Dear Memory: A Love Story (The End)

There was a time that we were lovers,
through March, April and May.
I went home in the summer,
though I wished he had asked me to stay.
The ocean was very wide,
and it got in our way.
So I came back from the other side,
to see how much had changed...

The time we met;
The time he loved me;
Today.

He always was a gentle man.
He is a gentle man still.
He met me at the train station,
like he'd said that he will.
We had a long, awkward conversation,
head to head, eye to eye.
I had lost his heart some time ago.
I may never know why.

The time we met;
The time he loved me;
Goodbye.

Does he regret
the time he loved me
today- I promised I'll be okay,
so I'll be okay.
Though I loved him- Maybe I'll hear from him,
and I can be his friend,
who loved him.

The End.

Dear Memory: Travel Diary

Wednesday 15th, August 2018

Dear Memory:
Today I set out. My bags are packed; They are heavy.
My body is tired, my way long since decided.
Before me there is only to go a long way for a very long day,
full of pulling heavy bags and full of waiting.
But I come today, across land and sky, across the sea I come toward you.
What will happen now?

~~~~~

At London Greyhound: 1:18 PM

Cabin bag 12 kg or 26 lb: 35.75 lb
Checked bag 20 kg or 44 lb: 79.65 49 lb

I packed too much for my voyage. Both my large bags were beyond the weight allowance my flight would grant me, and one was too much even for the bus. Feeling numb and imperative more than regretful, I ripped content out of the heaviest bag, and gave it over to a lady at the Greyhound counter, to be brought to lost and found, and eventually to be donated away. My D&D books, the first I ever owned, were thus sent away. I had decided against selling them, in a fit of sentimentality. Two swimming suits; and my old laptop, now replaced; and tablet seldom used. There is enough personal information on the one, probably, to steal my identity, if poor luck put it in hands that would. But it was with only the grim swiftness of a decision that must be made without hesitation, even if it must be made in error.

My wrist aches from writing on this pad, but I will to tell the story, so I write. I must pull more weight again from both my bags before I fly. Clothes, mostly, I will prefer to consent to abandon. Perhaps a book, and some toiletries if need be. The bus sets out, and I sit in it, as quiet and grim as an inevitable. I do not grieve. I follow my course.

At Pearson International Airport: 5:14 PM

The airport is confusing to navigate and lacks enough available information assistance for a traveler to find someone at hand to unconfuse it for them. However, I have taken this path before, and in the place where visual cues call back to the former experience, I remember enough to make my way more confidently. I left myself ample time, which helped. I did not need to hurry.

In a little heap behind a check-in gate, I left an array of belongings which I have cherished in their time. A stack of old CDs including the game Wolf was left along with clothes laboriously repaired and fondly worn. My broad hat. My grey rain jacket. The faceless rabbit, my companion since before London, when I rescued it from a Christmas drive it was too handmade to serve, was left there on the floor to be tidied away where the airport staff might put it. Perhaps to landfill. My box of dice stayed in my big suitcase to go with me.

These choices may sting, but in truth, I would go and leave everything if I must. It would likely even be easier than choosing which and what to consign away to the blind world which knows none of the stories of these things. Most of the elements of my shrine were left at home, to whoever would live there after me. The musical jewelry box and the fierce red bull sit on a bookshelf to be adopted or admired or discarded, and an empty waxen skull sits on a dead mantle long closed to any use of a real hearthfire, grinning over a basement den, for as long as it is left there. I kissed its crown one last time in reverence before I left. I go, seeking my dreams more boldly perhaps than ever I have... or then, maybe not, given the many journeys I have taken. But I go, and fulfil the promise I made by that candle gloriously.

I treasured these things, but mostly I treasure the memories carried on them. I leave much behind, but it is with a heart willing, and the abandonment of old relics helps me to feel new. They are only things, and I would give up more than I have for the sake of my friendships, which are greater; or just for my freedom, which is also greater. If I had to.

My flight should board soon.

At Keflavik Airport: 4:33 AM local time

My phone's clock reads 12:33. My headset has begun, while on the flight, to lose its strength in the wires by the speaker jack. Like the last one, the bundle of tiny wires inside must have twisted enough to sever almost all of them. I sit and write in a beautifully white bathroom where every stall has its own sink, and a door with no substantial gap underneath it. I was driven there largely by a keen and self-conscious awareness that I smell of menstruation. Probably, it is mainly a function of having worn the same clothes for so many hours in succession, having had to sit still in one spot for so long.

I remember that I meant to look up the phone number of my contact at the house where there is a room waiting for me on Ashfield St. A repeated announcement calls out in some English and some Icelandic for someone with a name that, to me, only sounds a bit like "alien saucepan".

I am tired. It has been too much dull restraint now to feel any glory, or at least any but slight occasional flickers, at my imminent and ongoing return. I did still enjoy the thrill of my last plane building up speed for the great rush that would lift it off the ground, after so long being teased by occasional accelerations that were only to taxi out to our designated runway.

I am tired from sitting still. From enduring the child behind me kicking my seat. From turning aside my thoughts when they wandered to the emergency door near me, and the long scream and fatal drop that could lie beyond. Or contemplated death in a crash, or in the sea in some emergency. I am more than half way through the part of my journey involving flight. I look forward to sleep, on a soft bed somewhere distant. After that, I will be able to begin to take on the tasks of my return and settling in.

At Ashfield, Carlow: 4 PM, Thursday 16, August 2018

I am here. The cool air greets me welcomely. The trees in their robes of ivy and all the walls and farmland look beautiful to me. The wind blows rain like seaspray and clouds like quickly passing crowds. All smells of sea and soil and, slightly, horses. My host met me and tried to help me see where things were. Gave me my keys and a lift to town, to Aldi where I bought some pillows and food.

Saturday 18th, August 2018

I type up the handwritten notes of my journey. It is about a quarter to four in the morning, in my little bright bedroom on the second floor of a neat little house in Ashfield. Not Ashfield St, for that is not quite how things are here. Ashfield is a neighborhood. A little expansion of duplex houses, pretty much all looking the same, and with a little road winding between them.

I am tired, and think I may sleep after this typing. I have slept mostly in evening, up until midnight, so far, and then again in the morning after an interim few hours of midnight activity. So shall it be today, although I mean to rouse myself earlier today than yesterday from my morning nap. I'll hope to seek out some place to access internet, post this blog, talk to my friends... and see whether I have yet any word from my Dear Memory, to whom I left a message: "I am back".

Perhaps I will ask my housemates to take me into town. Maybe to the library, or the grocery. It is hard, but I must constantly remind myself that during the morning, those friends I know best will not be around. The time zone difference would make it deep night for them, when they should be sleeping.

I have learned over the past day that I will need to find a job offer and then a PPS number, in order to take work in Ireland. I should go to Intereo for the number after I have an offer, with my passport, and a proof of address, and a letter of offer. I might open a bank account once I have a proof of address or student ID card.

I have rediscovered that in Ireland, candy tastes better. I remembered thinking this, but the substance of it does not really ring clear until the difference between flavours is in one's mouth again. I bought a couple of sticks of red licorice twist from a convenience store at the near edge of town, where I stopped to look around and speak to the lady behind the counter and ask if I might leave my CV there, once I've prepared one. Yes. And I did not eat the licorice for some time, but carried it in my bag and carried on my way. But it is so full of flavour, like red soda and some kind of delicious fruit. By comparison, a lot of candy from Canada tastes of almost nothing but stale sugar. I might well wind up stopping by Hegarty's to buy a small amount of candy fairly often. The open sweet bins behind the counter are delightfully nostalgic to me of the penny and dime candies at the gas station back in Killaloe. My Killaloe, the little village of my childhood.

My mind wanders to all manner of fantasy over you, my Dear Memory. I imagine meeting, over and over. I imagine singing to you. I imagine lying next to you, on grass under a tree, or in bed to sleep. I imagine asking you demurely a vast array of happy little invitations. I wonder that I ever felt muted in my feelings toward you. I have felt giddy and romantic and happy and suspenseful, and surprisingly little worried.

Typing up my notes here, I had the opportunity to now process the little feelings of loss at the property I have left behind. Feel a pang of anxiety over the accounts my old laptop may have still been signed in to. A little twinge of sadness over my old beloved D&D books, kept with me for 12 years, and the faceless rabbit doll, and a computer game that meant a lot to me as a very young child, and which I wonder to myself whether it can be found online. What is done is done, however, and I would not reverse it, though I do feel the loss. An the serpent sheds its skin it is cleaner and shinier, but also more naked and perhaps vulnerable for a time in softer scales not yet grown thick with scars.

Dear Memory: Volume 2

Good evening.

You have been often on my thoughts. Only natural, I suppose. I do not know, quite, when I am to meet you. You have already been told, given that it was not practical to have our first meeting immediately as I was in the country, that I will wait until my arrival to arrange it. You judged it reasonable.

As the day draws near, the need to have a place to stay becomes more urgent. That, though, pales in comparison. I have spent the last week or so kind of out of sorts, feeling antisocial, bored, tired. It may have been partly the after-effects of a minor cold, or possibly of failing to notice a missed day of my medicine. It has not prevented me from getting anything done, however. I finished the essential part of sewing up my backpack. It is, although not as thoroughly secured and finished as I want it to be, ready to be used. I redoubled my efforts contacting landlords who might rent to me, and have several conversations going with regard of potential places. Two of my friends agreed to come and move furniture for me, to set up a yard sale. Another from out of town asked to meet with me briefly before I go, and I agreed.

