Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Too much time has past, and I am sick. My stomach wails, my eyes run, my eyes bleed. There is no one hear but myself, my writings, and my translators. Everyone ignores me. I feel like I cannot even crawl, yet I hunch over my space on the floor, coal crushed in my claws, smeared on my eyelids from rubbing them. Breathing is too hard, dying is out of the question. When I came into this tiny foothill, what did I expect, next to alone? Did I expect in health and heartiness long to live? That was naive, I think. With little more to keep me than words and paper and words and endless paper, should I survive? No. But I hope against hope that I will be able to keep going. My translations are nowhere close to finished. My hope nowhere close to quenched. Perhaps history, which I have worked so hard to foster, will take mercy on me, spare me, leave me be only to continue my lonely work.

If I survive, I will travel. I have been too long in this hovel. Too long among my comfortable books, my dead friends and fictitious scholarship. Those I admire would never have holed themselves up like this, and so I will follow their example. I am not an old man. At least, not too old to leave here, not too old to find meaning in the wide road and the narrow wilderness. But where will I go? Back to the place from where I came? Back to the Orvelai-mai-Ith? Back to the Edge-lands and the once-home of my beloved Es'mensis? I doubt it. I know too much of them already. I will bring them with me, to come and see the wider world. Together, in heart if not in spirit, will the places know us. We are in tiny containers, separate and separated by time and place, but that is no reason that will stop us. If my people have taught me nothing, it is not that there is more to what is than the current.