The gap between When and Now...

Musical accompaniment: Sevendust - Waffle

Over the last week or two, after months of multi-threaded, nose-to-the-grindstone, eye-on-the-prize "Ideate -> Plan -> Execute", I've noticed that my mental To Do List has been gradually atrophying as tasks get competed, ticked off, and disappear with a cheerful *Pling!*. Somehow that cheerfulness has failed to infect my demeanour, but that's far from unexpected; I am after all, in the statistical context of the last decade, "a miserable cunt". Nonetheless, as the items on my list transition from 'Activity' to 'History', the one at the bottom remains stubbornly at "0% Complete". Every time I check it glares back mockingly: 

Title: Get a life

Deliverables: 

• Fucked if I know; 
• You're supposed to be The Smartest Motherfucker In The Room; and
• Sort yourself out, dumbfuck. 

It would seem my Executive Function Assistant is sick of my shit; I'd fire him, but can I really blame him? He's an arsehole, but I've got a point. 

"Life," said Allan Saunders, "is what happens to us while we are making other plans," which sounds like a whole-cloth-bullshit cop-out to me, cut from the same bolt as "one day I'm gonna...", "maybe next year when I get that promotion...", and "there but for the grace of God go I." 

Somewhere in the 00's I seized the opportunity presented by what I saw at the time as utter tragedy and in a barely-considered grief-driven moment of clarity I declared "well fuck you God, I thought we'd made a fucking deal, and whilst we're at: it fuck Grace, fuck me, and fuck the rest of you. Hold my... no fuck that as well," drained my pint, and as I started accelerating in a direction not so much forwards or backwards, but in no uncertain terms 'away', "I'm fucking going." 

A decade later I decided to run away again, from the circus this time, to go join 'the real world'. That worked out about as well as one would expect; it turns out Hollywood has been lying to us all this time and "what she's having" is just another little death wrapped in a different texture of misery, and if you order that you get it as well as the one you already have, not instead of, and twice as hard. 

"No more running away," I committed myself, and I'll be the first to admit that it was not an utter end-to-end catastrophe. I nailed my feet to the floor, built what I've been reliably informed was "a life" with someone, and it might have been more "Tyler & Marla" than "Ozzie & Harriet", but at least it wasn't "Sid & Nancy". For a while I got to eat in the warm, softly-lit restaurant full of happy-looking diners with the small-but-prominent sign on the door which reads "Solo diners will not be accommodated: We only accept parties of two or more," instead of gazing in longingly with eyes as hungry as my stomach, and as empty as my heart. 

It wasn't perfect, but it wasn't so imperfect that I didn't try again because surely I couldn't make the same mistakes twice. I was correct; I went on to make entirely different mistakes. 

"Life," I decided, "is what happens between crises," but as one crisis rolled into the next, and they began to overlap, I realised I was mistaken again because if you bite into any of them they all taste the same. 

Friday 28/07/2023 10:31

That sat in Drafts for two fucking months before I came back to it, distracted by one thing after another. It wasn't until I had another three stillborn thoughts racked up, each of which I wanted to avoid facing more than the last, that I came back to see if I could work out where I was going with it. 

My, don't I waffle on? 

Two days turned into two weeks turned into two months and I've no idea, so moving right along: All That Remains - Two Weeks

I was hoping that by re-reading, and correcting the typo's, whilst replaying the music I was listening to at the time I could reset to that mood and play it forward again, but things have moved on. I know I was building towards a "reframe"; I'd created the circumstance for re-creation, but instead of reinvention my resurrection seemed to be more of a restart, reset on the same set of rails which would see me running up that same road and down that same hill that I seem to push shit up again and again. 

But life moves on, and like tears in rain the moment seems to have been lost in time. 

Wherever I was, I'm certainly not there any more. A week or so ago the latest bubblegum crisis popped and kicked me out of "where am I going?" straight into the Go I was absolutely not Ready to. It's been another adrenaline- and amphetamine-fuelled surge of levers flipped, triggers pulled, and escape-hatches blown, with risks recalculated in real-time because who gives a fuck whether you're too cool to look at explosions, ain't nobody got time for that. 

I'll lament existential about my inability to affect meaningful change in my life when I have the luxury of shit being a whole lot less on fire, yo. 

But that's a story for tomorrow when I've reached the amorphous landmass marked on the map as Outrageous Fortune, not two months' worth of yesterdays ago when the opposition hadn't switched their slings and arrows for Pete-seeking missiles and started throwing them out of the pram along with the rest of their toys, forcing me to phase shift straight from walking Christ-like to running like hell on a sea of troubled water beneath which I can see dragons writhing through the blur of my feet on our outbound flight from Paradise Never Had. 

Deadman + Change = Resurrection?

Musical accompaniment: Karnivool - Deadman 

Motherfucking... 

I walk into the bottlo over on Lonsdale St earlier this evening and find my eyes drawn to a pretty girl enjoying a wine tasting in the entryway. We make eye contact, and she she smiles at me.
I head down to the back and spend some time picking out a couple of stouts for my Friday Night anaesthesia.
The same thing happens as I approach the counter; she catches my eye, and catches my look, and smiles.
Somehow my usually iron-clad self-control slips and I find myself glancing over my shoulder as I'm leaving (he who hesitates is lost), only to receive another smile.
I actually trip over the threshold; I'm certain she saw that, but I catch my balance, keep moving, and escape into the street. 

3 heartbeats later and I'm standing outside, one door down, lighting a cigarette whilst typing the above into my phone in a message to Ricky. 

"I keep walking, right?
I'm pretty sure that's what I'm supposed to do."

I get through half my cigarette before my feet start to move, but they beat a path the long-way home which leads me past the bottlo again. If she left whilst I was standing here I'll never know; a runaway truck or blaring police siren wouldn't have compelled me to look up from the glowing screen in my hand whilst I stood there frozen in nervous-lockdown. Nonetheless, I stare at the pavement in front of my feet as I walk past the window and don't break stride through two left-hand turns onto Mort St. 

"I love that you tripped over from her smile," she later replied. 

"Oh fucking fuck what the fuck I'm fucked," I think as, hands shaking, I tag through the Get Smart doors, up the elevator, and ride my autopilot-driven feet into my anxiety- and meowing-cat-filled apartment, my hands empty my pockets, putting the contents into their specified places and empty the beer out of my backpack into the fridge. I reach the end of my pre-programmed takeMeHome(); subroutine and they stop, leaving me standing, shaking, my heart pounding, just past the kitchenette, completely at a loss for what to do next. 

I am not OK, but we knew that; I haven't been for two and a half years. 

Some might suggest that this is a step in the right direction, but none of those sons of bitches were there to tell me how to proceed. My legs were locked in their full-upright position, my belt of self-control fastened, my pocket-lint stowed and secured, but in my inner-sensorium my head was wedged between my knees in the brace position kissing my arse goodbye. 

Fucking Deal With It Airlines welcomes you aboard flight FU42 from A Fragile Illusion, Peace to Life Sucks, Wear A Hat. We give zero fucks whether you enjoy the trip and your comfort is of no importance to our crew whatever. The in-flight entertainment will be Your Most Embarrassing Memories played on high rotation broken at random intervals by irrelevant announcements, self-flagellation, and abnegation of whatever self-respect you still have remaining. The meal service will commence shortly offering a choice of Shit Sandwich and Humble Pie, but until then sit back, suck it up, and stop being a little bitch. 

