#and the writing in the torn notebook is described as illegible

[the-n3w3st-g1rl-g1rl]

there are multiple things in Undertale that the narration describes as "illegible" and I just wonder if maybe Frisk or the narrator are really bad at reading handwritten messages

[cactisonicboxes]

Text, 2022 There is a fly circling around this room that I am currently occupying. My lover is going around with a cup in their hands, in an attempt to capture and release. Misguided attempt, if you ask me. After a few minutes of trying, they have forfeited the cup as a weapon and moved onto a kitchen towel. Several attempts have been made until the fly surrenders to its death; cause? A kitchen towel smacking it along the windowsill. Was it worth it? The buzzing sound has ceased to make way for the crackling of leaves. //// Ammonium nitrate has been stored in our basement for some time now. The management is coming round next week to inspect for security regulations. How will we manage to transport it to an off-shore facility? Should we just save ourselves the hassle of transporting it and pay a fine to the respected authorities? Will they confiscate it off our hands, regardless? Was storing it in our basement necessary? What did we get ourselves into? Can the law be manipulated in our favor, if we bribe a few officials? Would that be called saving grace? //// An explosion at the Beirut port where ammonium nitrate was stored which destroyed many lives and caused countless of damage. An inflation where 70% of the population lives below poverty. Corrupt politicians playing an active role in furthering the country’s descent into darkness. I have a grandmother, named Wahiba - who raised three children alongside her husband, Assad—during a civil war. She was a teacher and he was an architect. Their lives were uprooted, like many others, in ways that are inconceivable. Most nights were spent in a bunker. Most days were spent at school. Whenever the electricity was on, people were glued to a television set to watch the latest news. When the power cut out, backgammon was played with a candle and a radio playing in the background. My grandparents tried to establish a sense of normality amidst a siege on the streets of Beirut. There were many questions that circulated in people’s minds… when would this war end? If my loved ones exit through that door, would they make it back alive in one piece? If we cannot leave, how can we latch onto glimmers of hope amongst the decay that seems to permeate in each crevice? The reconstruction period of the city evoked hope and in that the worst is over and better times are coming. Today, the picture is much different. Assad died after stage three of stomach cancer was detected too late and succumbed to death shortly. Wahiba has alzheimer and does not remember much, neither her neighborhood which she has been in for over forty years nor her daughters. The only preoccupation she has is eating a piece of cake and smoking a cigarette, one after the other. Is there a word to describe the fear of forgetting memories and of oneself? Jotting down notes franticly onto notebooks full of coffee stains and torn out pages. So that when amnesia starts to settle in, you’ll have notebooks filled with illegible writing, bullet points that seem to take over the page and poorly drawn tables with information that does not seem pertinent to what has passed. Is it necessary to cling onto memories that contain misery, pain and regret? If rumination is a past time habit, what happens when the memories fade away, what does rumination set its claws onto then? The steady decline that comes with having alzheimer. Forgetting memories, people, habits.

A refusal to eat.

A refusal to talk.

A refusal to sleep.

The burden of rotating care between family members. The anger that emerges from the prospect of death. The bureaucratic mess of inheritance. What does fulfillment look like beyond the act of survival?

[clavitoh]

Part 2

Nāga and Azazel, Summer of 𑇙𑛉𑛇𑛇

Extract from my mom’s diary:

“Zel and I have decided to stick our noses out of the books and take advantage of the weekend and this gorgeous weather we are having, which is quite unusual for the place we live. It has been a wonderful season so far, and our small cottage garden that we have in the middle of nowhere is blooming with life. Although I am not fond of any vegetable that does not have a practical use, he has planted flowers everywhere. Their scent, mixed up with the herbs, makes me so nostalgic sometimes that I have to open the windows and let it in, at least to feel alive again. 

The frustration of feeling stuck in this investigation has changed us to the point where we are starting to fight for small and nonsensical details, like yesterday. I found what I thought it was simply a set of casual ink stains, but Zel insisted, with the creative mind that he has, that they were symbols pointing us in another direction. I thought that he was joking so I laughed at the idea, which spinned into us going to different rooms and banging the door shut while shouting vile words and accusations to the other. I accept that I am extremely stubborn, so it is no surprise that he was the one to give in and approached me after a few hours of leaving me with my thoughts. At that point he knows that I blame myself for all the situation, but I am too proud to be the first to back out of what I’ve said. He talked some sense into me and I admitted that I was angry that I had accepted this morning that we were not going to find any answers either in the Lebor Gabála, even after we have wasted more than six months scrutinizing every word for an alternative meaning that would match our original suspicions. At that point, that simple fact was more than I could bear. Especially when I am starting to feel like life is going on without us and that we are on a path of no return that is getting darker every step that we take further in. So, we decided to escape, even if it is just for a few days. 

The small seaside village that he has chosen reminds him of his childhood town. I know that Zel comes from the north, from a place where the sun almost never sets in the summer and winters are an eternal night, but he does not talk about him as a child very often or any of his past for that matters. Sometimes I suspect that there is something there that he does not want to share to avoid that I feel any pity for the golden haired, blue eyed and gentle kid that he was, and that is maybe the reason why I tend to overshare any detail about me and my family. Although now we are not as close as before because they disapprove of everything involving our investigation, there was a time where they were part of my daily life. Dad taught me my first spells and mom helped me create my very first recipe book (I hate the word grimoire). Azazel had to figure out his magic by himself. Maybe that is why we complement each other: I know how effective teamwork is as well as to be disciplined and he always helps us move on when we get stuck using his amazing creativeness and his inventive mind. 

Right now he thinks it’s hilarious to move my el(...)w as I wr(...) so I hurr(y?) up and we l(...) for a (...)lk. I just w(...) to le(...) (...) on pri(...) so I d(...) for(...) (...). I will continue later on.”

                                                               ⚶

The rest of the page is torn off and the last few sentences are almost gibberish, surely caused by my father’s impatience, whose physical form I saw for the first time in this set of photographs badly attached with what seems to be sellotape to this entry of my mom’s investigation journal. The date is also illegible, but I think they are from the summer before I was born. In a way, between her words and the images I can somehow feel the symbiotic bond that they had with each other, when I was raised up feeling quite the opposite. He was practically an inexistant figure in my family’s history, but I can’t see from this the reason behind that decision. Maybe my grandparents blamed him for taking her daughter from what they thought was the “right path”, establishing this distance between them that my mother spoke of in her journal. Or maybe they firmly believed that if my mom never got involved with my father, she wouldn’t have lost her life the way that she did. 

I would like to keep devouring the rest of the contents of this diary as if it was a novel, but I am aware of the emotional impact that all these recent discoveries are having in me. Sometimes they make me feel that my nana deliberately kept all this information from me for a reason, and not a good one. Most of the time, everytime I read anything my mother wrote my instincts tell me that what I am being presented with is not the truth either, that it lies between what I know and what I am discovering. There is definitely something hidden between these lines, but I do not know if I have inherited my parent’s courage to find it out. I have the feeling that the answer to all these questions is something that is going to impact my life and the very core of my being. And not in a good way. 

For the time being, I have closed the mistreated notebook that belonged to my mother and I have laid my arms on top, letting my eyes rest at the sight of the people walking by. I do not want to send anymore thoughts to the fact that I have another two full boxes of journals just like this waiting for me in my apartment and that they surely contain pieces of my early childhood that I might not want to know, rescued from the cottage my mom was writing about, where I was born. There is nothing left of that house, only those boxes. But the scent of the flowers that my father planted everywhere and that my mother described in her journal is impressed upon my memory, and that is what I will treasure from this experience.