Trish Crowther wrote:
> "To finish the job properly" ... I've been wondering for a while now
> if this exercise has a degree of closure about it for you.

Not to be morose -- though being russian that's nearly unavoidable for
me -- but I've been thinking about this since your question, and see,
the thing is...before I did this five year arc thing, nobody else
really had, y'know? Not quite like this. And I'd like to leave behind
the blueprints, the bread crumbs that led me through the story, so
somebody else can come along and beat me at my own game someday...do
something even more elaborate, more insane. I'd love that, more than I
can tell you. But the thing is, and this is something that's been on
my mind since we lost Richard, and for other reasons of late...none of
us lasts forever. And I didn't want my notes to just get filed away at
some university, or reconstructed afterward by someone who didn't
really understand what it was all about, who wasn't there, who wouldn't
understand what it all *meant*, in the end, what it *felt like*...so I
wanted to make sure these got out there, while I still could, y'know?

This amazing online conversation, this dialogue, started over twelve
years ago, and the road between there and here has been the most
remarkable of my life; the road has taken me, taken us, to breathtaking
places...through the most important thing I've written to date in my
life, the one thing that they'll put on my obit when the day comes, and
so it seems right to bring that conversation full circle with this,
putting the whole damned thing out there. It's the closest I will come
to going to everyone's house one night, one at a time, and saying,
"This is what happened, once upon a time...."

I'd even be inclined to try it, but there are far too many of you, and
as noted above, nobody lasts forever. So these rather massive letters,
tossed into the great unknown, will have to suffice.

And no, don't worry, I'm fine...russian, and therefore fatalistic, but
fine...it's just something that's been on my mind of late, and was one
of the reasons I wanted to do this. It is closure, in that sense.
That was a good call on your part.

jms