Three months, another 3, then 8, 4, now 8. How nice, I think. Maybe I'll make it into the OEIS.
I recently discussed with a dear friend how I have felt no great ability to write for some time. I recall the beginning of this site, when pathogen, solitude, and poor decoration walled me in. I wrote for want of confidante, and it worked! It, among other things, kept me sane in a lonely, stressful time. How many expressors (do you think I would call myself an artist? or a creator, in this era? let me say only what I know is true: that I have something to say at all) have the same fear I ward off now: that, hard days behind, the buffers of well-being obstruct that ethereal stream of ideas waiting to be discovered and voiced?
Thank goodness I have read the words of artists, and they say this is false! I have learned from the works of the joyful (thank you, Norma Ryūkō Kawelokū Wong Roshi), the compassionately open (thank you, Krista Tippett), those who look forward at our unfolding future with unshakeable vision and insistence on action (thank you, Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson). Despair is no incomparable wellspring. Well being is no inhibition.
So let me be done with this waffling! Do I think myself professionally aloof? Have I forgotten the hallowed intimacy of this place? Let the cold of networked metal invite not isolation but the penguine huddle. I began here because flesh, for all its warmth, floods readily with anxiety at the suggestion of another body in proximity. I began here to say with little reservation what someone, perhaps, wants to know. At the very least, I'm here to say what I, perhaps, want to say.
By new year's resolution, I owe you five more in 2026. Let us, again, begin.
Repeatedly,
Ty