"-and it will be alright," he said.

The blank page doesn't frighten me, has not done so for some time. It still doesn't. A blank pages is an invitation to make a mistake, a mess, a miracle. The blank page that breathless pause before the Big Bang and the universe begins.

What gives me pause it what comes after, when there are already words on the page and you have found something that may possibly be a flow, or a ghost, but it is enough of something for you to follow, and your thoughts have brought you this far, to a point at which you realise there is no point and you do not know what you are trying to say.

Blogging used to be such an effective weapon against myself, or the world, or myself. The act of structuring a post in my mind imposed a structure upon a struggle that in its very nature is without definition. An artificial and arbitary imprisonment, but one that gave me some measure of peace regardless. The composition of that post was a natural extension, requiring a further narrowing of focus and definition. The precision of a word was like the puncture of a pin through the hull of a moth, the 'preeeee-' that first prick and pressure before the point breaks the surface and the 'cish' the spearing and parting of organs and secrets as the shaft slides down, and finally the 'on' of the point thrust down into the board. That moth will not fly again.

You can only find such precision when you know your own voice. Second person to speak of the first. I. I do not entirely know this I. I, you, she, this entity, stopped blogging, stopped writing. She begin finding stories in photography, although even these she did not share with abandon. I spoke more, out loud I mean. More for me. People who encountered me still found me recalcitrant, but I knew the difference. Maybe I had nothing to say. Perhaps I didn't want to say anything. What I consider my true voice was left unused. It starved, warped, and eventually became nothing.

There have been, are still, so many hurtles between myself and the act of writing. The physical ones are lesser than they were, although this is due to a change of life circumstances and employment, not any radical healing on my part. I must still be careful with the time I spend both typing and writing by hand. This will be lifelong I imagine. It is not a bad thing. The flat tends to get cleaned when I need to stop. Everyone wins?

On only my second day in town I joined the Glasgow Science Fiction Writers Group. It has been good not just to surround myself with writers once again, but to engage actively in writerly activities. I've dipped my toes into the water of freelance editing, but writing up a report differs vastly from engaging in a face to face discussion on the strength, weaknesses and possible progressions of a story. There are so many ways in which a tale can be read, and it is wonderful and refreshing to be reminded of that. The shared excitement. The giddiness that comes from being with people who care about narrative mechanics as much as you do. These are fine things.

And then there is gentle insistance of loved ones who recognise that this small thing is such an important thing, and although I am not afraid they will hold my hand without asking and believe in me when I am indifferent.

Writing is no longer something to be shied away from, neither the thought of it nor the action. Be proud of me? Tessa, these shifts may be slight but they take such time and exertion, like the push of continental plates. There will always be destruction with change. You cannot see the time lost and strings severed without acknowledging the shift. One does not happen without the other.

Start small and long. A flash fiction competition with months in which to contemplate your inability to produce neat short ideas. Which is actually really fucking frustrating.

I've been gnawing tentatively at the idea of doing another 7wishes type project, which would additionally force me to write some joy into Glasgow. The city and I have had a rocky start, not helped by the fact that I think we just have conflicting personalities. I don't know Glasgow as well as Melbourne, not nearly. Nor do I know myself as well as I did.

I was thinking about that, and this voice, and what has changed. For example; my lover. My normal policy regarding blogging about other people is not to make them identifiable or overly specific in interaction unless that other person had an online presence of their own, somewhere they could return fire, so to speak. He does not. I also want to respect the privacy of others. What ever I share here I am okay with sharing, but I would not make that assumption for anyone else.

These are incidental however, solved by merely talking with him, and I do love talking with him. No, what gives me pause is the line between personal and precious. I cannot blog about my life and excise him from it. To do so would be to lie by omission and deny the incredible and integral part of my life he plays. I am no longer an identity in isolation, not to myself. Yet, because he is so precious I do not wish to share him. These times and glances and moments are treasures immeasurable. Perhaps you have been in love and been loved. Perhaps you do understand. But then, you must understand the greediness and selfishness that comes with delight.

These are lines I have not yet encountered in the sand, lines I suspect I will have to learn to walk as I learn what this different voice has to say.

the end will not be narrated

Curiosity has enormous round eyes and towering pointy ears which perk with interest at all going on in the world. Curiosity is never sated, never stops finding something new to take delight in.

Delight is a fat beam of sunlight curling a a living mobius like an ADHD eel.

