Paying for the past

We stood there cleaning up the apartment we'd rented nearly thirty years before. New words could be coined to mean "filthy" just by describing some of what we've seen. There were locusts that were not afraid of us at all. 

For hours I cleaned and threw things away, just going through it all and wondering where it had all gone and how impossible the task seemed to be. I began to fall into despair not knowing how I was going to pay for all of the clean-up and repair that needed to be made.

Then I found the box of checkbooks and the receipts and discovered I'd already done this action in the past, and there's no longer anything to do to clean up that mess. I could move on. 

But where would I go? 

Red payments and the eventual fading of this now

Last night I had several dreams involving an obscure scandal between two competing jurisdictions. Over the course of the night, I was aware of the implications of what I knew or at least I knew officials knew I was on to them.

I had receipts and I had a whole story written about what became known as "red payments" which had something to do with covering up a mistake. I was trying to figure out what it all meant, but kept worrying my notes would disappear.

They did disappear when I decided to wake up and all of that work will fade as I settle into another day of intense Olympics watching while also getting things done.

I am aware that much of what I write has very little consequence to the wider world but I'm told people actually get something out of it even though most of it fades away to me like the details of whatever reality I touched in my dreams.

The train station in Manassas

I was on the train back from Pennsylvania and it was full so I pushed through to the bar car. Not the café car, but an actual bar with wooden seats and people sitting there. It was full, too, but I found a place at the very front as the bar car was in front of the engine. The walls were made of something translucent. and I could make out the urban landscape I'm used to seeing as I travel.

I sat there wondering what I'd even done that week in Pennsylvania, as I had no memory. I dismissed this, though, as I've been going up so often these days. The train stopped to switch engines like always but something was different. For some reason, we were actually in Manassas and not Union Station so I got off to look around.

There was no announcement when the train departed and I watched at it moved southwest toward home. I didn't panic, and figured I would just catch the next one. So I walked through the station which was much larger than the one in real life. I found the ticket counter which was about to close and waited.

That was about it, really. It felt more real than my actual life which consists of staying home and working and waiting to go back to Pennsylvania. When I am here, there is nothing but work and that is by choice. Everywhere I look here is covered in memory and detail, and I can't just relax and enjoy myself.

Maybe I can find a ticket counter in real life that can help me.

Cocoon

I can only describe myself on July 20, 2024 as being in a cocoon. I am keeping myself away from people and cutting off ties as I contemplate what's next. My intuition tells me there are very dark days ahead and I am not sure what is going to happen. 

I do know I am not happy with the thoughts in my head and the sense that an entire civilization is about to completely break down. Perhaps it already has. The joy has evaporated from the universe and all that is left now is madness and chaos.

Maybe I'll be better tomorrow. I slept twelve hours hoping this would burn off, this feeling that I must reposition myself for the future. Hope is gone. 

Disconnected thoughts threaded back

For some reason, I'm going through all of the articles I wrote for Charlottesville Tomorrow from the time of my hiring in April 2007. I'm going through them to try to remember how that time of my life felt. 

Back then I had a life. Now I mostly have the work. Today is the fourth anniversary of the newsletter and podcast I began in order to give myself something to do. All I ever wanted to do was be a journalist who writes about the community and now that's what I do. 

And not much else.

I don't like to meet other people anymore because that might influence the stories I have to write. I first began to feel this phenomenon when I was at Charlottesville Tomorrow, and that was my job. Then it wasn't my job and six years ago I was at another one where I had to tell people what to think.

I barely know what to think, only that thoughts pass through me like clouds. Sometimes they are connected and other times they are not and today is a day I want to make sense of it.

To do that, I'm not allowing myself to write anything or work on anything at all except until I allow myself to do so. I have learned that when thoughts are leading to unhappy places, it's best to disengage and halt for a moment. 

Perhaps it is time to write some of these thoughts here, semi-public, with almost no idea anymore if anyone reads any of it. With a sometimes notion that none of this is real. Now it must be time to get back up and move around the house for this is a time when I've already connected one story and I don't know if I can do another.

But of course I can. I am here to weave and thread and plot out a mosaic and that's all I can do so it's what I will do today.