I am on my last week of work. My direct supervisor has praised me over several times, for being a good and energetic worker. Proactive, reliable. Last week, I found and returned a ring that had been lost on one of the shuttlebuses when we were cleaning them, and I was given a card and little reward for it.

For the past couple of weeks, I have occasionally stayed behind after my shift to play piano, for there are instruments at various places throughout the building, and some of real old wooden make, with the soulful sound of an organic, resonant thing responding to my touch. It has been a long time since I had convenient access to such an opportunity to practice my playing. I am rusty. However, with a half an hour here and there, I have been able to reclaim a great deal of my elegance, if not my memory of specific songs. Several people have complimented my playing.

All this is procrastination. It is... details. I came to write here today because I thought... maybe... it would help my temper at work, and allow me to sleep a bit better at night, if... If I...

If I admit here, openly in writing, that I am afraid you will reject me.

There. It is said.

Although I have no particular reason to expect you to, and although I have coached myself on every fancy that I must accept whatever answer you give, I am nevertheless afraid. Although I have prepared to move on confidently, with the condolences and support of several dear friends, and the necessity of looking after myself by earning my keep in the more expensive environment to which I go... Perhaps I will sleep more soundly if I have confessed here that for all my preparation, I do care. I do have hopes, and they stand at risk of being disappointed. I do wish... and with a power that makes all this that I have done, to arrange for myself to come back across the ocean to see you again seem perfectly in line, not excessive. I want to share fondness with you again. I want to be permitted to love you again.

The time I spent in Ireland makes a grand story. If it is, as I have at least once named it, like a story that makes all that came before only a prequel, then the time since October has been another very worthy story in the series, and frankly one much better documented within its own time. But I could not have written everything I have felt, all the times I have thought of you. They have been too numerous. I could not have written all the different things I have felt, or believed myself to feel. There have been long weeks of distraction that I did not write at all. There have been weeks I myself have forgotten.

This second volume, second story within the series that follows the arc of you and your impact on my life, present or not, must be drawing to a close. Its content has been doubt, and the coping with doubt, and learning how to respect doubt and carry it healthily and act confidently despite it. Doubt must soon come to an end, and I have been feeling the tension building gradually around me, the thrill of coming closer and closer to the climax of the story, the resolution of the doubt, the answer to the mystery. How it plays out, I do not yet know, but I know that I am nearing the final pages, and feel that however it is this story ends, however the doubt ends... My memory will be watching, and the memory of it must surely be keenly felt and remembered as the next story, whatever its shape may be after this, begins.

The tension is killing me, and my heart is cheering for a happy ending as the days lurch and drag. Two and a half weeks. Two weeks. A week and a day now, and I find that I am imagining talking to you at all sorts of idle moments. The tension is killing me, but so sweetly poignantly that I could have no objection.

Dear Memory: Nondispassionate

Yes, that is a deliberate double negative.

After having written four days ago in a state of surprised and surprising calm, and reflected on my own detachment from the emotional side of my return, I find that strange dispassion... it has not... gone away, exactly. I don't believe that anything I said then has become untrue. I still await the future with great curiosity, without certainty, without demand... and I think, ready to face a disappointing answer if that is what awaits me.

However, perhaps in response to having thought about it more seriously for the first time in quite some time, I notice a more emotional side of my experience. Perhaps it is rising up in response, or perhaps I am just noticing it in response, in all of the little ways that the things I said do not show the whole picture. The details of my life that those words do not adequately describe. Perhaps a combination of both, and I think this is more likely. I always seem to think of an exception to an assertion just as or after I make it.

Like rules in Magic: the Gathering always interacting with one another, and allowing for so many variations and conditions that almost any absolute statement you make will have exceptions. Like, "You won't have more than one sorcery on the stack at once." I have to admit, dear memory, I have enjoyed your Topdeck Tutors podcasts and videos a great deal. I listened to them many times, much like rewatching CarlSagan42's videos over and over again, which you also introduced me to. I like your taste, dear memory. The things you do and recommend have often been interesting, hopeful, clever and funny. Much like you...

I told the story of my relationship with you to one of my co-workers today. She has been working with us only two weeks, rather than the five that I have shared with the other summer students who joined at the same time as me. She is more than ten years younger than me, and working together with a co-worker more than ten years younger than myself feels very strange indeed. It gives me a sense of being older and more experienced in my surround that is very distinct and I am not sure how to react to it. I feel I should be a voice of wisdom and experience to some degree, but am also concerned against being a pretentious adult as I know I used to see adults who would try to talk to me: who thought they knew better, and needn't listen to me. I never want to be like that. I think I am managing not to be, so far.

I told her about meeting you at tabletop society, inviting someone else at the table to walk, but having you answer that call instead, and noticing you in a way I had not noticed before. The March-a-thon, and the long walks you markedly failed ever to make an excuse not to show up for. The discomfort on your face when I mentioned a lover from home. The request to kiss you. A relationship beautiful and intense and supportive, but always bound by time to end with the school year. My own desperate reluctance to leave you behind. A promise perhaps unfairly extracted. Intentions forged from fear of letting go. Inability to keep up a relationship worth having between the pain of distance and the dissynchronicity of time zones. A coming apart, first resisted, and then formally agreed. An attempt to move on. A song, a breaking point, a realization, and a decision, to come back. Plans, applications, formalities; step by slow, beaurocratic step. Success. Acceptance. Further plans. A plane ticket. And an email, requesting your consent to meet me. And a message, charmingly misspelled, 'of coarse'.

I was crying a little by the end of that story. I am crying a little recounting it here. The feelings... they are still there. Of course they are. How couldn't they be? And yet, none of the words I said four days ago, I think, are false. I do not think I am obsessed anymore. I do think I am ready to take whatever comes. It remains true, so far as I can tell beyond a veil of perspective behind which I cannot be objective, that the travel and the adventure may have been welcome even if I did not have this exceptionally romantic excuse to undertake it. That I expect the adventure to be welcome even if the answer I find is not what I hoped it might be.

Beside that strange dispassion is a shining storm of quiet passion, controlled... in some way respectful... perhaps even polite. But passionate nonetheless, moved into a whirl that twists the air into eddies and currents, that pulls me, although perhaps not inexorably. That moves me, because I consent to be moved by it. It would be a great struggle not to move to this current in some way or another, but I can direct it, I think. I can channel and turn its flow. I still am convinced this is not really a contradiction. Like so many other things, my dear memory, in this ball of seeming contradictons, as you called me long ago. I don't think I ever claimed, or ever expected, that I would not feel. I don't think I ever said, even to myself, that I would not cry, or hurt. Only that it would be worth it. It was, and is, my choice. The story worth telling, both the bitter and the sweet of it.

Dear Memory: As Seasons Change and The Time Draws Near

My upcoming trip back to Ireland becomes more real week by week. It is less than a month away now, and begins to solidify, develop the practical gentle urgency of something I need to prepare for. I went out today, and bought a luggage to fit close to the maximum dimensions for an allowed carry-on luggage as permitted for my flight. The one I found at Talize that I decided to buy was missing a handle, but seems roomy and adaptible. Part of its length is collapsible with an extension zipper. It also has little wheels on the bottom, and I know well the value of being able to pull, not carry, wherever the ground permits. I have begun to sew on a new handle, made of a synthetic strap that I have among my collection of various potentially useful objects and materials.

It has been a while since I've done any sewing, although I had a stint of it a while back, before I got this summer job, and I look forward to finishing my backpack as well, before I finally go.

The job... The first genuine interview I got this summer led to a hire. I must have been doing something right, and that brings a little soft smile to my face, although I know it also took me some effort and stress before I got to that interview. I have been working in maintenance at the Boys & Girls Club of London, and my direct supervisor is often impressed with the thoroughness and care of the work I and my co-workers who are also summer student hires do. Even, sometimes, with the speed, although this is far less one of my strengths. I have had sore muscles and joints in at least one place almost constantly since I started - it is physical work, which I have not been used to in recent years; and involves a lot of crouching and bending, which is hard on my feet, and thighs, and knees. However, the staff there are friendly and diverse, encouraging and gentle. They remind me insistently to take breaks and I think they want to make sure I take care of myself, which it is hard to remember to do when I am focused on proving my worth - at work, I always am.

For the first week of July, distant memory, I went into the United States to visit with another friend from the internet, who has seemed to be quite smitten with me for some time, and has been a great source of comfort and companionship. It was a very pleasant week of luxury and relaxation. I was treated to a hotel and swimming and I suspect I would have been bought restaurant food every day I was there had I not pretty much insisted on showing my cooking chops - so one night, I made us sandwiches and then my host bought us a hotplate so that I could cook a jambalaya (a boxed meal that caught his eye when we were shopping) and a soup and a good meal of pasta.

My dear host also offered me the opportunity to take a new laptop with me when I left, which caught me thoroughly off-guard. He had bought it just to have for our time together, he explained to me, and would have returned it otherwise. Although it baffles my awkwardness about money and worthiness, and jarred against my pride clamorously, I accepted; my budget for the coming year is likely to be stretched as it is, and my old laptop is in awful shape, just kind of waiting for one last problem to make it actually unusable. It already has no useable battery (and cannot run at all without being constantly plugged in) and often stalls and threatens to crash when dealing with anything complicated.

