Author's note and disclaimer:
Dear readers, I am no writer. But you will want to read the journal notes below from One who is a writer. I am now what you could describe as a fabulously wealthy drifter of sorts with only one mission: Find Her. She made me a writer when she handed me her journals and essays.
I previously published three random journal notes at the request of this very special person.
I have now come to a watershed point in my commitment to her to share her thoughts, the journal notes of this remarkable woman who, from our first session, when I was a bonafide young sex therapist, referred to herself only as "Born To."
I sit now in my makeshift office in a remote cottage with the western wall all glass, and half of the eastern wall all glass, somewhere in the vast, open Southwest plains, and I stare through bleary, weary eyes at the huge stacks of papers on my oaken desk identified with a yellow sticky note only as "Born To."
I haven't heard from her in over two years now. I have no further input from her as to the order of these voluminous notes, let alone what some of the illusions refer to. I must now try to piece her words together into some sort of order.
What you will read now must, of necessity, be her story as pieced together by me, the best I can, using all I know. I make no pretence of chronological accuracy, nor of the accuracy of the journals of others - her words are now scrambled with mine, and with other notes from other sources who were blessed to encounter her on their paths.
For all my disclaimer about factual validity, don't kid yourself. Question me as a writer (which I am not) all you want. But I have no doubt that when you feast your eyes on her actual words written or spoken to me and subsequently transcribed from her tapes, you will have no doubt about her reality. You will quickly feel the difference between her other-worldly words and mine: No Truer Words Have Ever Been Written.
My failing eyesight, drifting attention span, and constant diligence looking over my shoulder are to blame for parceling this out to you in short segments rather than just having it transcribed as a whole. Because I am predominantly alone and relatively isolated from society (about which I will explain more later) I am driven to publish this stack of notes as I finish each day's work, from my fear that one day I won't wake to another day's work.
Given what I then considered to be the grand life I once had as a responsible social being with both the doctorate in philosophy and military rank, I never expected to say this into the ferocious ears and eyes of nobody but the vast, empty desert creeping toward the sloping mountains which stretch southward toward Mexico, though not quite that far, and northward to Canada, where I know she has been in the last two years.
But, ironically, the embarrassing fact is true: You, my readers, have become my best friends, because it is only with you that I can speak of Her.
And so long as I speak of her to you, and take this search one day at a time, without writing the final chapter that I would need to pen to set myself free from Her, I still hold out hope: She is there. I will find her or she will find me.
First my morning coffee, a few encrypted phone calls to assure that a vast fortune is secure and ready for immediate transfer in case I don't make the calls tomorrow morning, and I begin the unenviable, but sacred (to me) task of trying to impose at least arbitrary order to the stacks of her notes, notes from strangers who encountered her, and notes from many who loved her once or many times -- interspersed further with various newspaper and magazine articles describing her sightings and activities -- or sightings and activities attributed to her: sometimes it's hard to know.
For reasons I will disclose in time, God willing, I have at my disposal two hours per morning with which to pursue her bidding.
