Well--
MK: We are lazy run-away-ers! You don't want to be anything, you just want to see what's over the next hill.
KLDOTCPSS: I only want to move?
MK: Absolutely. Next question: You're thoughts on self-inflicted suffering?
KLDOTCPSS: Well maybe by the end there'd be no question that the inside matched the outside and that the end was real and that my body was standing exactly where it needed to be. And nothing would ever lead you talk to me again. And nothing could ever make me talk to you again. Cuz we'd speak at the same time. But I have to get my finals out of the way first, and after that catch my plane. The logistics of walking out into the wilderness is probably a nightmare. And I don't have a good enough definition of "suffering" to do anything but mope on the couch. So take that what you will.
MK: I will! I love you!
KLDOTCPSS: ...
MK: Next question: Vihara, addhayoga, pasada, hammiya, or guha?
KLDOTCPSS: Definitely not guha. I'm not a cave kinda guy.
MK: Not a caveman?
KLDOTCPSS: Yeah. Not a caveman. If I'm ever anywhere deep under the Earth, then I've died and gone to Hell. You understand.
MK: I understand. When we were young we had that nightmare about that tiger in the tunnels.
KLDOTCPSS: With it's head over the campfire? I think I snuck in and slept under my parent's bed that night.
MK: We could never make it on our own.
KLDOTCPSS: Yeah. I'm just going to say vihara. The only thing I've learned from this project is that its better to be safe than lonely, and the safest way to be lonely is when you're with other people.
MK: You've learned other things.
KLDOTCPSS: But I don't want to talk about them.
MK: Why'd you want to talk bout the old slab o' feet?
KLDOTCPSS: I was struck. It was very low effort. The guy stood on wet clay for a second and stepped off. That's all it took. And sometimes I have a hard time imagining people in the distant past, but this was so easy cuz it was so physical. Very bodily. This was a guy standing on a wet rock. I can't tell you why he did it, but I can tell you the feeling between his toes. He made his footprints. I've made my footprints. I totally understand making footprints.
MK: Okay...Okay. Do you think talking about the body and what it can do is the best way to have a conversation?
KLDOTCPSS: I think it's easier to talk about anything when we also talk about our bodies.
MK: Barf.
KLDOTCPSS: ...
MK: But yeah, I sort of get it. I love our friends easier when they talk about how good something smells. How sick they are. All the different textures of scarves and hats and the cushions on a couch. That kind of stuff feels more assured than what so-and-so said and how much such-and-such is. And two people can be the most apart any two people can be, but if they're both standing in the sun then they're both standing in the sun. But I can't say "the body feels more assured" cuz that just sounds wrong.
KLDOTCPSS: Of course.
MK: Maybe that's the nice bit about being all alone. Everything's acted out. The thoughts separated neatly from the action. The end of language if we just wish it to be. Or all the effort of language deferred and funneled into a splinter in our palm or how much skin flakes off our knuckles. I think we really want that.
KLDOTCPSS: But I'm sick and tired of disappointing everybody with that sort of want.
MK: Ummmmmm. Let's move on. "Ascetic primitism." This effect calls to mind "not the first human but the essential human...unmedicated, unoriginal, nonconditioned." Do you want this?
KLDOTCPSS: Maybe. I'm not sure right now because I've entered a stage of metaphorical itchiness and swelling, as you know, and I'm not sure about anything except what I can trust, like lying down on the floor and shoveling snow. So yeah, I can see the appeal of being bare-bones. Why would I need to be funny if I was bare-bones?
MK: That sure sounds...nice?
KLDOTCPSS: Nice?
MK: Why'd you mention needing to be funny?
KLDOTCPSS: I don't know. It's the first thing I think about when I think about how much I'm a loser. I need to approach other people in a way that doesn't make me go insane and let's me feel like I exist. So I try to be...I try to be jovial. But then they're just....weird about me. And everything gets flippant, the exact opposite of what I was aiming for. And there I am, a total loser.
MK: Why can't you just be boring if the opposite causes you so much stress?
