Free Writing

 To try and overcome the mental block preventing me from writing my thesis, I've been trying to start my days by doing some free writing. I think it's helped a little, and I've been surprised by the direction these have gone. Here are some from the last few days:

20-8-23

There is something to be said about a place with no end. It captures your eye, even when you know you should be focussing on something else. Others insist that it’s disturbing, that it serves as an uncomfortable reminder of mortality, or eternity, or what-have-you, but I’ve always found it comforting to work within sight of the singularity. Perhaps it’s the fact that our city’s continued existence is predicated on it; anchoring reality by echoing its memory in the endless fractalline depths. Perhaps it’s because it’s like a dazzling light show, always reflecting the city spires and roads in a seemingly impossible lattice.

Perhaps it comforts me because people look at it the same way they look at me. Discomfort, confusion, maybe even fear. And if the anchor holding our city together gets some disdainful looks now and then, maybe I can help people too, even if they don’t accept me.

22-8-23

The glossy film over the surface of his skin. It never occurred to me that he would look different to us in death, but of course he did. He wasn’t human. I never truly believed it, even knowing him all these years, being his closest friend, but at that moment I felt it for the first time in truth. When I saw the glossy film over the surface of his skin. Excreted like some kind of developing cocoon, shining multicoloured like oil on the road after rain. That was the cruellest thing about it, that it stole away some part of his humanity, in my mind. But maybe that’s true about everyone; before, that was a person. Now, it’s just a thing.

23-8-23

High above the ground, neverwhere presided. They said the really was ground down there, If you went far enough down. Tallis didn’t know why you would though; neverwhere was everything he’d ever known or wanted to know, and the same went for his parents and their parents before them. But now and then, he’d catch a glimpse of void peeking through the clouds below, and for some reason—he didn’t know why—he’d feel a kind of sad longing. But, knowing that these sourceless emotions were unproductive, he would set them aside and continue with his business. He had no time for such nonsense, none at all.