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Calling my work a “journal” is a misnomer, as a science
journal is a record for the purposes of preservation, or lending
to its appropriated subject matter some reliable measure of
coherence and intelligibility. More specifically, a journal
seeks to classify some quantity or another—snatching
out discrete metrics from the swirling maw of chaos. The
contents of my pages are no mere collection of thoughts
outlined in ink, existing only for the purposes of imposing
order and thus clarity. They are thoughts—some of them my
own—imprisoned in prose. This book is a barred passage,
where vengeful chaos might reach out and take back its
numbers. My journal is a doorway and a floodgate—it is
holding, if only just—but for practical purposes, I will call it
my diary. My Diary of Madness.

***

Having read as far as I cared, and having deduced the
essential sentiment contained within, I immediately and
enthusiastically destroyed the journal. I waited for a few
moments to assess the consequences. Regrettably, nothing
transpired.
Something else swallowed my attention whole—a child’s
sketchbook-diary. It had my name on it. Vincent Alexander
Graves.
I handled it as if it were a sensitive explosive. In a way,
it was more than that. Substantially more. My hands had
grown beyond the size of a normal man’s, certainly beyond
the youthful hands that had once caressed the ragged book—
yet they remembered each imperfection etched into its cover.
This was the tale of my art, told between dying pages of
flax and hemp. I opened to the first picture. The world began
peeling back in tandem, to a time dimly remembered, nearly
dead and fleshless.

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