To you, The Wanderer, who found your way here:
Imagine you are in Europe.
Imagine that the internet is the ocean.
Imagine this website is a message in a bottle, floated across the Atlantic…
…and it found its way to you.
I’m sure I don’t know you. Maybe you don’t even know yourself. Most people don’t. But some people are brave enough to try.
There are many ways to try.
You can journal.
You can go to therapy.
You can create art.
You live in a world where you have access to nearly everyone walking the planet, and yet you find it harder to connect than ever.
You create art with supplies that are often cheaper and more accessible than ever before…
…and still people don’t see it…hear it…feel it…
You are a seed buried in the ground, growing roots in the soil best you can, hoping to break on through to the other side up into the light.
You don’t always find the light though. And sometimes when you do, you see the world around you looks a lot different than yourself.
You are not for everyone and everyone is not for you.
That is okay. That is more than okay.
Still, you carry on when darkness takes hold because you’d rather adapt and land on the Galápagos Islands than be dead in the water.
You are a creator after all in a multitude of ways, I’m sure.
I know this well…because I used to create for pure expression. I created films to better understand myself…
And when I made Sydney, all my experiences with mental health and neurodivergence came through.
That’s just how it was for me.
When you finish watching it, you might let out a breath of relief…
…or if you’re a specific kind of person, you may find that you were staring into a frightening mirror.
…a reminder that you are not for everyone and everyone is not for you.
—Jeremy Berkowitz
To you, The Wanderer, who found your way here:
You have landed along the archipelago that Darwin found, only to be greeted by a hundred and twenty year old tortoise who has lived longer than anyone you know.
You wonder what his eyes have seen.
You wonder what losses he has experienced.
You wonder what love he has found.
But you quickly realize that despite all his evolution, he cannot speak.
So you sit down in the white, volcanic sand beside his most recent footprints, watching them get washed away by the sea…
…the sea that has carried you here and from where you came.
The water squeezes between your toes just the same as little streams might flood to a river’s mouth.
Your mouth is wide open taking in all this strange land’s air.
Your eyes, though…your eyes are closed.
You know whether you stay or go you will never see for as long as the tortoise has.
And you realize that that is the beauty of storytelling.
That is the beauty of editing a film.
Someone else controls the way you perceive time in about a ninety minute window, inside a rectangular box.
You can feel an entire lifetime in that window and in that box.
You can glimpse into all the ticking seconds that the hundred and twenty year old tortoise has seen.
You become clearheaded.
If you make it back from where the sea took you, you will create something so you can live like the tortoise….
…for just a moment….
…or a culmination of moments…
…seventy seven minutes to be exact…
—Jeremy Berkowitz
To you, The Wanderer, who found your way here:
I myself had a day of loss, memory, and regression while the hands of a clock spun without any intended direction.
You see—
I was putting in my contacts, when I realized I’d lost contact with most of the people I knew.
I closed my eyes and grew less content with the fact that the content in my wallet never grew.
Lacking quarters, pennies and dimes I realized I spent two quarters of my life pretending there was no time.
Hours were not ours since I left everyone behind.
And now I stand here on the pier searching out in the seas to see if anyone sees me.
There is nothing to hear but my breathing.
I cease to move and I seize.
Oh, what have I done?!
I owe everything I am to my failure to not have fun.
I shed a tear that brews in waste.
The bruise on my knee tears and I collapse at the waist.
In such pain I open up my eyes to see I’m looking through my window pane.
In a daze I realized I had been asleep for days.
I looked at my wife to see the ring wrung around her finger. “I’ve been calling you all day. You didn’t hear the phone ring?”
—Jeremy Berkowitz
To you, The Wanderer, who found your way here:
I have a confession to make.
I did some research on how I could get these letters to pull up on search engines.
I found through the standard practice of SEO, I could make each letter its own page and hide the title in the metadata for the search engines to pick up.
But I cannot do that.
That would be fraudulent to me.
I like the idea of you finding a string of letters, connected together, with sure — one link to my film…but mostly a passageway or a doorway or a poem into a simple truth that might connect us though we may never meet.
The world is built upon the artificial sense of control.
That divides us.
Instead we need some sort of connection.
Some sort of emotional…um….emotional…
…understanding…
…bond…
…a level playing field.
Maybe I’m too opportunistic on the value of these letters.
But know that when I write these letters I aim to be true…
…at least what my truth is to me…
Not a blog.
Not social media.
No way to write back.
Just print on a white page, sailing along…
A place you can connect.
At least that’s what I hope.
—Jeremy Berkowitz
To you, The Wanderer, who found your way here:
This may remind you of someone back home.
