Me & My Obscurity

"I guess I've been letting things get obscure around here.  Time to go on a fact-checking expedition."

One funny thing about journaling -- aside from its inherent pretentiousness -- is trying to explain any long gaps in time.  The above quote was one of my favorite wordings of this recurring excuse, covering a 6-month span where nothing was written, back in '99.  It went on to do a survey of jobs, people I knew at the time.  I'm not sure why any of that matters.

But sometimes, those old journal entries just crack me up.  Here's one from 9 Oct 1999, in the middle of a long boring bit about my current programming hell:

"about two weeks ago, there was a guy at the street fair selling freeze-dried lizards.  we bought a bunch, thinking the cats would find them amusing.  as soon as i ripped open the baggies, the things swelled up and came back to life, bigger than ferrets and much more stinky.  the things in this paragraph did not actually happen.  it's just that line of reality again, ever devious.  i've toyed with the idea of marking the dream blocks, maybe with a "d:", but i'm not a friggin hard drive.  and i know what was real.  why spoil the fun?"

Odds are, those journals (over 2,000 pages) were written to entertain my future self, but more and more they're also good for sorting out faulty memories.  Lately I've been harvesting them for writing prompts.  I may have to write the Day of the Freeze-Dried Lizards now!

The Chessboard of Life

The Chessboard of Life
by s.c.virtes
---
             
Alternations: back forth oblique,
day night right wrong
jumping one to the next --

Pawns to kings in
stacked series cover the space,
no variation to the schemes:
32 days and 32 nights
hide on the 8x8 square.

Then there may be a winner
or at least a paycheck
and the game begins anew.
#

p#49, written 08/05/1986, published in Sidewalk's End (May 01)