Dear Wigleaf,

Greetings from Cloud City One (CC1) where writers live anchored by the weight of their own longing. Yesterday, I remembered an early episode of The Simpsons where Homer visits the Springfield Retirement Castle. When he sees Lucky hooked up to a respirator he says, "And here I am using my own lungs like a sucker."

Here's the truth: CC1 is a colony of suckers. Nothing kills curiosity more than having all of your questions answered before you've even finished asking them. We left earth because our creative urges had atrophied. We'd become sad scavengers of the past, linguistic in-breeders of monotony. We'd lost the emotional nuance we needed to grow.

While gravity is overrated (I heard earth is outsourcing it now anyway), I'll be honest, Wigleaf, living in a cloud space can be cruel and cold and eerily quiet. It feels like existing deep inside of a blank page. But then the solar wind shifts, the stars emerge, and their jagged, liquid light rushes forth in pure and breathless beauty. In that moment your heart forgets its rhythm. This is the place where words and stories crystalize. The algorithms of earth will never provide the inward clarity we've found in the cosmic brumes of CC1.

Come join us, Wigleaf, come use your own lungs, your own heart, like a sucker.

Jamy