Back to it with the ally

content/ally/019.md

@@ -0,0 +1,42 @@
+---
+date: 2019-09-08
+weight: 19
+---
+
+The tragic core to all this, to this whole project, is that I am not an interesting person. Or maybe interesting, but unremarkable.
+
+> You're in a mood.
+
+*Coming to terms with being a terrible person*, I wrote, but I'm not even that. I'm just a person.
+
+> I'll be the first to admit that you're largely just a boring person. You know that. There's nothing remarkable about your life. Middle class, middling intelligence, average looks --- at least for a trans girl --- okay sense of humor, no unusual challenges, unless the movement disorders count.
+
+What's this, then? A memoir? What would that accomplish?
+
+> Validation? I've already mentioned that.
+
+What would the written account of an ordinary life validate?
+
+> Sometimes it's worthwhile just hearing that ordinary people living ordinary lives can get by in the world. That despite being trans, despite feeling like garbage sometimes, you can still function. That even the drabbest of makyō still have stories to tell.
+
+I suppose that's fair. Literary fiction exists separately from genre fiction, as silly a distinction that is to make, because of the validation we find in the unfantastic.
+
+> Where is this heading? What is the future? What are we leading to?
+
+In the context of this project, or just life in general?
+
+> Is there an end? A goal?
+
+I'm not sure.
+
+> What will the last page say?
+
+<div class="verse">[...]  Endings were writ on your face,
+your hands, and your steps &mdash; your very pace
+spoke of completion.</div>
+
+> Are you thinking of ending this project?
+
+Not at all. I've got a list of side quests I need to complete in order to make you happy, and their very nature makes it easy to complete. One or two thousand words, an hour or two's conversation with you, and then they're done and I don't have to pick up where I left off.
+
+I'm just tired.

content/ally/020.md

@@ -0,0 +1,120 @@
+---
+date: 2019-09-10
+weight: 20
+---
+
+> Let me ask this another way, perhaps. Why are we doing this? Why are we talking? Why did you start?
+
+Let's put a pin in just why exactly you're asking these questions. I'd like to know what the origin after I give you the whys and wherefores.
+
+> Okay.
+
+To the question at hand, though, I think I covered that before, right? I started this project in a fit of nostalgia and one of the end results of an unstoppable wave of nostalgia plus a sort of graphomania is the need to write about the past, and to do so in such a way as to invoke the past in the process.
+
+> I guess I'm trying to decide whether or not to believe you.
+
+What's not to believe here? I spend page after page digging through old LJ entries, old poetry, old pictures and art and logs--
+
+> Let's talk about TS.
+
+Don't derail me. These are your questions.
+
+> Point.
+
+What's not to believe about a project filled to overflowing with nostalgia being borne from nostalgia?
+
+> I don't doubt the roots in nostalgia, I doubt the intentionality.
+
+You doubt that I started this on purpose?
+
+> Did you summon me? Answer truly.
+
+I don't know.
+
+> I say that I've always been here, but that's only a part-way truth. That's only half-meaning drizzled over too many words. It's easy enough for someone to say that an abstract concept, a loose portion of someone's personality has always been there. Of course that's the case. Why did you summon **me**, though? Are you in need of an ally?
+
+I'm surrounded by friends and chosen family, these days. Most of them are my allies.
+
+> Well, maybe we should disentangle what exactly an ally is before we continue down the path of why you summoned me.
+
+Okay. I was going to call you my shadow, but that's not exactly right, is it?
+
+> No.
+
+You share some similarities, I guess. You have these aspects of myself that are submerged beneath the surface, usually. You see me from a distance. You know everything about me.
+
+> I do. But by its very definition, I'm not your shadow. Like I told you, I'm not your id.
+
+And like I told *you*, it was a joke.
+
+> You'll have to imagine me laughing.
+
+Right.
+
+> I'm not your shadow or your id because those are not necessarily things you can see. They are the things that are, by definition, unknown and unknowable by the ego.
+
+Or at least heavily obscured. Dr Jekyll knew of Mr Hyde. Perhaps you're not my shadow, but maybe the personification of enantiodroma. Perhaps this is my process of assimilation. Perhaps this is me airing my dirty laundry.
+
+> It's not **not** that. There are enough parts of me that are opposite of you for the similarities to be more than superficial. Enantiodroma carries too many implications of balance and equilibrium, however. That there are parts of me that are opposite of you does not make me the opposite of you. You could not press us together, merge us completely, and wind up with some more complete self.
+
+Right. You'd have to be the same size as me, and you're not.
+
+> I don't have a size.
+
+You'd have to be in the same place as me, and you're not.
+
+> I don't have a place.
+
+Right. *You're not person shaped,* I said. *You're the shape of my hands displaced half an inch behind my own, navy blue and trimmed with sea-foam green.*
+
+> I don't have physicality. I don't have boundaries.
+
+You are bounded by me. I am your boundaries.
+
+> Are you?
+
+Can an ally move beyond a mind? Can allyship --- true, individual allyship --- move beyond the allegiance?
+
+> You tell me.
+
+I don't know that I can.
+
+> I am a liminal creature. I told you that. I'm almost a shadow but miss the mark. I'm near to the concept of a back-stage persona but miss the mark. I get close to being you, but never quite come into focus enough for the outlines to match up.
+
+Are you not just me? Just a part of me?
+
+> There is no me without you.
+
+Is there a me without you?
+
+> Can you imagine so dull a life?
+
+You're not that exciting.
+
+> Not my department.
+
+Right.
+
+So an allegiance in the [orthocosmic sense](http://wiki.postfurry.net/wiki/Metacosmology) is a relationship two entities where they help each other. Or at least trust that they can rely on the help of the other at need. It's not contingent upon friendship, as you are so fond of saying, but that's not to say that they're mutually exclusive.
+
+> I am an endocosmic ally.
+
+Are you helping me, then?
+
+> Do you not feel my aid?
+
+I suppose I do. Sometimes it feels like you're just here to kick my ass.
+
+> Ass-kicking is well within the bailiwick of an ally. To not kick your ass when you need it would be to fail at being a good ally.
+
+I've heard that said about friends. A fair-weather friend may leave you to create your own demise, while a true friend will knock some sense into you.
+
+> True friends are almost always also strong allies.
+
+But not vice versa. I see that now. You are not my friend.
+
+> I am not your friend.
+
+But you are my ally.
+
+> I am your ally.

