Hey guys. It was really nice meeting both of you at camp. I thought it was funny how we ended up getting along, even though we're all so different. I guess I was particularly surprised that you two wanted to be my friends -- and just my friends. I find that, a lot of times, boys only see girls as possible sexual partners. I think that's disappointing but I'm glad you two are different. I wonder why that is.
So, what's been up with you guys lately?
-- Abigailtobeornottobe@netscape.com:
'Tis because love is too complicated, that I do not bestow it upon any other woman, besides, perhaps, Ophelia. It has torn apart my family, as my mother has fallen for our incestuous king, and allowed Claudius's untimely death to go unavenged. And besides! a woman's love is only temporary.
-- Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
youreaphony@verizon.net:
Hamlet, what are you talking about? You're just about as mad as all the bastards at that place that time I had to be psychoanalyzed. I get that you like Ophelia, but what the hell are you talking about with the king and Claudius? And I don't think a woman's love is only temporary, because it'll always have happened, you know? Just like how my brother Allie died, but I can still like him. Just because he died doesn't mean I have to stop liking him. It's like that with love. Even if you're not going out with someone anymore, you can still love them. Just because you stopped dating someone doesn't mean you have to stop loving them.
And Abigail, I don't think that's true what you said about guys and all. Only the phonies are like that. See when I hang out with a girl, I want her to be the type of person who doesn't say "grand," and I want her to be nice and I want to be able to talk about things with her. To tell you the truth, I think being attracted to a girl is different than wanting to hang out with her.
tobeornottobe@netscape.com:
Holden, there may be truth in what you say, yet women always change their minds and fall at the hands of lust. My father's incestuous brother slayed my father and then took my mother for his wife. My mother claimed to love my father, yet now she loves my evil uncle. Thus, women never have permanent loves. It is the men who love truly, and the men who suffer in consequence.
Now I wonder whether 'tis better to suffer in love or to die, to die and never to love. Is there a possibility of love after death? After my death, will I be loved? Will I be forgotten? Will I be capable of love, of memory, of any sort of consciousness after I am gone? These questions haunt me, and so, for now, I live.
abigailweinberg97@gmail.com:
Hamlet, Holden's right. You are nuts.
I think the whole thing about love is really complicated. I think what Holden said is right, that you can always keep loving someone, even if you're no longer together. You can't take away the fact that you loved them. I think love can be temporary or permanent, depending on the situation, but I don't think the permanence of your love has anything to do with your gender.
Hamlet, people will love you even after you die, just like how Holden loves Allie even after Allie's death. But you will be forgotten, eventually. Unless, like, some big fancy playwright dude makes a fantastic timeless play about your life that people read for hundreds of years after your death. But it's not like that would ever happen.
And I don't know, I don't like thinking about what happens after you die. Mainly because I've never been able to convince myself that anything happens after you die. Even as a little kid, I used to cry whenever my grandparents came to visit, because I knew they were nearing death and I thought it was just so awful that they were never going to exist in any form after they died. I've tried to suspend my disbelief and imagine a heaven and a hell but I just haven't been able to stretch my credulity so much as to actually have it work. It's scary and I secretly envy religious people for this reason. I think their lives must be so pleasant, having this knowledge that you're always being cared for and watched over. How do you guys feel about this stuff?youreaphony@verizon.net:
Well, I don't think people just go away after they die. Like, they still exist, and even though Allie's lying there in the ground, he's probably up in heaven or something. But he's still here somehow. When I was acting all crazy asking him for help crossing the goddam street, I knew he was there somehow.
I guess you could say I'm an atheist, if you want to know the truth. To tell you the truth, I don't like the idea that you have to be religious to go to heaven. I'm in the middle between having a religion and not having one at all. If you didn't have one at all, what would be the point in living? The truth is, I would probably jump out a window or something, if I didn't have one at all. If you think of all the people you know that have died, it's too goddam miserable to think they're all just dead and don't exist anymore. Jesus Christ, that would be awful.
tobeornottobe@netscape.com:
Consciousness after death is separate from the location of your body. To be killed while praying is to go to heaven physically, and to die sinning is to go to hell. Yet, when in heaven or hell, only God knows what thou experience.
abigailweinberg97@gmail.com:
Hamlet, you're weird.
youreaphony@verizon.net:
Hamlet, you're a goddam phony.
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