Impostor from the future

Lindsey Diane Alexander, Purdue University

Abstract

If you are reading this document, Good Me and Bad Me have finally caused the apocalypse, thus fulfilling the prophecy of the end times. No more asking What if the sun burnt out. Earth has been left behind. The following pages will prepare you to sustain life on this strange planet, solo. ^ Scratch that--the planet is the planet. You are the strange one. You are the stranger here. ^ Realize this world, like the last, is a heaven and a hell. Inside of you is a heaven and a hell. You are the wheat and the chaff. In zero Gs, everything might fall away—the grass wither and the flower fade—but for this essential fact, which will endure forever. Once acclimated to the tundra and foams, rings and moons of this world, both the heavens and hells will, of course, slip in and out of understanding and of view. ^ I can only hope that these instructions have fallen into the hands of one who has wished for her whole life to disappear, and some miracle or horoscope chart calculation has led her eyes to this very page. If you are reading this, you are the pioneer who has been chosen to steal the fire from the gods, to re-create your image using only your rib, to determine the vanishing point, to begin it all over again—so begin. Begin full of mistakes, full of virtue. Begin in joy or longing, begin in frustration. Begin today, begin tomorrow, begin a garden. What you grow will trouble and feed you. ^ Read the enclosed manual carefully. This message will self-destruct— ^

Degree

M.F.A.

Advisors

Marianne Boruch, Purdue University.

Subject Area

Literature, American

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