Grim November

It has been some time, and so I will explain.

Things began to be sour, I think, in August. Habits which were endurable in the short term so long as they were being worked on and would improve over time seemed to worsen, signs of improving grew sparse or there seemed to be subconscious resentment at the pressure.

Too much responsibility was placed on me.

There was cause, of course; there were extenuating circumstances. My Stars left their job, trusting to another to support us, and then he lost his job too. And there was much discouragement and despondency. None of us were in fit shape to carry the limp weight of the others while we were robbed of strength. And so I did my best at times, but neither was I - and I lashed out and growled and broke down often under the strain, so little rewarded, so little relieved.

I believe I am still blamed for my failure to hold up the heads of my companions during that time, as well as my own, but I plead that it was not within my power, and ought not have been expected of me. I had not enough participation. I had not enough support. I had not enough compensation to see me through it, not enough nor gentle enough reminders; reminders which are invitations, rather than chastisements.

Of course, it is an advanced difficulty to succeed, with me, to my standard, in giving invitation and not chastisement.

But this is how it went on. I carried far too much, seeking not to let others down, but I must in the end. My patience, my spirit, was overloaded for quite some time, and my vulnerabilities pricked when I was gathering enough air and lift to begin to get somewhere, such that that liveliness would easily and swiftly drain away, and I would lie again lifeless in a wasteland of bitterness.

I do not say that I held no responsibility nor blame for these cycles - O, I was part of them. My failure to speak my boundaries while I could still do so without cursing made things worse. I was at times negligent. I was at times evasive.

And so it went, and until I had a room of privacy to myself for a while (the gift of interim hosts in the city of Kitchener, and O my great gratitude to them for the privilege), for six months I had no place I could retreat to which was mine to be alone in, mine to rest in, and not need to share it, neither night nor day. Looking back it shocks me that I lived so long in these conditions, and I did not seem to realize that that was a problem.

Of course, I was caught up in wanting to be there, be present for Stars if they needed physical assistance to get up, and perhaps then, I ignored my own need for privacy, for a crook I could lay in on my own and be undisturbed. There are reasons for this, of course, reasons. But O it was surely a part of my growing twisted and impatient and bitter.

And so it went until a particularly bright-careless and manipulative episode, of some of my love's worst habits. And then I told them I would not marry them. Not now, not like this. And so I would need to return North and leave the country, for I had no other legal basis to stay. And it was sad and sour but felt necessary.

We moved several times, because as everything descended into a slough of despond, we would not organize cohesively enough to close a rental agreement and did not have a place to go by the ending of the old lease. And so there was a hotel one night, and an Airbnb for a half-week, and then another Airbnb for the rest of the month, with our things in a storage locker a long drive outside town, near to where we had hoped to rent a place, but it was a scam. A scam we would ordinarily have spotted, but we were desperate for a place by that time, of course.

Much of our things have been left behind. My friends I leave with less, materially, than they had before, and some bitter memories of my impatience and desperation and the guilt of having drawn it. But still though, my friends I leave in a pleasant place, a roomy apartment somewhat bare but well outfitted with such things as the kitchen that came with it. I leave them in a place with an extendable lease and the flexibility to adjust time there, so that they may be sure of their next leap's landing before arranging to leave. I leave them nearer to some people who have been friends of ours, that we wished to be close to... And still do now, but less so. Less, for there has been loss and grief and disappointment.

I leave my friends and I hope very dearly that I leave them better for having spent time with me rather than worse, for all that they have less materially now and our lessons from each other have been grim. November was a very slow, very sad and waiting and grieving month for me this year.

I hope to pick up my project again. I have not done so quite yet. I have a bit more of ensuring my next living-space to do first. I was in no condition then, really no condition for it.

And that is how it went.

Claustrophobic Dreams

"Oh." I came into my room, thought to do some gaming, but realized that I would prefer to just lay down and be still for a bit. Contemplate. Let things surface. Perhaps sleep if it happened, but not make a point of it.

When I lay down on my back and put my arms down at my sides, I thought of morgue drawers, and the idea of being put into a CAT scan, in a metal tubular place with no easy way to get out, and a stricture against moving.

I think, if I ever need to have such a scan done to me, I will need to plead with the doctors to give me something to relax me, to draw me down out of or prevent the rising of a panic attack.