Seeing your face
Reminds me of my own
For they connected
Like slices of bread
On a restaurant table
For all to see.
Entering lips
With butter
Just like we used to
Smother our faces
With each other’s
In the night of
Lit kerosene.
Call it a dream
For the meal has arrived
But you are not present to eat.
Your face is now your own.
My steak is raw to the bone.
I am incomplete.
—Jeremy Berkowitz
To you, The Wanderer, who found your way here:
You might also find it peculiar that people seem to believe they own the parking spot their car is in as long as they are parked in it.
I think about the three connecting lines that a parking spot is composed of.
Fitted neatly with ninety degree angles between them.
And then, there’s an open space….
…an entryway, as if to say:
“Welcome. Stay a while.”
Madness ensues when someone parks across two spots….
…crossing what?
Four lines?
How dare they not enter from the empty space?
It’s madness.
It’s all madness.
Madness ensues in a full lot while two families fight for an opening spot on a busy Saturday morning.
It’s as if the drivers are saying:
“I am welcome. You are not.”
But on any other day any lone person could pull in with ease.
I wonder where this sense of entitlement comes from.
I mean, right now, I’m sitting on a toilet seat as I finish writing this.
I think some people call it a throne.
Perhaps, whether it’s parking or using the bathroom, everyone wants to feel that something in this world is special…
…just for them…
…but the reality is that most of our lives spin down the same drain to the same empty space.
I suppose our life is like our gut…
…an empty space eternally looking to be filled and emptied again.
We bought that food.
We owned it.
It was ours for a satisfying moment…
…just a moment…
—Jeremy Berkowitz
To you, The Wanderer, who found your way here:
You probably cherish a memory or two.
You probably bury other memories away, hoping they’ll never be found.
I like to leave memories at locations I know I’ll never venture to again.
It’s like I can drop them into the cement beneath my feet, even if it’s dry.
And it sticks.
And it stays there.
And if I ever happen to return to that same spot, it shoots through the bottom of my shoes…
…and up through my feet…
…along my blood vessels….
…or bones…
…or nervous system.
And when it hits my brain, my skin chills.
My mind becomes trapped in a time that no longer exists.
And often times, they make me sad.
But sometimes they make me smile.
So I’ve learned to keep some memories in the pockets of my favorite pants….
…just so when I grab for my phone or wallet,
I’m struck.
In a belly of sadness, I’m struck with beauty.
And I think, maybe I can find beauty again.
Or at least I can try.
They say God built the Earth and the heavens in six days and took a rest.
Imagine what you could create in a week…
….or if you had so much more time….
…walking along the cement…
...hands in your pockets….
A cemetery of memories.
Rather, love.
—Jeremy Berkowitz
To you, The Wanderer, who found your way here:
If I told you how I see the universe, would you laugh at me?
Probably.
It’s kind of silly.
I imagine the universe is a candy shop.
And the main attraction is the gum ball machine.
The way I see it, every universe starts as three shifting points that expand in tandem with one another in infinite directions.
Limitless.
Boundless.
Timeless.
Each universe expands until it hits its peak…
…at which point it implodes…
…and every thought…
…every word…
…every action….
…every person, place, and thing that ever existed in this universe is wrapped up into a gum ball…
…and every day the owner of the candy shop tries the new gum ball...
…smacked with the entirety of a universe,
hoping to find the solution in the battle of chaos and harmony….
….to let harmony prevail.
He knows the solution will never be found.
But the gum balls will always get closer.
And everything that ever was and ever will be is a part of it all.
If I told you that that was how I see the universe would you laugh at me?
Probably.
It’s kind of silly.
—Jeremy Berkowitz
To you, The Wanderer, who found your way here:
I started feeling bad about telling you that you are not for everyone.
I mean, no one is.
But I never thought about how the realization could bring you down.
My intention was to say—
“You are not for everyone. But there are people you are for.”
Believe me. I get it.
Finding a community is difficult.
I guess I hoped maybe I could somehow, some way find one myself by sharing these thoughts.
You are not for everyone really means:
“You stand by who you are.”
Most people don’t know how to do that.
I think you do.
—Jeremy Berkowitz
To you, The Wanderer, who found your way here:
It’s funny to think I’m writing all these letters and sending them out at sea knowing that no one may ever find them.
I imagine a lobster clawing at this bottle just before it’s trapped…
…just before it finds its way to a local supermarket chain…
…wondering why all the other meat is dead and it is alive….
…pondering why the butcher shop isn’t stocked with live cows.
Of course, it doesn’t realize it’s two days away from being plucked from the tank and boiled red.
That’s at least how I imagine the fate of most of these bottles will be.
