Seems I am dipping back to a wistful, bygone era, at least for long enough for me to mark "Lace and Fur" in the olden style, right up to and including the cryptic post on the abandoned, frozen-under-glass blog.

Lucky 13 years, my friends, and that you shall remain, until we all may die.

And if any of us come back as zombies, well, I think it is safe to say all bets are off.

[let the water hold me down]

Two years ago, I got a wish I'd had for nearly a decade. Right here on this very blog, actually, as dusty then as it is now. Perhaps slightly less so, but once you get past a certain point, it's all the same. Anyway, I digress.

At that point, I had finally ceased commemorating a certain bygone period on my blog, as it had become a sort of self-flagellation and cryptic reliving of some glory days - which ordinarily I'm all for, but even I have statutes of limitations on that sort of thing, and for once my life had nothing I could really complain about. I was happy in everyday life - not deliriously happy, not perfect in every detail, but happier than I deserved or thought realistically possible. It was one thing when my day to day life was terrible to use sentimental calendar markings to bring myself back to a fond period. Fondness of my everyday life and increasing distance from the people and events being commemorated had dulled my sense of duty and the perceived benefit of publicly wallowing in the observance of significant past events. I privately wallowed, paying tributes and reinforcing stories much like one would with a religion, and even had a steady cultmate. We kept alive a dark art, assuming others had dropped it as much as they had us.

And then, for the ten year anniversary, I got something far different and more unexpected than Tin or Aluminum. I got a comment on this blog from someone I was pretty dead certain I'd never hear from again.

Several days later, I had my first actual live back-and-forth contact. That happened two years ago today.

Over the course of those two years, a great many life-changing things have happened, and while I can't say what the future holds, I have worked hard to return to a point where I am not as in need of my calendar markings to get through the days, nor wallow in the sad ones as much. I have worked to try and enjoy the happiness I still do not deserve, which is harder for me than it sounds. I have a paradoxical sense of debt and guilt for having gotten my wish, but I am aware enough of it to attempt to be grateful for it, and not ruin another gift out of a sense of guilt, as I always seem to do. Because I cannot live an uncomplicated life, being grateful and suppressing guilt seems to be paradoxically not working as well, as it dulls my sense of duty and observance. It feels rather like not visiting a dead relative who gave their last breath to ensure you live a free and happy life. If you're sad and grieving, they died for nothing - if you're out living, you're not showing the proper respect. Which is the appropriate point of data on this curve?

I imagine myself today talking to the me of two years ago. Oh, the things I could relate. Regardless of these things, though: good, bad, harrowing, exciting, I'd been granted my wish. What it developed into is a story far too voluminous and emotional to recount here, but for the purposes of this post, it is a day worth marking twice on a calendar, to say the least. A goodbye and a hello, both laden with aftereffects that I will obsessively analyze for the remainder of my self-involved life.

So here is a commemoration of that day two years ago, a day with a far-reaching, cataclysmic significance I was ignorant to at the time. I remain ignorant of the ultimate effects this day will have on the tapestry of my life (to steal from Star Trek in the most pretentious way possible,) but I really wish I could talk to a future me and find out.

But as the old adage goes, I suppose you must be careful what you wish for.

Well, it's the first of May, and all the components of a plan I hatched right before moving (that would be a month ago) have more or less come together, so here's the skinny:

Starting today, I'll be trying to create a whole new album in a "short" span. It'll be called "A room of one's own" for reasons that will be explained in detail later. The idea is to create 10 songs in 12 weeks - that's 3 months, starting the first of May.

This idea obviously takes some inspiration from the venerable Jonathan Coulton's Thing A Week, but I am allowing myself 2 weeks of sucking hard and producing nothing, because I have found that ambitious tasks like this seldom pan out for me when they are projects for myself. For someone else, no problem. For myself, the follow through tends to peter out about a third of the way into something of this scale. This may well happen here, but we'll see.

Speaking of Jonathan Coulton, I do hope you all got outside for a bit today.

This process will be chronicled on the newly revamped TRB site, which still has broken navigation, but also has neato flash players and a slightly rebuilt header graphic, and is available here. The old version will remain at its current address until I iron out all of said navigation and flow issues.

[i said I'm sick and tired of winter]

I've considered changing this, but normally I'm not big on the "brief intro for a link plus link = entry" kind of entries, but this sent me into fits of hysterical laughter.

Escalator Sign via Fail Blog

[it creates the reason for its existence]

OMFG.

Fuck you, Mike Nelson.

[yay]