And next I remembered a dream. I think it must have been a dream I had last night, but amidst headache and waking I forgot it completely, until I laid back down. A dream of exploring big metal pipes, like a tunnel to a secret place in Morrowind or something. But they were full of water. I was in a place where I could find one small pocket from which to breathe, but it was only a few inches from the surface of the water to the ceiling. Enough room for my mouth and nose to be above water, or my eyes, but not both at once. And I think when I realized I would not be able to take a deep enough breath and then kick off with enough speed to endure the swim back out, for there was nothing really in the gradual curve of the pipe to kick off of, I shook my head violently, hoping to move my body enough to wake me and so dispel the dream, as has become a habit of mine in some claustrophobic dreams, and the cloying grip of sleep paralysis when it has me.

I think perhaps it worked... But then I came aware of my headache, and waking was gradual, and the dream was lost. Lying still in my room feeling terror claw at me gently, I wished to forget it again, and realized I feared sleep, although I was tired. So I rose again, and began typing, and typed this.

I feel helpless and shaky; as I usually do, when it comes to claustrophobic dreams. I am not enough of a lucid dreamer at this point to control what dreams I have, and when I remember how frightening they can be, it becomes a very frightening thing to surrender to the possibility of nightmare.

I Like Being This Person.

Wait. I just said I like being this person. What happened?

And then, everybody laughed. My lovers and I had been talking about norms, policy-building between us. How to stay in touch across time zones - fewer hours than across the ocean now. Planning to reserve one convenient hour to connect to one of our busiest people.

We were talking about leadership. In our group of five, three are far more followers than leaders by preference. Maybe, maybe that's more two, and the third is on the fence. Two of us are more leaders than followers - and I'm one. I'm the louder one, the one who draws attention to it more often, who usually asks what telecommunications program we're using to voice chat, and suggests something to watch or to play, takes responsibility for remembering things we agreed we have to talk about.

But we have another leader, who usually stays quiet, who spends more time watching and less time saying what he sees. He gives careful prods but not ostentatiously. It's not his way. And he and I, it seems we work together well. Me the circus ringleader, he around the shadows at the edge of the ring of light. I asked again that he remember to remind me, if my shouting becomes too self-serving - I don't want my trained assertiveness only to serve my own preferences. And I'll try to give him time, and bite down on my jealousy when it has a problem with sharing the spotlight.

I asked him to tell me out loud that it was alright that I was louder, was showier, was the ringleader kind of leader that I am. Whether we really do work well together with this being a prominent part of the nature of our double act.

Good. Because, I like being this person. And I wouldn't want to have to go without it.

Wait... What happened?

And then, everybody laughed.

You're healing, he said.

Okay, crying. Crying again.

I'm on my second day of being back on my thyroid medication. There was a gap there for a bit, while we got more. But I'm just over the extra hormonal stress and mess of my period, and although I expected things to be harder while I was off my medicine for a week or so, and then back on again... All I've really had to cope with so far that's seemed worse than usual has been some waves of tiredness in the middle of the day. And I eat, and drink, and get excited with my loves and I listen to upbeat music, and they pass. And honestly, I have been getting short and broken sleep a lot of the recent nights too.

I've been here a month and a half, in the house of someone who wasn't surprised to see me, who wasn't pined after secretly for months on months - we've discussed my coming to see them for a long time, and they've said yes, that they would welcome me with open arms, and they have.

Our apartment is our apartment, they tell me. Ours including you (meaning me). Our food and drink is your food and drink too. You don't have to keep asking me whether you can have it.

Our apartment, then. It's a pretty place. Well maintained, simple and somewhat small but high quality and close to their work. I keep it tidier than they ever did - I asked first. We've discussed the matter many times, and I've gotten consent over and over again to go ahead and turn their lives upside down.

We watch heartful TV together. They've been showing me This Is Us. I've been showing them Steven Universe. They're started to show me My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, and I've had a bit of fun riffing on it and analyzing it.

With some prompting from me, they started to shift their focus away from the idea of signing up for a code college which would require them to be at a physical classroom for months and pay up thousands of dollars later down the line presuming they can find better work after the schooling. They're taking on some courses on Udemy instead for now - there was always some fear that they wouldn't be able to stick to it, but I'm here to help now. To ask what they're learning, and remind them to study regularly... but not too hard. ♡

We're doing it together. I'm picking up a Udemy course too, and suddenly I have a six month plan, to end in a working store website and all the experience it took to build it. This morning, a Saturday morning, we each spent a few hours on our different projects, in the same living room, taking time from time to time to hug and kiss or give back massages.

I send them to work with packed lunches. We can save money that way, and still eat deliciously. They don't mind - they like the food I give them. I keep our apartment clean, and cook, and when they can't walk on their own, I'm there to help carry them.

