Well, That's Encouraging.

I've been fighting a most hideous mind fog for the past 6 months.

It's been all I could do to pull together enough concentration to study for the few classes I took this academic year. I have been sleeping 12 hours a day. Music has become uninteresting. I've been living on mac'N'cheese and popcorn and reading only the schlockiest of SF and mysteries. Anything requiring attention was dead to me. I was even finding it hard to follow inane Hollywood movie plots.

The best descriptor I've found for the feeling in my head is to imagine living in a world stuffed with cotton wool. Muffled, white, and thick to move through. Every motion seemingly requires great effort, but you have no sense of having moved at all. Sound sometimes reaches you, but you can't reach it. Light doesn't vary, nothing attracts your attention.

The worst of it is the acceptance that comes with the endless repetition of these effects. It's just easier every day to imagine/believe/accept that this is how it is and always was.

Overlying all of this is the sense of being a spectator. It's like watching this sad, slow crumbling of an ancient and beloved landmark building that no one cares to repair. Everyday another piece cracks off and falls to the ground and is swept away to the ashbin by the groundskeeper. The building stoically stands there being buffeted by the forces it cannot see and slowly dissoves away.

But I think I might be coming out of it.

The fog has parted a bit. This miasma composed of a chronic Lyme flare, anti-depressant detox and BushCo lies/hatred/malefeasance is still roiling about me, but there are objects to be glimpsed in the fog.

It's sunny outside today. Flowers are aburstin' up everywhere. The cat is tanning on the window sill. The maples are in full bloom and I can't breathe, but it's OK.

In the past month I've found that I can do math in my head again. The horrible deterioration of my memory exemplorized by my failing recall of names has seemingly improved greatly. I had been blaming the Lyme for these things, but now I suspect it was the anti-depressant.

Beware the Jabberwock my friends, It steals slowly and without notice.

I actually was able to read a some of my favorite blogs today (arse poetica, Blogfonte, Bats Left Throws Right, corndoggeral, Creek Running North, dharma bums, Fragments from Floyd, Hoarded Ordinaries, Kathryn Cramer, Making Light, Michael Berube, pharyngula, The Heretik, The Sideshow, Via Negitiva, Whatever) without having the instantly familiar and powerful feeling that I shouldn't bother, these guys do it so much better. Today it was, well they do do it better. Enjoy.

I've been able to read some non-schoolwork non-fiction in the past couple of weeks, something I hadn't the mentation to handle in quite a while. Thanks go to Kevin Phillips for confirming much of what I had figured out about the slow motion apocalypse that's upon the USA and the world. To Wislawa Szymborska,for her new (in English) book of superlative poetry. I only wish I could read her in her own Polish. Some cutting edge, intelligent SF. ( Greg Egan, Alastair Reynolds, Charles Stross and Kim Stanley Robinson ) to help me fire up a few braincells as well.

And I've been a bit creative on my own. I've half written a couple of new poems. I'm deep into the design of a new D&D campaign that I plan to run this summer.

And to top it all off, the news out of DC doesn't totally suck bitter lemons for once.

So maybe Miss Dickinson was right. Maybe hope can fly after all.

I'm going to give it a shot, it seems.