content/ally/021.md

@@ -0,0 +1,64 @@
+---
+date: 2019-09-10
+weight: 21
+---
+
+> When you started this project, several people asked if you were okay.
+
+Yes.
+
+> Were you?
+
+I think so. I was swinging up toward hypomania, and plowing heedlessly through nostalgia. Some of it was good, some of it was bad, but I don't think that had much bearing on me starting the project.
+
+> Robin asked if you were okay. "I just want to make sure," she said once. "You asked me to check in on you if you ever started talking about geese."
+
+Perhaps this has a similar feel to it. A similar scent of ritual, a similar flavor of mysticism, a similar sense of some other reality vignetting my vision.
+
+> lorxus asked if you were okay. "People normally write memoirs at the ends of their lives."
+
+Life is a series of beginnings and endings dovetailed messily together.
+
+> There is a final ending, though.
+
+I don't think I'm near that, despite what passive ideation might tell me. I'm not writing some drawn out farewell.
+
+> So, why are we talking, you and I? Where is this going?
+
+We're talking because this project, self indulgent as it is, is leading me to confront and process a lot of different things, which I'd call a net positive. We're talking because how can I know what I think until I say --- or write --- it? We're talking because I've got a lot on my mind.
+
+This is going nowhere.
+
+> I don't know whether to be proud or insulted by that.
+
+Can you feel either?
+
+> Not my department. The metaphor is still useful.
+
+Well, fair enough. I didn't mean that idiom, anyway. This is going nowhere because it's a project that needn't have a direction.
+
+It's not a directed thing.
+
+It is a river.
+
+It is the movement of the tides.
+
+It's guided only by gravity and the lay of the land.
+
+It is its own *musica universalis*.
+
+It's a conversation.
+
+> Conversations have direction.
+
+Not all of them.
+
+It's one of those late-night conversations that go where they will, in which sometimes very little is said.
+
+It is not a minded thing. It has no autonomy and yet has no guiding force. No sapeint guiding force, at least.
+
+It is a way. It is a path, and yet the path is not the walker.
+
+> This is going nowhere.
+
+Maybe, but maybe that's the point.