And I'm working through this course, and from time to time I just spend my day watching YouTube videos, but it's okay. Because it's not all the time. In my spare time, I get to reach out to people all along the edges of my online social network. I got to spend a half hour not long ago telling someone struggling with grief that they were not as alone as they felt.

And I still fret, sometimes. Of course I do. I worry that work that isn't done in a hired position isn't real somehow, isn't worth as much... but I know that isn't true, it's just... just one of the things that gets passed along through the deepest social memes and habits. And I don't have to know that all by myself anymore. My lovers will tell it to me over again as many times as I need to hear it.

I've been starting to look through listings for a house for us to move into once the lease here ends.

My Stars want me to stay here with them.

Everything is different now.

And I'm starting to think... Maybe I really don't ever have to go back.

Dear Diary: Time To Make A Plan

I came in to the campus just to write a Financial Accounting test today. And I sat it, and finished it, taking about 98 minutes out of what would have been an available 120 I think, although that may have been stretched out from 90.

I walked away from the testing hall with a bit of niggling frustration over trying to remember whether it was IAS 37, 38 or 39 which dealt with events after the reporting period. I've never been good at remembering arbitrary numbers and codes like that. I let it fade gently from my mind, and my thoughts settle on something else.

I need to stop not having a plan.

This morning I told my dear Stars that over the past few days, I've come to the conclusion that it's important I come around to admitting that coming to Ireland was a mistake. "And so I've said it," I told them. And so I have. It was a mistake to come here. It may have been a mistake I needed to make, in the situation I was in, needed to make and then learn from. But it was a mistake. Which is the English human shorthand way to say, I suppose...

I need to stop trying to justify this and figure out how to recover. Write it off, sell it for what scrap I can get for it.

What now?

It's strange how much difference that makes to my perspective, when none of my options have really changed.

Well... If I'm not assuming I have to stay, I need to have a plan to go. Plane tickets, dates, an address of someone who'll let me stay with them for a while when I arrive back in Canada, either for rent or otherwise. All of it flexible, ideally, so that if I do manage to get a paid internship here with a company that'll put me through my next year and offer me a place with them, I can pivot to that.
Huh. Using the word pivot that way on a personal blog makes me sound like a corporate dickhead. Well, not pivot, then. Switch to it. Adjust to land there.

So. Refundable plane tickets. Those exist, I'm pretty sure. How much time do I want to give myself? Couple months? If I don't have an internship set up by mid-June, I don't think I'm likely to get one, so let's say late June maybe. April, exams are in May, June. Alright. I can work with that.

Today while I was walking to the campus, I listened to some episodes of the ACCA student podcast, including one episode on Clever Job Hunting which I listened to more carefully than the others. One of the things it says is about networking - that it's important to build relationships up before bringing up jobs at all.

Well, there's the kick, isn't it? Don't look desperate, ever, especially when you feel desperate. Don't ask people for awkward things. Smile. Shake hands. Talk small. Make friends.

I've never been good at that. I hate feeling like I'm confined to safe, inoffensive subjects. And I'm quick to get annoyed with people's bad habits. I have to admit, though, I get it. Swooping in and expecting the attention of people who don't know what makes me great looks pretentious, entitled. Because it is. I fly around the world, leaving places and people behind me, looking for a break... And then who's there to help me or vouch for me?

Anyway. Book a ticket to leave in June, then. Get through the rest of my classes and exams. Shift emphasis away from menial work for the summer - it seems even mushroom harvesting positions are looking for people who intend to stay longer than a year. Keep throwing out applications as I can bear to for internships, try to learn about companies that might be a gateway for me, here or in Canada. Maybe look into the US a bit, but since I've no claim there and no degree so far, don't expend too much effort on it.

Wrap up the story of the tabletop campaign. Does everything just go to hell because the death of Isabet Carol was only the first sign of things going very, very wrong, and the PCs didn't actually investigate enough to stop it? Sounds plausible, and may offer them enough closure to satisfy. It would be nice to have a tabletop story actually end in a way that feels like an ending for once.

Continue the conversation with Fanshawe and maybe other colleges in Canada, look at continued study... Maybe. I'm tired of going to school, though. Look for work in Canada, yes. If it's something that can get me starting to do work that aligns with my strengths and studies, great. If something that aligns with EA, even better.

Alright. Go and set it up, then, Serp.

