From: L. Owl
To: bolthy@bolthy.com
Subject: Owe It To You
Date: Sunday, January 10, 1999 6:01 PM

I don't know how I ended up here. I began to search for the Getty Museum. And, I found you.

So, I started to read your biography, and finished reading your biography. I totally enjoyed it--even your suffering. You suffer exceedingly well, in fact. Perhaps you would be wise to suffer for a living, as in writing screenplays or tragic novels with a caustic hint of irony. Musicals. Sonnets. Don't limit yourself.

Yours in admiration,

L. Owl
Winged Messenger

From: Jeremy "Bolthy" Zimmerman
To: L. Owl
Subject: Re: Owe It To You
Date: Monday, January 11, 1999 8:23 AM

Thanks! I used to write a lot at one point, but have totally just not done anything with it in a while aside from what you see on my site. Ironically enough, I'm looking into becoming a copywriter for an ad agency... ;)

From: L. Owl
To: bolthy@bolthy.com
Subject: Re: Owe It To You
Date: Monday, January 11, 1999 12:26 PM

Jeremy,

Your "Legend" may be fiction. If real, you have the perfect history, the absolute made-to-order biography of someone who could become a good writer.

"Legend" showed this: you have the Zen ability to stand aside and observe your situation from all angles, even while in it. Your view is an outsider's, who understands the inside, who harbors polarities: romantic and cynical; iconoclastic and seeking. You are interested in everything. Best of all, you're very funny.

Get some job, but not in ad writing; the eight to five clock will own your words and ultimately your soul--better to chop wood, waiter for a cruise line. Good writing comes from having lived expansively, and survived somehow, and then having the grace and means to tell others about the dragons and damsels you met along the way--something you are already doing. And, speaking of damsels, good writing attracts fame, which attracts power, which attracts "hot chicks."

Stay in college. Study anything. Business. Music. Economics. Waste Management. Quantum physics. Art History. Read. Read more. It may take fifteen years to get the degree. But, it's evidence. It shows you are committed to yourself.

You may not know it, but your chaotic childhood is a priceless gift you were given. Unwrap it. Your humor is a wand you can wave to create better worlds. Use it. Your sadness is a key to open ecstatic universes you cannot imagine exist. Go there.

If this were an ad campaign, it would go like this...

"Life. The Ultimate Game. Your Move."

L. Owl
Returning to Olympus*

*This constitutes the final visit from Winged Messenger Bearing Unordered Verbal Fortune Cookies and Unsolicited Advice.

© 2000 Jeremy Zimmerman, unless where noted. All rights reserved. Comments, complaints, death threats, and flaming chickens may be sent to bolthy@bolthy.com.