My trip in July was romantic, and my relationship with the one who invited me there as well. It continues to be a strong and fond connection. I wish for you to understand that although it took me some time to be ready to open my heart again after losing you last summer, and losing you much more thoroughly in October... I have been able to. I want you to understand that this is not an indication that I do not care about you or am no longer fond of you. It is, however, part of the plan. I needed to let you go, in order to come back to you freely, and with the strength of independence. Forging new romantic connections again, once I was able, has been part of that, a small and vital part of letting you go. But they do not displace my promises, or my hopes. There is a throne somewhere in my heart, now perhaps a little dusty, for I have left it mostly alone for some time... that sits reserved for you, should you want it. I have set up my other relationships to be secondary, to give primacy to the potential of you. If the primacy of you does not come about, I will adjust. If you make clear that you do not want the throne, I will adjust. Offer that place to someone else, or destroy it and build something else.

I think of you only occasionally now, and I think of you as a feature of the future more than a feature of the past. I do not have much to think about you that I have not already covered, and I think I have settled into a reasonable comfort in waiting. I went very thoroughly over all this, emotionally and practically, earlier. I chose my strategy, now it only remains to carry it through, and this I can do quite simply.

It occured to me while I was taking a shower at some point, perhaps a week ago, perhaps two... that there had been a time that a former state of Serp was thoroughly obsessed with you, and that state of Serp had had little else in its focus than you, and what might be the best way to have the best chance to know you again, and to have all the good of your company. That Serp decided that in order to have the best chance, it must cease to be the obsessed Serp that it was, but make a plan to pursue you gently and without being obsessed, so that the future, non-obsessed Serp would not simply ignore you or fail to make any effort. And so my past self plotted, and felt, and dreamed, and wrote you letters here, burning out its passion and resigning itself to pass away, giving way gradually and by its own will to a different Serp with a very different state of mind.

It feels like a different person wrote those letters, a little. This Serp, this present I... I do not think it is obsessed. I do not think I am obsessed, but regard this whole adventure as just the way that things are going to go. In respect for my past self, and in accord with the arrangements and work already put into the plan, in acquiring an acceptance from another Irish school, a deposit from my father, committing to my landlord to leave. I do not feel all that romantic about it day by day, but from time to time I do think about the future and wonder what will happen, when I will actually meet you. What look will be on your face? What will you see when you look at me? Will you notice some differences right away? Will I seem calmer? Stronger? Thinner? Happier? The subtle changes that take place over months are rarely well observed by one who lives through them. They are rarely drastic enough to notice, and even when they are, the new way of things quickly becomes merely normal again. But perhaps you, old memory, will notice.

And so that I do not leave it out, because it is still part of the reason, I do come to Ireland in order to find out. In order to see you, and speak to you, and in order to answer the question of whether we can and will love one another again. Perhaps I will feel a wash of emotion as soon as I see you again, eye to eye in real time and real space. Perhaps I will remember my obsession and be again entangled. I think, however, that I will be able to resist becoming obsessed for a time, by being careful, so as to not overwhelm you or make myself a nuisance by being too attached if it is not reciprocated, or if it is not desired of me. It is not, now, a demand... as my past self insisted it should not be, and I think I am ready to fulfil that. It is not a need for you. It is an open question, one in which I remain interested and curious, and very much inclined to pursue. Will we love one another again? Shall I be your companion for some substantial amount of time? Will your life and my life fit together? Can we make them complimentary in a way that makes each of us stronger? Will you want to?

I remind myself, in a reflex, to imagine that the answer could be no. And I smile a little to myself, because I think I genuinely have managed to prepare to accept that gracefully, by reminding myself every time. It would be alright. It would be satisfactory. The question would still have been answered. Don't get me wrong, I expect it may be at least a little disappointing... But my cunning past self knew just what it wanted its strategy to be, and set it in motion and then lay down and passed peacefully into the past so that I could emerge as I am, as planned, and I have to say I am somewhat impressed with myself. I didn't realize I could do that.

I think I'm ready. I am prepared for long travel, and to face uncertainty with confidence and with ingredients gathered around me from which to forge all manner of alternate plans. I am ready to meet you and be rekindled as a lover, or embraced as a friend. An... old friend... I remember the words, and my mind is transported back to a grassy field, a gentle rise, a tense and tearful conversation. My eyes leak in sympathy with the past and I feel curious, and wistful, and I continue to think about the future, but note that there is still this possibility of being reminded vividly of the past, like a movie playing over again, known fondly and memorized.

I have begun to sell some of my things. Took a bunch of photos and made a bunch of listings the other day. It has demanded more organization from me, and I have done it. It is useful on its own anyway.

I knew it'd been some time since I wrote here. There are a good many things I struggle to make time for, in those moments when I have power and confidence enough to choose to do something, and then go ahead and do it. Rather than going through my life desperately from reassurance to reassurance like it sometimes feels like.

I have three weeks left at my summer job, and then another handful of days left to myself, and then a long, long travel back to the country where I met you, old memory. Since you will not be able to meet me the day I land, there is not really any need to plan the meeting in advance. I will take up the offer given me by my college and be transported to Carlow to begin to settle there, and then I will probably feel I have the right to speak to you more freely, for I will be there, and available at the expenditure of a few hours in transit. I breathe. I sigh. Until then, then, old memory. Heh. The reunion comes.

Dear Memory: Overlap

It's been a while since I wrote here... A lot has happened.

I mean, a LOT has happened now that I look back on it. Three short weeks later, and so much has happened after these long, stretching months of seemingly so little... I have finished my diploma. I was a bit worried about Tax, so I studied it purposefully and did well enough on the exam for a solid pass, although still not a great grade overall. I have moved out of the house with the loud and inconsiderate roommates I didn't feel I could talk to. Moved right next door, to another room managed by the same landlord, with different roommates. These ones don't bother me much. The walls are thicker and the room is further away from main flows of traffic. I've been sleeping full nights again, at long last. I even have access to quite a large downstairs den which I can reshape to my heart's contentment. I cleaned off and rearranged the furniture, populated some neglected shelves and a mantlepiece with books, knicknacks and an assortment of tasty snacks. I actually set up my round table, which has had no space to be useful in for over a year and was just in the way at my last house. It is so pretty now, a comfortable and happy place into which to invite my few local friends. Including a special new addition...

My asexual girlfriend finally moved to London! I had been forgetting this was even a thing, but a few days before I moved (which was a few days before the end of the month) she was landed and local. The night before the move, unable to sleep and stressed, I called her up to go walk the London night streets together and we hugged and kissed and chatted about all sorts of wonderful things. I've been showing her the markets on the weekends. It gives me an excellent excuse to go out to them myself, and there's a great budget stall at Gibraltar that sells non-perishable foodstuffs that are past their expiry date. I've found some pretty great things there (like sunflower seed butter and some delicious little cookies) and also some not great things there (like protein bars and Welch's fruit snacks which become very tough as they go stale), but the prices are certainly right for experimentation.

I got another three offers from Irish colleges, and am currently trying to decide between Sligo IT, Carlow IT and IT Tralee. I also got mail from Waterford, but to be honest their letter wasn't even a conditional letter of offer like the other three were and I was very unimpressed, so I'm not seriously considering it. I'm currently leaning towards Carlow because it's the closest by transit to Athlone.

I booked my plane ticket. Five hundred dollars or so, including baggage allowance. I'm bringing a real suitcase this time, bringing more with me; since I'm leaving nothing behind to wait for me.

And I broke the silence. I wrote you an email on the first of May. Brief and simple and somewhat formal, but contact has been made. I got a response the very next day, which was even shorter and simpler, but although little is said and although you did not take me up on the offer to talk more by starting a further conversation, there is enough confirmation there to make my heart sing. Misspelled and humble is a simple message that validates all the work I have done to get back across the sea. "Of coarse I'll meet with you".

Now my next big task is to choose between these three colleges and get access to enough money to pay my confirming deposit before May 30th. I'll probably need a student line of credit. And for that, I'll need a co-signer. Probably my father, if he'll agree to do it. Otherwise, I might reach out to Iris. Or Ashlynn. Or maybe even Brian, possibly. I'm willing to have some really awkward conversations about finances in order to make this happen. I will find a way.

As I was heading out to the bank today to discuss this, I paused and wanted to hear a specific Ani DiFranco song. This happens often enough, but this time... I didn't have the version I wanted to hear. I have the song, somewhere in my discograpy, but... it was too loose and whispery. I remembered a different rhythm. The search for the correct earworm involved a flustered overturning of YouTube to no avail and my purchasing a single track for 99c of the other non-live recording that was made of it... only to be sent the wrong song. They sent me "Shameless" instead, so I called the support line to have them fix it and ask questions about the song I was looking for.

It's been sorted. I have it now. The lighter and jazzier, more rhythm-tight 2007 recording, from the album 'Canon', of Ani DiFranco's song "Overlap":

...I know there is strength in the differences between us
and I know there is comfort, where we overlap;
Come here; stand in front of the light.
Stand still, so I can see your silhouette.
I hope... that you have got all night,
because I am not done looking at you yet.

I love this song. This version of this song. It prompted me to draw an analogy between communication and light that I built up so thoroughly I drew a colourful diagram of it years ago. And thinking those lyrics brings tears of intensity to my eyes. I feel this so much. I feel this about you. Not just you... So many of my friends. But also about you.

