OK, I'm starting to miss it. Watching movies, foremost, but also being here among friends. It seems like pretty much every year, now, I just crash and burn and forget how to watch movies, or how to adequately maintain friendships, or how to write anything at all. Even now I'm wringing these words from myself with absolutely no foresight, no idea or plan for what I have to say here. Obviously, this isn't going to be much of a review of Fire Walk With Me at first, but we'll see if I can kinda get there.

The easy answer would be unending depression and a sinking feeling that I have nothing to offer, but I know it's not that simple and that's just my own little way of haunting myself — like, we all carry a little bit of the Black Lodge with us, yeah? Sometimes we (or parts of us) feel trapped. That part of me certainly feels like it's been in stasis for another half-year, at least. I miss how I felt about movies and making friends here last summer and fall in particular. I really do.

Honestly, though, it hasn't all been depression and isolation. In my absence, or rather in the time this part of me has been absent, I've dwelled entirely in music. The new Full of Hell LP is huge to me, and in fact its opening clip taken from Burden of Dreams (Herzog talking about the erotic and miserable chaos of the jungle) got me thinking about movies again. I received a new turntable and bought a beautiful copy of the Twin Peaks soundtrack on thick, smoky red vinyl. I'm addicted to the jarring yet cinematic flow of Lil Ugly Mane's Third Side of Tape, where hip hop beats give way to weird goth rock and ersatz black metal. I saw Acid Mothers Temple live for like the 6th time and met a new friend from social media! I've even been gathering records and tapes, which is something I've put off ever since losing my entire collection to a flooded basement years ago and that really feels like regaining a part of myself.

I've watched a lot of TV. Legion was incredible, far more terrifying and amazing than I had expected from a Marvel-branded thing, and aside from Hannibal or Mr. Robot I think it's by far the best show I've seen since... well, Twin Peaks. Which now looms, a bit more than 25 years later, but whatever — we're always losing time.

Last night, watching Fire Walk With Me for my first time since 2009, I was again struck deeply by the very last scene: Laura's tear-streaked, beautifully smiling face awash in blue as the music swells to a requiem. All is lost, yet more is still to come. The flow of time is convoluted, and the story isn't over.