Elsewhere

17 August 2000

I have noticed, and this is just a tendency, not a hard-and-fast rule, that I tend to offer help more than I can really afford. I volunteer. But then, whenever I may need assistance, I don't normally ask. Hm.

beyond reach (a semi-fiction)

Sometimes, when I'm really quiet, those times when I've successfully avoided the lure of the stereo, the guitar, the telephone, the [insert audible medium here], and when I'm looking out a window (almost always out a window, don't get me started on trying to speculate the symbolism in that), I can hear the sound. It isn't the sound of my pulse in my ears, a rich, low, thick sound, nor that of the tinnitus which haunts me in the silence like a ghost visible only in the blackest dark, but the sound of echoes bouncing around in my soul. It is a hollow place, and whenever it is full, the soulstuff leaks away, it evaporates into the dry air around me, so slow I can feel it. Each time the echoes are of different things, words, thoughts, promises, promise. Things which are gone, but the space hollowed out for them longs to be occupied. Sometimes, God stops by, pouring energy into it as though from a clear reservoir, but the seams are loose, and the ache of the passage from inner to outer rises, peaks, and fades, so that I can hear the echoes again.

good to hear

In speaking a bit more with you, I'm finding that you're learning to balance things now. It's been a few months, and now you're getting the swing of it. The most important thing, which I was afraid you wouldn't get, is that you can take it seriously and not become a robot. Don't get me wrong, you still have a way to go. I guess the best analogy is that you were able to smuggle photographs of the important things into your situation, and they periodically remind you to go grab a small one and come back.

musings of a prod.

Hanging in there through the data trials at the Revolution. Please come home, Dr. Zaius!