I have started taking firm steps in the process of job searching. There are postings on a student website. There are agencies in town that might be able to find me a temp position; maybe even one related to my accounting studies. I had an intake interview with one of the recruiters at one of those agencies on Tuesday (two days ago).

But I think I may be pushing myself a bit too hard. I came home feeling somewhat dizzied today, my mind full of blades and violence. I've had a particular propensity within the last week and a half or so to imagine stabbing myself through the left eye with my biggest, sharpest, favourite kitchen knife. It has been making me very twitchy, and I'm not entirely sure what to make of it. It may be... I hope... just down to a high intensity of stress, which is natural as the school term is ending and one is looking for a summer job. And preparing to go back to school. And adapting to changes in romantic relationships. And a move into a new house. And finances... So all told, I mean, I don't think I have a reason to be all that worried, but it's still a particularly unpleasant symptom of stress and I hope it goes away soon.

I hope I will hear from my dad. I hope he will be willing to co-sign a line of credit for me. I hope I can find a summer job that pays enough that I can do some saving for Ireland. I hope so many things, really... And I look forward to seeing you, sometime in my first few days of being back on the isle. I want to get to know you again, Fish. I hope you want that too. I really do.

Dear Memory: The Games You Play

Hi, Eoin.

I feel very close to you today, dear memory. I have been listening to your voice. It has been... over five months, I think... since the last time I listened to your voice, and that sound, so familiar, carries an amazing weight of nostalgia now.

I know you must be doing okay, for now, because you're part of a podcast now. Maybe later, I will come back and add a hyperlink to it into this post, but not yet. Not today. I'm a little afraid that you'd see the back-link somehow, and find me here, watching you, and that that would make you uncomfortable. So as much as I would love for you, for this person you are now, your voice still familiar, your jokes told with the same friendly sass... but not to me... As much as I might love to see you turn and see me watching you, I do not rustle the branches. I stay quiet and hidden and permit you not to be any more likely to notice me than you already are, for I've posted links to my blog sometimes on Facebook and I think once, the preview line visible from there held your name.

It's so good to hear you laughing again. And Gearoid and Troy, too. I miss hanging out at your house, listening to you banter with them like this, at home and happy and comfortable. I miss listening to you talk about the games you love, and shows you love, and things you do. I hope I will one day be welcome again to stand awkwardly at hand, listening. Trying sometimes to find something to contribute by saying. Even feeling self-consciously out of place there, but still allowed to be there, listening, enjoying the stories... and talking to you about them afterwards.

Maybe someday I will play games with you again. I hope so. You're so fun-loving. It's... relaxing just being around that, sometimes. It... was, I mean.

While looking through Steam today after nabbing a game which was released for free as an anniversary promotion, I stumbled across something I had remembered only dimly for some time. The Beginner's Guide... And I remember, like vision, like the physical world coming back as a dream fades. I remember sitting and laying on your bed and exploring it, rapt with attention. I remember the prison cell which ostensibly would originally have trapped the player for hours. I remember the trick-door which kept coming back or something, although I'm not sure I remember the trick to it. I remember three figures with blank faces, asking questions about how I got there, and how to move forward. I remember a huge room full of bubbles with comments in them. I remember a combination lock without any clues to the combination. I remember a man standing at a podium. I remember a red curtain around a stage, and a gun which shattered the scenery into blank whiteness... I remember a house full of little things to fix. Little chores to keep up, maintenance to be done. I remember liking that part. It seemed... peaceful.

I remember sitting with you and speaking aloud back at the narrator about the point I thought he'd missed. I remember... rising above the maze. Do you know, Fish...? I still keep that screenshot among my wallpapers. And whenever I see it, I think of you.

I listened to your podcast while I took a long walk today, and bought some ramen. Many times, I laughed at your jokes. Not just yours, Eoin, I mean Troy's and Gearoid's too. I'm glad you're okay. I'm glad you're talking about things that you love. I'm glad that I can listen to your voice without getting in your way. If you keep doing this, then there may be a way that I can have your good humour and your cheeky cleverness in my life even if you don't want to talk again when I land.

When I land. Dear memory... I haven't written this here yet. But last week, I got my first offer of placement back from an Irish college. Dear memory, the only condition set out in that offer is that I successfully finish my diploma and hand in my transcript by May 30th. Dear memory, I don't even have to get good marks in my classes, I only have to pass them. Dear memory...

I am coming.

I hope I will get more than one offer. I hope I will have a reason to contact you and ask which one I ought to choose, a lapse in the silence that's existed between us for more than five months. But even if this is the only choice I am given... I am coming. It's gone from "hope" and "maybe" and "trying" to something more solid.

The day after I received the email, I woke up in my bed, and squirmed gradually to consciousness, and my first conscious thought was to repeat, in my mind, I could buy my plane ticket today. I'm going to Ireland. Where to head after I land may not be set in stone, but I have my confirmation now. There is at least one answer available to that question. I'm going to Ireland. Coming to Ireland. I'm coming back, and I'm coming for you. It sings in my heart so intensely it turns almost to a shriek when I think about it. Like a perfect tone, sweet and high and pure and so loud it could shatter glass.

There is still much to be done first, but the greatest hurdle, the most doubtful issue has been cleared. The rest is details. Details which will fill my days, my nights, my schedule, until mid-August.

And this is why I felt it was now an acceptable time to look through your Facebook page again, and see a couple sorta recent pictures. And I found your new podcast there, and I've been listening to it. It's close enough now, somehow. It doesn't feel distant and stalkery the same way it did once before, because I expect I may have cause to actually be in touch within just another two weeks.

It all comes down to this... and now I hear you laughing and joking with your friends, just like you used to. And something in me that had worried that you might be somehow a very changed person now, someone less likely to like me... something of that fear melts away. You will very likely have changed somehow... but you laugh the same. In your most recent pictures on Facebook, your smile is as I knew it before I left. That's Eoin alright. And that's something right about the world. Something happy. Right now, it must be night time in Ireland, though it's yet early evening here. Goodnight, Eoin. May you rest healthfully and wake happy. I love you.

Dear Memory: Back and Forward

Good morning, Eoin. I've had a pretty crazy week. If I were to presume I were bipolar, I would conclude that I have begun to shift back into the manic side of my cycle. I have slept relatively little recently... Although, naturally, it doesn't help that yet again I am in a house where I have grown to resent some of my roommates, and just about every noise I hear from them, which frequently happens late at night.

On the upside, much of the effect comes from happier things. I am attending more of my classes now... Although, still not all of them. I have grown closer and more intimate with some new friends, and have done some batches of writing. A sequence of three posts here which were explicitly about rationality for once. I plan to repost them at LessWrong (I can do that, apparently; it's a community blog now, with many contributors). A short story, a little over 900 words, which captured an idea that I got caught up in my head while I was out walking. I have been out walking a lot again, too. That also feels good. I have been very happy with the success I had in capturing and conveying out the idea. I got a prettier story out of it than I expected. It's viscerally violent, and yet transhumanist and optimistic.

I joined a bunch more Discord servers, and have been actually spending some time discussing things with some people who confuse and intimidate me with their high standards and down-to-business modes of communicating. I have been managing to resist the temptation to stop and ask for reassurance that I'm actually wanted there. Partly because one of the most no-nonsense of the bunch told me frankly that I was too valuable to discard just because I was weird, and was also very open about being annoyed with me a couple of times. I haven't always understood why. But he's not making a habit of hiding it if he has an issue with me.

Besides that, I find myself thinking... If I were to ask, and he told me that I was appreciated and welcome, it probably wouldn't help me for very long. If he were to tell me I wasn't, or that it was a stretch, it wouldn't help me at all. It may simply be that he projects an attitude of such greater knowledge, and engrossed preoccupation with greater and more important affairs, that I find myself instinctively assuming that it would genuinely be a colossal waste of his time. Or perhaps, more accurately, I would expect him to find it annoying again and get another minor swat to the ego because I ought to know better. And I kind of do.

I still think it's still important I have friends I can be vulnerable with, away from this high-tension scene. And again... I do.

I finally submitted my college applications to five of the six ITs in Ireland that I had planned to. Just to wait for responses now, on that front.

I think of you often. I have often had trouble getting a half-hour of work into my applications, because facing the task brought you to mind as thoroughly as ever. I imagine singing duets with you. Dancing with you. Cooking with you. Walking with you. Do you know what I remembered, the other day?

When I first showed you my little facial expressions ice breaker game, and you decided to read your subjects first, and the first one was "OK Go". And I think I must have looked magnificently baffled. "What? I thought you were going first...?"
Do you remember it, Eoin? Ah, such fun and silly times.

In... about three hours, at 10 AM, I have a Law test to write. I actually spent a couple of hours studying for it, for once. Although, to be fair, we have a really good practice resource for this course, in the form of a bunch of content quizzes with questions of exactly the same sort as will be on the exam, which auto-grades itself and can be taken as many times as we might wish. We also get a single page of notes we're allowed to bring in with us. So I did all of the quizzes relevant to the content, and I took notes on all the questions I had a hard time remembering the right answers to, or got wrong the first time around, and the principles on which they were based.

I haven't slept, although I am tired. I might actually manage to get some rest for two of those three hours, and then more after the test. I tried laying down, but my back was stiff and sore and my mind not particularly conditioned for sleep. I had been searching through my paperwork, looking for documents relevant to filing my taxes... That may have had something to do with it. Or, then, perhaps it had less to do with that than some of the things I found that had nothing whatsoever to do with tax.

