In the Shadow of the Umber

* July 17th, 19:47

I’ll tell you a little about my past today, because who are we as people, if not a pastry folded hundredfold, each layer of butter and dough a vignette of the past?

My mother told me I must eat my journal pages after I write them. My journal has a slightly vinegared taste, the pages are thin, and once damp they stick to the roof of my mouth. Back then it was a matter of practicality - the famine of ‘87 left meant a round of hardtack bread had to be split between the four of us and stretch a whole week. Mother found that the stacks of unprinted paper leftover from her deceased husbands work was a useful way of keeping myself and my siblings entertained. Whenever we begged for some crumbs, she’d sit us down with pen and ink instead, and tell us to write about our hunger. About what we’d order in a restaurant if we could have anything in the world. Or about describe how the malnutrition ate a hole in our bellies. My mother never read what we wrote, bless her, she was barely holding together her broken heart, no need to crush it beneath the weight of our suffering. I don’t remember the first time she asked us to eat paper, but I can imagine it was after a session of waxing poetic about what I’d do for a link of sausage or so, and then going to my mother to ask for some bread for my efforts. And she’d say something like: “You must eat what you wrote.” And so we did.

Before we ate the paper, she burned it, so really it was just economical. It wasn’t wise to have your thoughts out in the open then, even if you were a little child who knew nothing of politics or the famine or what was causing the daily aches. This was before the Umber swept over the land, and tore the Governor from his throne like gale tears a flame off a candle's wick.

It’s funny that a habit born out of sheer desperation should be what saved my life so many years later. The Umber struggles to catch a hold of those who know who they truly are. And to write about myself is to know myself. Here I am: It’s hot and humid, and the clouds above look like they are fit to break. I’m under a canopy of yew trees, but it looks like I’ll sleep on damp ground tonight. I’ve had worse. My whole life is contained in a makeshift backpack - tied out of two blankets with belts for straps. My journal and my pen, bottle of water, a pair of spare boots and some scavenged scraps of food.

For dinner I’m wrapping bananas into old journal pages. Writing down our selves is well enough, but leaving it out after it dries, is like leaving a backdoor wide open for the Umber to creep in. I’ve seen old words change and alter on a page. I’ve seen selves be corrupted from words to the mind. I can tell you this because you will never read this: I estimate it’s in the hundreds of people I advised to write their thoughts down to preserve their sanity, only to doom them by not disclosing that I ate everything I wrote. How was I to know it was important? That’s what I tell myself, when the guilt creeps in. A creep in it does, whenever I still and close my eyes to sleep. It works surprisingly well. The Umber is easy to blame.

I will have a little tea and then settle down to sleep - perhaps the rain won’t bother me so much if I drift off before it starts.

* July 18th, 10:22

I slept abysmally last night. The rain did eventually wake me, and I found that I had the misfortune of having made my camp in a small depression in the earth, where the water puddles into a makeshift sort of pond. I dragged my things to higher ground, but by then was soaked through and cold, and sleep was an impossibility. I could not journal either to lighten the load, so I was left to my own thoughts in the dark. And in those moments, I wonder if it wouldn’t be easier to surrender to the Umber. The evil spirit, the disease, the miasma - whatever you like to call it, it confuses the sense of self until you are but a husk of impressions. No one seems to survive it for long, and in the late stage Umbrenites are known to stagger through the streets of the now dead towns, searching for something always beyond their reach. Their skin colour washed out, ashen or muddy, eyes distant, looking for an invisible horizon. But perhaps there is peace in surrender. Eventually they all stop, frozen in time, and the wind crumbles them to dust. Perhaps that’s an absurd thing to want. But if you’d been wandering the countryside for months, knowing you likely doomed the last few who resisted the Umber in their own, inexplicable ways, sitting cold in the pitch dark, you too would begin to have your doubts.

But the morning gives me strength. Despite it all, the sun rises.

* July 19th, 13:00

It’s been weeks since I last spoke to anyone. Writing has felt like speaking into an echo chamber lately. I can only describe my day-to-day actions so long until I feel as though I am separating from the man on the page, like oil separating out from cream when it’s heated too far - ah, cream, now only in my dreams. Cream spread on ripe red strawberries - I eat food every day but tasting truly tasting seems a distant memory. It’s all spoiled fruit and vegetables, crushed between paper and pages and more paper, musty cellulose in thin, digestible sheets. I know I should be eating them as I write, but sometimes I save a few pages. For days that I can scarcely remember passing, sometimes I need that reassurance. Proof that they truly happened. Don’t worry, I won’t keep them long.

If there was ever a worse time to have an identity crisis, it is now. I wish I had people to talk to. I feel like my sense of self is only truly realized when I can test this self against another person. I’m a theory until someone tests me.

* July 21st 20:13

Sometimes I have conversations with people I make up. I never used to be that kind of person, and now I worry it makes me seem insane. Not that there’s anyone here to witness me. Drama students do this, right? And I do put thought into it. I don’t cheap out. I make up characters and I play their roles well. It’s a fun change of pace to speak someone else. I still do my journal, I’m holding on to what’s mine.

*July 25th

I crested a hill today, only to look down at the flatlands and valleys I’ve crossed through, and feel a sense of loneliness so thick with dread it brought me to my knees. All I can think of is how empty it all is, how every town down there is barren, and will stay barren for as long as I live. I feel as though something inside me is dying too. My watch has stopped. Another part of normalcy has gone.

* July 28th

My bag is stuffed full of papers, but I’ve been feeling too nauseous to eat. Perhaps a bad lot of potatoes. Sometimes I am so dejected I eat them raw.

* August

Humidity high. I can drink the air.

* August

Perhaps it’s time to let go.