KLDOTCPSS: I already told you. Cuz I'm afraid. Cuz I tell myself that if I'm crazy at the watercooler, then that'll give everyone else an excuse to be crazy at the watercooler, and then we'd all be crazy at the watercooler. And there'd be more room to make mistakes and be human beings. Because I need a place where I'm allowed to make mistakes and be a human being. Because I've been away for two years and I still don't feel at home here and I want to be now.
MK: And how would you say this applies to our project?
KLDOTCPSS: If I was at the watercooler with a beautiful prairie, I would not have to call myself a human being. Words like "funny" and "bare-boned" and "being at home" would lose all meaning. They would apply to nothing. I would never have to laugh again.
MK: It says here the purpose of ascetism is the shunning of distraction. Would you say you're distracted?
KLDOTCPSS: I believe so. I just lost at Spider Solitaire.
MK: Ha! Yeah.
KLDOTCPSS: I would say I get tangled up a lot. This whole conversation proves that. I get the sense from my loved ones that they're waiting for me to figure something out. So I think that's a good sign I'm generally distracted, that I haven't reached a focus point.
MK: What would you define as distraction?
KLDOTCPSS: I don't know. At the top of Mt. Kailash you might not find it. Ummmm....paradoxicallllll....buh buh buh....undefinable....A waaaaste of tiiiiime. This conversation is distraction.
MK: This conversation is for a very important project.
KLDOTCPSS: The project is distracting.
MK: I think I'm distracting on purpose. Is that bad?
KLDOTCPSS: Couldn't say. Can you achieve a "special effort" to figure it out? Of all four horses, are you the stupidest or the one that runs before the guy even kicks you? Are you going to sit criss-crossed-applesauce or are you going to put both heels on both thighs like a man? Are you going to sit still and actually take the time to figure this out? Are you ever going to be a hermit for all the right reasons?
MK:...Probably not. But I'm not going to twist myself into knots about it.
KLDOTCPSS: What's "twisting up into knots" look like for you?
MK: Who's asking the questions here?
KLDOTCPSS: I am. I am friggin I.
MK: Do you believe in reincarnation?
KLDOTCPSS: Not particularly. I'm in the camp that people are train stations, not the trains. I think when my station closes down, the trains will get scrapped for parts or go off somewhere else, but the train station won't be anywhere anymore. Raw material gets to come back, but systems die for good.
MK: Are you saying humans are systems?
KLDOTCPSS: If they were anything else, they'd be properly understood.
MK: What you just mentioned earlier sounds a little like reincarnation.
KLDOTCPSS: It does, doesn't it? My spiritual beliefs don't make me feel better, so I don't think about them much.
MK: Would you call yourself religious?
KLDOTCPSS: No. But I like how serious and intense it can be. If I was religious, I'd finally get a break from being easy-going.
MK: So true! People think being easy-going is easier than being solemn.
KLDOTCPSS: But all you need to be solemn is to be sincere, and being sincere is the easiest thing in the world.
MK: Wow! I'm glad we can agree on this.
KLDOTCPSS: Mhm.
MK: What did you think of Julian of Norwich?
KLDOTCPSS: I'm sick of that lady! I don't want to think about her ever again!! I can't talk about people with a great amount of faith. They're boring to me.
MK: Because you can't understand them?
KLDOTCPSS: Because I can't understand them!
MK: It seems we've gotten right back to where we started. Let's see...Thoughts on anekantavada? Not-one-side?
KLDOTCPSS: It's fine.
MK: And it's...
KLDOTCPSS: Hard to apply to my life sometimes. It's not supposed to make me happy, but I wish it did sometimes.
MK: You mean the flux of the universe?
KLDOTCPSS: Yeah. That flux....There's only so much you can do with it.
MK: Mom says we're too dismissive of the universe.
KLDOTCPSS: Well maybe deep down I'm not.
MK: Maybe. Do you like that there's a little bit of truth in everything? And that every honest word you've tried to say has been the wrong one?
KLDOTCPSS: Huh?
MK: I mean, do you like that you're a liar?
KLDOTCPSS: I mean....I guess I've never thought of it like that...........................
MK:...
KLDOTCPSS: ...................................... ................................. ................................... ............................................ ........................Woah..........Yeah....I guess I sorta do.
MK: Are you sure?
