TO: Rodrigo Weiss
FROM: Mathilde Bagnoire
DATE: 04/22/98
SUBJECT: The solipsistic conceit

Rodrigo -

I feel I should distinguish for you between the rational, empirically provable fact that I am alive and the emotional truth that I am dead. The paradox here is essentially the same as that which underlies the solipsistic conceit: the doctors can tell me that I have a mental or chemical condition, but when I question the very reality of those doctors, none of what they way matters. I KNOW I am dead. I also know that others find this difficult to accept. I am perfectly within my rights to doubt their existence.

When I am capable of being rational, I am fully aware of my situation. I have been diagnosed with Cotard’s Syndrome by a team of doctors in Paris. I spent eight years in an institution on a daily regimen of Venlafaxine and Zuclopenthixol. When my doctor, the leading specialist in Cotard’s Syndrome, decided to relocate to Southern California, I followed him. I have not seen the specialist for years, although I have continued my drug regiment. But when I am here, Paris does not exist, and the doctors do not exist except as constructs of my own imagination. My problem is a reality. I am dead. If the doctors do not exist, their theory that I suffer from mental illness is simply a construction of my mind. Nobody else exists—I am in the grave, surrounded by six feet of isolation. If anyone is capable of making me believe in the autonomy of the other human beings around me, it is you. I know my psyche, which has known so little kindness, love, or generosity, is utterly incapable of inventing a person with such an abundance of these qualities.

However, though sweet, your words worry me. I do not want you to be absorbed. If anything, I want to be absorbed into you. As I’ve said before, your existence is proof positive that I am not alone.

If you will have me, I am yours.

Mathilde.

P.S. I suppose kissing is fine, but I will not have you sullied by allowing you to engage in an act that amounts to necrophilia, much as I might desire it. Please honor my wishes on this point.”