A Lokys update, after months - almost a year - of silence.
Who would have thought?
The plain and simple truth, though, is that I've missed this. Lokys has always seemed to go in cycles for me: there are times when I'm desperate to express myself (I remember spending stats class the morning after getting hit by that car typing out my daily entry in Notepad, then emailing it to myself so I could post it when I got home), but then there are times when the entire process seems like nothing so much as an onerous, thankless, entirely optional chore.
There's another complicating factor, too, which has to do with the quantity of writing. I thought, and still do, that I have a certain number of words in me per day. Once they've been expended, I'm all but mute, incapable of mustering the thought to compose a single cogent sentence. Living at home took a lot of words out of me; the simple interaction of talking to my parents about my day, the bustle of class, the letters written daily to my boyfriend. (I'll call him Caspian, here; it's not his name, but he likes his privacy, and it's an appropriate alias to use for him).
Now, however, it's November. A cold, wet November, in a cold and distant place, away from home and all its comforts. A strange place, filled with people who are unknown to me but have the advantage of long familiarity with each other. The classes are different, the students are different, and the words that once came forth easily from my lips now lie heavy on my tongue, unspoken, unsolicited.
It's not that I'm lonely, exactly. I remain curiously indifferent to the pressures of socialization. I am in constant contact with Caspian, I call my parents a couple of times a week; that suffices. I feel no need to seek out new friends from the ranks of the student body here. It just doesn't seem worth the effort, when I can walk to class gazing wide-eyed at the sky and the buildings and the trees, perfectly happy within myself.
But the sky and the buildings and the trees have no interest in my voice. I could sing to them, were I Orpheus, and the skyscrapers themselves would bend down to listen. But I'm not, I'm not even Eurydice, I'm just Kate. So, I cast my voice out instead, into this void, a fire of text upon the deep.
Will anyone still listen, after all these months?
Maybe not. I had a few regular readers, back in the day, but the day was a long time ago. Maybe I'll attract new ones. Maybe not. I won't know; this version of Drupal doesn't keep the same access statistics as the old. But I, at least, will be able to speak, and it doesn't much matter to me whether my audience is one or a thousand: here, I'm on the stage, and the light in my face blinds me to whatever shapes may be sitting in those distant balcony seats.
Still, I hope you enjoy the show.