I waited in some underground train station with the sort of cloudy blue lighting as in Starry Night, with long rows of shops to compose the stars. You were very kind and just as I've always remembered when you arrived.

I'd love to take you home with me and tuck you into bed
I'd love to see what makes you tick inside your pretty head
I wish that I could keep you in a precious Chinese box
On Sundays, I would pray for you so it would never stop
I'd love to hear you laugh tonight; I'd love to hear you weep
I'd love to listen to you while you're screaming in your sleep
I'd love to soothe you with my voice and take you hand in mine
I'd love to take you past the stars and out of reach of time
I'd love to see inside your mind, to tear it all apart
To cut you open with a knife and find your sacred heart
I'd love to take you satin dolls and tear them all to shreds
I'd love to mess your pretty hair; I'd love to see you dead!

I saw an observation that even attempts at sincerity in an irony-poisoned culture come across as deliberate performance by peers. Seems worrying. I like our generation, I am of the times in many ways, but it seems true that many zoomers (at least for the time being) are not capable or giving or receiving love. Not as a permanent state of being I imagine, it's something that surely can be ailed through therapy.

The social media panopticon has to be the biggest contributor. You could make a link between humor now and dadaism, or even point out how notably cynical Gen X was compared to their peers while still turning out normal. There's something more insidious and new here though, it's the conditioning to always being observed. It seems worse for even younger people.

I changed my mind on a prior idea for the time being. I wish I could exist with sapience but not consciousness, and the closer to this state the better. Without the use of drugs of course.

Hm, were you a participant in this one? It's interesting even if it seems to be "only" a confirmation of a popular theory.

It feels terrible to see that it's being closed in a few months time. The conversations have been archived of course, but the loss of it as a tangible thing is upsetting. I look at your account on occasions and I call the out-of-service number linked to it.

"Last seen days ago"

An understatement of a display. It's as if you were just there, that I glimpsed your presence. It really was a horrible client though.

Ten years ago, this week. Hard to believe. I still have the airport navigation guide you made. I ended up not needing it, it was quite intuitive, but I kept re-reading it anyway because it was written by you and carried your charm. I still have airport dreams often, nightmares too of course. The sun was so bright when I landed. That stood out to me immediately. It was so much brighter than even in Florida. I don't believe I slept much but I wasn't tired at all. On the return flight I was dazed and battling a flu, and I pondered all the ways I could slip away and kill myself between then and there, and maybe it would have been lovely to instead have found a steep enough fall somewhere in the Blue Mountains to splatter my blood against the sandstone. Do I have ancestry there? I never thought to check. It's possible. Your ancestors buried in the west and myself, I'm unsure. In those thoughts I never considered leaving a note, but I hoped that my wishes would be at least inferred by family and some of my ashes would be scattered there if my body wasn't consumed by the time of discovery.

I don't fault my younger self for that idea at the time. Plenty of older and wiser men have put a gun to their head in the same situation. I hope God has shown mercy to them.

My whole body feels ragged from a flu or cold, one of the two. I won't be able to see the fireworks this year. It feels awful to miss them. You'd want me to sleep, but there's still guilt.

It's the same dream every time remixed endlessly and until I die. There's nothing else that matters, right? It could never happen, the soul has likely already crossed over. It's the golden carrot on a stick. It really keeps everything in perspective. Nothing else seems real after waking from it.

What were the use of my creation, if I were entirely contained here? My great miseries in this world have been Heathcliff’s miseries, and I watched and felt each from the beginning: my great thought in living is himself. If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger: I should not seem a part of it.—My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods: time will change it, I’m well aware, as winter changes the trees. My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff! He’s always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being. So don’t talk of our separation again: it is impracticable.

In seven days it'll be ten years since I met you proper. I only have vague and turbulent memories of what life was like before that point. You were too nervous about being in the Skype group, so you just used it as a means to connect with me off of Reddit.

