Time tombs.

 I am a fan of Dan Simmonds - especially of Drood, and the Hyperion Cantos. 

They paused at the head of the valley. Soft dunes gave way to rock and ink-black shadows at the swale which led down to the glowing Tombs. No one led the way. No one spoke. The Consul felt his heart beating wildly against his ribs. Worse than fear or knowledge of what lay below was the blackness of spirit which seemed to have come into him on the wind, chilling him and making him want to run screaming toward the hills from which they had come...

But the Cantos only provide half of the metaphor I'm looking for, as my way into the feelings of this post. 

Another book by Dan Simmonds is Drood. Here, Wilkie Collins is the fallible and deeply flawed protagonist, narrator and cause of some wicked going's on; obsessivly observing and commenting upon the less than noble behavior of his equally talented and flawed friend, Mr Charles Dickens,

Inspector Field stopped. I stopped. After a moment, he said, “Your point, Mr Collins?” “My point, Inspector, is that Charles Dickens, although chronologically fifty-four years of age, is a child. A mischievous child. He manufactures and plays the games he enjoys and — through his fame and force of personality — bullies those around him to play the game as well. We are now involved, you and I, in Charles Dickens’s Game of Drood.”

The time tombs are inexplicable. Indeed I'm writing about them here and now in a way that can only be described as oblique. For rather than the tombs themselves being the subject of this post, the time tombs provide the landscape I inhabit as I try to guess how best I should shift time around. To best serve my purpose.

The Tombs glowed brightly and then dimmed, now one tomb, then the next, in no apparent order or sequence. Occasionally the tug of time tides would assail both men, making them gasp and grip the stone, but the wave of déjà vu and vertigo would fade after a moment.

But in making choices, and taking action - I feel a lot like Wilkie Collins transported into the Hyperion Cantos!

The feeling that I should do something is like the beetle Wilkie thought had been placed behind his eye, constantly twisting inside his skull. Because my question is, when should we let other people simply get on with what ever error and harm we think that they are doing, versus when should we go full Wilkie, accepting with many a grumbling word, and curse, the madness and foolishness our thinking, writing and actions will bring?

No one can answer me - the future is a construct...

Anyway! What I'm really talking about here is another blog, where I am time-shifting the posts. So how do I write about posts that are in the future that I've already lived through; and write in the present to be posted after - or before...? 

But also how do I know when all this is to happen? 

I am enjoying this aspect, I have to say. 

This other blog is the next chapter, after my son's psychosis, suicide attempt, and my husband's infidelity (a minor thing compared to the real damage of his gaslighting). It is called The Black Box . 

The first 'book' is Rings Around The Moon - was partially migrated as the older posts of this blog.