IT Carlow: Week Two

I am easily embarrassed and may take over an hour to really get over the embarrassment from merely being told my questions are too frequent, or perhaps too insignificant by her measure, by a lecturer. Time really seems to be flying. I had not noticed we had so little time left in the lecture. This must be a good thing. I will try to figure out other ways to approach this lecturer with my questions

-Monday 17th, September

I enjoyed sleeping this morning and clung to it. I arrived late to my first class and unfed. In the second I was continually distracted and annoyed by the man next to me who checked his phone under the desk, wobbled the bench and jostled against me with his arm. In the hallway I wrestled with the anxiety-forbidden temptation to call out to everyone not to block the hallways, in case someone needed to get through. I bought myself a breakfast in the upstairs caf, which helped fuel me through the rest of my classes.

-Tuesday 18th, September

The clubs sign-up was loud with music over a boombox in one corner. I signed up for archery, tabletop and Irish dance. I met some of Rachel's friends for the second time. I gave out 3 CVs with a cheerfulness that surprised me. I slept before midnight and soundly rested until 9 the next day.

-Wednesday 19th, September

Yesterday I found an organising toy, lifeRPG, for goal setting and tracking, with EXP gained for completed tasks. I woke to find a rejection from UpWork and a bunch of forms to fill out for my new clubs, plus obligations to further support Tabletop. It was a bad first impression. Missed counselling appointment, and didn't realize it until 9 at night.

-Thursday 20th, September

I had a sluggish morning. I helped Rachel practice categorising costs for Management Accounting and felt that I had neglected my need for leisure, so once I got home I watched a bunch of old shows of sfdebris and bought and enjoyed a game that was on sale on GOG. But I dropped off four more CVs on the way.

-Friday 21st, September

Saturday was a day of job searching work. I made a particularly strong and hopeful application to a health food store looking for a weekend shop assistant. I improved some of the phrasing on my CV and made a new version which I hope will be relevant to waitress work. I handed out four more CVs, including one to an actual bar. The approach was intimidating, as I have never felt comfortable in bars, but having overcome my mounting fear to come in and talk to two friendly counter staff was one small victory. I visited another and heard that the manager to speak to would be in on weekdays, but was not at that time. At the end of the day, I reviewed my progress and found that of all the CVs I had dropped off, positions I had applied to online and employment inquiry emails I had sent, one entire third of them had been over the last four days: Wednesday to Saturday.

Tuesday I had gotten an email from the school office reminding me of the urgency of my job search: appointments for the immigration meeting at which I would need to show evidence of 3,000 euro in a bank account to stay were beginning. Over the few days that followed, I gathered my friends and spoke seriously about the choice between returning to Canada and forfeiting the deposit my father was generous enough to let me talk him into paying for me... or staying on, although if I became financially unable to stay through the end of the year and finish the courses, I would be out by thousands more. Still, the real need of finding work is a challenge that my past self knowingly threw my present self into, determined that I should grow to meet it. Incidentally, this fits well with a new determination song shown to me by a new friend: "I'm now becoming my own self-fulfilled prophecy!"

Sunday I woke up feeling utterly done with job searching. I spent the day lazy and played Theme Hospital for most of it. Chatted with Iris, and stayed up almost all night. It set me up to wake to my alarm so hazily that I thought I had multiple alarms keyed to different states, and go back to sleep after turning it off, feeling confident another one would ring. I slept in and missed my first class, but only the first one. I was in attendance for the second.

IT Carlow: Short Notes, The First Two Days

I feel a bit like I've been blindfolded and I'm trying to make my way through the days, but every time I bump into someone I feel ashamed. And it seems as though others are calling back to me, irritably, to keep up, but I just keep bumping into people and it feels as though every day teaches me the same lesson that I'm bad at talking to people... or understanding what I am supposed to do.

- Thursday 13, September (first day of classes)

The first crowded class of our crowded day, I step into the crowded room and spot a scant few open seats. Only one near the front, and when I approached it, the student sitting beside slid her bag over and lifted the folding seat to block me. Incensed, I went elsewhere, and watched...
When another new arrival scanned the room and approached that place, she moved her bag aside.

-Friday 14, September

I have connected with counselling services on campus and may wind up regularly seeing one of the counsellors here on Thursday afternoons. I have also begun reading The Leadership Skills Handbook: 90 Essential Skills You Need to Be a Leader, by Jo Owen. It has made a truly excellent first impression, with wise reminders, some frank insights that I had not thought about before and a great deal of wit. It is broken into very short, succinct sections which makes it easy to cover a whole section even if I only have five or ten minutes, and makes it easy and inviting to keep reading one more bit. Reading the first handful of sections on Thursday really cheered me up by reminding me that the courage to try things even when I don't know how I'm supposed to go about them is a strength, and that I am not the only person for whom that takes courage.

