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For a long-ago challenge: PLACES
Jan. 12th, 2026 10:35 amI'm not sure why, looking at that old discussion thread, "Places" seemed hard to write. Maybe I'm just looking back and making a big deal of a tough morning--it happens. That doesn't explain why, as I was looking back, it was as if a still, small voice in my head, thinking in full sentences as I almost never do:
"You can't do places because you've never had one."(Which is a thought I was trying to keep from everyone, back then,including myself, but especially my spiffy new(ish) virtual friends. The thing about an oasis is trying to make it just about the fun parts, not the fact that there are doorways in your own house that you don't fit through--I don't really need them, but that's not always the point.
Freud, who definitely had his own problems, would say it's about "love and work", but unless you grade on a very generous curve...well, I've had a lot of scraps, okay, made my share of collages, but I can't say, on either front, that I've ever had anything to sink into(whether or not that's a real thing or not, anyway, like Snot from The Wire, I've never really gotten to play along) Never had a spot where things are okay because I'm there. Not since I was lap-sitting size, anyway, and there are limits to how far back I want my time-warp to go, even as I sort of wish my friend Steph were still waiting for this overly-long attempt, and I wish I could be like my old self and see a future with my half-mordant, half-cheerful stamp on it.(That old self wants me to further break word count to assure us all "Hey, it could happen!" and I'm writing that because I probably owe her, but I'm pretty sure I don't believe that anymore.) Maybe just typing it is good for me, though.
"You can't do places because you've never had one."(Which is a thought I was trying to keep from everyone, back then,including myself, but especially my spiffy new(ish) virtual friends. The thing about an oasis is trying to make it just about the fun parts, not the fact that there are doorways in your own house that you don't fit through--I don't really need them, but that's not always the point.
Freud, who definitely had his own problems, would say it's about "love and work", but unless you grade on a very generous curve...well, I've had a lot of scraps, okay, made my share of collages, but I can't say, on either front, that I've ever had anything to sink into(whether or not that's a real thing or not, anyway, like Snot from The Wire, I've never really gotten to play along) Never had a spot where things are okay because I'm there. Not since I was lap-sitting size, anyway, and there are limits to how far back I want my time-warp to go, even as I sort of wish my friend Steph were still waiting for this overly-long attempt, and I wish I could be like my old self and see a future with my half-mordant, half-cheerful stamp on it.(That old self wants me to further break word count to assure us all "Hey, it could happen!" and I'm writing that because I probably owe her, but I'm pretty sure I don't believe that anymore.) Maybe just typing it is good for me, though.
