Secret.

An anthropomorphic way of explaining the force exerted by gravity is in terms of desire: no sooner had I thrown the ball into the air than it wanted to come back to earth again.

Extending the analogy of wishing, then, we can say that the ball feels more comfortable on the ground than when airborne or that the ball belongs on terra firma.

Anthropomorphism is useful - it presents a shortcut to explaining ideas which would otherwise defy words. It is, no less, a branch of our old friend associative learning. When I cowered at the sound of thunder as a child, I was told it was because God was moving his furniture about. When Danny licks the meat-covered fork that I just broke his breakfast up with, and purrs loudly, I assume delight, but can never really progress from assumption to certainty.

The dictionary tells me that anthropomorphism is especially applied to deities, but I want to stretch its terms of reference again by asking what else I might apply it to.

By far the most significant event in your author's life since the last blog update is the gradual unearthing of a secret by an enthuiastic digger. I'd not intended to reveal it, but the work of another has made it so.

Is it the case, then, that secrets want to emerge into the light, that they are more comfortable without the only characteristic which separates them from any other conjecture or opinion? My little 'known unknown' (apologies for this by now very well-worn cliché) had a unique beauty and life which I cherished. It seemed to have a regular, predictable breathing pattern that matched my own, not so much an illness that I wished to expurgate, as an alembic.

Now the cat is out of the bag, my secret's tiny cathexis is temporarily drained. I can no longer be thrilled by its existence, even though its subject continues to cause endless interest. That is to say although I knew something that nobody else knew, and this knowledge made my heart beat faster, I somehow longed for its release in order that my heart would slow down to its normal rate again.

The secret seems to abhor its privileged position up high where the air is thinnest, with the downward collision course its preferred option. It prefers to join the vast pool of public information - this is the meaning of the word alembic; here is a list of the countries that comprise the former Yugoslavia; to calculate 5!, you multiply five by four by three by two by one.

I am attracted to a co-worker, and the secret is out as of Thursday afternoon. I write those words with the usual tightening of limbs and shaking of the head that I normally experience when she comes to mind, but now the emotions are directed entirely towards her, and not divided between her and the upholding of that (her unknown other self which I have internalised) which lived within me and mediated the frequency of my footsteps and the ratio of spoken words to the number of times I exhale.