A couple of weeks ago I woke up in a way which was less "gradual emergence into the dawn of a new day", more "traumatically breaking through the surface of a suffocating and bottomless well of oblivion". In my flailing, I rolled over and my hand landed on a soft, rumbling ball of need called Beckett. Stiff, arthritic fingers melted into his plush furry back, so I pulled him to my chest like a drowning man clutching a squirmy pool noodle and just before he nope'd the fuck out to sing his song of hunger from the bedroom doorway I found myself thinking "man, wouldn't it be nice to wake up and throw my arm over someone who nuzzled me back?" 

Staring at the ceiling with what I can only imagine was a haunted look in my eyes, and the second verse of "My food bowl is empty and I'll love you right up until it's not" by Beckett Meow-riner & The Obligate Carnivores filtering through the earplugs I habitually sleep with, I realised I was at the end of the peace offered by the Psalm of Pete #23: 

Solitude is my shepherd; I shall not want for more. It maketh me to lie down in green pastures: it leadeth me beside the still waters.
It restoreth my soul: it leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for its own sake. 
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for Loneliness art with me; thy cold and thy emptiness they comfort me.
They preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: they anointest my head with melancholy; my cup runneth over. 
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of mine self-sufficiency for ever.  

Nothing Lasts Forever; all this shall pass.
Finding oneself Lost, Weightless In Space can be a comfort, gazing unblinking at the Embroidered Cloths of the Cosmos laid out before you promising depthless wonder; in space, no one can tread on your dreams.
It's the friction of re-entry that burns. 

This is what you get for wanting things; for things to be other than what they are, you have to give up the static crystalline cold, and allow yourself to burn bright, knowing that every shooting star will inevitably burn out. To have one, you must accept the other. 

This is the way. 

To experience life is to experience Change; I moved across the country and managed to not move a fucking inch, but I insisted on living so I had to have a life. In making that choice I broke my stalemate with Dostoyevsky, Buddah, and God, and they ganged up to ensure I paid the price of my hubris. Even Nietzsche put the boot in with a chuckling "Du dachtest du wärst schlau, doch du bist ein Dummkopf," echoing derisively and hollowly across the void. 

The thing is, for all that I've been quite merrily self-sufficient, doing it for myself, alone, has been starting to get to me in all sorts of little ways. 

Like the little conversations you have when you see the same person all the time; you tell your stories in real-time, as they happen, rather than having to stitch together a patchwork-background giving context to the latest event or minutia. It's the part of a shared journey no one really talks about, the comfortable familiarity which creates a texture to a friendship akin to that je ne sais quoi which makes a 'house' a 'home'. I have my substitutes - people I call regularly, send emails to, or chat with online, but it's an incomplete experience; so many 'start's, and 'end's, but lacking that plush hollow halo of 'middle'. 

Or the casual affection that comes as part of a shared bond. Outside of the occasional obligatory hug it's so long since I've been touched I've become... actually uncomfortable with the idea. I almost can't remember what it feels like, but I remember a time when I did. 

Comfort being the operative word; that concept which defies design. logic, or engineering, which I can neither completely comprehend, nor consciously create, corporeal only when I close my eyes, confounds capture, and collapses under consideration. Coming to Canberra was cold comfort indeed. 

Emphasis on the word "cold". 

The move over from Perth really rammed home how much doing everything alone has been wearing on me, too. There were plenty of people who helped along the way, but there were a lot of things I couldn't outsource. For weeks on end I was packing, organising, working, and still having to keep myself and Beckett alive. If I didn't do it, it didn't get done, which is a problem when you're so exhausted you just want to curl up into a ball but you haven't quite got to sorting out inconsequential stuff like... y'know, food. There's nothing like being part of a team, and humans have come to thrive specifically because we form communities; a community of one can survive, but for all that I may be singularly competent even I am not so arrogant to believe that I, alone, can thrive. 

The hardest part for me tho, the hurdle I always struggle to overcome, is knowing that whilst I can be self-reliant and self-motivated, I'm rarely motivated by my self. Cooking's one of those things that trips me up every time - I love cooking, creating, making something delightful, but I'll almost never do it for myself. Most days food is a chore for which I must cease more meaningful activity to laboriously consume a balanced variety of substances which provide my failing meatsack with the chemical energy to ensure that it fails a little more slowly. I swear, if there was a Bachelor Chow Food Pellet I could get on a subscription... but for all its efficiency it would be a miserable existence, because food is a joy; I just take no joy from it unless it's shared. 

So I find myself sitting on the beach with the waves lapping at my ankles, holding a bottle in one hand and a scrap of paper on which I might write a message in the other pondering what, if I were to write one, it might say. 

I haven't decided whether to offer resistance, or capitulate and go with the flow; can I keep pretending to be an island when the smile of a pretty girl is enough to make me stumble in the street? Can I lie to myself when I know that the climate is changing, the seas are rising, and the gentlest of storms will wash that island away? 

Logic dictates that I face the facts, punch myself in mine, build a bridge, and get over it. I'm going to have to re-learn how to "dating". 

Gods, all of you, help me; Gods help us all. 

Convergent catalysing co-evolution...

Musical accompaniment: Blink-182 - Here's Your Letter

Beckett has learned to be circumspect. Getting kicked because I have a habit of having ANC earbuds in, not turning the lights on at night, and his having a need to lead the parade despite having no idea where it's headed, not to mention my sight not being as good as his will do that to you, which is why he was to the left of my trajectory as I passed, meowing at me. 

This time the noise in my ears had paused which meant the noise in my head was building back to crescendo, so he got picked up and cuddled because... 

What the fuck do you take me for? I might be a sociopath, but he's cute, his belly is soft, and for all that I built my church on the rock of logic, I'm not made of stone. 

Holding him to my chin in repose whilst his rumbling purr transmitted through my mandible it struck me how we, Beckett and I, had learned to communicate despite neither of us being capable of vocalising, let alone understanding, each other's language. That language isn't exactly what one would call "complex" or "highly nuanced". Mostly it consists of various iterations of: 

At its deepest and most existential, our communication has reached an equivalent intellectual and metaphysical level of my ultimate- and penultimate-ex's: 

and: 

Sticking my Jabra earbuds in my ears this morning and poking the button marked "Just pick up where you fucking left off seriously just make me less miserable what the fuck please?" which my phone handily abbreviates to the single, sardonic word "Play", I hit the pavement and the song which started, obvously following after the one after the one which had ended when I last stopped listening, kicked off with Mark Hoppus' unmistakable bass-riffs and vocals.  

The 95.45:1 ratio of relevant/irrelevant lines caught me in the amygdala and I filed it away under "shit to deal with more when you're drunk because in vino veritas, and you're way too sober to deal with this shit". 

Turns out that time was 12 hours, a day in the office on a random-but-not-inconsequential-for-that-Wednesday, and a bottle of discount Shiraz later, because i've taken to indulging in the habit I tried to detox myself from in my early 20's of "listening to the same song on repeat to keep me in that moment". 

