I feel strange this morning. More strange than normal I mean.

I'm floating in a featureless void, and I wonder what I'm doing here. I could call out, but I know that there's nobody to hear me. I wouldn't know what to say anyway.

This isn't right. I don't belong here, in this empty place. This is not where I'm supposed to be. I'm not afraid, and I'm not sad, but I'm not entirely comfortable either. Uneasy would be the word I'm looking for.

This morning I proposed, in an email to a friend, that perhaps I'd died in my sleep during the night. Well she got the email so I guess that theory is no good.

Something happened though. I didn't just wander out here. In fact, I don't really feel as if I went anywhere. It's more like the world disappeared around me. It was there when I went to sleep last night, but now it's gone.

Last Spring I wrote this:

There is...Nothing.

Blackness and silence surround him, seep into him.

He wonders how long it has been. A minute? A day? A million years?

Even the familiar thump thump of his heart has stopped. He ponders this, and reaches his hand to his chest, but he finds that he has no hand, and that he has no chest.

He simply exists, seeing, hearing, feeling nothing.

He waits for something to happen, and wonders if he is dead.

I shouldn't be here.

Those characters take up a lot of valuable real estate.

Meanwhile, I continue to wait.

Just dazzle me.

Just be so wonderful, so astonishing and so fascinating that there's no room in me for doubt, or for fear, or for terror. Just be so bright that the only thing I can see is you. But make sure that you do it soon, before I get too complacent. For once that happens, I'll start to think. And that is where the trouble starts.

Don't give me a chance to think.

Just enchant me. Overwhelm me. I dare you.

Sure, it may be difficult. But it's not impossible.

I used to think that it was. I used to think that it was, until somebody managed to do it without even trying.

Now I just want somebody to do it again.

Somebody else.

I'm waiting.

I just might go and make South Park images of all of my friends so I can use them in my comics.

I just might.

Unless it's too hard.

Okay, I got them all.

I don't understand most of them, but I got them.

...was that a blacksmith will temper metal by repeated cycles of heating and cooling. Heated until it's glowing, then plunged into cold water, over and over and over, the metal will become stronger with each iteration.

But there is a price that the metal must pay.

It loses flexibility.

It becomes brittle.

It may shatter.

She forged me, made me stronger than I was before. But then, then she either dropped me or she flung me away from her or she simply failed to take care with where she placed me. It made no difference to me why I struck the ground when I did.

I fell, or I was dropped, or I was thrown.

And I shattered.

I never end up writing what I think I'll write.

Sometimes I get lucky and end up with something decent anyway, but not often.

The thoughts are there, running around inside me, but they flee when I try to capture them. They hide behind trivia and inane bullshit, and they snicker among themselves about how easily they evade me.

Only the weakest among them are ever at risk.

Sometimes I manage to catch one of these lesser thoughts. Then I'll dissect it and expose its innards to the world. And its brethren watch in horror from their hiding places, and they stop their snickering, for a while at least.

It's only a matter of time.

They can't hide from me forever.

I suppose that I haven't been completely honest with myself.

I mean, I haven't really been lying, but I haven't quite told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth either.

The thing is, everything was not wine and roses. Or, to put it into words to which I can better relate, everything was not beer and jasmine.

There were good times, certainly. But for every time I smiled, there was another time when I frowned. For every time I laughed, there was another time when I fought back tears.

Things were hot then cold, or cold then hot. Never warm. Never comfortable enough that I could just kick off my shoes and relax.

Hope would be overshadowed by fear would be trumped by joy would be shattered by disappointment.

Nothing ever lasted.

Except this.