This is the season of molt for many creatures, be it their first, as that of a caterpillar, or their final, as that of a may fly. The air at night sweats with the excess humidity, and in the light mist highlighted by the street lamps in our complex, it seems alive with the promise of other things just out of our realm of vision. Of late, I’ve found myself standing on our balcony, without my customary cigarette, just staring out into all those dark possibilities.
For this, too, is the season of my change.
I can feel it coming back, all those forgotten feelings, everything I suppressed in my desperate scramble towards sanity and a more normal life. The fatal charm, which always manifested when I was teetering on the edge of some change, is back in full force. My eyes have become photosensitive again. I can feel the weight of all that tar in my lungs, and I know that I will have to stop smoking soon. I am still eating, which means the change is different this time, but by no means less drastic. Something that has been lying dormant within me has re-emerged, altered, to insinuate itself back into my consciousness.
I remember everything: I remember why my madness comforted me, and I remember why I believed the things I did. I know that I cannot, with the weight of logic and reason looming over my fantasies, believe them anymore; but I also know that there are other things that logic and reason were never able to explain. Someone close to me reminded me of all those other things that I’d suppressed with everything else.
I started this journal because I had to. Honestly, I never expected other people to read this – it was for my own benefit more than anyone else’s. Ever since my time of madness, when I first put pen to paper intending to write a novel, I have had a drive, a geas, if you will, to write. I found that when I didn’t, the words would literally eat me alive until I was describing everything that happened to me during course of a day in serialized episodes in my head at night. That is part of the reason I never stopped it, even when certain others sorely tempted me.
All these years, ever since I stopped working on that novel, all those characters have been taking up space in my head. That plot line has changed and changed again, because I never finished pinning it down with words, like a snake. I’ve never known if I am a good writer....I just know I won’t be able to rest until I finish writing their story. The geas is upon me, stronger than ever, and I’ve already started all the outlining necessary to do my characters justice.
I do not know what all the changes mean right now. Everything I saw with such clarity seems to have been airbrushed, the definition lost. I do know that I am putting this journal on hiatus, because I cannot be distracted from my other writing at this critical stage, and I also know that I will not be online very much. The format of the Internet appeals to my short attention span, and I need all the focus I can maintain. For now I will say that I am planning to start again in three weeks’ time. I may send out e-mail entries, so it would be to your benefit to join the notify list. The link appears at the bottom of the screen. Thank you for reading, and thank you for your patience.