I remember a completely-deserved breakup after which I listened to "Unsent Letter" by Machine Gun Felatio for a day and a half, to the point where my Aspgers housemate decided it was worth asking "R U OK?"
I remember being in London and listening to 'Cosmonaut" by At The Drive-In and "It's Myself vs Being A Man" by Inhale Exhale back and forth until one day became indistinguishable from the next. 

I remember listening to "Me, Myself, and I" by Oliver Tree again and again to help me concentrate on capturing the conceptual-synchronicity of convergent-experience of "Ian vs Being Myself" after a 2:39-hour phone call during which he told me his partner of 8ish years had dumped him. 

"Aw fuck, I mean... Jenny's nothing if not Mercurial, but.... shit. man." 

<insert some ultra-noble. self-effacing, sincerely-Ian shit right here> 

"Man, there's a blog-post in this somewhere... hang about, I'm gonna go find it." 

A little while later: 

Because if you want to declare yourself "The Smartest Motherfucker In The Room", it's a double-down. If something goes against you, regardless of what, it can never be anyone else's fault, it's mine. 

Yes, my self-reflection is self-defeating. 

Thanks for noticing! 
Your noticing has been noticed and referred to our #FuckedIfIveAFuck & #AlsoYou'reACunt Departments! 
Have a Luminescent Day! 

Now go fuck yourself in the optic nerve with a pool-cue! 

Fuck, (this isn't how I wanted it to go but) I can't let this kill me, let go
I need some more time to fix this..."

Fuck, if only I could say that without invoking TS "He Wanker" Elliot I'm sure I'd be fine. Thus spake Zarascoundrel. 

Full circle...

I'm screaming. 

I'm in Aldi Belconnen doing a decent-sized grocery shop somewhere with free parking so I could use the car and not be limited to what I can carry on my back and loading up my basket with "what the fuck do people even eat anyway" and turning a corner past the bulk nuts I'm suddenly transported to Aldi Belmont and after everything I've gone through and done and packed and given up and unpacked and lost and fought and won and suffered and achieved I'm still in the same place I left and nothing's different because every Aldi and every where is exactly the same and everything is different but nothing has changed and I'm screaming because I've not stopped moving for two months now and I've gone so far but I've still not moved a fucking inch. 

Momentum carried my right foot to the floor, and the left one after it, and the moment passed, but in the back of my head the screaming continues. 

Now I'm sitting here on my balcony writing this, so obviously I made it out and home safely, so you can take that finger off the panic button; I'm fine. 

But I'm Not OK. 

I've been sick for a week - the system collapse I knew would happen took longer than I expected, but at the end of the moment the pendulum only pauses; everything has its price, and the loan shark will always have his pound of flesh. 

Repeat after me: I am not immune to Newton's Third Law. 

Since my stuff arrived a fortnight ago I've been battling sequential grid-lock. Unpacking boxes means finding places to put things, but those places have been filled with or blocked by boxes. I replaced the sagging mattress that came with the place without delay and have managed to sleep more than a few hours at a stretch, but getting rid of it was problematic. Setting up my desk meant getting the dining table out of the way. Making any progress whatever has been hard, and through it all I keep being confronted by an empty fridge I can't seem to make it to the shops enough to fill. and a cat who insists on tearing the shit out of my furniture instead of the scratching post I got him, wants feeding every 13 seconds (or hours? I can't tell), and holy shit didn't I clear that litter box out just the other day? How has he filled it already? Or maybe that was a week ago? Fuck me why didn't I leave him in Perth? 

I can't deal with this. 
I don't get to not deal with this. 
Fuck. 

And then there's The Office. 

I didn't talk about this before I left - these emails have been a lovely exercise in escapism; getting to create this selective perspective for you to read has meant getting to exist in it myself, at least until I wake up again the morning after hitting Send. Your own work-life hasn't sounded particularly rosy... actually not a single time you've mentioned it ever; adding my growing unease to that would bring no joy to either of us, but we're past the point where I can ignore it. Big Bossman is losing it - he's well past erratic and is now thrashing around so violently we're past "damage control" and into the point where the rest of us are starting to crack. 

I have suspicions and conjecture around what's happening in his world (although my predictive model is getting pretty refined), but one thing I do know is that he's freaking out, his instincts are flawed, and the steps he's taking in response are so badly in the wrong direction that he's starting to tear down the foundations that support him to the point where both the Bossladies who interviewed you had to threaten to resign to prevent him making a Very Bad Choice. 

I've shoulder-barged my way into that alliance; I have, and can have, no authority; I'm both a subordinate and a scumbag-contractor, but we all know that I'm the closest they have to a peer and an ally. They need to let me help carry the strain because things are already borderline unsurvivable. If they work with me we might make it through with minimal collateral damage. If not, the action I suspect I'll need to take will be cataclysmic. In the last 8 days I've had to smack down the Smartest Motherfucker In The Room, the Big Bad Scary Bossman, twice, successfully both times. 
Yes, whilst sick. 

There are two more brewing, either of which I'll win, but the chances of survival depend entirely on his remembering that I'm the only way he'll actually achieve his goals, and not just squash me like a bug. The odds are not in my favour, but you know that I will, without hesitation, spend any and every capital I have accumulated in the pursuit of maximisation of (my chosen) value. 

And, y'know, it's just a job, right? Except I took on a considerable amount of debt and risk to do this. The "Emperor Went Mad and Now Wears No Clothes" scenario was not on my radar when I pulled the trigger, couldn't possibly have been (although if my growing suspicion is correct and I find that Bosslady was hiding the possibility from me proves correct... I'm not one for threats, but remember that everything has its price), but if I had a clue then I might not have traded mind-numbing exile for half a million dollars of debt. 

So the view I'm staring at over the glow of my laptop screen is currently bringing me increasingly cold comfort. I'm exhausted, on edge, I can be calm, or focused, but not both at the same time, my manoeuvring thrusters are shot, and I'm a whisker off bingo-fuel, but my nose is pointed down the throat of the beast, I have ammunition and fumes enough for one last world-shattering salvo as I make my final burn, and my fist is hovering over the glass-covered button labelled

"Bop in case of Blitzkrieg".

Now I exist in the weightless moment of calm stillness between the rise of my fist and the hammer's fall; the lambs might not have stopped screaming, but at least I have. 

Smeghead...

A long time ago in a high school far far away, a not-yet bearded nerdboi and an obnoxious little shit became friends. 

Actually, "friends" is too strong a term. Let me reframe. 

Once upon a time in a misogyny-and-homophobia incubatorCatholic All Boys School run by soon-to-be-convicted-paedophilesThe Christian Brothers which smelled of anxious conformity, unwashed socks, burgeoning testosterone, furtive (occasionally mutual, I'm told) masturbation, and a less-than-subtle undertone of Lord of the Flies, a small group of outcasts accumulated. We were nicknamed "The Cool Gang", and somewhere along the line I became its leader... in that the rest of the group could generally be found on the opposite side of me from the bullies. One of that group was a weedy lad named Leith C****** R****** who never missed the opportunity to tell you about how he was in the Air Force Cadets and reminded me of Arnold Rimmer from Red Dwarf, so I took to calling him Smeghead. 

