Apologies for any hiccups with the site over the past day. I believe I've corrected them all. Mind you everything here is done "by hand" rather than with high-tech, fancy code or a slick CMS that "just works".
One year ago Leah went to South Carolina with her mother and sister. When she left, everything seemed to be fine. The previous July Leah said she wasn't in a hurry for me to get out of the house, but she wanted me out in about three years for various reasons. I was still deluding myself there was some glimmer of hope. When Leah returned, she was piss and vinegar. When I picked her up at Cracker Barrel she was quiet the entire drive home. The next day I said I was going out, my intent was to give her space, but when I returned she told me she wanted me out much, much sooner.
Leah's in South Carolina as of Saturday with her mother. She asked me to take care of the cats while she was away, possibly replace the air filters and mow the law one last time. She texted me on Sunday morning that she may need me to pick her up at the same Cracker Barrel, offering to compensate me for gas and tolls.
I have misgivings about this because it's a repetition of last year. I'm getting used to my life by myself, not to mention getting a plan together for my life moving forward. Still going to help her because I want to make a point to myself that I am a good person who will do their best to help someone else. Worse, I wonder what she's going to say or do when I pick her up and drive her home. I know I have agency in my life. I know I am beholden to myself, and the cats, and everyone else comes after that. It's one thing I learned from my support group. "You come first. Then friends and family. Then work and everything else."
As my sister frames it, I'm going into the Nether without my armor. Just right now I'm hoping that I do have armor and it's enough.
While it's been many years since I wrote for an online journal, it appears the muscle memory and habits are still ingrained in my head. For example, formatting stuff at inkubo.org means I have to use <p><a class="title">whatever the header is</a></p> so the page formats nicely on mobile browsers. With heptapod.org's previous layout, I could put a line break (<br />) after the </a> rather than closing the <p> tag. While my habit hasn't been used in years, it remains ingrained in my head and I must change. While not every page on inkubo.org will be valid HTML 5.0, mostly due to YouTube embeds using (seemingly) non-standard properties in the allow attribute. Fortunately Firefox, and I presume Chrome, don't have kittens when encountering such heresies.
With that in mind, I'm hoping to get the rust off my writing and stop typing, and begin writing. While Truman Capote is notorious for distinction between typing and writing, I discovered Bob Dylan also maintains a similar conceit. While I discovered this on Twitter, American Songwriter has a wonderful write-up of Norm McDonald's time with Bob Dylan.
And that is when Bob Dylan began speaking about being a writer. He said most "writers" were what he called "stenographers".
I don't want to be a typist. I don't want to be a stenographer. Somehow I want to connect with other human beings, evoke something from them by invoking words and imagery to convey how a reader is not alone with their feelings or dreams. Bring people together despite my façade of misanthropy stemming from an indelible child's temper at the perceived and imagined yet minor injustices of the world.
So why give a fuck what Dil from To Kill A Mockingbird or a folk singer think about your style if you don't even register on their radar?
I don't. Just their seeds have found fertile soil in my mind and I much rather draw upon the strengths from the seeds, rather than allow their roots to crack my foundation and bring down my 'home'.
Lord knows I've already lost one home in 2021.