I still keep scribbed notes and poetry, and especially drawings, from many years ago, even some of the ones that just seem dumb to me at this point. I happened upon a piece of writing that wasn't fiction. It was a little bitter reminder of just how insane I've been, at my worst... the times when I felt myself and my control, slipping, slipping. If we do get back together, and I read you these blog posts... Remind me, sometime, to read you my notes from The Day Everything Changed. It is not a pretty story. It is not a proud story. But it is a true story. And I remember hearing you voice your fears to me once, when I was in one of the worse fits I ever had while I was with you, that you weren't good for me. That you might be making things worse.

I think, perhaps... you will not think so anymore, after I tell you a story, not from memory, but from a record written on the same day, and never edited or changed since, about how bad it really was, once, quite some time before I met you. And yet, still not really all that long ago. You cannot realize how far I've come, until you can see the depths where I've been. I have to admit that I had almost forgotten how very little time has passed, and how truly awful it used to be. The feeling of slipping, slipping... and being afraid, a kind of visceral, in-the-moment dread, that I might not be able to maintain control of my own actions. Not even in my usual fallback manner of shutting them down entirely.

It's amazing to me how far I've come, these past few years.

Dear Memory: Panic Attack

I have continued to be largely passive, skipping a fair few of my classes, playing video games with most of my time. I feel some pressure about school responsibilities, and more pressure about dealing with the applications to Irish colleges, but it is rarely enough to move me to action.

On the other hand, yesterday I had a visit with my counsellor. It cheered me up quite a bit at the time, just being listened to as I discussed some of the issues in my past that I had been unpacking with a new friend as well, who I have come to call Stars. I also did quite a bit of talking with my landlord about the matter of my roommates semi-regularly bringing people into the house late at night and talking loudly without any forewarning.

Then I played Don't Starve Together with a friend of mine, and watched GrimithR streaming Spooky's Jump Scare Mansion. I participated quite a bit in chat and enjoyed the stream. I experienced waves of fatigue several times, but at the end of the stream, I nevertheless spent another bunch of hours gaming on my own before I slept.

I slept long and through the morning, through my morning class and my early afternoon volunteering hour, although I woke up for brief minutes twice when someone slammed the door coming or going. I woke just as one of my one-hour classes would have been starting. I did not elect to rush to attend it. I prepared some soup. I went to my last class of the day, and participated somewhat in discussions, trying to keep up and catch up with information I had missed from previous classes. Sometimes my questions had a fairly obvious answer. I shrink in my seat, I rub my arms frequently, once I make a soft whining noise without meaning to. I feel intensely self-conscious and uncomfortable. I feel myself come close to hyperventilating a little, but I think unless someone was staring at me instead of the lesson, they probably would not notice.

It is tempting to flee home and into the distraction of video games, and the soothing of familiar voices preventing my brain from doing much with words, and some nice hot soup. I stay for the class, feeling panicky and feeling as though forcing myself to stay is almost a form of self-flagellation. Yet, at the same time, I am learning, becoming acquainted with some systems of accounting which are worthy of my attention. Pity my attention is scattered and split. Why is my capacity for enduring my classes so decimated lately? What's wrong with me...?

I stay, I follow along with the work. I comprehend what we're talking about, although I am extremely distracted and feel somewhat nauseous. I turn my mind tentatively to the question of Ireland and wonder a little whether I will really make it. I suppose there is room for doubt. It is a component of experience. This does not mean, necessarily, that I will not. I just feel so feeble right now.

Dear Memory: A Little Return to Code

Hi, Eoin. Hi, blog which is a symbolic representation of the potential of talking to Eoin.

I'm not very engaged with my classes lately. I had midterms three days in a row last week, and I barely studied at all and arrived late to two of them, but the thing is... I think I still aced them. The one I have marks back for already went super well, although I struggled to remember how to do one of the questions for a while. It was just more of a challenge than usual, and that was actually kind of more fun, in a way.

I haven't gone to the gym in a week. I'm not sure when I will again. I slept during the day today, although I did attend my classes all the way through first and participated actively in them. Got another midterm tomorrow, have barely studied, but it's in a subject I don't expect to be hard: Business Information Systems.

I'm still procrastinating on filling out my college applications, and I feel worse about that than any of the rest. It's more important to me. However, here's what I have been doing. I spent a couple hours two days ago going back and writing in an easter egg to the first little game I programmed on Khan Academy. The bouncing basketball one. I showed it to some of my new friends, and even a fan community, and got some very positive feedback. People had some fun with it, and they seemed to appreciate the easter egg, too. And I've written out a bunch of steps to a program I've wanted to make since my stint of trying programming last year.

I've completed the first step, written out twelve and even after all those steps are done there will be lots more things to expand the program to include and make it more interesting, but it will be together enough that I should be able to invite my friends to start fiddling around with it by then and have something for them to enjoy playing with. I'm also making a point of using ample comments all over the place, and permitting myself to be sassy and emotive in them. I generally am, when I'm happy.

Just as it was the first time around, this is challenging in the way that my classes just aren't living up to much, and that makes it fun.

I've also been in a revitalised skitter about you, occasionally just drifting around, pacing while my mind is occupied with happy, hopeful imaginings of meeting you again. The reinforcement from Ampersand and from the one person from Ireland that I told about it has stoked up my optimism and dampened my fear. But that doesn't change my strategy or my resolve at all, I just... feel more giddy about it. Heh.

I miss you. I'll figure out my way somehow. I can't wait to see you again - but, I am going to have to. For now I'll just have to settle for the dreamy imaginings that are rarely more than an idle thought away, and visit me often while awake and even sometimes while asleep. Also, I've got Don't Cost Nothin' in my head, having watched more Steven Universe recently.

Dear Memory: The Man in my Dream

Vivid dreams again last night. They seemed to follow on from the dreams of kissing people a couple of weeks ago. Only, this time... I was thoroughly in a happy courtship with a tall young man with black hair, cuddling close and sharing things I found awesome. He wasn't explicitly attached to your identity in my dream. He wasn't explicitly attached to any cached identity. It was the kind of dream I might have had as a pre-teen and grieved and cursed the fact that I must have woken up from it... Except perhaps that those dreams also usually seemed to involve climbing a tower, and I don't remember any such element to this one.

I reflect on it with soft, confused consideration, and am mostly happy, I think. I got in touch with someone I'd met in Ireland the other day on Facebook after they liked one of my posts. I bound them to secrecy and told them about my plan to return, my thoughts about contacting you once it becomes time to choose between colleges, so you could have your say about whether I should be close by. I found their answer this morning after I woke from the dream. "If you're here, surely he'd wanna be with you?" Again someone on the outside responds as though this were obvious. Someone closer to your side this time. Again it is warming.

I walk about the house, thinking of music in a lively style inspired by the traditional Irish sound of jumping and leaping violin, thinking I would like to compose a song to mark my love of the music and of the place, and the strange fey madness that seems like part of the picture. I feel tired. My sleep has been less than eight hours again, though I woke up naturally. My sleep has also been full of vivid dreams. Perhaps that demands more energy of me. If not to dream, then to process having dreamed.

I had my Finance midterm yesterday. I have my Tax midterm today. I am not particularly worried, although I don't think I'm all that well prepared either. Not being worried may be partly down to the fatigue.

Dear Memory: The Song in my Dream

Good morning, Eoin. At least, morning here. It is a quarter to seven in my local time. In my dream, I sang part of the melody of a song familiar to me, by Enya, and it stayed with me as I woke, with the strange, eerie weight of some dreams that drives people sometimes to interpret them.

Such was the weight and the strange calm, and my appreciation for thinking again of someone whose music I have loved and not listened to in quite some while, and the strange dream-sense of importance, and also as well some of my desire not to forget the melody, that I sang out the verse-melody again as I remembered it. But I have never known the words. They are not in English. I did a bit of Googling to see if I could find it. Enya > Watermark (for I know that's one of only a couple of albums I know). On the track list I saw it, one track titled in Irish. Undeniably Irish; I know some of the patterns now, and I remember the word "geal" from that one song by Maria Dunn. Na Laetha Geal M'òige, which according to translators means "The bright days of my youth" and is a song that mourns time lost, and whatever vague things; opportunity, experience, that were lost with it.

So here comes again this sense of both devotion and frustration. As soon as I saw it was writ in Irish, the song had meanings linked to you, although I won't consign you to a thing lost in the past just yet. If anything, I shall take this as a precautionary tale not to live with regrets, to seek out those things that delight me and live my life fully as I can.

However, even so, my dreams evoke yet more little poignant reminders of how much I miss you, as well, I suppose, as my desire for physical affection, and the conflictedness of trying to figure out whether I would, at this time, be comfortable falling into some physical intimacy with someone who were not you. Since that seemed to be expressed in my recurring dreams about getting close with and kissing an acquaintance or stranger. I think I had those dreams three times in one week, which is remarkably recurring for me.

Having seemed to have clawed back out of my slump for now, I fetched out the application forms yesterday for the six Irish colleges I have been considering, and intend to make it my task over the next short while to start filling them out. I stopped by the business office yesterday to ask where I could find the closest thing my college has got to a program syllabus, since that's been requested alongside my application if I were to return to Athlone. If I were to return to Athlone, indeed. And something inside me thrums and shudders like a guitar string that's just been plucked at a little harshly.