For the longest time I thought he was pretty fucking annoying, but The Cool Gang never excluded a member because "safety in numbers", and... well there wasn't really anywhere downstream for someone to go. We were the outliers; we played Chess, or Suicide Chess, or Magic: The Gathering, or D&D, or Lacrosse, were hyper-clever, or functionally retarded, on weird scholarships for Academic Achievement or Organ Playing (the one with pipes and a keyboard, not another masturbation reference), the awkward, the uncoordinated, the Mad Scientists (one guy made his own taser out of 9V batteries and copper wire coils in ~year 9), the Terminally Inept, the hadn't-hit-growth-spurts-yet, the already-6-foot-tall-at-14. We, the unco, the nerdy, who fit in with none of the cliques, collected in one corner of the playground near the Library, and kept each other company (and occasionally from being beaten up by the rugby playing jocks). 

I never really liked him all that much in high school; I mostly thought of him as an annoying hanger-on, and I remember mostly just putting up with him because he was just this-side of being irritating enough to punch. Still, he invited me to his birthday party out of the blue one year, and we bonded over our mutual love of Pink Floyd (I later gave him the Super-Audio CD High Bitrate Remastered edition of the Wish You Were Here Album for his 20th or 21st birthday). 

He was one of the two who dragged me off the last of the bullies I beat up in Year 10, and made an effort to keep in contact as we were winding up Year 12; somehow when the rest of them fell away he remained. 

He'd come to my parties.
We'd go body-surfing for fitness and fun (and a bit of a perv) in the summer.
He worked at the local Sizzler, so I'd go out for a cheap feed.
We both go into wine wankery - he worked for Sandalford Estate for a bit, and I worked for Saracen (plus I'm a wanker). 

Whilst our adventures weren't by any means the Stuff of Legend (the escapades I collaborated on with Sharpie, the Silent Bob to my Jay, transcended fame into infamy), a bond was formed which survived his finishing uni and heading over to ADFA, various postings, and long stretches of distance and time. 

I visited him in Brisbane because fuck-it-why-not, when he was posted at RAAF Amberley (I vaguely remember being driven up to Sunshine Coast to fix his nan's computer as being an excuse?), then again to stand as his Best Man when he married Esther.
We hung out in Canberra when they were posted back here between my returning from London and moving back to Perth.
I visited him again in the Blue Mountains when I was in Sydney for orientation day at AGSM (before I restarted my MBA with Ducere).
I missed his mum Rhonda's funeral because of time-frames and covid restrictions.
I managed to procure two high-end monitors for his twin sons at the behest of his dad Cameron during the peak of hardware shortages and had them drop-shipped to Canberra just in time for Xmas in 2021, which I sold him for Cost-Price+A-Mars-Bar (literally rounded up by $1 to $300 per unit when the market price was $450).
But I was here in Canberra in July of last year when Cameron passed away after a long battle with cancer. 

The night before his wedding we stayed in a hotel in the Brisbane CBD (he and Esther were living together by then, so this meant they could at least pretend to observe some of the tradition) and decided to eat at the nearby Sizzler for "old time's sake" (and because we thought it was hilarious, and because neither of us was particularly rolling in cash), then his "buck's party" involved us sitting around the dingy hotel room we were stating in, sharing the best whisky I could afford. 

So when he messaged me saying Cameron had gone I threw my phone over my shoulder in the middle of the discussion I was having about IT Security Policy, finished whiteboarding the gap-analysis we were doing, picked it up again to reply "well shit." and went looking for an appropriate bottle. 

It took a few stops to find, but whilst showing Ian around we found ourselves in Manuka and I ducked us into the Vintage Cellars wherein I found what I was looking for. 

I've been fond of Oban whisky for ages, since I found it on special and decided to try it. It used to be my "keep some in the cupboard for a special occasion, or Tuesday (whichever comes first)" until the price started creeping up. I was exchanging bottles with a client in Melbourne for a while - he sent one when I told him I'd got my marks and had officially passed my MBA - I knocked off work early, poured a glass, plonked a couple of ice cubes in it, and took a photo from my infamous Friday chair of it alongside an empty glass with the bottle in the background. He sent one back a short time later, of the same arrangement on his balcony; one glass with whisky, and the other empty but for a couple of ice cubes. Pete's a good client, and a great guy. 

This was a Limited Edition called The Tale of Twin Foxes, which sat nicely with me in the context of me and Smeghead, particularly the blurb at the bottom of the box: 

Sweet, for how life is supposed to be.
Salt, for tears at a funeral.
Smoke, for a cremation. 

It was special because it was a Limited Edition, but at $200 it was also modest because that was Cameron; I thought he'd have approved of the effort and consideration, but also that I didn't go all overboard over it (Smeghead agreed). 

So the day after I watched a short-but-sweet ceremony over Zoom as a grid of people I didn't know sat alone with their grief and cried on webcams and Cameron went up in smoke to the sound of On The Turning Away, I Ubered out to Moncrief and cracked open the bottle. 

It was a pleasant evening - we spoke very little of the day before, or Cameron, although Smeghead did say at one point, with a wry smile, how amused he was that the song his casually racist dad had picked was a song admonishing racism. 

When I left there was just a small bit left in the bottle - enough for one more stiff pour. I have no idea whether it's still there on his shelf, but I rather hope not; I prefer to imagine that later, either after I left that night or one shortly after, he found a quiet moment to himself and put his own full-stop at the end of that sentence. 

A while later I checked in to see how things were going. He and his sister Cara were doing the "you take it"/"no you take it" thing with Cameron's possessions, and neither of them had need or room for his Rather Nice Bose Sound System. I, an audio-snob, made a joke about giving it a good home, and he, knowing that both these things were true, said "Done." In a later call he mentioned that they couldn't find it, and I promptly forgot all about it. 

Last week, having spent my first Friday in town with my Penpal, I pinged my once-Air Force Cadet-now-Wing Commander friend to see if he was free to join me for my second, and when he arrived he'd brought it with him; it had been boxed up in some out-of-the-way place, and he'd put it aside. I was touched, and a little ashamed - I recently upgraded my stereo and wondered if I'd be able to show it the love he deserved, but I accepted it with gratitude, and we sat out on the balcony as the sun set catching up on the last 8 months' worth of stories, and some from much much longer ago (when you've known someone for a lifetime-and-a-half there are plenty of them to remind each other of). 

Last night I set the Bose up in my bedroom; there weren't enough power points in any convenient part of the living room. Cabling it together, re-tuning it for the room, and with the only source I had cables to connect to it being my laptop, positioned it alongside, cued up Wish You Were Here so the album cover was visible on the screen, hit play, and settled on my bed to listen to it, snapping a photo on my phone which I sent to Smeghead without caption or comment: 

This morning he replied with a Thumbs Up emoji, which was all that really needed be said. 

Everything comes down to this...

