the ruins
2024-07-14_0
I think that 2023 will be a good year for perfectn0ir. -perfectn0ir, 2023-01-08
So that was a lie. I should learn to not make bold promises like that. Alas, here we are, a little over a year and a half since that blog post and no content to hold that promise. 2023 proved to be a busier year than I expected. The first half of the year I trodded through the greatest workload I had ever endured in my life. Working on my university applications had delayed the schoolwork I needed to complete to graduate, so I had to cram multiple supposedly year-long assignments into a couple of months, while studying for exams (thanks IB programme!). I expected the months following graduation to be a complete change of pace from the start of the year. And although my stress levels were soothed by the lack of pressure from school, my schedule did not cease to be packed with preliminary appointments and arrangements for my upcoming international move for university.
Once I moved, academic pressure began to build back up. Granted, this was a third (or less) of the workload I had at the start of the year, but now I had other obligations to tend to, including being a responsible adult, being an irresponsible adult, and clubs, among others. All of this essentially erased this website from my memory. Up until yesterday, I had forgotten about its existence. I only remembered it because I found some scratch paper with some shoddy drawings of a previous iteration of the website in a forgotten binder. My bad.
Returning to this website feels like stumbling upon the ruins of an ancient civilization:
I walk through the ruins, and enter what resembles a temple. I close the rusted door behind me to keep the wind's whispers outside. Despite the chaotic arrangement of wooden planks on the floor and walls, the sanctuary is at peace in its mess. My paces reverberate in all directions, echoing throughout the ruin. I approach the center of the sanctum and notice a small shrine coloured by the stained glass. I saunter to it and see candelabrum of all shapes and sizes, and underneath each one, a pool of rock-hard wax. Next to the smallest of candelabrum, a tattered piece of paper signed last year tells me I am not the temple's first visitor. I return to the center and continue my paces towards the altar. Upon reaching it, I brush off the dust atop a forgotten tome and begin to read its faded words...
Personally, I believe that the idea of free will is false. I think that are we are prisoners to our brains. So if everything was determined billions of years before we were born, why are we here then? -perfectn0ir, 2022-01-07
I laugh at that ridiculous statement. Whoever wrote that obviously did not read any existentialist authors, and was probably depressed. I skip a few pages and continue:
I will provide a way to contact me once I figure out a secure and effective method. have enough time to set it up properly. -perfectn0ir, circa 2022
I looked for this contact information, but couldn't find it. Weird.
I try my best to publish a new blog every thirty days, but this is a very lax 'schedule'. -perfectn0ir, circa 2022
I flipped to the next page, but after this point, every page was blank. I close the book and turn around.
As I turn around, I can't help but feel melancholy for this place. This ruin, this beautiful ruin--it once housed stories, attracted visitors from far and wide, and manifested the results from countless hours of work. Someone built these walls, someone lit the candelabrum, and someone wrote that book. And I, the visitor, was too late. I did not hear the builders toiling away at the walls nor the conversations that took place within them. I opened the rusted door and the wind resumed its whispers. Now, I take a last look.
But what if this temple took on a new life? What if this sanctuary of stories could hold more? What if I stay, honouring the old and embracing the new?
I close the rusted door. Welcome back to perfectn0ir.