KLDOTCPSS: Hard to say. "Hard to say" I think is also sort of a part of the flux. Maybe if I was more alone I'd worry about lying less. I guess that's another reason I used to fantasize about walking into the wilderness.
MK: Yeah? Well who cares? Walking into the wilderness is old news!
KLDOTCPSS: What's the new news?
MK: Well, it's not hermits, either.
KLDOTCPSS: Could it be...blues guitar?
MK: That would be lovely!
KLDOTCPSS: It would, wouldn't it?
MK: Would you like to get a EEG?
KLDOTCPSS: I would love to see my brain! The reality probably wouldn't live up to my expectations, but it would kind of be like looking at a fetus photo of yourself. Sort of like, "Oh wow, that's me."
MK: "And who cares if that's not what I look like anymore. That's still me!"
KLDOTCPSS: Yeah.
MK: Though on some level it's not really you at all.
KLDOTCPSS: No it is not.
MK: Changes in the body do matter. We're not driving a car here. If you put Katie's brain in a jar then Katie would be gone.
KLDOTCPSS: Totally. And people would come up to the jar and be like, "Hullo, Katie," and the brain in the jar would go, "Dude. Who's Katie?"
MK: Dude!! Totally!!! You can't have Katie without her stomach!
KLDOTCPSS: Her stomach?
MK: It connects us with others in more ways than you think...
KLDOTCPSS: Please elaborate.
MK: I will not! Man..I really thought you'd get this one. It's one of the fundamental reasons why we could never be a hermit.
KLDOTCPSS: Because my belly would miss the bellies of other humans?
MK: Absolutely!
KLDOTCPSS: ...
MK: You still don't get it?
KLDOTCPSS: Mmmmmm.
MK: That's okay. Next question--
KLDOTCPSS: Can this be the final question? Or like...the penultimate question maybe?
MK: Um, sure........Ya..Penultimate. That's okay.
KLDOTCPSS: You know you don't need to worry about me not talking to you after this.
MK: ...
KLDOTCPSS: Like, we're the same person. So everytime I think, you're going to be there too. Like, everytime I go, "Should I buy that sandwich?" or whatever, that'll be like me talking to you. Or like you talking to me.
MK: No it wouldn't. That's not a conversation. That's just you talking to yourself.
KLDOTCPSS: But that's what I'm doing now, tho.
MK: ...
KLDOTCPSS: So what you want me to do? Constantly pretend that I'm two people?
MK: Well first and foremost, I just want you to be happy. You shouldn't do anything that makes you unhappy. But what you need to understand is that I live in Mirrorworld. I can't leave Mirrorworld. And sometimes it's hard for me to talk to my mirror friends and loved ones and roommates and be a good mirror-student and a good mirror-daughter. It can be rough in Mirrorworld. So, if I'm being honest, all I want is to just talk to you through the mirror sometimes. I feel like we have so much in common, and it would be nice to talk to someone who really gets me.
KLDOTCPSS: I think deep down I can track the exact path I took to get to this delusion. Not enough to put it into words, unfortunately.
MK: I'm just going to say it one more time: After this, you don't have to talk to me ever again if you don't want to.
KLDOTCPSS: Could I maybe talk to you metaphorically? Do I physically have to talk to my bathroom mirror every day?
MK: ...
KLDOTCPSS: I'm not doing that. That's exhausting.
MK: Like I said, you can do what you want. I have other friends, you know. You wouldn't be abandoning me or anything. It's okay.
KLDOTCPSS: Okay.
MK: ...
KLDOTCPSS: ...
MK: Penultimate question: Are you worried about loneliness affecting your health? Your lifespan? Your ability to feel happiness? Bowels? Skin? Blood? Do you think it's already affected these things?
KLDOTCPSS: That stuff is definitely scary to think about. I don't know. What's even scarier to me is the fact that loneliness is defined a lot by perception. So I'm even more scared that I'm going to perceive that I'm lonely--choose to think that I'm lonely--for the rest of my life, and then it's going to bite me in the ass with bad blood pressure or some shit.
MK: And we already have bad cholesterol!
KLDOTCPSS: Cuz of Dad!
MK: Cuz of Dad.