—Jeremy Berkowitz
To you, The Wanderer, who found your way here:
I’ve come to accept that numbers are the most concrete form of communication humans have.
That is if they are in the same:
Metric.
Time Zone.
Language.
Etc.
These dividers require translation.
Translation requires patience and time and effort.
There are so many numbers…
…so many numbers that we threw 8 on its side and created:
Infinity.
But of all the numbers, there is only a single, solitary way to communicate a union…
…a togetherness…
…and that is one…
Strange to think the number that can hold everything together is at the beginning.
It’s as if to say, we start together…
…and then we fall apart…
…at increasing size and distance.
We can add and subtract and divide and multiply and play all the funny mathematical games we want.
And even if in the end they form a union….
…they are not naturally one.
Then again, isn’t the Roman Numeral for one —I?
—Jeremy Berkowitz
P.S. I almost failed calculus in high school so take this more as a metaphor than a reality because I might be wrong.
To you, The Wanderer, who found your way here:
I had a dream where I had terminal cancer.
Someone told me I was unlucky.
But I realized I was not.
I was lucky to be alive.
To have had a chance to live in a universe where so little gets to experience life in the human form.
To feel all I’ve felt — good and bad.
To do the things I did.
To make movies.
To love.
To know the people I knew.
I felt so grateful and knew I was filled with such luck to just have lived.
…
And then I woke up, not sick, hoping to carry that optimism through the day.
But I couldn’t.
At least I know there’s hope inside me…
…bubbling in my dreams…
…conniving with inkblots…
…waiting to be found.
—Jeremy Berkowitz
To you, The Wanderer, who found your way here:
I noticed when I was young that I heard my Papa’s laugh in my own father.
It made me wonder if somehow someday when I laughed I’d sound like them.
And it turns out, I do.
The other day I rolled my eyes in a strange way and my mother laughed, remarking that her father used to do that all the time.
I see myself in my grandparents.
My Papa’s anxiety and storytelling…refusing to sell a book unless they let the main character use his name.
My Gammy’s tenacity and fierceness and cleverness.
My Grandfather’s intelligence and communication habits and love of good food.
I regret to say I didn’t know my other grandmother well.
But one day after her second remission into cancer, my father let me ask her a question:
“Why keep fighting?”
The truth is I don’t remember what she said.
My dad said she said it was to spend as much time with her family as possible.
I believe that to be true…
…even if I can’t recall much of her…
But if I have all these other things from the other grandparents, then I know she’s in me somewhere...
Maybe we let the dead rest in the ground, but as long as our genes are slipping through, I feel confident we’re all still somewhere kicking up dirt.
If only that was funny enough to laugh…
…because then I’d laugh…
…and I’d feel those I love around me.
—Jeremy Berkowitz
To you, The Wanderer, who found your way here:
Some people can’t understand that what it means to be a lonely man is to be trapped in the sand like a crab that can’t claw its way out.
To be an oyster that’s raw and served at the bar to an obese elder with a drink in his hand, crying inside that he lost his life to the sea.
His wife’s ashes lay there floating in peace, scattered through the water with his unborn daughter.
He knows they’ve likely evaporated into the clouds and once watched over him like they claim heaven does.
But if God existed he wouldn’t be drunk off scotch making love to oysters right now.
And he prays that in the rain their ashes didn’t fall into the water that filled his toilet that he pisses upon now.
He hopes that they’ve fallen into the water that make up his scotch, so as he drinks them down with the glass he can be with them once again.
Maybe his thoughts are twisted. Maybe that one man should’ve never been enlisted, so he never would’ve hated all there is to love.
And he wouldn’t have driven how he drove. And the man with the oysters wouldn’t be alone.
…
When I wrote this at 17, I didn’t think anyone would see the inspiration for it.
But how naive could I be?
Gammy could tell it was loosely related to my grandfather in seconds.
It was the first question she asked.
I was embarrassed.
And then I reassessed.
It was in this moment that I learned to not have shame about being autobiographical in my work.
—Jeremy Berkowitz
To you, The Wanderer, who found your way here:
I wrote a short story.
I had to use small print to get it all on one scroll.
This is the only copy, so if it gets lost, I will just have to accept that.
It’s called:
Helen Keller and Schrödinger’s Cat
Helen is alone and can’t find her cat.
Her teacher is gone for the day.
She searches the house trying to find Schrödinger, her cat.
Eventually, she finds a limp, folded up blanket covered in spoiled milk and believes it’s her dead cat.
Her teacher arrives.
Schrödinger is dead on the front porch.
Her teacher takes him to the pet store and exchanges him for one of many clones she had made for instances like this.
