inklingfair This journal started out as a creative writing project. Now it’s evolved into a discipline for me to look at life closer and to arrest it from the endless, routine repetition of days and motions.
Writing slows down time for me. It gives me points to mark and work into a less fleeting, alternate storyverse. Vernor Vinge’s True Names speaks about reality and “kernels” of alternate personas, and in this passage, Debbie’s kernel Erythrina speaks:
When Bertrand Russell was very old, and probably as dotty as I am now, he talked of spreading his interests and attention out to the greater world and away from his own body, so that when his body died he would scarcely notice it, his whole consciousness would be so diluted through the outside World.
For him, it was wishful thinking of course. But not for me. My kernel is out here in the System. Every time I’m there, I transfer a little more of myself. The kernel is growing into a true Erythrina, who is also truly me. When this body dies… I will still be, and you can still talk to me.
Some part of me will remain longer in this universe, I hope. Maybe one day the Blue Fairy will grant flesh to it and unlock a cellar door** to a different dimension.
For now, this is me peeking through the cracks. Oh, what a delight it will be to fling it wide open!
*or so R.E.M. says
**J.R.R. Tolkien considered “cellar door” one of the most beautiful-sounding phrases in the English language, dissociated from its literal meaning. Yet I think the enchantment of it is the promise of Mystery, dark and deep, of something veiled and waiting.
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