However cliché this may sound, I can't, in all honesty, imagine the world without apricotpie. Maybe because I was introduced to it so young? (eight years ago) I just can't picture it... I'm trying to visualize it. Is my world going to keep revolving around the sun? It seems as permanent to me as the house I live in! ...Such a cozy place. It really became a part of my personhood, in a unique and irrevocable way, and I am genuinely and warmly grateful... I think other people can vouch for that, as well, in their own sense. Others may think this is saying too much, but for me, it isn't. I spent so much time on here. I didn't write that much, but I READ a lot. (For example, Aisling's chapters of "The Quiver and the Bow" were like weekly birthday presents in the mail to me!) Some of you shared your thoughts so honestly, that I connected with you even if we didn't talk. I gained a few of my closest friends on here and have flown out to see them in person; this website spawned a thousand-paged penpal corresondence!
       Through realistic posts, I learned that other human beings could be sensitive and/or deeply reflective... a realization that I might not have had fully, just through highschool friendships. Literature does that... it goes past the surface and touches to the quick, with the core of another person's essence. For that reason, there is no way there could not be something permanent about this place. The beauty that you all created exists, and it now exists in other people, because they read it. Isn't that amazing?
       Apricotpie is in my heart, and I am strengthened by the thought that it is going to live on in all of YOU, too - people with whom I feel a kinship! With that cumulative effect, it is - in a sense - eternal. Families do not end when the house falls down because of old age.

       So gather your papers, everyone - copy and paste. Friend people on Facebook if you have one, or swap emails. And let's POST stuff in the next two months: let's make it a gala month: let's make this literary battleship go down with ALL our flares ignited!