 ("Sunset & Twilight: Art made with Lasers & Maths: Epilogue Part 2" & "The Resurrection Deluge Part 5" & "Metacursion II")

Musical accompaniment (convergent song title only partially coincidental):
Gary Numan - Everything Comes Down To This 

The night before Becky came round, at one minute to midnight, Scott dropped me at my new not-yet-feeling-like-home apartment. I set up the litter tray (which was used immediately) and laid out some food (which was immediately nom'd) for Beckett, emptied my backpack and hit the pavement heading through Braddon for Coles. Sandra had stocked the fridge and cupboard with thoughtful supplies, but I needed... I wasn't sure what else, and wouldn't until I browsed the aisles, but mostly needed to get out and feel the city under my shoes. I was shaking just slightly when I boarded Qantas 737-800 'Bungendore', exhausted and drained after cutting the last part of my departure so close I was surprised the next day when I still needed to shave. 

As I plodded, stumbled even, down Lonsdale St I felt my fatigue, fading, falling through the veil of my world, a blanket of despair through which somehow I kept walking. 

"I live here now. I'm home," I thought, "and now I can never go home. Where the fuck am I? What the fuck have I done?" 

Throughout last year's trips back and forth, I'd taken strange solace in existing in both places but living in neither. Wherever I was I wanted to be in the other, wherever I went I was Going Home. My inability to find comfort became excusable because comfort was always on the other side of the looking glass. Now my super-position was collapsing, and as the world around me began condensing into something concrete and Real, it felt like I myself was becoming less so. 

As the terror took hold and the tears rolled invisibly behind my face I convinced myself that I really just needed to eat something substantial and drink a bunch of water, and walked on. 

I went to work the next day, and through the motions. It wasn't a productive day, but was never expected to have been. I pinged Penpal, feeling that a switch to SMS was acceptable, and confirmed that the Presentation was still on (it was), and skived off early to run some errands on the way home. The painter needed paying, and had discounted a good 20% for cash which needed acquiring. I needed pillows (the one I'd brought in my luggage got me through the first night, but too much longer and my neck would begin to protest) for a start, a better solution for Beckett's litter tray than a cardboard box was required, and now the cheese-and-crackers comfort food I'd picked up the night before were to be the evening's hospitality platter, the lack of a chopping board (or knife) was going to be a problem. 

Arriving back with a heavy backpack, and two heavy latex pillow under my arms I met Painter Jack out front of the building and handed over his shiny ducats, thanked him for the good work, ran around replacing now-stinky litter box, high-speed tidied to make the place presentable, and realised something was missing. For starters, I only had the one bottle of wine (and the dessert wine, but that barely counts) and no idea if she liked red. A backup would be good (after all, whatever doesn't get drunk that night I'd go through later), but something else was missing - the cheese plate felt incomplete, needed some light sweetness to offset the rest. 

Apples. 

Shit. 

Upending my pack and shouldering it again, I dropped through the a-little-bit-fancy bottle shop on Lonsdale St, bent the shopkeep's ear a bit and left with a locally-made Barbera (somewhat esoteric in Australia because there are few climates which suit it and I'd only ever come across it once because my winery-client happens to grow it, but it's a light, bright, fruit-driven red which would go perfectly with what I'd prepared) and a lightly-oaked Chardonnay for the white-option. I haven't had an excuse to play my wine-wanker card in longer than I could remember, and I left Blackhearts & Sparrows with something of a spring in my step. Leaving Coles for the 3rd time in two days I cranked back to the flat again, rapid-fire setup up the Friday photo I'd been planning since December: 

(which caused me to receive a confused/concerned ping from Sandra: 

Because that was the first of two reveals I had planned for tonight and I'd be damned if I wasn't going to squeeze them both in. 

Out of the bathroom, into a clean shirt, and no longer smelling like I'd power-walked a good 6km with a heavy pack, I started preparing the cheese-board as the seconds ticked down. 

A few weeks ago I'd sent Becky an email ("Ricky..." Mon, 27 Feb, 03:20) which, after two weeks she hadn't responded to. She usually replies within a week and a half, generally on a Monday morning, so this was out of character enough that I sent out an "R U OK?" follow-up ("Heartbeat check" Mon, 6 Mar, 20:49). I hadn't told her that I had my landing date booked yet, and *really* wanted to, but had reached my self-imposed "don't spam the poor girl" limit, so I broke my own rules and included it in the message. In one of the flurry of responses she mentioned how pleased she'd been to be invited to "an actual grown-up event" ("Resurrection" Thu, 16 Mar, 14:16), and as I cut up Truffled Brie, Wensleydale-mixed-with-Cranberries, and fresh green apples I found myself existentially satisfied with how nicely this complemented the concept; because what could be more pleasantly "grown-up" than warming my new apartment with some nice wine and cheese? 

I'd just finished applying a bandaid to where I'd stabbed my hand, so my heart didn't quite leap when my phone pinged to say she'd arrived, but I was still relieved that I'd cleaned the blood up (and not got it all over the sliced apple) when I ushered her in to meet Beckett and my pretty blue wall. 

Although it did sing just quietly when she squee'd over the view, which we sat down to enjoy, drinking good wine from shitty high-ball glasses, burying ourselves in conversation which flowed deep, rich, and smooth like honey over glass; the moment I greeted her at the door on Mort St it didn't seem so much to 'start' as 'continue'. It seems impossible to be this comfortable with someone you've laid eyes on precisely twice before; it's as if we shared a past-lifetime in each other's company, have only just found each other again now half-way through our next, and are just catching up on the things we missed. 

You'd think that in the three months I'd been ticking along with my Art Project I'd have come up with a stylishly elaborate method of doing The Reveal, but moving into this little apartment the day before defeated me. There was nothing I could come up with which wasn't going to give it away from the start, so I'd decided to go with simple and just hid them in the wardrobe of my room so that with everyone comfortably settled in I pulled the trigger by gesturing towards the Telstra Tower and saying "OK, do me a favour and keep looking that way," before ducking inside and coming out with Sunset, leaning it against the balustrade angled (I hoped) so she could see herself in it. 

If she'd been anxious up until that point she'd hidden it well, but to describe her reaction... 

Well she didn't hurl it off the balcony (2-3% probability). 

And she didn't respond with a "Well... that's nice?" (2-5% probability). 

But... 

If you've ever seen a water balloon popping in slow motion, you might have an idea; a cascade of reactions which happen so quickly they're almost simultaneous. 

The tension on the rubber causes it to snap back on itself along the surface of the water no-longer-contained by it. 

During this process, the water's surface tension holds most of the way through, but the violence of the balloon's retreat tears droplets away from the main body, flinging them perpendicular to the angle of the rubber's retraction; to wit, spraying outwards. 

The main ball of water, now subject to both gravity and air pressure, shatters as it falls in a gushing splash. 

Or one might say: 'sploosh'. 

So I got to watch her face contort as she tried to process a paragraph's worth of thoughts and emotions simultaneously. 

Words like "what", "but", "WHAT", "how...", "oh", and "wow" pinging off in all directions. 

Gradually she put her thoughts in order, and a wave of warm, glowing second-hand amazement washed over me. 

Through all this, I just sat there and grinned. 

As she started getting her oscillations under control, but before she could quite get her feet under herself, I told her to "keep looking that way" again, darted back inside to get Twilight, grab my phone and, after a month of waiting, finally got to hit "Send". Placing Twilight down next to Sunset I got to watch the whole process again twice as fast, and with twice the magnitude. 

