haunted by nodeshells, like pronouns signifying other worlds Dec 23, 2010

P227i---.244 THU 23 DEC 2010

I have been meaning to work on this planet. Since Julia got sick and I started working again, I've fallen into a limbo. I haven't been getting much exercise and I'm sleeping at odd hours instead of waking to a proper morning sun. I'm not sure if I'm eating regular meals. Suddenly it feels like being disconnected, like being on another plane. Ironic that I use this metaphor while lying here on P227i. I switch off the record player. There isn't much here yet---the grass beneath me, a small brick building a couple hundred meters off to the side, over the horizon. I keep my books there. I brought the music and a lantern out with me, to lie here and watch the sky. There's only one thing up there: P227j, a smooth white stone sphere the size of an orange. I had to fudge the orbit and lighting calculations to make it travel the exact speed of the moon back home and be visible from the ground...

I can feel the heat coming off my neck when I think too hard. Julia says I need to get out more, do more. Don't sit stuck dreaming all day, she says. It can be hard for me to find that inertia. I have more dreams than notebooks. I am afraid that I complete little, and instead embark on many partial journeys and enjoy them for their duration. Am I to be this way until I die? I wonder if anyone will ever find my P227i, unchanged from the moment I now lie upon its surface, and enjoy it in its incomplete state. Will they peep in, notice its brevity, and discard it? Will it inspire them to insert their own elements, developing this humble carpeted rock into a comfortable home? Perhaps a few well-placed trees, so that the creeping motion of P227j can be more easily observed by contrast...

In fairness, I accomplish many things. But the weight of an unrealized dream is greater than that of any physical object. So I sit at my notebooks, and sometimes I sit for many days before I write. Sometimes I write for many days before I eat. Almost always there is the drive; I have to remember to come up for air. It's hard to learn a lesson and then to forget it. It's hard to take the first step when you don't realize that it's your own brain stopping you from doing so.

That's enough. I've strayed into useless philosophy. I'm back to the grass, now, and the empty sky. P227j has set. Perhaps I will go and work on another planet---I have some ideas to try for the clockhouse on P47. I need to check on Julia and write a thank-you letter to her sister.

I need to put out of my mind the one I am not yet ready to write.

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haunted by nodeshells, like pronouns signifying other worlds

links to:
- Geography of the Islands of the Dead
- Wandering Star
- hanging yourself
- the lake around which are a thousand tiny fires

linked from:
- an essay for humans
- the lake around which are a thousand tiny fires
- Wandering Star

all writing, chronological
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