Story of My Life

I am trying to get some reading done (story of my life) but the world keeps intruding. It is 7:05 p.m. on the 16th of January 1991. Something dark and terrible is unfolding in Baghdad, Iraq. Something dark and terrible took place in Staffordshire, England during the month of July 1916. Various things, some of them dark and perhaps terrible, are about to happen in a place called Tara. At the moment, none of these events seem real.

Borges referred to a place called Uqbar, supposedly "a region of Iraq or Asia Minor" which was in fact unreal. Uqbar is brought to you by the people who invented Tlön, a conspiracy to replace the bad old world with a novus ordo saeculorum. There's a lot of that going around.

I try to focus on the page or the screen but my mind insists on wandering. I experience that swarming sensation again.