Once again, I sat, grinned, and waited. 

"There's more tho." 

"Huh...?"

"Check your email."

"Wha... now?"

"Yeah. Now." 

"But... what the... how???" 

"Magic."

I asked her to read it, and read it now - I'd wondered whether she might take the opportunity to have me read it to her (33-49% probability); actually hear one of my emails in my own voice, but she buried her head into it quicker than a 6yo left unattended near a chocolate fountain, and devoured it just as greedily; the speed she read it was ferocious - so quick I couldn't keep up (my eyes can't focus quickly, and I only skim when I'm looking for something. Speed reading is something I can only do in quick bursts and it exhausts me; I can see keywords, or detail, but not both at the same time) I completely missed the mark where I'd planned to hand her my laptop to coincide with the suggestion to "switch to a larger screen" and caught it far too late to score that particular point. I hadn't considered this delivery method when I wrote that - I hadn't even expected to be here to deliver it. It was going to be something I sent once I knew the mirror had been delivered or handed over (if I used a proxy). 

Far-too-quickly she handed me back my laptop and picked up Sunset to look at it more closely. 

Whether because she smashed through it, was overwhelmed by the whole experience, or was just too subtle (I hadn't noticed it myself until the 3rd editing read, and I wrote the fucking thing), she missed the final twist (20-40% probability). I zoomed in on the last paragraph and had her re-read it, then prompted "now look in the mirror", then watched as, reflected in Sunset, the sun came out and lit up my balcony. After months of planning, construction, thousands and thousands of words, running around, and only barely scraping things together in time, I made a pretty girl smile at herself in the mirror. 

Finally my Project had created Art, and the clock struck midnight. 

Becky hugged Sunset for a long time after that. As if it was something magical, ethereal, which would evaporate or somehow disappear if she lost contact with it. 

I wonder, now, what she was thinking. I was too caught up in relief that it had gone so well. I suspect that if I'd asked at the time the answer would have amounted to "Glow," but now there's been time to settle and for the thoughts to coalesce it occurs to me that I should ask her. On the plus side, now that I'm so much closer the opportunity shouldn't be too far away. Likewise, opportunities to make her smile; as epically entertaining as "Sunset & Twilight" has been, I do rather hope it doesn't always take this much fucking effort. 

Although every once in a while...

But now the Pete-pocalypse Clock is moving into unfamiliar territory. That moment was the culmination of everything I had in the pipeline. It isn't to say that there was nothing but a balcony swan-dive in my future, just that with how much strain the move has placed me under I just haven't had space for "next". There is, nonetheless, plenty to do. 

Moving back to The 'berra has been all about creating space; removing the clutter, junk and weeds so that there's room for something new to grow. It isn't about who I want to be - when I came here first, half-a-lifetime ago, all I wanted was to not be who I was. Now I've seen what I CAN be; this time is about creating the freedom and space to be The Best Me. Not Peak-Pete, but Pete-fected, Pete-volution; 

Pete-surection. 

I died, I think, a long time ago. Two and a quarter years in limbo waiting to find a way to be reborn, for a life into which I could resurrect. 

Before she left, Becky put Sunset down facing Twilight, creating the infinite hallway effect. I'd just been saying that if I'd PLANNED to have two I'd have put the words on opposite sides, mirroring-the-mirrors. In that moment she showed me how I'd been wrong - I'd never actually tried facing them towards each other. I had, after all, had them in my possession for only a couple of cumulative hours, but it stuck me as almost shameful that after all I'd thought and planned, I'd never considered doing that. 

I looked into the mirrors and saw the words reflected back and forth into infinity, saw the unplanned perfection that to her was inherent; it took her to show me what I'd missed. 

Looking over as she takes the first hesitant steps towards a resurrection of her own ("Resurrection" Thu, 16 Mar, 14:16) I'm starting to suspect that despite her doubts and unbelief, the only way either of us is going to make it through will be with each other's help.  

Even if it means I need to drag her along with me. 

Sunset & Twilight: Art made with Lasers & Maths: Epilogue Part 1

 If the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, how does it end? 

The same, of course. Not one more, and not one less. 

Sitting here is this perished-and-peeling bereft-of-soul mass-produced chair on the balcony outside my room-with-a-view across from its now-cold sibling which you vacated just a short-but-somehow-achingly-long while ago, I find myself once more with a surfeit of time to think. 

But since time is something I feel I have an abundance of, whereas sleep has been something in deficit, I will claim just a little more for one at the expense of the other and leave you in suspense. For once you are both the subject, article, indeed both the BDO and its recipient in this narrative, I can think of nothing more perfect than to capture the thread of catharsis-interruptus, roll it in a ball, and dangle it tantalisingly just out of reach whilst you gaze back across an intangible border thinking: 

"Please sir, I want some more," (I prithee, more). 

Sunset & Twilight: Art made with Lasers & Maths

 Sat. 18 Feb 2023 14:16
I've just got back from dropping the mirrors off at my local framers (and getting my car washed, followed by a late brunch, but that's just facts which otherwise ruin a good narrative), so I'm sitting down to write this now the with intention of leaving it in Drafts until after handover. I wanted to capture the details of the process, and record the multiply-nested references I included whilst it's fresh in my mind, so as to reduce the potential for the sort of unintentional ret-con which occurs with the passage of time. I already know this is going to be a long one, which I mention so you can switch to a larger screen than your phone (an inference I've made over the last few months), make yourself a cup of tea (pure conjecture) and buckle in for an adventure into this 'Art of Darkness' (after all, Mistah Raven, he wanker). 

(Since this has all come from our various emails, I'll cite the references by Subject and Date. If for some reason your archives are less comprehensive than mine I'll laughingly punch myself in the face provide, but I calculate the chances of that to be vanishingly small so will save myself the effort of screen-grabbing or quoting.)

Act I: Inception
How the concept for this mysterious Art Project emerged is murky. I can tell you the seeds for the idea had been bouncing around for a while before they coalesced into an idea which made me think "hey, that'd be cool...". The date-stamp on the oldest mockup designs in my archive says January 8th, but I'm pretty sure it was a 'thing' in my head in that deadzone between Xmas and NYE. That out of the way, it started with what what has been an ongoing thread of ours: 

(1. "Old thread was old. New thread..." Mon, 21 Mar 2022, 21:39)

I'll admit without insincere shame that I've always been a little proud of that one. For something I came up with on the fly it's had a disproportionate impact on the conversations which followed, and has proven almost universally understandable. 

Later you provided the background: 

(2. "My turn to write the subject line" Sun, 27 Nov 2022, 17:47)

Somewhere in the the sifting churn of my brain's sort-and-file process (during, I suspect, a conversation I was having with someone about my Fascinating Penpal and our even-more-fascinating conversations) these converged with the concept of "reflecting", and "commonality", and "like-ness", and the imagery of the subject I used for (3. "Familiar reflections in a darkened mirror..." Sat. 19 Nov 2022, 12:08) which provided the third element. 