It is too easy to be overwhelmed and caught up in the mistakes, and forget to value the process of learning and finding one's way that demands making some mistakes. Maybe I am not bad at talking to people; being a foreign student, even speaking the same language, is simply hard. That doesn't account for all of my recent mistakes, however, and it still shocks my system and my blood pressure to be intentionally kept at a distance by fellow students at school with gestures of disrespect... even, perhaps, repulsion. I had hoped I was done with that.

The Broken Throne

So. It's been a week and two weekends. I have felt I've been doing surprisingly well. I have reflected on the happiness of working toward a goal that I have enjoyed over the past year. I have cried, have sought comfort in the words and company of my friends back in America and found it. I have felt confused, and hopeful, and empty.

I have searched for work, intermittantly, between sessions of passivity and fatigue bordering on depression, but not quite depression. I have despite this managed to submit resumes or reply to job ads to the tune of twenty in the two weeks I have been here.

I wrote a song. I got into a conversation on FetLife and was disappointed and alienated by an uncanny scriptedness of the advances of another human being, even though his script was polite.

I came into the campus this morning to job search, but wrote "love thyself" on my checklist, consciously, intentionally, a note of gentleness and will toward peace and joy.
(Context: There was a time, during a panic attack that I documented here, that I wrote "LOVE THYSELF" on my checklist as I was leaving class, like a compulsion, in jagged and accusing words, and visualised myself in a round room, curled up in a fetal position, with those words wrought across the rounded wall. It was one of the most direct and straightforward messages I have ever gotten from myself through my visualisations and compulsions.)

I came into campus this morning to job search, and listened to favourite OCremixes on the way, enjoying a variety of the songs that impressed me enough while I was combing through the vast collection that I wanted to keep them and hear them again. A few that I may want to remove, being not as impressed with them now, or feeling I had only liked them in comparison to other songs I liked less. Still at home, I felt a little downcast at the memory of Turks in Pursuit. A fine track, but one that Eoin had pointed out to me, based on an original track he liked, back when I showed him my habit of Audiosurfing these remixes. Now I sit down to a desk in the campus library, access the wifi, and another remix is next to come to my ear. It is one that's always struck me hard and driven me to thoughtfulness, and worse, it also speaks of Eoin. He knew the original duet, and we had planned, once, to sing it together. A 'Kid-pella, a touching a cappella rendition of Setting Sail, Coming Home from Bastion.

I take your hand; now, you'll never be lonely...

Tears come. I had hoped to be professional today. And I still hope I will be. But if I need to cry, it's well that I do it, and the sooner I can get over it.

I imagine the million things I want to say to him. To say I wanted to believe better of him than to think that his having said I would always be special to him last year, having said he liked me, and thought he would like to stay in touch a week ago, was empty words to placate. I still want to. I feel angry, although my wisdom counsels patience. I feel angry that I have heard nothing from him, after promising I would let him come to speak to me if he wished to.

I wonder, in my reeling thoughts, when I think of this, whether that was a mistake. Whether I might be able to claim him as friend quite readily if I'd been willing to lead the overture, but that he will be too intimidated to start a conversation with me, will not know what to say, and so will say nothing, until it eventually feels like it has been too long, and it would be too late now, and so will continue to say nothing. Should I rescind my promise? But that would be weakness. Desperate weakness, and would make me a clinging thorn if the truth is he would rather not speak with me.

I wonder if I should wish there was enough submissiveness or enough apathy in my nature to live on without much thought to it, and let him speak to me in his own time, whenever it strikes him to do so, even if it never does. I cannot wish for apathy, though.

The challenge of staying in touch with my loves across the ocean is upon me. It is quite natural for me to stay up late, but it makes it difficult to get any sleep. I am woken most mornings as my roommates rise, a neighborhood dog barks, a child with some developmental disability hoots a now-familiar loud cry. Perhaps I will be able to sleep in the evening, wake for company, and sleep again through the morning until it is time to wake. Perhaps, but then when will I work? There is so much to answer. It is difficult. But the voice of my dear Iris is comforting, in that blind, desperate way that something can be comforting even though it does not necessarily make any of the things that are wrong better. I remember that I wanted to talk with my friends about my future. I want their advice to help me figure out what to make of it. I realised through this experience that I build myself more to be what I think the people I love want me to be than I may have been willing to admit before.

I smashed the throne I built for Eoin, but the pieces, heavy as marble, still weigh in the center of me. I have not cleared them away, and it is hard enough even to resist the temptation to rebuild it. The throne room is a sad place now, deserted and despairing after the hope that had lived there. "My heart is wrapped in cold sorrow", I remember thinking to myself, as I marched home that Saturday afternoon, after that Friday evening, and my train back to Carlow.