KLDOTCPSS: And! And! When you think that you're lonely for too long, you get avoidant-motivated and whatnot, so you stay away from potential friends. And you also start to get shittier and shittier and more bitter and more bitter. And eventually you don't know up from down or left from right, and nobody wants to be your friend. And at best you get stuck with acquaintances till the day you die.
MK: Fuck acquaintances!
KLDOTCPSS: Fuck acquaintances! If you're my acquaintance...Then I don't know what to tell you. Maybe go fuck yourself?...Our relationship is stiff and nebulous and so so weird and..I don't know. I'm sure you're lovely if I really got to know you....But anyway...It just becomes this horrible cycle, and that scares the SHIT out of me, just falling into a horrible cycle that I can't ever get out of, and ultimately getting killed by it.
MK: But--
KLDOTCPSS: But! Fucking off into the wilderness feels like a break from that cycle. So even though I'd be all alone, I wouldn't be...Like, I'd have my hands on the wheel. I'd actually be driving, and that just sounds a million billion times better than the alternative. Despite everything I've talked about. Despite everything I know about myself...That feeling of running away and being alone on my terms still feels waaaaaaay more healthy then constantly having to push a boulder up a hill everytime I have to be with other people.
MK: But is that actually true?
KLDOTCPSS: OF COURSE NOT! OF COURSE IT'S FUCKING NOT! Motherfucker! And I know that! I'm not stupid. I just get...
MK: Frustrated.
KLDOTCPSS: Sometimes I just get frustrated, okay?
MK: ...
KLDOTCPSS: I'm so fucking frustrated. With myself and with other people. And it's the easiest thing in the whole world to wrap your head around and yet I made my WHOLE goddamn archive about it. Cuz that's how much I've gotten hung up on this frustration. Cuz for some reason, I just can't get over how....angry I get when I'm alone with other people, and I just want that anger to stop.
MK: ...
KLDOTCPSS: But I'm being overdramatic.
MK: You are.
KLDOTCPSS: And I'm angry. But I'm not going to build a giant column and climb up onto the column and tell all the people at the bottom to build a rudimentary pulley system for my dinner and then kindly fuck off. I'm not going to live in a cabin for forty years. I'm not going to live in a cave. I'm not going to brick myself in. I'm not going to hide out in a forest. I'm not going to join a monastery. I'm not going to sit on a root for a million years. I'm not going to escape the cycle right now.
MK: Yeah. Tonight's Thursday. So that means tomorrow is Friday. So that's Group at 9. Then work. And Benny's hosting cactus night at 8.
KLDOTCPSS: And I have to study for that stupid fucking natural disasters exam too.
MK: Yeah.
KLDOTCPSS: Yeah. So you get it?
MK: I get it. Life in the fast lane.
KLDOTCPSS: Do not "life in the fast lane" me! That's so laaaaaaaame!!
MK: But it's true! Everything our mom has ever told us has been true.
KLDOTCPSS: "More true than truth."
MK: "More true than truth."
KLDOTCPSS: Okay. Final question, then I really need to go to bed...
MK: Okay...buh buh buh...Give me a second.
KLDOTCPSS: It has to be a good one.
MK: Give me a...second.....
KLDOTCPSS: It has to be your best one.
MK: ...Umm.
KLDOTCPSS: ...
MK: Okay! Final question: If you could get turned into any animal what would it be?
KLDOTCPSS: ...Ummmmmmmmmmmmmm. Probably a cat, so I could be well taken care of.
MK: That's a good answer.
KLDOTCPSS: Thank you. You came up with it too.
MK: Uhhhhh. Yeah, I guess. Now you've become Katie Going to Bed.
KGTB: Yeah. Sure. Nice to meet you, I'm Katie Going to Bed. Goodnight!
MK: Have a nice night!
KGTB: I might talk to you in morning.
MK: That would be nice.
KGTB: Or I might forget. I'm not sure.
MK: That's okay.
KGTB: Goodnight.
MK: Goodnight. I love you.
KGTB: Love you too.
MK: ...
KIB: ...
MK: ...
KIB: ...
MK: ...
KIB: ...
MK: ...
KIB: ...
MK: ...
KIB: ...
MK: ...
KIB: ...
MK: ...
KIB: ...
MK: If we were a cat we wouldn't get our masters...