The "dark mirror" reference comes from a few different places. Primarily it's a reference to the Star Trek "Mirror Universe" (first appearing in The Original Series episode "Mirror, Mirror" where the ship gets bamf'd to an alternative timeline filled with ruthless sociopathic versions of themselves. It's the origin of the trope where the "evil" version of a character has a goatee: 

The "Dark Mirror" phrasing comes from a book set in The Next Generation era connected with the same place. NOT, in this case, anything to do with the TV series "Black Mirror". More generally, the concept/imagery is pretty common - "window as a doorway", people talking to aspects of themselves in dreams, Alice and the Looking Glass, and you can probably name a bunch I can't. I used the concept in the same email in the phrase "reflected in tear-wrapped eyes" (4. "Familiar reflections in a darkened mirror'' Sat. 19 Nov 2022, 12:08). 

As the concept took shape I found myself fascinated by the conceptual layering that I could see stretching out in front of me (almost like standing between two mirrors? Or is that too much metacursion?): 

1. Each as a reflection of each other (as intimated in the email). 
2. Following from #1, "I see you in the mirror" in that if reflection = equivalence then the viewer and/or reflection are interchangeable, so this remains true. 
3. Cutting the phrase into the back of the mirror, removing, as it were, the mirror to imply "I see THROUGH you" - the artifice, the masks, the facades we wear when we're out in the world, to what lies within, or beneath. 

And what you see beneath the revealing cut is your sunset, where your "Luna" can escape the harsh light of the sun to which she is bound, becomes free from duty, and in that balance-point between light and dark is free to dream. 

Or something like that. 

If two people view the same sun setting in different places, at different times, is it the same sunset (5. "Struggling" Sun, 4 Dec 2022, 23:39)?

Of course not. 

And if the perspective offered by the point of view is different over 3000km, does that still hold true when it's 3000mm? 

Of course it does. 

But if you could see the same thing, in the same place, at the same time, from two sets of eyes, would that not offer an astounding depth of HDR metaperception? 

Of course I have no way of knowing because the concept is utter wank of the two-handed variety. 

Act II: Execution

Accompaniment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aR-ahv40s5s 

So there was a concept. Turning it into An Actual Thing has been long-running work-in-progress. I knew I was going to want a mirror, and access a laser cutter. Oddly, I think the conversation I had with one of my clients about things one can do with a laser cutter in early/mid-December may have contributed to the idea landing in the first place. I checked what the limitations of that were (which turned out to be a maximum dimension of 600mm x 400mm). Plugging that into the software I used to design the "This machine kills problems" stickers, I threw the words in and shuffled them around until I found something I liked. 

For a start, I wanted a mirror you could actually see yourself in - large enough to be useful, where the words didn't interfere with the primary purpose of the thing. Being usable was, in fact, CRITICAL, because that's part of me; if I'm not useFUL, then I am by definition useLESS. I'm certainly not ornamental, and neither is damn-near anything I create. 

It also had to balance (I'm a Libra; balance is a thing. That said, I'm also a Monkey, so my approach for achieving balance is often chaotic). 

To start off, I had to turn the concept into a design. 

Mon. 20 Feb 18:21

My phone pinged an hour earlier than expected to tell me that Rick had knocked off work and was heading to the pub, resulting in a well-deserved and (mostly self-inflicted) hangover ("Combing the mess of tangled threads..." Sun. 19 Feb 2023 14:34), so yesterday was not what you'd call productive. Narrative continues with token-if-any effort applied to tone-matching or continuity. 

I like art, because I love communication ("Scheduling" Tue, 9 Aug 2022, 10:49); the expression of thought and feeling transcends the medium or language in which it's represented. Whether it's a painting or a photograph, the graceful movements of a ballerina or motorcycle racer, 

the beat and rhythm of music, rhyme and cadence of verse, chiselled marble or welded street-signs, so long as the artist left a piece of their soul embedded in their work, I'm there. You know my primary medium, of course; you're looking at it right now, have revelled in it, received barrages of it as I fire it off into the ether, each time praying that the audience remains receptive and that her reply might contain new threads from which I might weave fresh cloth. 

I imagine often, but rarely dream. 

I Do Not Dance, but I have danced*.  

My lips don't move, but you've heard my song. 

My hands can't draw, but give me a thousand words I'll paint a picture in your mind that breaks the rule of thirds. 

* Sadly few audiences have been receptive. 

Occasionally tho, I try something new: 

So I took the concept and broke it down, each component its own problem to solve, and reached out to my client, ordered three mirrors from Ikea (which were conveniently on sale), and started playing with vector images. What came out was this: 

That was what I ran past Ian ("Re: Metacursion...: a coda." Mon. 23 Jan, 2023 20:11). 

It was what I was explaining to April and Tim ("Re: Metacursion...: a coda." 16 Jan, 2023 22:18) and why, after they left, it was still open when I started that thread in the first place ("Metacursion..." Sat. 14 Jan 2023, 22:59).* 

* I've taken great joy in dropping these hints here and there, watching you not even nibble on the bait (which has been equal measure frustrating (because I really wanted you to) and fun (but have been glad you didn't, and it allowed me to keep building towards the big-reveal), but I've thoroughly enjoyed the game ("Musicals Are Garbage (more recycling)..." Sun. 29 Jan 2023, 22:43). 

With the mirrors in hand, I booked a job with another of my Marine clients, and headed down for a frantic afternoon/evening (I had to go back and forth between sites to accommodate both missions). Three, I figured, would give me two I could fuck up and still get one right. The first pass of the cutter was not a success, but not catastrophic as far as failures go (there were decent odds that the glass would shatter if the laser was set too high). In the end, we only needed the one sacrifice - we just re-ran the cut again and again over different sections until we got it right: 

Then it was just a case of re-running the cycle... only to have both passes go wrong differently. I won't go into those because I'll have already done so, but I was struck as I surveyed the results how perfect each was in its individual imperfection; one with a glitch, the other with a shimmy exclusively affecting the struck-out words. 

Over the next week or two I messed around with the Sacrifice, looking at different ways to bring the colour to the fore: 

I found that the cutting process had vaporised the laminated backing, but the outermost layer of plastic had burned, and in doing so mixed with the powdered glass to create a residue layer (visible in patches of the "what" above). Removing this by carefully scraping it out (I tried a variety of tools, eventually finding that a stanley knife was best, with final detail performed using a small screwdriver from a mobile phone repair kit) you could see through much better. In the pic above, the second 'e' was painted directly on the glass with some modelling paint I had lying around. The 's' and first 'e' have a layer of Gorilla Glue applied which reduced the hazing, and with the orange painted on top of that. In the 's' you can see a paint sample card from Bunnings showing through. I liked the sense of depth that provided (as opposed to the second 'e' which feels like the orange is embedded in the glass). This had the added benefit that I didn't have to try to colour-match paint to your original design (although I spent quite a while in Spotlight working out whether that might be doable ("Re: Musicals Are Garbage (more recycling)...: another coda..." Thu, 9 Feb 20232 16:26): 

Mon. 20 Feb 21:44

The arrival of pizza brought with it respite from what's starting to feel a lot like the "then Harry, Hermione, and Ron went camping for 4 months of adolescent angst and subsumed polyamorous and/or homoerotic tension" dead-space in the middle of The Deathly Hallows, in that it's important to show that time passed, but even the author was getting kinda bored with it by about half-way through. Much like the 7th Harry Potter book there was a whole lot of scratching around outdoors, the short-of-attention-span passed out from boredom, no one got laid, and after a couple of hours each we were all relieved it was over: 

5 coats of clear gloss acrylic enamel later, I had a finish which corrected the frosted-glass effect from the laser process enough to be optically adequate so that I didn't have to paint the next stage by hand (which... I was gearing up for mentally, but was also fucking relieved about to be honest): 

(OK, it's hard to see. A lot of these didn't come out in photos, but it was a bunch of painstaking effort which was, I think, entirely worth it.)

