something beautiful

It's odd, looking out at the drowned city that used to be the capital, staring at that bone-white spire surrounded by waves, knowing that the end really is coming--sooner rather than later, I think, but it's hard to measure the exact point an empire dies. Most people have fled the old heartland already, and this old observatory won't be safe forever, but one day, whoever survives the end will come here, and they'll want answers.

I don't have answers, of course. But I want them to find this observatory, these texts I've carefully preserved, and I want them to know who we were. I want them to see that there was more than just the hubris that nearly shattered the continent and drowned a city. There was something beautiful here, too. And maybe, if I'm lucky, some traveler will find what I've written here and salvage that beauty, pass it on to their own civilization. 

I'm imagining them sitting in the ruins of this building, as I used to sit in the ruins of the old pre-imperial shrines, basking in the melancholy air, wondering what had happened. And maybe they'll find these old texts and bring them to some scholar, just like me, who'll burn many a candle trying to decipher the language that was once so commonplace. (Will it seem at times familiar, or will it be completely alien to them?) And maybe they'll feel connected, in some way, as I've so often felt connected with the sages of the past, with whom I've communed via their own carefully preserved texts.

And maybe, after all that, something I've archived here will live on, and thrive, and take on new life in whatever world follows this one. I hope it's a kinder one than we've made here.

a prelude for february

2021 sure did start out rough, huh? Republicans openly attempting to stage a coup, three solid weeks of holding our breaths and wondering if there would, in fact, be a transfer of power to the newly elected Joe Biden, let alone a peaceful one. And then all that insurrectionist energy fizzled out and we have a new president and everyone is so fucking desperate to pretend that things are normal again. And I get it; it's been a rough half a decade. It's important to take some time to rest. But the problems that led to the last five years have not gone anywhere, and they will not go anywhere if we don't do something about it.

It's been a warm winter, so far, relatively speaking. A few cold fronts, a few threats of snow that never went anywhere, but mostly it's been warm and unremarkable. Perhaps the weather's tired. I think everyone's tired around February, when it's been cold and dark for so long and there's still at least another month before it ends--and that's when the world hasn't been on fire for the past five years. The sheer exhaustion of simply existing these days is hard to fathom. But we made it. There might be an end in sight to the pandemic, at least.

I still need to work on fixing the Vaudeville Ghosts website. I'd like to put up my media reviews as they happen instead of waiting until the end of the year for them; perhaps for the end of the year I'll try to write up something a little pithier for my media lists, to make them more readable. (Medium said my last one was a 30 minute read, which is quite a lot, and I do tend to ramble.) So that's my goal for this month: get that website up and working.

Anyway. Winter's not over yet. Things are looking calm right now but who knows when the weather will break? We've miles to go before spring and February has a history of surprising everyone. It's not quite yet time to put away those winter coats.