the old world is dying, and the new world is struggeling to be born. that is what gramsci writes, optimistically, i think, when he declares that this is the time of monsters. the monstrous, according to mycroft canner, PtS, is something the world needs, something noble without being good, something necessary to the constitution of the map as ‘here there be dragons.’ i am in morning for myself of three months ago, for the self that could read Terra Ignota for the first time, for he destroyed himself, and I grieve that I will not have the pleasure to so destroy him again and again and again. I have been changed by everything I have read, but the magnitude and depth of the change I wrecked upon myself by the double grief of losing Belle and reading Terra Ignota leave me stumbling in a dark too bright to permit either receptive or call-and-response senses. 

Monsters are out of joint, internally chaotic, synthesized upon themselves with a rigour and fearsome desperation which renders not only and not so much themselves monstrous as every scene they appear in: the world which hosts a monster is made monstrous, and to the monster all worlds scream with the discordance and unpalatability and fear and loathing which they hold towards the beaste and to themselves. 

I am afraid i have nothing of value to say anymore. I am afraid that I am inadequate to my task. I am afraid I will despair and give up and never see the project advanced. I would like to become monstrous towards these inadequacies, and shatter them. Nietszche says that those who fight monsters must be careful to not become monstrous themselves, but when confronted with the monstrous, we have only the monstrous to rely upon to respond and check and metabolize and incorporate them into ourselves and thereby render some degree of concordance to a monstrous world. 

I am afraid. when I cut myself, i had control. i check at this ccliche, that cutting allows one to assert control where control and power and stability have been denied because I think it leaves too much unexamined, leaves too much assumed about the relationships between self, need, control, power, pain, harm, injury, grief. 

I had the thought to write this as a letter. a letter to a friend. a friend who is familiar with the phenomena so as to escape the trap of perpetually trying to justify and explain, as to my irate parents when they tried to institutionalize me, why i would harm myself. let me spend at least part of this conversation with someone with whom i can say, and then of course, of course i hurt myself, of course i harmed myself, of course i injured myself, of course i killed myself.

i miss you Belle. I begged as they carried you to the crematory for you not to go, though i promised myself i would not ask that of you, that i knew what i could give you was understanding, solidarity, that i would not ask too much, that i would not rob you of that essential solace of saying of course, of course, and congratulate you for escaping, for getting out of this labyrinth. but i am weak, and i am afraid, and i am lonely, and if i could bring you back, or call to you beyond the veil, and shake up time and identity and reason and cause to cry with you, i don’t think i could resist. and so, even if i don’t think i will have the chance to swing such a magic rod or carrying in trembling cut up hands a bitter draft of the water of life to pour upon you and the ashes of all the worlds, at least the knowledge that I would bring you back compels me to do what i can to make this world a world more hospitable to you, and to the monstrous battles you face, and so there is not anything to be helped by it: I will make the world more monstrous if it will make it more worthy of hosting you. 

i miss you Balreet. I miss you. i miss you. i miss you.