content/ally/022.md

@@ -0,0 +1,48 @@
+---
+date: 2019-09-10
+weight: 22
+---
+
+My turn.
+
+> Shoot.
+
+Why ask this now? Why ask about the core instead of a side quest?
+
+> I did. I asked about TS.
+
+Don't deflect.
+
+> Okay.
+
+Why ask about the project? Why ask about yourself?
+
+> You had job interviews. You had the convention. You're visiting Barac. You stopped writing for a bit.
+
+I started again, didn't I?
+
+> Yes. Hypomania is fading into the comfortable static of a ground state, though. You're **still** writing. That's why I'm asking. Why are you writing this if you're not hypomanic?
+
+I wrote a bunch of *Restless Town* when I wasn't hypomanic.
+
+> Yes.
+
+I wrote some of *Rum and Coke* when I wasn't hypomanic.
+
+> It shows, in the last one.
+
+I've grown as a writer. I've grown as a person. I can continue projects whose inception lay in hypomania.
+
+> And yet you say that you know a thing is right if you feel the same when depressed as when hypomanic. You can tell a decision is worth making if something other than strange energies birthed it.
+
+Yes.
+
+> Did strange energies not birth me?
+
+I don't know. Maybe. I don't think they birthed this project, though. I think this project is...hmm.
+
+> An honest one? A true one? A worthwhile one?
+
+Sort of.
+
+Maybe I think it's an earnest one. One that was borne out of a real desire, birthed by a need beyond what might be imbued by hypomania. A more grounded need, not one based in those non-Newtonian laws that govern that other space, where mechanics break down and strange energies spring, palladial, into being.

content/core/019.md

@@ -1,28 +0,0 @@
----
-date: 2019-09-08
-weight: 19
----
-
-> Where is this heading? What is the future? What are we leading to?
-
-In the context of this project, or just life in general?
-
-> Is there an end? A goal?
-
-I'm not sure.
-
-> What will the last page say?
-
-I'm not sure there, either.
-
-> Hypomania is fading into the comfortable static of a ground state.
-
-<div class="verse">[...]  Endings were writ on your face,
-your hands, and your steps --- your very pace
-spoke of completion.</div>
-
-> Are you thinking of ending this project.
-
-Not at all. I've got a list of side quests I need to complete in order to make you happy, and their very nature makes it easy to complete. One or two thousand words, an hour or two's conversation with you, and then they're done and I don't have to pick up where I left off.
-
-I'm just tired.

content/core/020.md

@@ -1,22 +0,0 @@
----
-date: 2019-09-08
-weight: 20
----
-
-The tragic core to all this, to this whole project, is that I am not an interesting person. Or maybe interesting, but unremarkable.
-
-> You're in a mood.
-
-**Coming to terms with being a terrible person**, I wrote, but I'm not even that. I'm just a person.
-
-> I'll be the first to admit that you're largely just a boring person. You know that. There's nothing remarkable about your life. Middle class, middling intelligence, average looks --- at least for a trans girl --- okay sense of humor, no unusual challenges, unless the movement disorders count.
-
-A memoir, then? What would that accomplish?
-
-> Validation? I've already mentioned that.
-
-What would the written account of an ordinary life validate?
-
-> Sometimes it's worthwhile just hearing that ordinary people living ordinary lives can get by in the world. That despite being trans, despite feeling like garbage sometimes, you can still function. That even the drabbest of Makyo still have stories to tell.
-
-

content/news/2019-09-02-catastrophically-maddy.md

@@ -5,6 +5,8 @@ title: Catastrophically Maddy
 
 > You seem to be working ever close to some platonic perfection of what means to be Maddy.
 
+<!--more-->
+
 Yeah, this is one of those things where I seem to have looped all the way around from being proud of a work to being vaguely ashamed of it.
 
 > It's not bad, it's just very Maddy. Intensely Maddy. Catastrophically Maddy.

content/news/2019-09-10-metacosmology.md

@@ -0,0 +1,24 @@
+---
+date: 2019-09-10
+title: Metacosmology
+---
+
+Well, that was pleasant, in the usual harrowing sort of way.
+
+<!--more-->
+
+> Yes. A talk over coffee. Pastries. Johnny Cash and the sound of bakery's oven being cleaned a low accompaniment for us.
+
+Do you feel like more was resolved?
+
+> 'Resolved', as a word, does not feel like it's something that should apply to this project.
+
+Right.
+
+### New content
+
+* [ally 19](/19) through [ally 22](/22)
+
+### Updated content
+
+* The software side-quest was copied over from GitHub and now [mirrored here](/writing/software) for ease of reading. Within the project, links will still point to the PR, though, because, like...c'mon. It's me.

content/poet-and-mystic/008.md

@@ -58,8 +58,8 @@ waiting for the time you might turn to stone
 and be completely still at last.
 