Dear Memory: A Hole in My Foot

Dear memory... Over the past week I have been largely idle, as I mentioned before.

On that Monday, I came into school and was unnerved and confused that the front doors were locked on a Monday morning. I had not remembered the short Family Day holiday; Monday and Tuesday classes were cancelled. The gym was not open either, and I would be unable to work out for my third time that week. I returned home, and slept long and through the day, and at some point, I scratched and pulled at some rough edges of the thick soles of my right foot, and restless, I pulled skin away that tore bloody at the end, and wound up with a patch that was thin and bare and painful to walk on.

I have not been to the gym for the past week, while I was being idle, and part of the reason is that I have been waiting for my foot to heal, and for the slight stiffness in my calf to recover after walking with a limp which puts more stress on different places. It seems to me as though my restless picking may have corresponded to a subconscious need for rest, and winds up working out quite nicely, although the fact that the way it works out involves temporarily hobbling myself is not ideal.

On Friday and Saturday, I turned my sights to work again, as the finished version of an important assignment in my Finance course was coming due. I worked for three and a half hours solid on Saturday morning before 6 AM in that special zen state I get into when I am under pressure to finish a document, in which the hours seem not to matter, as the document forms. Large pieces of writing produced, and then whittled and perfected and formatted step by step; like a drawing, increasing by stages, but not in a particular order. Just switching to adding or refining in some other place where additions or refinement can be made, and then coming back and adding to or refining the part I had just left behind to do so.

It is strange and beautiful and trance-like, and I think I always worry, as a deadline draws near, that I might not manage to fall into that alien and productive state of mind again, it is so different. But then I do. One of my team mates started out working on the wrong part, one that had already been done, and adjustments needed to be made at the last minute. I volunteered to take on part of his work and adapt the project to include the extra work he had done even though it had not been necessary, and it all worked out. I believe so, anyway. Our grades aren't in yet.

I have to say, I have been delighted with my team for this assignment. I think it's fair to say I have done the lion's share of the work on the project, but if so, I have determined lynxes pulling beside me. They show solidarity, they rowl in support and pride when we make a leap forward, and we make that leap together. My teammates have had my back and contributed resources I did not have by conferring with their friends in other sections to figure out segments of the assignment that I did not know how to proceed on. Their written segments showed effort and contained genuinely useful material, despite a few inaccuracies and some poor English. I don't blame them. For two of my groupmates, it is not their first language, and in any case some peoples' skills are not oriented towards writing well.

Mine are, and I spent some of those hazy, focused hours of vaguely happy-ish just-do-it-ive-ness stroking my chin and carefully rephrasing, reducing redundant statements, correcting spelling mistakes and structuring the flow of sentence to sentence.

I also made the report pretty, putting the original phrasing of each assigned question in italics at the beginning of the section that addressed it. It had a pretty header with all of our last names in it and collapsible headings, and I uploaded my current state of progress for my teammates to look at several times. They expressed appreciation for how pretty and comprehensible I had made it.

After the three and a half hours of solid work on the assignment report, I continued on to finish two quizzes for other subjects before sleeping, because they were there to be done and at the time, I didn't mind the expenditure of time in the way I normally do. I scored 100% marks on both, despite being so tired that words occasionally swam before my eyes. I think the difficulty and doubt made me focus and double-check myself more, and the fatigue to the point of feeling uncommon silence and stillness within my mind helped prevent restless distraction or overthinking.

I went back to my games on Sunday, but felt less engaged with them. I think I have had the rest I needed. But, even if this level of strange, zen productiveness were entirely sustainable, I don't think I have a task before me that demands it. Until the next time to crunch on school affairs, I mean.

My foot has healed to a point that the pain is minor and of a different kind. Only the slight pain of touch on scab. It barely hurts to walk. I think I will go to the gym again today.

I listen to another episode of Welcome to Night Vale while walking through the halls, feeling friendly and zazen. The weather comes on, and the gentle, romantic sound of strumming guitar greets my ear, and I experience a strong mental vision of myself laying in a field of swaying yellow grass, half feeling as though you were with me, and half wishing that you were. My heart yearns gently like the satisfying ache of a well-exercised muscle. I pause, and look out of a window, and gently touch the glass as I continue towards my Intermediate Accounting class after the weather is over. I want to go for a long, long walk to nowhere in particular, to be walking. The temptation is extremely appealing. I decide that to do so would neglect my duties at this time, and I continue on to class.

The class is review. I do not focus on it. I sit and write this blog, and listen to the gentle, comfortably familiar sound of my professor going through example problems in the background. I occasionally look up and acknowledge the subject matter. I occasionally hear the input of one of my classmates, and once or twice there is a little chuckle of laughter across the class. I am not focused on the lesson, but I am happy and feel a gentle, abstracted affection for my classmates and my professor and the community that we are together, in the context in which we operate together. Various things seem vaguely and peacefully right about the world around me. This may be partly attributable to my having consumed a Monster energy drink this morning. Those things don't just make me alert; even when I remain sleepy and tired, they tend to make me bizarrely happy.

And I continue to miss you. This, too, seems vaguely and peacefully right. I miss you, Eoin. I love you. Cecil's deep, pleasant voice during part of this episode of Welcome to Night Vale had said... You are never the same twice. You are different at every moment. Continue to do what is important to the you that you are now, until you are not that person anymore. I smiled. I appreciated that part. I feel it is very much what I am doing, and a vital part of the perspective that has been what I am doing since the original light of determined decision in November. This is what is important to me now, and it is true to myself to act upon it. What happens later will wait for later. My priorities will someday be different. I doubt I will regret this, though. How could I regret taking calm, gradual strides toward being as I wish to be? Being where I wish to be. Being with someone I wish to see again.

Dear Memory: Night Vale and Daytime Dreams

Dear memory...

I have been bingeing on Welcome to Night Vale, as well as the Sims, lately, as I have shifted into a state of rest and reluctance to apply myself to anything. However, and perhaps unusually, I am mostly enjoying the rest, and the opportunity to let my mind and body be comparatively still. Perhaps, I have been overextending myself recently, and it is important to allow myself a time to pull in on myself.

I think of you often. Night Vale reminds me of you... since, of course, you were the person who originally showed it to me. I am up to episode 74 now, and when I heard the announcement describing the dog park, repeated almost exactly word for word from the pilot, I went back and listened to part of the pilot again to confirm that it actually was almost exactly word for word.

I remembered hanging out in your bedroom. I remembered commenting that the segment featuring advice to parents while bringing their children to play in the scrublands had some very genuinely sensible advice in it. It felt strange to remember so vividly a thing that happened about three quarters of a year ago, but then... My memories of my time with you are vivid. More vivid than usual, and my memories and imaginings are usually... vivid. Emotional intensity, I am sure, has a significant amount to do with memory formation and retention. That which a person feels strongly about, in any way, their brain will register as important, and reinforce.

You have always been important to me.

I think of you much, recently.

I have had strange dreams, the past couple of days (I had four days off of school in a row, and started sleeping during the day again; I have been unable yet to stop sleeping during the day, and this has contributed to my recent retreat into myself). Twice in a row... I think... My dreams involved getting to know a person, and winding up lying with that person and kissing them. The person was not you. The person was different in each dream, and represented a real person that I recognize, and sort of know, and have sort of liked, but not someone at all close to me. A YouTuber I occasionally watch, and a classmate I never really talked to much, but had a slight crush on for a time.

It feels strange to have my dreams repeat themes so strongly like that. I miss kissing you. I miss kissing anyone, really. It's been quite some time since I have. None of the people I know that I would want to kiss and feel comfortable trying to do so are here in London with me. Perhaps the dreams are simply an expression of desiring that kind of physical contact again. And yet, there was something about both of them that seemed as though they were trying to retell the story of my meeting you, and becoming involved with you. In one case, I asked the dream-partner to let me have a moment to process my feelings, after I had somewhat unexpectedly wound up kissing him, and I thought about you. In my dream. And whether I was okay with this, given how much I still miss you.

I have been very passive lately, but aside from a sense of slightly concerned pressure about an assignment which is due in two days, I'm not worried or upset about it. I was working hard for the first few weeks of the term, and we really didn't get much of a winter break at all this year. It's been very tense and active at school since the strike ended three months ago. It seems I am well able to forgive and tolerate myself taking time off to just relax for a while. I believe with some quiet, non-dramatic confidence that I will be able to pick up and start working again, once it becomes necessary for me to do so to keep pace with the course and continue to perform at my high standards for myself.

When I listen to Welcome to Night Vale recently, I snarl and giggle more often and with slightly less care to ensure no-one is close by to notice. I feel fairly peaceful with my own acknowledged, adopted, personally delighted in creepiness. I feel happy about my friends, who know that it is part of me, and love me no less. I have one person in particular who tells me that they really value the fact that when they talk to me, some of the things I say reflect a darker side to the world that they don't notice until I point it out. But he appreciates being able to see it, like a shape on the other side of the water, behind the clearer reflection of his own light, his own experience, his own face. Enlightening, endarkening, as he says.

It is... beautiful... to have contexts available to me in which this tendency of mine; although it arises quite naturally out of my perspective, and simply sharing the way I see the world and what things mean to me; is acknowledged and appreciated as a service.

I miss you. I hope that you are well. I look forward hopefully and with quiet, distant excitement to the time when I can speak to you again.

