Four factors have combined to keep me from posting on this site for six months, which feels like an eon.
The janky setup behind this website Imposed too high an activation energy for creating new posts.
My poor hands, though in a somewhat better state than at the beginning of 2021, are still suffering from an undiagnosed source of pain.
I started graduate school.
I’m busy as heck outside of school.
However, aside from my hands, things are really looking up. For the benefit of my lovely readers, here’s what I’ve been up to since the final episode of The Drongo.
I didn't expect to write you another letter so soon, but my mind kept piling up phrases which I could tell were destined only for you.
I have continued to spelunk your wiki. Your turns of phrase give me unceasing enjoyment; it would be clear from your diction alone - if it were not already clear from all of the philosophy that wrestle with - that you are deeply immersed in language. I must also note that I adore your term of art "Fireman Time." I often wake up to find I have unconsciously summoned a monster into attack mode. Yu-Gi-Ohhhhhh...
Your handle always reminds me of the robot character "Peace" in Ralph Bakshi's Wizards. It's not much of a movie, but somehow I've seen it twice.
I'd been meaning to write you a letter for a while now, but took longer than expected. Why? Carpal tunnel. My couple years of on-and-off hand pain, once ignorable, evolved last November (2020) into numbing of the fingers after mere minutes of typing. In January I was diagnosed, and given a steroid shot for temporary relief.
I'm hanging in there. I've felt flooded, but I have little room to say anything. Given the [degree or kind] to which you [publicly self-model], it's difficult to see how well you are doing from over here, but I hope you are safe and well as well.
I am indeed safe and well: interviewing for jobs; learning to run my own servers to host this site and add more IndieWeb tools; writing poems. I have several drafts to type up today.
I hope you are well. I was delighted, really actually delighted, to see that you are now collecting Chinese phrases on the "中国语录" page. I want to help you improve and expand this page's classification scheme and its contents. I've begun taking notes and will use the tiddler editor to add them when I can (unless there's a better way.)
Since I don't know how often you read my website, I thought I'd bring my website to you.
Linguary: further thinking and design toward the "linguist's working environment" application I mused about in my last letter to you.
I hope you'll be able to forgive me for being so slow. I am thinking about you and many others. Even though I am somewhat manic, I'm socially glacial and autistic.
No problem. You need never apologize to me for communication speed or length. When I need a particularly timely response, I send a follow-up email.
Hell yeah! I'm really glad you took the time to hit me up. It's my honor to meet you, nomad.
You too, you big drongo. (What's a drongo? Answer Number 1, Answer Number 2.)
Sundown. My latest letter is complete:
I post it to the madman's house of black.
His call for correspondence thus fulfilled,
White ink on parchment fuligin comes back.
The auto-philosophe greets me with cheer.
He's scoured my tubes; he's scanned my public face.
"Your site's delightful" — so reads his review.
No lesser turbo-hermit has such grace.
I swear I see him through Eye Number Three:
Thin fingers, stained with e-ink, sweep the keys
That lock him to the ever-growing Book
Of Life, which he attends on hands and knees.
From ones and nones, h0p3 builds a prophesy,
And from his labors may he never tire.
In 2020, Montaigne essays on.
His precomputed smile floats down the wire.