The teacher walks in through Helen’s front door with the cat.
Helen and the teacher sign touching hands.
Helen is sad her cat died.
Then the teacher hands her the clone.
She tells Helen he is alive and well and was just outside on the porch.
Helen never knows Schrödinger died.
She never will.
This is not an attack on Keller, but Newton for basing physics upon the visual sense.
—Jeremy Berkowitz
To you, The Wanderer, who found your way here:
You wake up alone in a wide, dark hole.
You don’t know how you got there.
You can’t find a way out.
Hours pass and the sun rises.
Looking up, you can see that you are surrounded by brick, at least fifty feet deep.
You scream for help to no reply.
There is no way for you to climb up.
If you remain unheard, you will die.
Three days pass.
No food. No water.
Just as tears are about to fill your eyes, a shovel drops down, nearly cutting you in half.
Instead it lands beside you.
You realize the base of this hole is packed dirt.
All you can do is dig.
So you dig and dig.
The hole gets deeper.
In hunger and thirst, hallucination is soon to set in.
You dig deeper.
And suddenly there is light.
Light above.
Light below.
I can’t tell you what the light beneath the dirt is.
That’s for you, and you alone to decide.
—Jeremy Berkowitz
To you, The Wanderer, who found your way here:
While these bottles sift across the ocean waves, it crossed my mind that the ocean itself could be both a reality and a metaphor for life at the same time.
There are seven ways you can approach the ocean:
Avoid the ocean.
Swim in the ocean.
Surf the ocean.
Sail the ocean.
Capture the ocean.
Watch the ocean.
A combination of the above.
I think depending on which you choose tells a lot about how you try and control your life…
…how you approach the waves and the storms and the moon…
…your tolerance for risk and reward…
Maybe fear controls you.
Maybe you like to move and be with others.
Maybe you seek freedom on your own terms.
Maybe you seek freedom with money.
Maybe you’re an artist.
Maybe you see there’s nothing to control at all.
Remember the ocean is both a reality and a metaphor for life.
And you can change how you approach it anytime.
—Jeremy Berkowitz
To you, The Wanderer, who found your way here:
It’s strange to say, but I went to the shore to drop off my latest letter and one of them floated back.
I’d rather not say which one because I might try and send it out again.
But in a weird way it’s sort of heartbreaking.
And, I guess, also maybe a reaffirming sign about the world around us.
Mother Nature is more powerful than me.
The sun and the trees and the ocean don’t care if I make any transcontinental connections through glass bottles…
…glass made of sand under manmade heat that the sun would swallow up…
Some people think humans are parasites.
Others think we are here to conquer.
In the words of Caesar:
Veni. Vidi. Vici.
I came. I saw. I won (conquered).
Peak parallelism.
Maybe this is a sign to keep the letter that washed up just for myself.
Maybe this is a sign to judge the weather before I ship the letters off.
Maybe this is a sign to accept what I cannot control.
Breathe.
Just breathe.
Just breathe it all in.
Oxygen, toxins, and all.
You can control that much…
Ugh.
Oh no.
No. No. No.
I’m embarrassed by this whole letter.
If this is the only one that reaches anyone, I will be seen as a coward or a rambling imbecile.
But maybe that’s the point.
I can’t control how others perceive me…
I just can’t.
—Jeremy Berkowitz
To you, The Wanderer, who found your way here:
When I say I thought of you the other day, you have to wonder how that could possibly be true.
We’ve never met and I’ve left no return address.
But if you’ve sat at the shore, waiting for these letters to arrive, then I think I have some idea of you…
…not in a simple way…
…not about your appearance…
…not to say you’re smart or dumb or crafty.
Rather, to say, you are layered and complex and vast and frightened and excited and understanding all at once.
Is that you?
Or is that anyone?
Am I saying we are all the same or that I think you’re special or that words can be used to make anyone feel special?
I most certainly am not special.
But I know you.
To me, you might be.
I know you hope and have desires and worries and fears.
I know that because you are human.
And no matter how much the world divides us, about 96% of us are driven in these same ways.
So don’t think twice about it.
If I don’t even know you and I can be certain you have value…
…and we are likely just the same…
…then I should take this letter as a mirror and see I have value too…
…for all my hopes, worries, desires, and fears.
Thank you for this.
Whoever you are…
…wherever you may be…
—Jeremy Berkowitz
To you, The Wanderer, who found your way here:
[first portion of letter redacted]
I’m not one to believe in ghosts.
But sometimes when I drive past her street or can’t sleep at night, I swear she’s somewhere nearby.
