By the time you read this, I will be...

in my Ph.D. viva.

But it is a curve each of them feels, unmistakably. It is the parabola. -- Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow

It went on for a month. Those who had taken it for a cosmic sign cringed beneath the sky each nightfall, imagining ever more extravagant disasters. Others, for whom orange did not seem an appropriately apocalyptic shade, sat outdoors on public benches, reading calmly, growing used to the curious pallor. As nights went on and nothing happened and the phenomenon slowly faded to the accustomed deeper violets again, most had difficulty remembering the earlier rise of heart, the sense of overture and possibility and went back once again to seeking only orgasm, hallucination, stupor, sleep, to fetch them through the night and prepare them against the day. -- Thomas Pynchon, Against the Day

By the time you read this, I will be... was originally published by Martin Paul Eve at eve.gd: Martin Paul Eve on September 10, 2012.