Day 86,

The fear last night’s dreams of the Catacomb Depths brought was a different sort than normal.  I had abandoned my futile attempts to ascend and was now actively delving deeper.  I once again felt the presence of an other in the maze of tombs, but this time I was the one hunting it.  My steps had a steady rhythm backed by a force of purpose.  The rhythm was that which had so filled my waking hours lately and the purpose was violence.

But underlying this newfound confidence was the fear.  The fear that I was not fully myself.  Fear that I was a passenger in my own body.  Fear that not all of the thoughts and feelings in my head were my own.  Fear that I was simultaneously two.  Fear of what would happen when I found the other.  Fear not of what would happen to me, but what I would do.

Have you ever woken up from a dream horrified with yourself?  With what your actions and feelings in the dream imply about you as a person?  Because that’s how my morning started.

I don’t think I’ll go into the Village today.  Part of me’s saying I maybe shouldn’t be alone right now, but I just don’t feel like dealing with people.  At least I haven’t heard the tapping since I got up.

Just heard the tapping again.  Realized that I was the one making it, absentmindedly drumming my fingers on the table as I ate lunch.  Was it always me, or am I just reflexively copying it now to fill the silence after days of exposure?

I’m going down to the beach.  Try to let that natural rhythm of waves wash it out.  Maybe sing a song while I walk and get something else stuck in my head.

I still need to get around to acquiring proper swimwear.

Sitting under a tree by the beach as I write this.  The walk (and swim, I couldn’t help myself, but at least I brought a change of clothes along with me this time) helped, I think.  So many other sounds out here to take your attention if you listen for them.  Other rhythms.  Birdsong, frogsong, insectsong, wavesong, song of wind blowing through foliage (windsong?  leafsong?).  Okay, now I’m just tacking “song” onto the end of anything that makes noise.  Not sure if that’s silly or pretentious.  Maybe a bit of both?  Then again, what’s a “song” other than a rhythmic repeating pattern of sounds that carries a message and evokes an emotion?  Okay, maybe the wind and waves aren’t carrying messages seeing as there’s no life or will behind them, but they do incite emotion.  And animals certainly have meaning and signals behind their cries, even if what we get out of them is totally divorced from their actual meaning.

But I’m rambling on faux-philosophical tangents again.  Not really any more meaning to those than the aforementioned ocean noises, but writing them down calms me in the same way as listening to the waves, so I suppose they’re alike in that way.  Meaningless but comforting.  And I’m doing it again…

Point is, it’s hard to obsessively fixate on one particular rhythm that’s been stuck in your head when there’s so much else around out here.  I’m pretty sure I made the right choice not going into the Village today.  The silence in the archive would have been just awful.

Kept strolling along the beach for a bit after making that last journal entry.  Wound up in that cove where I got a close look at Maiko for the first time.  On a whim I went looking for her boat.  Maybe that was an invasion of privacy, but I justified it to myself saying that if we did sense her in danger we’d have some way of theoretically getting to her.  I’ll admit it was a flimsy justification seeing as I have basically zero confidence in my ability to paddle a boat that far.  But it’s not like I was planning on taking it for a joy ride or something.  Yeah… it doesn’t sound great no matter how I spin it and I’m just digging my hole of guilty self-judgement deeper here.  I did find it though, a ways back into the woods, flipped upside down, and covered with rocks and dried out branches.  I guess the rocks are to weigh it down so it doesn’t get blown away in a storm or get flipped back upright by a curious animal?  Or maybe to help wedge the branches in place.  Those had all gone brown so they were sticking out now.  Curiosity (mostly) satisfied, I made my way back home.

Had a little bit of a scare making my way back to the cove from the boat, thinking I heard something large moving in the woods, but I didn’t see anything and didn’t hear anything else after the first time.

All in all, nice day out in nature and taking in some sun in private at the beach.  Maybe that really was all I needed to clear my head this time.