Hope

Of Much Needed A'Tuin-ing

Sometimes, during those late hours of the night, you get some moments of clarity. True ones, that aren't obstructed by desires or sidetracked by rationalizations. You let yourself daydream, breaking free of the reigns of reality and morality, what you can and can't be, and you just see, detachedly, what you're all about.

You're not necessarily any less lost, but you're not panicking about it. Time stops, silence sets in like a medium of its own, and you really see; all that you want, all that you need, and all that you fear. Reality loosens its grasp, and you see beyond yourself. All that's important to you is obvious. All that you need presents itself. And you're not in distress.

Perhaps, instead of looking back onto things that were, peeking in on them as they're undressing, or looking on to things that will never be, getting attacked by liquor bottles from unfriendly hobos, you could look in on a time that never was and never will be.

A time with more dragons and space and mathematical extrapolations. A world of flowing coffee rivers and gremlins and music. One where gravity isn't so certain and time isn't so constraining. One where you could visit long forgotten tunnels, saunter into forbidden forests, and hack into your old inventory to arm your avatars with shields and great swords and charms, instead of intentionally casting them as helpless, unarmed and scared intruders.

One where winds blow by and through, obliterating you in scale. Rounding up into a deafening storm worthy of the wrath of Norse gods, shooting down from the skies to spite you, and in all its arrogance, instead, it soothes you.

RIP Terry Pratchett

Goodbye, you wonderful wonderful alien. You came from a better world, this one has never deserved you, and now the mothership has come back for you. You cannot die, for in your words: “No one is actually dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away.” And yours shall not, not for me.

Kurt Vonnegut & Joseph Heller War Experience: Battle of the Bulge, Bombing Raids, VE Day (1995)

The Empty Jar Club Reconvened

"Actually, I don't feel like an empty jar as much really, more like a jar full of something it shouldn't be full of. Like grabbing a nutella jar, emptying it and filling it with salt."

"I think I broke my jar."

"Weh. No one mends a broken jar though since they're dispensable. They just replace them."

"Yeah. That, they do."