Dear Memory: Tempted Closer

My plan to beast through my Cost Accounting quizzes has been met by an unexpected obstacle. When I logged onto the publisher website to study again, I discovered it. Access to quizzes five through ten had been taken down unexpectedly, while apparently the course administrator adjusted which questions from the question bank would be on them.

I had not been confident I would do well charging ahead anyway, and it was taking a lot out of me to try. After all the recent stress I had been under, I was not altogether unhappy to surrender to this sudden enforced change of plans. Instead of working on Cost Accounting quizzes, I worked with my team on the finance project in a more relaxed state, knowing I could give as much time to it as the task might take, and enjoyed laughing with them while working.

Again I feel the strange sense of suddenly being surrounded by more reasonable people. In this case, people I can work with, who are willing to work with me. Even though I do wind up doing a lot of the primary processing, having company who are making useful comments makes a great difference. We sent one of our number home, because he was too sleep-deprived to be of much use and had only insisted on dragging his body to our meeting out of a sense of duty. He blessed us quietly for being so understanding when we insisted he should go sleep instead.

I have also spent long hours and majorities of days playing The Sims 3, and have been quite surprised that I continue to find it so engrossing despite bugs that make it through ErrorTrap, a mod which fixes most known glitches. I am not sure I'm done on my stint of it. But, yesterday (I suppose; I am writing at 1:30 or so in the morning after waking up feeling restless and alert after only a couple of hours of sleep) I took time out to do productive things; a bit of shopping, put away the laundry I'd done the day before, and pushed myself back to the gym.

I re-listened to Irish podcasts about the federal budget, and found myself thinking so much of you that I stopped focusing on them entirely, so I switched to listening to The Seldom Seen Kid again instead. My heart whirled and I felt and fantasized many different things, and snarled a little to myself while I thought no-one close enough to notice at the almost painful intensity of my want for you, and of how it might feel, when I see you again, to fear that that meeting may be the only one I ever get, if I present myself poorly...

As I thought might be the case, I performed better at the gym for taking a bit of a longer break, particularly on the strength elements. I upped my weights on several exercises and powered through them happily enough after willingly jogging (or something) my cardio for 20 minutes with more resistance than before. For the first time yet, every exercise I did, I did for three sets (I started with two sets each, and have started going on to three when I felt able on some particular one). By the end, my shoulders and arms felt gently stiff with muscle soreness.

I also listened to Savant while working out, and I thought of you, and showing off my strength to you. Also to Coda; I remember with a little crafty smile that he has a particular attraction to strongly-built women, and I feel it would be fun to meet him again with some confidence I may look sexier to him.

...The question of how to manage polyamory is one of those that I imagine could be a bit of a problem for us, dear Eoin. I put it off while I was there last time; the temporary nature of our relationship then offered its own answer. I was unlikely to find someone else during that time to get romantic with anyway, and was too much enthralled in infatuation and new relationship energy with you to have wanted any such distraction, so beyond my offering not to see anyone else for that period, and the mention of it as something that would need to be talked over if we were ever to want to have a longer term relationship, it was not really discussed.

It is kind of nice to feel so dizzied by thoughts of you again, although it seems to contradict my theory that the time of it were over. Perhaps my quest in Cost Accounting and the various stresses of becoming acclimatized to a new term had suppressed the phenomenon? Perhaps blogging stirs it up more than I generally acknowledge, and having spoken of other things without getting to you led the way for my mental habits?

Perhaps that thought of six months made it seem so much closer, so much more real, that I began to feel about it again. I almost wonder if I should after all break the silence far ahead of schedule to tell you, so that you can help me plan. So that you can weigh in on the question of whether I should come to Athlone IT again, or rather go to one of the other colleges. I don't know.

Changing such an integral part of the plan is unsavory to me, and the thought of breaking my silence to you when I had promised it far more so. Although... Whether I were to talk to you a couple of weeks before I expect to be there, or a few months... Perhaps the heart of it would be much the same..? Perhaps the factor that makes a difference is whether it is already set up that I will come back to Ireland? In that case... I should not, at any rate, until I have bought my plane ticket, I think. But that may be much sooner than anticipated, if I decide to make it my constraint.

Dear Memory: Difficult Day in Stride

(after Unsupportive and Dance-X, same day)

I have had a lot to tell today. Yet there is more. It seemed sensible to divide it into these pieces. This piece is for you, Eoin. I feel as though you may have been on my mind a little more this past little while that the previous similarly sized while.

I'm glad to have been going steadily through school, trying to balance homework and classes and fitness and the process of trying to bring myself back to Ireland. I keep thinking back to something my friend Ampersand said, the last time I had him visit me. I was talking about my plans, and something about how I intended to arrange things so that they would work out well for me even if it turns out that you don't want me back. He said, that seems pretty unlikely.

It stuck in my mind. I think he may have been the only person who ventured to assess the chance. It was certainly something I appreciated hearing, and I wonder what this judgement is based on.

I can't say. But although the intensity and inability to control my tendency to think of you has faded over time, I certainly do think of you from time to time, and smile, usually. I want to see you again. I look forward to seeing you again. While I was getting out of the shower today, I thought to myself... Well, it's half-way through February now. March, April, May, June, July, August... September.
It could be as little as six months. It could be as little as six months that I actually see you again.

It's sensible to leave early. One of the college reps suggested I give myself a couple of weeks before school starts in order to have time to find a part-time job. So really, arriving half-way through August is entirely plausible, and if you are amenable to it at that time... it really could be as little as six months. Something about that just strikes as though it's unreal and also more real, both at the same time.

I recently took photos of some of my books, to add to my list of things to try to sell on Kijiji. I delete and replace the sale listings once a week. They get pushed down the list very fast, but there's only so much time I have to spare for it just now. Perhaps after my trial period quiz challenge. I think casually about what things are important enough or difficult enough to replace that I will want to bring them with me. My knife set, probably. My few issues of Transmetropolitan, likely. My cool old-fashioned pepper grinder, maybe. That would be it for kitchen things, though. The rest, better to find new ones as I settle wherever I wind up settling.

It's... exciting. And despite the difficulty today, and the uncomfortable coughing and watery feeling in my stomach and tightness in my calves after Dance-X, I note that I have stuck to my initiative of working out three times a week for three weeks and still counting. This is the most consistent with exercising I've ever been for an extended period. I feel my abdomen and my shoulders with curious, interested fingertips from time to time. I feel as though it's making a difference... and hoping that you will see that difference when you see me again may be almost all the motivation I need to keep it up...

I wonder at my determination, and the way my confidence has held strong. There must, I suppose, be something special about the way I love you, that it makes me stronger like this.

I need to eat, and I need to work on quizzes. But Eoin... I love you. And I am coming. Six months from now... I hope you're ready.

Dear Memory: Still Working On It

Dear Eoin...

I have been writing less often, and directing my thoughts here toward you less often when I do. I think the period of intense heartbreak and missing you since the last time I heard your voice in October is pretty much done.

However, my peace lies twined with my plans. I have unpacked the things I call my "shrine", symbols and trinkets that I like to keep together and revere as little treasures. The red bull, the antique horn, a musical jewelry box which holds some stones and jewelry... And my skull candle, my oath candle. I have contemplated it with happiness. A few years ago, I burned this candle hollow, so that a pillar's worth of wax ran out and left its eye sockets and nose hollow, just as a skull is meant to be, and stared intently at it for hours as it burned, making a promise to myself, in a desperate and unhappy circumstance, that if I continued to be unhappy where I was, I would move. Put another way, that same promise could be phrased, "follow your dreams".

It gives me peace and happiness to look on it, because I know I have not forgotten the promise. I keep my oath to myself. For my joy, and my health, if I find I am not content with where I am, I will change it.
I think the wax shell is probably too delicate in its hollowness to bring across the sea. I am thinking that before I go, I will seek an opportunity to burn the rest of it in a fire, and re-confirm with the destruction of my oath candle the same promise that made it what it is.

I am still planning to come to you, although you come into my thoughts less often. The intent to go back to Ireland is always close at hand there. I am committed to it so thoroughly that the idea no longer seems at all unusual to me. The processes are perhaps a bit daunting, and of course it will cost me more than studying in Canada, but there is much at Fanshawe to help prepare me. I will probably need to work part-time while studying. It's something I have made a point of avoiding in my studies in Canada, but when it comes to bringing myself to Ireland... If this must be a part of my plan, for it to work out financially, it will be, and that is that.

I was so excited to meet the representatives of Limerick, Sligo, Carlow and Tralee. One of them was named Eoin, too. I must have suppressed a sad smile when I recognised the name and was able to pronounce it at a glance. There is a little workshop next week as well about procedures related to studying at a foreign college.

This morning, I came in to the school library and sat down to read and study my Cost Accounting material. I put on music from TouHou and wrote down many phrases and sentences from the material in my schoolwork related cardcast decks. It was a bit of a distraction, and no doubt slowed my reading. However, the music was so appropriate for background music while focusing that as I was packing up to get some breakfast, it was with some odd surprise that I realized turning off my laptop would require me to stop listening to it (since that is what I had playing the music). It was as though the TouHou tracks had been accepted as just what life sounded like on some level.

From that early morning on to late evening, I have been busily tending to one thing and then another... I was exhausted and barely taking anything in by the time my last class ended (it is the latest in the day of any of my classes). However, there were some fun highlights. The professor makes Google Documents and shares an editing link with the students; we pour in, over a dozen of us, and start building something there. Seeing it come together in several pieces at once like that, some formatting, some writing... It reminds me a bit of ants, in a good way.

