Introducing...

My room is ice cold, or so it feels to my fingers as they try to type. Yet somehow, I haven't the will to close the window. There will not be many days or nights to come wherein I can leave it open; I savor the few left me. I should go to bed an hour ago, but I need to get this out and off of my mind first. Or at least cement it in my mind, so the shadow can take a form and I can start to figure it out.

I sat down to do a few things; the latter was a letter, a prayer, something like both. I want to throw the material bits of this life away and find a spiritual truth, and my spirit is... well, pathetically weak. I come up with a thousand excuses, vague as steam and not nearly so substantial, why I can't. The fact is, I think I'm afraid of what I'll find. To plunge oneself into the void... to throw oneself into the wave, even though the strength be so great that all your strength came to naught. Yeah. That fear. Unsurprising, really. But anyway.

Today, my friend jolted me out of the rut I'd fallen into, lit a fire under me, made me remember how I felt-- dear God, that was less than a month ago. Wow. Anyway, I remember, now, the purpose of all this striving. I will become a journalist; I will write the truth, and publish it, and expose the people who control this world to the reality of what it is, as compared to what it could, or should, be. Rephrased a bit, that's what I believe. That's what I want to do. No, that's a part of what I want to do. That's what conscience demands of me. I -want- to tell stories, to spin the worlds and characters in me into tales, to spellbind people with the craft I was born to an understanding of. The problem with this is two-fold. Firstly, I have little skill as of yet, and those tales, if I give them voice, deserve better. Secondly, it is exceedingly hard to turn a living on story-telling. I will have to wait.

And, as I said, conscience demands more of me than that. The truth of this world, the horrors that lurk beneath a glamorous surface, have been laid bare to me. What would I be if I ignored them? How can I ignore the murder and slavery and poverty and disease that are directly caused by the Western lifestyle?

I can't.

And, to that end, I will become a journalist, and I will force people to look this monster in the face until someone decides to DO SOMETHING about it.

there's other matters to talk about, mainly the affliction of my conscience still regarding anarchists and former-idealist-chefs and my own part in theft and betrayal. and also the return of nightmares. but that can wait a little longer.