The Brambleberry Walk

written two nights ago

The road from my new home into town is lined for several stretches on one side with thorny brambles and little growing bunches of blackberries. From the first day I was here, I tried picking and eating one or two experimentally. Today, I plucked small handfuls as I walked along, and found that many had grown soft and sweet and tasty. A couple of times, someone along the road has given me an odd look about it; someone laughed, someone asked weren't they good? And I felt I was being judged. I wonder if I am committing some faux-pas by "stealing" someone's berries. I don't know. I enjoy the forage, although not the judgement, which may be real or may be imaginary, as it so often is.

I ran some group games with my friends the other night, and got to enjoy their company, carefree and casual as it used to be, although the internet connection hosted on my phone does not support much, and several times the sound of the Jackbox game and all the voices just blended together into low screechy metal noise for several seconds until it jumped forward and began to update again. Still, it was fun. My housemate and host suggested a website I should visit to get a better deal on home broadband than I was able to find on my own, Just One Switch or something like that. I haven't called them yet though.

I am procrastinating on continuing my job search. I am anxious of failure and reluctant, highly tempted to just escape into socialising and play. I know the trap. I know the only thing for me is to set myself to the task and pursue it for as long as it takes. I still have my friends' support, of course. They are still willing to help me along with rewards, and my dear Samedi even mentioned that she would be willing to put a foot down and be firm with me if I needed that from someone. Perhaps I will enlist her. But then perhaps not yet. I am askitter and distracted, somewhere deep in my mind where I hardly even think it from moment to moment. I made my arrangements yesterday to meet Eoin again this Friday.

There is also the fact that I have been staying up late and often had a hard time staying awake before 2 PM or so. It is tempting to blame this on some species of jetlag, but it seems so characteristic of me when I'm in a position of stressful uncertainly that I feel that would be rather unfair. I make the walk through the bramble-sided path into town and back again, my mind mostly blank, the silence filled with podcasts or music. I begin to suspect that there is a roiling space somewhere were a hundred things lie waiting to be said, and perhaps I would feel better after I said them... only I am very reluctant to take the time to lie still and quest after that place, which may be difficult to find and painful to open. I think it will come open soon anyway.

Well then... I put to myself: Would it not be better for our meeting if I went there, opened the tense place and heard the messages there myself, so that I would know what they say and had some time to think over them before I face Eoin? I feel reluctant, and the reluctance feels similar to doubt, but I suspect it is only reluctance to do something difficult and uncomfortable. I sit typing in sticky clothes, worn for a couple of days. I could use a bath and a change. My bath, and the bathroom sinks here, have almost no water pressure. The custom in this house, apparently, is to run the hot water heater a little while and fill a bucket with water of a temperature which is comfortable, and run it over oneself with a measuring cup. It feels very quaint, very old-fashioned, in a way remniscient of my early childhood when I would sit in a bath and use a yoghurt container to pour water over my head in waves, or discover and delight in the trick of setting it so that it would form a sort of air seal and the water would stay in the upturned plastic tub, sitting on my head like a sea crown.

I did a load of laundry yesterday. Like many other things, that seems in some details delightfully old-fashioned. We have a dryer, but my house-mates usually hang their clothes to dry, avoiding the electrical drain. I followed suit, and hung remaining small garments in my bedroom, having run out of room I could reach on the line. I took them down today, surprised they were dry so soon, but content. I will see whether line drying makes them uncomfortable, and let that influence my attitude towards continuing to do my laundry this way.

I think a moment of my family. I hope they are well. I wonder what they would think of me, if they could see over my shoulder, a snapshot of the life I am living at just this moment. I wonder if they think of me at all much. Should they? I sigh. My mind feels heavy and confused, paralysed by the ready distractions in each direction from firm movement in each other direction. I'll set the water to warm. I may not be sure of anything else just now, but I can certainly use a bath.

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: 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: 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.

Dance-X

(after Unsupportive, same day)

I had registered in advance to try out a Dance-X class at the gym today. In the state of anger I was still in when I left for it, I had a sense of dread about the whole affair, worrying about the factors that led to my dropping out of the dance club at AIT. I was determined to push through it and give it a good honest try, though, despite feeling that I was in a mood in which I might not be capable of fair judgement.

