It has really nearly been a month since I wrote anything here. Not counting OtherChanges. Clearly my brain has been in a strange new place. Clearly my brain has been drained of its contents and refilled with something which I am completely unable to describe. Whether this is because of Godel’s incompleteness theorem or because all of the words I might have used have drained out as well I do not know.

Right after I wrote that my coffee habits have declined over the past year I figured out how to use Florian’s espresso machine and now I drink almost incessantly. I’m sure it will drop off once the novelty of the machine wears away.

Boredom is something of a blessing. Otherwise I would probably sit around drinking coffee and reading until I starved to death.

On the other hand I’m sick of work: the same experiments day in and out, the same modes of thought. I have a tremendous amount of freedom in what I want to pursue and yet right now I think I would be happier if someone told me to make them a double cappucino venti decaf blah blah blah. With no foam.

My mind changes in ways I can’t control. The fact that I am aware of these changes is something: there must be more to a self than memory and desire. Yet I wake up as it were in a strange body every day, or a strange room; I find books, music, instruments, clothes, plants and I have to put the right clothes on, water the plants, find my place in the book all without remembering anything from the night before or even knowing that night preceded daylight.

As I complete this metaphor I realize that of course this is what Gene Wolfe’s novella “Forlesen” is about. Or at least that it is the predicament of its character (and we can safely say that there is only one character).

What is the nature of this Forlesen who moves about in my mind, touching one thing and not another? Why do I embrace, morning after morning, my love for a certain woman as though she were in fact there when I woke; why do I feed and care for this bird that has emptied the room of my mind?

Why do I know my face in the mirror? Why, in spite of the weakness and uncertainty of my memory, am I never fooled by this anonymous website, always and irrevocably certain that I wrote all the scraps and fragments that litter my desk and lie stacked in boxes? What do I call a thing that does not change and yet surrounds itself in a maelstrom? Will? Soul? Spirit?

There is something in this, I am sure, but for now I do not particularly care. I have mentioned love and the word itself is eating away at my language.