If you were to wonder of me, I wish I could tell you that I still love you, and with this strength of mine, I will come to find you. I will be healthy and hearty as I can be.

You never read the Discworld books, I think, but... There's one character in them, a Mr. Carrot who has been in various books corporal, sergeant and eventually I think captain in the nightwatch. He is an immigrant, a human (by blood) who had been raised by dwarves, and his defining characteristic is that he believes so strongly in the good nature of people that they can't bring themselves to disappoint him and act more nobly and honestly than they do around anyone else.

At one point, he and a bunch of the other watchmen are aboard a ship in a storm at sea, chasing after someone who has kidnapped Angua, the woman he loves, also a member of the watch. The others had expected that he would be sick and restless worrying about her, but in the hours before they expected to land, Carrot was soundly sleeping with such determination that even the fierce tossing of the storm could not wake him. Since, as he had said, if he arrived in an exhausted state he'd be useless to actually help the woman he loved.

I feel kind of like that about you. Not that you are in need of rescue of course. Just... I want to be stronger for you and not weaker. I want to be better for every influence you have on me and not worse. You deserve that.

Storming Phase

I spent much of today feeling very annoyed with my new roommates. Yesterday I discovered that a jar of quarters I had kept near the washing machines had vanished completely, and I was unable to do the load of laundry I intended until today after going out to get some more. Further, the kitchen counters have been a mess and the sinks piled high with their dishes.

I was soothed a bit when I asked one of the trio who cook together and talk so much together when I could expect them to have cleaned it up, and was told they could have it done in an hour, but when I came back from my errands to find the house empty and the kitchen still a mess I was angry.

Nothing steals away my energy and motivation to do cool stuff like resentment. After plunging away the blockage that had formed in my ensuite bathroom's toilet and cleaning it, putting my laundry on and into the dryer, I just could not find the inclination to study, although I had already been delaying. I watched YouTube for a while and eventually fell into a mid-afternoon nap... only to be woken by the trio chattering gaily away and returning to the house.

Almost nothing infuriates me like the ongoing distraction of unwelcome noise, and being woken up from tired slumber by it makes it even worse. For some time, I turned this way and that, flopping onto one side, burrowing in my blankets looking for my socks, for I'd fallen asleep clothed. I was angry and exhausted, and knew I would not be able to be polite to my roommates. Eventually, at last, I got myself onto my feet and resolved to go out, get myself a coffee (being caffeinated seems to help my mood as well as my focus) and perhaps seek somewhere quiet where I might get something done on the campus. I still fumed away darkly at the feeling of not having quiet space to enjoy within my house, though.

It occured to me to check the area where religious gatherings and discussions generally took place, just in case there might be somewhere there this Sunday evening whom I could plead to advise me toward patience and diplomacy, because I was out of it... but it was closed up and locked with a note on the door about how to book the space.

I found my way to the library, remembered that the homework I wanted to do would require me to have my headphones to listen to sound, and immediately left again to get coffee and headphones. The landlord was in when I returned, mending a cabinet in the kitchen. I had been strongly considering walking in and demanding of the noisy trio that they keep quiet so I could do my studying, but the presence of an unexpected person took all the wind out of my sails. I collected my headset and walked back out to the college, waiting for a moment outside, as the landlord was leaving at the same time, thinking I might mention my frustration to him... But he was bustling around putting his tools away, so I did not.

I checked out the B building and D junction computer labs, but one was full of more students than I would like to be around, and in the other some people arrived talking noisily to one another, the last thing I had patience for just then, so I made it back to the library lab, and set myself down to work.

In the end, I did about 2 hours and 45 minutes of diligent homework, study and organization tonight at the campus, with a break in the middle to use the bathroom and take a brief walk around the halls. They were so empty, I took up karate stance and a couple of steps, then finding the purchase very slippery, ran and slid across the floor a few times just for fun.

The trio were still awake when I returned home at half past eleven. One was still talking on the phone, although doing so in a soft, low voice. I portioned myself some soup I had made yesterday and a toasted bagel, washed my soup pot (finally empty) and returned to my room where I now write.

Once while I have been writing the girls reconvened and started talking to one another more loudly. Braver now and feeling more justified and more capable, I walked out to firmly hush them: "Excuse me; please; quiet. It's late." I was given an understanding smile and apology in recognition. Perhaps things are not so bad. The state of the kitchen, and seeing them only tidy up in time for them to start cooking and fill up the sink with a whole new batch of dishes is still a major annoyance. I will try to bring it up with them later, when I have more energy and more patience.

Amusingly, yesterday while I was out on a long walk, I listened to a couple episodes of the Accountancy Ireland podcast, and one of them brought up the four stages of team building: Forming, Storming, Norming and Performing. Well, I guess this is bound to happen. At the very worst, I should on most days, or at least most weeks, be able to find somewhere on campus where I am able to focus on schoolwork. If it comes to that. I will have a great deal of complaint to make if it does, but I will not be rendered entirely helpless nor allow myself too make too much of an excuse of it if my home environment is unhelpful.

Another thing I did while walking was listen to Oceans again on loop for a while, and think of Eoin...

When it comes to love, you've dipped your toes in the river, but I've got oceans waiting for you...

It even uses a metaphor of catching fish in there somewhere. Heh. Sigh.
Don't let me fool you. I still love you, Eoin.

Dear Memory: New Fitness Regime

Five days, apparently, since I last wrote. Those five days have been quite full, although I am not sure whether I feel they have been eventful, per se. The fullness has been self-driven and domestic in nature.

My new roommates have all moved in. I did a moderately ambitious little sewing project, replacing patches of a worn-out pair of jeans, and then re-sewing a seam that came undone. I've unpacked a little more. I've cleaned my room. I finally got around to sitting down with Coda to have a good long chat about all manner of things. We wound up talking about religion a fair bit.

Probably the most notable event of the past few days... I made and attended an appointment at the wellness center, the gym at the school. It included a sort of electric scan to determine my body composition, and being shown how to adjust and use five of the different kind of exercise machines safely and do two other exercises without machines. I have a workout to do, aiming for three times a week or every second day. It was a significant step outside my usual comfort zone, in all honesty.

I returned the next day, listening to Welcome to Night Vale again. It'd been a while, I've been pursuing other podcasts and audiobooks more lately. I hadn't planned or expected it, but I wound up listening to the first part of the podcast that had been recorded as a live show. Episode 49, divided into parts A and B because it was quite a long show. It was pretty cool. But... I wasn't prepared for the first repeated Weather they've ever done.

It put me in a state of consternation, that special unique feeling that a joke that I thought was over has had another punchline, and it's kind of funny and kind of annoying that it's just not over, because the joke is on me. Of course, the one song that would have to be brought back up, out of 48 that had gone before, and for that matter the plethora of new songs to choose from. It would be the one that I added to my mp3 player and associated with Eoin, wouldn't it? I stood for a while, staring out the window while a live version of the song played in my ears, feeling emotions. Some frustration, and some of a special sad/manic feeling of wanting to either cry or laugh. But gently. It did not overwhelm me. I stood and felt it, and appreciated the way this moment communicated the ongoing drama of my love story. I was a little impatient, a little annoyed... But had no inclination to deny that it was poignant and, in a way, appropriate.

I finished my work out and left the gym, taking a walk to let my thoughts wheel and my body cool down. There was one exercise I didn't finish full sets for, but I stand by the decision. It was becoming too difficult, and it will be better for me to stop early than risk burning out my muscles or my emotional capacity to endure stressing them.

I know what my priorities are on this fitness venture: to try to make exercise more regular and more comfortable for me. To learn to enjoy going to the gym and working out, to get past any lingering feeling of reluctance to do so. That means taking care not to push myself too hard, and erring on the side of stopping early rather than too late so that I don't give myself any reason not to want to come back next time. It's tempting to beast through hardship, but I know that is not sustainable, and this try is all about sustainable.

Success will be enjoying myself, and a couple particular benefits of working out that I look forward to: Sleeping better at night, and feeling more alert while awake. Any weight loss or muscle gain can come second to that energy and restfulness. They will come, if I keep going. I know they will. But slowly.

I have found that in this few days, I think of you less, Eoin. I still think of you, but it doesn't consume as much of my mind. I have mixed feelings about this. I think it's probably a good sign that I am rebalancing my life, able to live more independently, look to my own happiness. I feel so many conflicting things that the net result is mainly tension. I feel as though I may not be okay with everything I feel, and I suspect I am on some level avoiding looking at it.

On the other hand... All this rebalancing, all my determination to have myself a good winter term and keep myself mentally, emotionally, and even physically healthy... Ironically, it comes down in part to that point of not wanting you to feel as though I am spending, or have spent, all my time pining after you in despair and heartbreak. I am making sure I'm doing alright, and to some significant degree, it's because I'm sure it's what you would want me to do, and I don't want you to end up feeling guilty about how things have gone. Isn't that funny?

While I was contemplating my feelings about this, walking by myself, I came back to this: I am still planning to come after you. That it takes up less of my time in obsession does not mean it has become unimportant to me. I still love you. It's haunting me less. That's bound to be a good thing, for now.

The fog is back, and much deeper than it was before. The foggiest day I had ever personally seen in January has already been bested. If not for the clear and familiar roads, I could have gotten lost in it.