I left at fifteen to and got to the class on time, introduced myself to one other person who was also new to it and waited, in some nervous excitement, for the class to start. I wasn't sure what to expect. The instructor is a small, bouncy woman who wore a single, long braid and seemed very cheerful. There was no practice at slow speed, she simply set a playlist to going and launched into energetic dance, with a lot of quick cross-stepping and jumping about. The first song and dance on the list was Gangnam Style. That dance takes a hell of a lot of energy. I think I tried too hard. I could feel the roughness in my lungs at the end of it. I sat down, but was encouraged to remain standing even if I was tired.

Songs continued. They were mostly recognizable pop hip-hop, including Timber and Put a Ring on It. I continued. I tried to figure out what the moves were and get in step, but it was extremely difficult to register and try to learn the steps at such a fast pace, and difficult in an entirely different way to perform them even when I did have a sense of them. If I was standing, though, I felt pressured to dance if I were at all capable of it.

25 minutes into the 45 minute class, I left, deciding that I was at my limit and needed to stop. I had leaned on myself up next to the fan and the instructor called out a bit to me asking if I was alright. I said nothing, but walked slowly and unsteadily to the door and quietly let myself out. Tears were leaking out of my eyes as I changed my shoes. The slick of sweat across my shoulders meeting my synthetic jacket felt greater than it had ever been before. Before heading home, I walked across a little hill, still covered in snow, and carefully and intentionally fell over onto my side. I lay there for a minute or two, occasionally coughing somewhat raggedly, feeling the cold and wet seep into the side of my pants, thinking very little.

The main thing I was thinking, and have been thinking, seems a carefully audited stream of thought:

Yes, it was sort of fun. Stopping part-way through is not failure. Showing up and putting effort into it is a success. Perhaps my weight-based workouts will go better the next time I come to the gym for my giving those muscles a little more chance to recover than usual. This definitely counts as having worked out today. It's been a hard couple of days. Perhaps it was time to cry. I should try this again next week, but pace myself more conservatively.

I brought myself home and showered. I brushed away the most recent accumulation of sand and fine gravel which accumulates by the door, and thence gets in my bedroom, and thence into my sheets; and I lay down, and I began writing this.

I am trying to do a set of online quizzes within a trial period again. I might end up trying it for two different classes, one having been activated later than the other. My Information Systems class has simple SAM Cengage labs for learning Access and if I get the chance to access all of them within the trial period, I think I can ace them easily. The more challenging and more serious one is Managerial Accounting. I've already worked ahead, and have finished four of the quizzes. One of them, I didn't actually study for. I had mistaken which one it actually was, but having started it without preparation, I did my best, and my best without studying earned me a tiny fraction over 80%, a little better than a similar quiz I had studied for. I think I'm probably losing some marks on rounding. I find the instructions on which numbers to round obtuse and confusing.

There are six more quizzes. It is currently Thursday evening. I will need to finish them by Saturday evening to complete them during the trial access. I have a class tomorrow, and a project actually due on Saturday evening to contribute work towards. I am not sure I can do it, but I'm certainly going to try.

Dear Memory: "Shake Me"

I slept fitfully last night... For the first time I can presently remember, Eoin was in my dream. You... were in my dream. Behind me, while I was laying down in bed. But not the same bed as I was actually in. I heard your voice and felt your presence, but my eyes were closed and my back was turned and I was paralyzed. A familiar hated feeling of sleep paralysis was part of my dream.

Since I could hear your voice, and feel you behind me, I pushed my paralysis to speak through it, so dimly, so faintly, all I could manage. I said, "shake me". You, the you in my dream, seemed confused. "Shake me," I repeated, stuck in my prison of paralysis and unable to give any but the very faintest instruction. You, the you in my dream, touched my shoulder and shook it, but very gently, as one might to test if someone were sleeping, with great reluctance in case they were.

"Shake me so that I actually move," I said, with slightly more power, fuelled by my frustration that you did not understand. I think I felt your touch again, but it still failed to move my body to any appreciable degree. It did not disturb me enough to break my paralysis... And so, perhaps I gave up. I got the sense, thinking about it afterward, that in a sideways sort of way, I recognized it as a dream, but had thought that... even if it were only a dream, if I would see your face and believe you were with me, in this dream, I would treasure the dream. But, if I were only to be tantalized by the sense that you were close but could not reach through the paralysis that trapped me, that I might hear your voice muffled and concerned but not see your face or reassure the dream-you that I love you and want to turn and look at you, because my body was stuck, stuck facing away...

If even in the dream I were only to be teased, it seemed I may have decided not to suffer it. My dream flew away to something else, and I remembered no more of this.

