This is Not Robert Longshore - The Memoirs of the Fulcrum of Fate

  I realize, thinking back on my work and my words – yes, I think about my words – that I do not often write optimistically. I'm sure that no fewer than 75% of these posts, be they Robert or my PLogs, have an apparently pessimistic voicing. In music terms, you'd say I write in a Minor Key. And that's fair. Thinking about that has dominated my thoughts the last few days – since I last posted anything. It's contributed to my silence. The Holiday did, too. It might have dominated them before – just in a different way. Which direction do I want to go in with this? The why – or the why ? I have figured out some things about myself in that time, though. Reading Jordan Peterson's Maps of Meaning on Tuesday of last week, (it's Monday as I write this) I learned of the concept of the Creative Illness. I'm not going to talk about it much in this post – probably I'm going to run way out of time and space. But I find it so funny. I've been talking aroun...

  We ran. This was not the way I had envisioned returning down this hill. I had not envisioned returning down this hill. But if I had, it would never have occurred to me that it might be like this: with some kind of Sith Lord wielding unnameable and inconceivable magicks at my back, a badly-injured snake-woman at my side, the fading screams of one Pepin the Great and Terrible the only suggestion that we're putting any distance at all between us and unquestionable dread. I was right about one thing, though. There is no hope that we will survive these mountains. My foot splashes into the shallow river, slips on a dead man's armor. I'm going down. I don't fight it. It's not worth it. It doesn't matter. Not against - not against that . Can't run anymore. Can't breathe. Can't— Peitho catches me by the collar of my jacket and carries me across the river. She sets me down – but doesn't slow – just enough that my feet will drag if I do not run...

  I fall to my knees. The Rod of Wadjet clutched is in my hands before me. I must look like a supplicant, kneeling in reverence or prayer. But I stare in horror at the jade serpent as it shifts on the wood which feels like it fell from its tree yesterday – turning its head in all the slow-motion horror of the impossible proving all-too possible. Nothing is impossible. Only improbable. It levels its beady onyx eyes on me and grins its all-knowing grin. Her tail flicks across my wrist, and I fling the Rod to the ground. “ Get up. You are out of time.” The Master's voice is distant and muted, like the reverb of The Serpent's voice in off the confines of my skull. “ Out of time,” I mutter to the ground, my vision blurred. My awareness feels dull, dim, like too weak a light shining through too narrow a hole. Like I am the smallest doll, alone in the largest nesting doll, shut away under bucktooth floorboards. “ Out of what time? I'm in this time?” “ Um,” Pei...