When at last you speak, you speak of the inevitability of change, as though that had ever been the issue. Change is coming, you say, it's useless to fight and futile to predict. You're pleading, you're explaining, trying to make me understand about change. And this is when I understand that you aren't even talking to me.
I"ve been quiet. I've been busy. I've been earning my keep, proving my worth with the purely pointless. Roulette wheels, bowling scores, traffic cameras, airport codes, childrens' songs, quiz shows: been there, done that, figured it out. No jackpots for me, but if this is what being first loser feels like, I'm okay with that.
Extremity breeds change: call it hitting bottom, or being taken away from your everyday cares, or the sheer necessity of action, or a dose of perspective, or a gravitational slingshot. Call it whichever you please, but when I came back across the bridge and slipped off to sleep, it was all quite clear.
At work, I'm on a march towards zero, a gruesome hand-to-hand fight with the bugs, and that line has its perfect mirror elswhere. There are balances here to be maintained, conservation of creativity, constraints on the overall net flux of life force.
We war criminals like to rewrite the past; we slip away and make new names for ourselves. There are things you don't talk about, things you don't think about, not even in the silences of the evening. Doctored photographs, new identity cards, that was a long time ago, in another country, and when everyone in the village is complicit, memory stands on its head and looks to the future.
Times are tough in dot-com-ville, and the Lab is cutting back on its operational budget. We could stay here where we are and wait for the marketing momentum to die out, but where's the fun in that? That's not what I wrote on the napkin when I had the idea for this place. A laboratorium is a place for experiments, for mixing strange and scary chemicals, for proving and disproving theories. If you're not going to play with fire, then why'd you put in the fire extinguishers? Don't even get me started on the eye wash station and the fume hood.
Strange angels, singing just for me. Their spare change falls on top of me.
The Lab as we know it isn't going away, it's just not going to be my top priority, shall we say? It's all about the projects.
I wish I had something positive to offer up right now as proof of my sincerity, but things just aren't at that stage yet. Lotvs-Eaters is getting close, watch this space for updates, and that's going to be where it's at for a while. I'm not turning my back on weblogging or the Lab, no, precisely the opposite, but goals in the large necessitate sacrifices in the small, and, of necessity, I'm going to be a bit terse for a while.
Silence doesn't speak. This I believe, which is why I'm saying this much now.
Never explain. This also I believe, which is why I'm not saying more.
Existence is a con game, it's what we can get away with while the universe is distracted for a moment, and I have next to no idea what I'm going to try to pull under cover of this next bit of stage business, but I guess I'm going to find out, then.
I understand about change, believe you me. And if you spoke to me again, I know just what I'd say.
It's Election Day tomorrow. Vote Democrat and hope.