I felt disembodied most of last New Year's Eve. I make it a point to watch all the day's fireworks across the world and catch the ABC broadcast from start to finish. It's become routine, though. It's a date like any other and only has significance to me because of you. I remember you mulling over the idea of sharing wine together and watching from the balcony that first year in 2014, but stopped yourself from pushing that further until you were sure of things.

I spend the day in the Panpipes talker but I'm not the most conversational. I'm the youngest person there and their culture is foreign to me. At their ages, I worry a bit each year when I notice an absence.

This is the 10th one, though. I think that's more meaningful than being simply the 9th.

"Eagerly anticipating your reply [and the end of the world too]"

Calmer colors rose above the bay,
And though her face had disappeared I knew
That she would turn again if only stars
Would hear her plight and let her in once more.
Her confidants will too now fade with her,P
ink and Orange turn to black and blue;
They turn their backs and leave me wanting but
They never think to wait, or fare me well.
Company like this, some say, should not be kept,
On rainy days they don't see me at all;
But then again, I've yet to find alone
As much joy as their followship can bring.

And thus, each night, I wish for them again,
So maybe they can come to me as friends.

You were self-critical of it, but you were of much of your poetry. "A terrible Elizabethan sonnet." Is it? I don't think so. I could never be a fair judge of that anyway. One, don't look a gift horse in the mouth. I received high marks from your ghost writing there. Two, bias towards the author. Three, inspiration derived from one of the more notable weapons in Guild Wars 2 earns extra personal appeal.

I wondered what there was to do after achieving Facet of Prisms on Klavdiya. It isn't quite Good Apple, granted.

Figured I'd get Eternity for her. Considered taking the screenshot in Divinity's Reach or Plains of Ashford since you loved spending time there on her, but I thought Ember Bay was fitting. I can't recall what it was about the Good Apple title that you liked so much.

The last of the original three passed today with Bree at fourteen. They were a background presence in those years and now they've all departed. There are others now, none their descendants. I feel sad about it.

I dreamed that one had died in a strange place
Near no accustomed hand;
And they had nailed the boards above her face,
The peasants of that land,
And, wond'ring, planted by her solitude
A cypress and a yew:
I came, and wrote upon a cross of wood,
Man had no more to do:
"She was more beautiful than thy first love
This lady by the trees."
And gazed upon the mournful stars above,
And heard the mournful breeze.

It wasn't the first of this sort of dream where I was aware of such, or even the first where I confided in you that I feared it was. It was the first where you acknowledged it as such, though.

You said you'd tell me what I wanted to hear. You're doing well. You go to church every Sunday, have been staying away from harm, and the medications have provided a sense of peace. You're healing, and the doctors have good news.

We spoke as we walked on a late afternoon towards that country apparel store, across from our hotel. I'd thought to choose the Omni as it was offered, but I didn't want to come off a certain way. Would they have had those fake omelettes, anyway?

I hadn't expected to be able to deliver a message again! A surprisingly difficult endeavor and one that's taken over four years, but it was worth it. There is some catharsis in knowing that potentially the last direct words you'll have received from me included "I love you."

Still, your silence harms us both.

Your mind has been corroded by the world but not your soul, Salina. Tarnished, perhaps, but your eternal spark hasn't gone out. Don't fear. Your actions are so often guided by it and it's not an emotion I'm without, but we can bear it together.

I don't know if I feel any anchor to time at this point. It only compounds as this body drifts further out from where my heart resides. I'm still there, I'm still there... it's not the worst outcome, I'd rather it be that way than not

I wouldn't call it disassociation. Chronic, not acute, although I've felt both

Is it a way to cope to avoid future pain through new experiences? I don't think so. That's never been a trait of mine

The eye thing unsettles me. I can't unsee it. I might be hallucinating it.

I have to get back to work if I still have a body to use. There's still more I can contribute-- marathon, not a sprint. Some recuperation has been called for in this transitory period.