when the whole thing drops, you lose your nerve; I hope you get what you deserve

Well, this doesn't fill me with confidence. (This article on New World Notes filled in some of the details, but is still not thrilling me.)

And past Linden Lab's internal difficulties, if you're around people who are asking why they need to wear masks, drop one of seventy scientific papers on them. May not convince them, but they will look more foolish claiming the science isn't there.



you're on your own
in a world you've grown

Yeah, I know. Still in the mists. What's new?



few more years to go
don't let the hurdle fall
so be the girl you loved
be the girl you loved

And the storm still rages outside. It probably will until I can view everything dispassionately. And that, my dears, may take a very long time.



I'll wait
so show me why you’re strong
ignore everybody else
we're alone now
I'll wait

So, what's the point of dissection, anyway? It's supposed to teach us things about how that thing operates. All I seem to be learning is why things hurt. That's not the best lesson, right now, I already know there's pain. I just haven't figured out how to best heal it.



suddenly I'm hit
it's the starkness of the dawn

At least the alligators don't need to be fed right now. I spent most of the first months of quarantine feeding my brain horror films. And I am (slightly) reassured that last night, I didn't wake up gasping from nightmares.

The down side of that is, I didn't wake up from any particularly...pleasant...dreams, either, but then...right now those are sort of a multi-edged sword anyway. Some part of me wants them, wants to cling to the past and relieve every detail, and the rest of me is just glad I get the occasional reprieve.



and your friends are gone
and your friends won't come

And no amount of prayer to any form of deity staves off self-knowledge. It only delays it. The reckoning is coming.



so show me where you fit
show me where you fit

And I still don't know. I want there to be a nice, neat, easily detached box to fit this in. Something I can set aside on a shelf and move on with the life. Nothing about this is neat, though. It's messy and painful and confusing and constricting and, I can admit this now, desperately unwanted...but it's what we have.

For whatever value that has.

(Pictures taken at Bitterwick Harbor, Sooden Store, Final Refuge and Innsmouth. Lyrics from James Blake's "Retrograde".)