Act III: Calculation

You may have noticed (if your eyes haven't glazed over) that the plan and design were for one mirror, but here I was with two. The 'obvious' assumption would be that I'd just make two of them, but since that would be boring you know that's obviously NOT where this was going (and... well, you've seen the outcome already... yeah, I need to reframe). 

Over those hours I spent pouring blood, sweat, and tears into the reverse of those mirrors I had a lot of time to think about semiotics. Looking back at the original concept, one is fine, but two... this is one of the few times I've come up with a bi-partite concept like this - my cycles *always* run in three's... except here, where it's all about duality. I wasn't banking on having two, but I'd be damned if I wasn't going to run with it. 

So if a mirror is a window beyond which is a darker reflection of yourself, an identical pair is just literary laziness. 

That Sunset is (a reflection of) you - the warmth of the day fading into the cool stillness of night, an image of beauty existing entirely in that space between zero and one. It belongs to you; you shared it with me, but it was never FOR me, and putting it on my wall would be sheer presumption (plus it really wouldn't suit my decor). What does suit my decor? Blues, greys, black: 

So to maintain a thematic connection I would be reflected as Twilight; the day's warmth a fading memory under a seamless dome of limitless depths pierced by the cold glimmer of uncaring stars. 

In keeping with the "two parts of a unified whole"/"quantum-entangled pair" (instead of unique iterations of a concept) theme, there had to a direct connection in the design, so I developed a progression - extending the original instead of replacing it, I took the top 6 of the 11 rows (maintaining the original as 'primary' which serves as a respectful hat-tip) and set them at the bottom of the image. I opened Excel, and mapped the colour codes (in decimal for expediency) so I could chart the progression mathematically; I thought you of all people would appreciate a data-driven approach. I tried a couple of different methods (my maths is not great), starting with a simple average of the rate of decline, then manually adjusting to re-introduce a little chaos: 

I gotta say, I'm really quite pleased with the outcome: 

Knowing I wouldn't have to find 16 perfect paint matches (whether perfectionism, OCD, or sheer bloody-mindedness is a coin I'll leave for you to toss) and then spend a week of painstaking painting, masking, painting some more, fucking up, starting over, painting, masking, running out of one of the colours, order more, wait until it arrives, receive something ever-so-slightly the wrong shade, persevere, paint, mask, crease the canvas, fall to my knees and scream at an uncaring universe until my throat is raw, all the mirrors are shattered from frustration, and all I have left to show for all of this are torn canvas, paint on my shoes, the shards of broken dreams, and 21 years of bad luck... 

Sorry, spiraled a little there. Let me start that over: 

Not having to paint meant... I was kinda done. I could have gone and built the frames and mounted it all, except I have a really good framer who also offers photo-quality printing services in dimensions of up to 1.2m x 30m, and framed almost all the art in my house, to whom I could outsource, so I did. 

Sometimes the personal, by-hand approach is important, but when it won't improve the outcome, creates unnecessary project risk, or worse, stops being fun, I'm not shy about throwing money at a problem to make it go away. 

Shit, how the fuck do you think I make a living? 

If you want to be the change you want to see sometimes you got to spread that shit around. 

Plus how could I NOT choose digital perfection, when the original source material was presented in fucking binary? 

But it's now 23:38 and I've been at this for quite a few episodes of Disenchantment (I've seen it before - it's one of my "I want to watch something but I'm too tired/drunk/distracted/depressed/circle-all-that-apply to actually pay attention" go-to shows). Half of this will probably need a rewrite, although this bit's really more of a recipe than a narrative so perhaps I'm expecting too much. 

That's Future Pete's Problem, and fuck that guy. 

Wed. 22 Feb, 2023 22:54

Act IV: Conclusion

Getting back from helping Ricky collect her dad's car from the hospital he took himself to on Monday when, after feeling increasingly feverish over the course of the day, scratched his balls and had his fingers come back covered in pus and blood (short version: neither of us wants to know HOW he wound up with gangrene on/in/around his left testicle, but with a reported blood sugar level of 24 at the time of admission (safe being 5-7) the phrase "I don't think we're in Kansas (or 'pre-diabetes') any more, Dipshit" springs to mind), I sat down to make a proper go of finishing this off. I glanced at where I'd got to. queried my word-generator for what to say next and received: 

What the fuck am I doing? 

What the ever-loving fuck am I doing? 

Plugging the above into Notepad++, I found that over 5 days and 3 sessions I've generated 3091 words of... is it drivel? I don't even want to read it to find out. If this was one of our MBA assignments I'd be deeply into "see me after class" territory. Add another 16,000 for the pictures I included (one of which one is a collage of 8!) and thank fuck pictures, charts, and tables didn't count. 

3091 words, plus the 81 above, plus these and those which will inevitably follow of smug self-congratulation written about a self-indulgent vanity exercise explaining just how fucking clever I am to someone who has literally no reason to give a shit or still be reading (although who my predictive behavioural model tells me stills is; enrapt, fascinated, and increasingly concerned but this new plot-twist). 

But finish this I will, because of course I will (indeed, does your predictive behavioural model for me suggest I'll do anything else? I mean, I sent it, and the scroll-bar still has a gap underneath, so the answer is obvious, but in my POV it's nailed to the bottom of the window and the future is as-yet unwritten). 

For me, subject to the Tyranny of Distance and Time's Arrow, all of this is in the future; an Unsent Letter written in homage of an artefact-as-yet-unborn, a fever-dream wrought in powdered shards of broken glass, paint-fumes, and presumption, printed in the ink of literary-Onanism, provided by irresponsibly inconvenienced electrons, and presented by mistreated and abused photons, having been propelled by the tap of a finger which, until somewhere between 16 and 26 minutes ago, has been poised over a blue button labelled "Send". 

The mirrors are still at the framers. 

I am still in Perth. 

The catharsis which for you was half an hour or so ago is, for me, nothing more than a fantasy. 

Sitting here in the post-midnight darkness of my garden, and across from you as you read this, I live in the moment described by the swing of a pendulum; the Everlong arc between tick and tock. 

Schroedinger's Dickhead watching as the box begins to open. . 

Between when a random flash of inspiration led me to create the accidentally perfect expression of a complex, but indelible sentiment, and my finger fell. 

A Random Act of Art, of which this letter itself is part. 

I had a huge amount of fun doing this. 

All of it. 

Everything that was involved, and led up to it. 

And, I will allow myself the hubris to hope, whatever comes after. 

But now, as you read the line after this, it's done. 

Because if you look over at your Sunset, there you'll see what I did. 

Regards, 

Peter.