Desire has short arms and short fingers. Desire reaches for things just beyond its grasp, but it can see them, it knows with only a little work it can change the position of the world and have what it wants. Desire is never sated, never lets its arms drop, never stops yearning.

Fury is fists and a mouth that never closes and so the roar never ends. Fury is constantly battered and beaten by that which gives rise to it, and as it defeats that which has woken it so it slays itself. Fury doesn't want to die. Fury can't help itself.

I can anthropomorphise character traits till you get bored and stop reading. Hope is a tortoise and fear is an elephant. Resolution is the bug on the windshield that no amount of speed will blow away.

None of these entities want to die. They don't fight back. Most of them don't know they're dying at all. But when I hold them under they don't stay down. I can't keep them down.

What I fear is depression. It's a perfectly rational fear to have all things considered, but I let it affect me in an irrational way. I've cut people out of my life not because they were going to do anything that would send me back there, but because I couldn't trust myself not to use them to send myself there. There are whole countries of conversation I won't visit because they call on memories that may sit next to other memories I don't want to visit. I fear depression and so by proxy I fear all things that may lead to it.

It is only logical that I then cleave to those things which combat it. "Being awesome" is about as WMD as you can get without prescription medication. In this case, the awesomeness is entirely internal. The space my mind occupies is immense and ridiculous and so much bigger than me; I have made it that way. I have made it so that even when my head is full of poison and horror it is still breath-taking and glorious. Everything I consume as thought-food, all the experiences and trials I put myself through, the rewards and punishments I vest upon myself, all of them become architecture, amazingly intricately stupidly illogically whimsically viciously laying out new ground. Be glorious. This is all I need to keep myself alive.

The character traits are my hunters, catching pieces of the world and laying new foundations.

I fear the damage I do to myself by continuing to push on. I fear the damage I do to myself when I strangle my voice.

They're different paths to the same destination. I do not like what I am becoming.

It doesn't matter how I anthropomorphise these character traits, how much distance I put between myself and the violence I wreak upon them. I can build walls of detail, personality and symbolism into their being. It doesn't matter. It makes no difference. In the end there is only me, murderer and victim and crying for both.

Written at 19:54 on 16 August 2010

The Quiet Lie

It has been over a year since the RSI took hold of my hands.

There have been moments of progress, which in and of themselves were marvellous things, like remembering to breathe, like warm water on cool skin, like seeing the way out.

These peaks were inevitably followed by their equal in troughs, which were made all the more devastating by those brief tastes of hope, like being snatched by the undertow, like a cold wind across cold water, like walls, walls, walls.

What dies when the pain returns is not simply my ability to exist comfortably in my body, but in my mind. I cannot write. It hurts. I cannot write. It hurts. There are walls, walls, walls.

And I, I do not like to fail. I do not like to be defeated. The only person who will judge me is myself, and that alone is too much. That I witness myself turn a piece of writing over in my mind until I must write it. That I watch myself sit, and begin, and stop because my muscles are burning and nothing has been accomplished. I find myself wanting. I am one witness too many for my regular retreats.

Each time I do this, the walls creep a little closer.

Now they are close enough I cannot write.

I will not write.

It is not enough to cease the action. The desire remains, and to keep this division between will and world from destroying me in a different yet still thorough manner I must stifle that too. I must silence my voice.

It is not enough to cease expression. That inner narration remains, and to keep the pent up thoughts from destroying me in a different yet still thorough manner I must sow enough salt that nothing grows, and I have nothing to say.

Do not be an entity that nurses curiosity. Do not ask questions, do not explore your ignorance, do not seek answers. Do not desire. Do not analyse. Do not absorb. Build nothing within yourself. Draw your horizons in close. Fight no battles. Marvel at no mysteries. Be affected by no change in the world around you. Do not affect change in the world around you.

I am vast. The psychological space I occupy sprawls out across the carpet, slips beneath the door and raises itself to the satellites. It is not that I am removing the architecture within this space. I will not be empty by the time this is done.

I am undoing that space entirely. Eventually, I will exist only behind my eyes and between my ears. I will be small, and full of what small pieces are left of me. I will concern myself with grout on the bathroom tiles and the specials on tea and butter on at the local supermarket.

I will not be worth knowing, and by the time this happens, I will not be the sort of person to whom this would even occur.

Written 19:07 16 August 2010