a prelude for july

It's hard to believe we're actually halfway through this extended conceit I'm putting you through. This is an example of a lie, the sort of lie we tell all the time because we don't know how to properly mark something as significant or noteworthy. So we pretend we're having difficulty believing it, when the opposite is usually true. It's far harder to disbelieve than it is to believe.

This is where hope comes from--humans will never have a hard time believing something, even when we have no evidence for it. Hope was the theme of my stories from January, you may recall. This month is their counterpoint. This month, the stories are about regret.

I was tempted to make the counterpoint to hope something like nostalgia, but that isn't properly the opposite, is it? Hope is thinking of the past with positive thoughts; nostalgia is like hope, except pointed backwards. There's still positivity there. Regret, on the other hand, is hope's truest companion.

It may be helpful to read January's stories before you read this month's stories. This is the part of this project where I start writing variations on the stories I've been telling for the first half of it, and I suppose that makes it the part where we find out whether my hopes for the project ultimately turn into regrets.