1.24

I woke up with a burning ache to use a new word at some point today. I just can't seem to work it into normal speech, you know? I've been trying to bend each conversation that way, but I end up so stilted and unexpected, slowly rolling the boulder of my mind closer to my goal. None of my discussions seems to last quite long enough. Maybe towards bedtime I'll just call a 511 number and blurt it out, hang up, and turn out the lights to sit in darkness.
It's okay. I'm used to it. It happened yesterday with "polyamory" and the day before with "interregnum." I get a new word every day. Now I've got a new one: I guess it's "quotidian."

1.20

The swindle of Jason Dorrigan was almost complete. Twenty thousand dollars lay, crisp and clean, stacked and sorted on the countertop of the closed-for-business nouveau riche café. Jason looked, kindly, into his precious con artist's eyes, so ravenous and strong. Now that the money was within Billy's grasp, the whole escapade was nearing an erstwhile attitude, and nostalgia for the time he was currently living threatened to choke Jason. He pushed the satchel across the counter, as though indicating that it was, finally, okay for Billy to hungrily shovel the short stacks of greenbacks safely away. Jason knew he would never see the fake children who were supposedly getting a new playground with this cash. He made a mental note to donate a concomitant sum to the Catholic daycare down the street, as though that would somehow absolve him of this six-week sin he had engaged in. You know, at the end, it was rather good, and well worth the money. His mother wouldn't understand, but then, she thought a cruise was a good investment. She hadn't had an exciting day since the sixties.
Jason nearly broke down when, satchel on his shoulder, Billy paused at the door. But the dashing criminal only pushed out into the wind-whipped streets of Jason's suddenly unfamiliar city without a backward glance.
"Goodbye," Jason croaked, and pulled out his telephone to tell his banker to stop investing in breakfast joints.

1.10

This small mind can't stretch too thin or it might snap. This small mind might stretch itself to encompass what it may. This small mind is pulling on its edges, stretching badly, hoping to thin and spread, hoping to swallow you.

1.9b

I was born to carry my father’s armor and to protect a village across the shining sea. My helmet is burnished and engraved with my ancestor’s names. A foreign place waits for me to protect it.

But you have need of my protection, too. You, my son, have need of light. You needn’t be afraid while I am with you, but someday, when you take up my father’s father’s helmet and strike out with intent across the shining sea, you will yourself stave off the fears of a hundred generations. Find this village of ours, wrap it in your will, and become as I am.

They will need armor; not for beasts and ghouls, but for the indecision and darkness in their souls. They will need to know that (though youth can sting) life is bright and safe. Someone will need to draw them out of their winding canyon to stand in the sunrise on the low dale and to say to them “Cry not, for I am here.”

1.9

Has it been a month, Madeline, since the last frost? Has it been a year since I broke my leg? Has it been a decade since we met? Has it been an hour since I laid down in the new-tilled field to watch the clouds go by, bugs crawling through the collar of my shirt, open eyes drying in the breeze, unwilling or unable to close?

[sorry I've been gone]