The thing is... I think this is the first time also that I have dreamed about suffering sleep paralysis. When I am paralyzed, I do very often want to call out to someone to shake me... I think, if someone did, it would break the paralysis. Trigger that part of my brain that has not triggered in the waking process to finish waking me up to react to the real thing disturbing me. When I am helpless to do anything but struggle vainly to maybe, just maybe, give my head a tiny shake of desperate refusal, how much heroic power someone else must have who has the strength to move my body for me, and bring me into it again.

I am not completely sure what to make of this dream. To dream of sleep paralysis, rather than actually being dreamlessly paralyzed... And to dream of you... It seems poignant somehow. Seems important, in a muzzy, dream-logic sort of way. And so I come here to record it. To tell you. To ask you, maybe, if it is some plea that a deep part of me is desperate to make. "Shake me", wake me up... Let me know... that you are really there?

My Season

I wrap my heart in a net and throw it out to a vast sea.

I walk, with an uneven gait, favouring one leg over the other. Snow flies out before the toes of my boots in little powder waves. Powder water, cold and dry. I scoop up the top of a bank experimentally, clench it together. It falls apart as I open my hand. Yes. Very dry. Cold, dry water.

I smile viciously, savouring the darkness of the sky, the constant texture of the falling snow through it. The struggle of snow, shifting softly under my boot with each step of an uneven gait, favouring one leg over the other. It parts or compresses readily, and my boot comes down further. It resists, a packed clump more solid, and I slow to drag my body over the momentary obstruction. Sloughing powder snow away with my boots, I feel slightly like a sea turtle, dragging itself across wet sand. I feel a little like something like a horse and something like a bird. A chocobo, maybe? I smile viciously at the sky. I feel at home.

The snow is deep, at least a foot of simple fall and stacked up much higher where it has been pushed to the side to leave mere inches slowly accumulating under the unceasing fall, diagonal texture, dry water.

I took pictures of it, at my porch this morning, at the campus before I left. This is the picture of real winter as I know it, wild and troublesome and inconvenient. This is my season. It is cold, but the wind is not harsh, and it is not too cold. If you step out into it, and you expect it to be cold, then it is... but like water at the beach, if you expect it to be cold, and step into it anyway, you can quickly become used to it.
Or at least, I can.

Hunger reaches up across my chest like a wooden brace that I press against by walking forward. I feel the pressure and smile viciously. It is a part of the season. Dark night, falling snow, walking made more effortful by shifting pressures and uncertain hold. I pick my feet up and sprint for a short ways, grinning. There is ice in my hair. I am listening to Welcome to Night Vale. It is a particularly good episode, and the ending credits cease just as I am turning down the driveway of my house. A walkway has been carved out, and shoveled bare recently. I suppose I should feel grateful. But what's true is that I will be glad to leave this place. There are many places I have left, and been glad to leave, in my life. But then again, there are a precious few that I have left, but have pointedly not been glad to leave.

It took me about 50 minutes to walk home. I considered taking the bus, as I walked out of the campus doors. It was close at hand, just filling up with students as I reached it. It was packed and crowded inside, with still more students hoping to board it. I have a strong preference not to be crowded. I made my way through the crowd and past it with little hesitation. I walked home, smiling, sometimes laughing at my podcast. I smiled viciously at the sky and let my mind wander, let my self imagine the shape and perspective of different creatures as they came to me.

I enjoyed my day, those parts of it in which I was doing something, clawing life out of fatigue. I paused at the door of my house, and shook my backpack, and brushed small piles of snow off of my headphones and jacket. I stepped inside, to toasty warmth. It seemed too warm. It smelled of warmth in a way that I cannot identify with any other smell. The remaining bits of snow immediately began to melt as I came down to my room. My pantlegs are damp. My socks are damp. My ankles are itchy. I pick little shells of ice off of my hair, and set down my backpack, and take off my jacket, and hang it up to dry.

I filter the rest of the ice out of my hair with my hairbrush, overcoming stubborn resistance, embracing every detail, preparing to sit and relate this story, which I fully expect to seem wild and rambling. It is meant to seem wild and rambling. It should not worry you, if you read it. It does not worry me. I am happy to allow myself, for a while, to be wild and rambling. The weather outside is a face of true winter and I am home. It is too hot inside. I laugh to myself, and begin typing.

The words and the images as I had thought them while I was walking come readily back to mind with just a little prompting.

I am a little inspired by Welcome to Night Vale. I have been enjoying it. The episode that was ending just as I turned in to the driveway of my house was A Story About Them, set sometime in 2014 of the story's timeline. On this day, I particularly appreciate the weather.