And I know it’s selfish to believe her ghost would visit me, especially after I ghosted her.
But it’s really nothing more than regret of what may or may not have been a beautiful friendship.
Because I bet if I went over her house that day on the hill our senses would’ve united.
And I don’t mean sex.
I mean something spiritual.
I mean something where souls collide.
I mean she’d admit to me that I never got a single answer right in her game.
She’d admit that she was making it all up as we went along.
That’s just life, though…that’s just what I think of when I think of her.
—Jeremy Berkowitz
To you, The Wanderer, who found your way here:
Think about a woman in medical school.
On this particular day, she’s set to dissect a cadaver.
A man who donated his body to science.
A man who owned a gas station she used to visit as a kid, stealing Devil Dogs once every two weeks.
But she doesn’t know this is the man.
He never worked at the station.
Only his fraternal twin brother and nephews and nieces.
So she cuts from his sternum straight down to his belly button and through.
Something shifts out of the corner of her eyes.
She looks towards his face to see he’s smiling at her.
Looking up and around, it’s as if no other student or instructor sees this.
Remaining calm as can be, she hears him say:
“You devil dog, you.”
She recognizes the voice.
It’s the same as his brother’s who called the cops the last time she stole.
That voice loomed in her ears.
She was too invested in her degree to panic and drop out.
All she could think to do was donate her body to science upon her death…
…which she did…
…hoping to frighten someone who wronged her…
…not realizing she would never die…
…for the moment she opened that cadaver, her life became hell in a way she could never have imagined…
…eternally returning to a childhood where Devil Dogs tasted like the smell of the cadaver she just cut through…
—Jeremy Berkowitz
To you, The Wanderer, who found your way here:
Consider the criminal with a strange set of ethical values:
It doesn’t matter where his money comes from.
He must…and I mean MUST pay taxes on every dollar he makes.
No crime is too sacred.
But every dollar is not his.
He is a man of the people.
So he goes around the country pitching his case to accountants, killing anyone who won’t help him launder his money.
He never finds anyone to work with him.
Sometimes he kills his potential collaborators before they can change their minds.
And so, he dies with millions in cash, locked in a safe, never having fulfilled his dream of paying taxes.
In his final breaths, he begs his son to change his will and donate his life’s work to charity.
His son doesn’t.
Instead, his son uses the money to start a business of his own.
He shoots drones up in the sky…
…filled with human excrement…
…high above where the birds fly…
….to teach the birds a lesson for pooping on fancy cars.
He winds up getting a military contract.
And he’s so wealthy, he can pay off politicians for the rest of his life to ensure he never has to pay taxes.
Of course, he dies covered in shit when a swarm of rogue drones drops upon his head.
C'est la vie.
—Jeremy Berkowitz
To you, The Wanderer, who found your way here:
You know, I don’t know if I ever told you this, but when I left LA I thought my film career was over.
The circumstances around my leaving…
…well, the circumstances…
…the circumstances…
Oy.
Okay.
The truth of the circumstances around my leaving is something I don’t like to talk about.
It was like I was in a hole with no way to get out, and even if I had a shovel, I had no energy to dig down.
Did I end up making a short film in my favorite movie theater in Michigan before it got demolished?
Yeah.
Did I get to make a feature that — no matter what anyone thinks about it — I’m proud of, and it changed my life more ways than I could ever have imagined?
Sure.
But I also got something I didn’t account for.
You see, I had a friend who moved home too, around the same time I did, after having his own troubles.
We were talking about sitting with our parents at night watching TV, and how lonely that felt.
And it struck me that in a way we were lucky.
He and I might not have lived the late-20s American Dream...
…but we had time with our parents that many miss out on.
And in the long run, that’ll mean something.
I was once selfishly complaining about my parents to a friend who’d lost both of his years ago.
He said:
“I promise you. One day you’ll miss the annoying stuff, too. The good. The bad. You’ll miss all of that.”
He was right.
He’s given me so many gifts as a friend.
And he’s taught me so much.
He’s how the short and the feature actually came into place.
Anyway, most people I know have landed on their feet.
I’m still floating around in the ocean.
Swimming.
Capturing the ocean.
Observing from afar.
But that’s a good thing…
…that’s progress…
…I used to avoid it altogether…
…the beach…
…the water…
…the sand.
Without all the people I love, and the films I’ve made, and the lessons I learned, I would still be holed up somewhere…
…hiding from myself…
…and you.
So I hope one of these letters reached you.
And if only one did, I hope it was the one you needed….
…whoever you are…
…wherever you may be…
—Jeremy Berkowitz
Sydney (2025): Autism, Masking, and Art as Survival (An Essay on Medium)