Nice Limbo You Have Here

A pulp, you say? Well yes, I have been chewed for awhile. This place is pale, all of the colors leached out. The horses are thirsty, I can tell. Their tales barely swat at the swarms of flies that linger even in February. In limbo, there are always insects. It's 40 in the morning, but 70 by the afternoon. And so colorless it hurts the eyes. So colorless you feel yourself pulled down as if gravity itself cannot stand up to this chillless winter. I can remember vibrancy as if a dream, fleeting and flickering, a child's distance laughter.

Creeeeeeeeeaaaaaak and Drip

In limbo, there is no one to rub your back or your other aching limbs. I can feel my bones knotting up as my color drains out. They're already getting to me. Now is midway, maybe, but I'm already beginning to stiffen and crack, bleached from sun, mildew settling into my darker regions.

My Quiet Escape

Fortunately for me, most people in limbo are illiterate, so I won't worry too much over my plans being discovered. Besides, this is limbo, it generally can't get much worse, and I've started collecting a few "go fuck yourself"s that I keep in my back pocket. Any day now, I'll have to start pulling them out.

Limbo is all about tedious waiting, but they try to keep you from waiting alone. They figure the more exposure you have to the limbo locals, the more likely you will be quickly assimilated. The locals hate being alone. They want only to be in the company of others like themselves. They swarm. They buzz. They mew. But I slip away when I can, at the expense of angry stares and whispers. A different person would feel compelled to conform, to float along with the others. But I have my feet firmly planted in opposition, even if most days I keep my lips pressed tight. I do not want to make them overly suspicious of me yet.

In my contraband alone time, I keep up my blog and plan my escape. I can still think linearly. I can still move myself from point A to point B without a circle, though I'll admit sometimes I accidentally make an arc. But I will prevail. I have to. I must tell the story.

Don't Forget to Dream

If you forget to dream in limbo, you'll never escape. It doesn't matter so much what your dream is or who it involves. You have to keep longing for something different, for escape. If you ever dare breathe the air here and forget to choke, if you stop noticing the explosions in the sky, if you begin to think the oily, gnarled heads of vultures are as it's always been, then you're lost.

Atreyu knew. He trudged through the swamp and refused to rest, to forget his mission for a moment. He tried to keep Artax moving, but limbo is simply too much for a horse not born here. The horses born here have a fine mesh over their nostrils and black eyes. Some of them lack faces altogether. Artax was doomed from the moment he placed hoof in wet sand.

Most come here and die slow deaths. Their souls mildew in the humidity. Their brains atrophy in the relentless sun. They lose all sense of linear motion. They develop orbits. Point A no longer has any possibility of leading to Point B. Point A leads to Point A leads to Point A in a constricting cocentric circles.

I've Been Right Here for Thirty-seven Hours

Limbo necessitates a standing still of time even as it technically moves forward. Such is the nature of limbo. A person in limbo can wait out anybody not in limbo. It's easy, one of the few benefits of limbo. Limbo is a good place for hatching longterm schemes. Operation Eripsa Realizes How Much His Life Sucks Without Januarygirl is well underway and picking up steam.

Here, I am too busy fighting rain and bugs and neverending fireworks to worry about much else. I swim the green green roads. I cut out laminated phonics fish. I brush up on my Espanol. I wait.

I've been right here for thirty-seven hours.

Kristin Hersh Knows Limbo

She says:

If you lived here,
you'd be home by now
and suicidal.

Water

In limbo you are always wet. The air is saturated. In response, the body pumps out an oily sweat from all of its glands that runs down your smooth parts and puddles in your creases. Here, it is either unbearably humid or pouring down angry rain, trapping you inside, washing out roads for an hour before the water seeps back into the swamps through the sand. Then it is humid again.