I know what everyone else wants, but I can never figure it out for yself. Typical melodrama of course, but you’ve got to add some spice to life. Too early to give any useful details away anyway. Got to find a proper way of exposition.

So it’s like this: more than five weeks spent and all I’ve got to show for it is a decent poem (one to two drafts still to go, maybe) and half of another one, and I’m trying to figure out when I’ll eventually write for real. Given I’ve only [got] two and a half weeks left. Being here has done little to heal the mindbending loneliness of being in Lake County, Illinois for two weeks, and I can’t help regret wasted time, despite my insitence that there is no such thing—nothing is truly ever wasted. But I very nearly lost my mind then. I can’t really remmeber how I managed to stay sane (or at least maintain some facsimile thereof.)

Then there is this situation with [redacted] that I would like to figure out, only I’m too chickenshit to deal with it, and if I leave without something to hold on to, I will surely be lost. It’s one of those cases where I figure that life would be easier if certain things never happened, but I do not begrdge this, I am glad for it in my trademark masochistic manner. Still I wonder.

If it was Mark’s skewed interpretation of events in an attempt to instigate what can surely come to no good end. If she really asked for me, what is it she sees? God knows it’s too good to be true, I do not look forward to descending into more madness, I’ve had my fill of seeing things that aren’t really there, yet I dare not deny it, or throw this gift away. What is it she sees?

Is it my poort talen, garbed in shadows, still genuine though, if only because I know it has touched others in unexpected ways? (I am but the messenger, an instrument, etc., etc.) I cannot go two seconds without a crisis of self-doubt. But I will learn.

That’s how I try to explain it, it’s not every day you meet authentic artists who understand the sputtering, flickering Nature of Inspiration. It is more a solidarity thing, I suppose.

There are only two ways (that I can think of, of course) to explain it (slipped my mind of course, [I’ll] get back to it later.) One is the path of madness, the other the middle course, most likely to be true. Details left out for another day. But now, time for the ideas:

Darunaig:

• Of course, the wizards only start showing up, they are totally the distribution of the Gifts, a registry of sorts trying to counsel the Almighty. This was a real institution in the old days, but is now viewed as some demented cult by the Republic government officials.

2500 A.D.: (circa, give or take a few centuries)

• Delivery systems are the key. Information (genetic code, culture (see cultural engineering)) is quite useless without them. The tailormade pharmaceutical revolution. Delivery via ear (the “skullfucker”), subcu (“temple blaster”), oral (“faceraper”). Nanos, the human-brain API, virutal reality, designer drugs with programmable effects, no hangover

More later. My brain is ready to melt.