 You told me how as you sat, the room lengthened,
-curved around, turned on you --- strengthened,
-it seemed, by your very presence ---
+curved around, turned on you — strengthened,
+it seemed, by your very presence —
 and amid all of that gathered pleasance,
 bit you in half.
 
@@ -78,7 +78,7 @@ perhaps, subtext, allusion, metaphor.
 You were right, though, I could hear it in your voice.
 There was finality, there, which spoke of a choice
 already made. Endings were writ on your face,
-your hands, and your steps --- your very pace
+your hands, and your steps — your very pace
 spoke of completion.
 
 I replied to that sense rather than your words.

content/writing/software/01.md

@@ -0,0 +1,56 @@
+---
+date: 2019-09-01
+weight: 1
+---
+
+This chapter of ally takes place in the <a class="pulse" href="https://github.com/makyo/ally/pull/4" target="_blank">git commit messages</a>, but here are their contents for completion's sake.
+
+> I'm ashamed to know you.
+
+It's a stretch even for me, but hey, here we go.
+
+-----
+
+> Are you having fun with this?
+
+Did you really expect me to not approach the idea of writing about software in any other way? Did you expect me to not be something of a nerd about this?
+
+> I suppose not. Tell me about software, then.
+
+What's to say? Mom decided that, since I was showing an interest in
+computers, it might be a good thing to let me use her copy of
+VisualBasic 4. From there, I just kept on going.
+
+> Well, hold on, you're skipping over a whole bunch of stuff.
+
+I suppose so.
+
+> You're skipping over your dad joking that, since you spent so much
+time on the computer, that he was always worried that the FBI would
+come knocking on the door one day.
+
+Well, he was the one who got me the computers in the first place. He
+bought me a copy of RedHat 6.2 on a CD at Circuit City.
+
+> Oh, my aching bones.
+
+I know. Every single bit of that sentence was ancient.
+
+Still, it's largely his fault. We strung coax throughout the house in a
+simple network. He bought a file server, a copy of Windows NT, and we
+worked on setting up IIS together so that we could have both a file
+share as well as a way of getting those files from work for him, and my
+mom's house for me.
+
+> Very kind of him. Forward thinking.
+
+He wanted me to be an engineer. What better way to get me into the
+mindset? Besides, *stuff* was his game. Our relationship was not yet
+mature enoug that we could be buddies, so instead, he did what he
+thought parents were supposed to do and punished, instructed, and
+showered with gifts. It's just that some of those were computers.
+
+As many gifts bounced off of me as those that stuck and proved useful.
+
+Either way, start a kid on VisualBasic and give her access to AngelFire,
+and you're bound to wound up with at least *some* kind of nerd.

content/writing/software/02.md

@@ -0,0 +1,36 @@
+---
+date: 2019-09-01
+weight: 2
+---
+
+Matthew was pretty keen on Perl at the start. Something about all the delicious punctuation, all the built-in obfuscation was appealing. Something about how you could write an incantastion that was difficult to read unless you had the proper knowledge tickled him.
+
+> He wasn't very good at it.
+
+Well, no. He was pretty terrible at it. He uploaded some samples to Perl Monks and mostly got yelled at. From then on, he developed alone, with little to no communication about what he was doing with anyone who might be able to help.
+
+> A solipsistic software engineer? Color me surprised.
+
+Right.
+
+Perl filled high school. Dumb scripts to walk a directory (despite a module already existing in CPAN). A guestbook. A forum. A terrible website.
+
+> Was it that bad?
+
+[RF!P](https://web.archive.org/web/20050202100148/http://ranna.babylonia.flatirons.org/)? Oh yes.
+
+> At least you can see the dull adherence to monochromatic web design started early on.
+
+Listen. Color is hard.
+
+Either way. There was a brief PHP phase toward the end of high school, and then it was off to university and John Wright teaching him about Python and Django, and he was lost.
+
+It made it so easy to start projects.
+
+> Too easy.
+
+Yes. They littered his computer, his [git repositories](https://github.com/makyo-old/). Started and abandoned, sometimes even before any code was written. There exist more than one project which is simply a skeleton of a Django application with a name. No code. No documents. No info.
+
+> No motivation.
+
+Or maybe only the false motivation that comes along with hypomania.

content/writing/software/03.md

@@ -0,0 +1,30 @@
+---
+date: 2019-09-01
+weight: 3
+---
+
+At some point in late 2005, I got my first job in computers--
+
+> Well, hold on. What about that summer job at Rational?
+
+That was before birth, remember. That happened to someone else. That happened somewhere else.
+
+> You have nothing to say about your mom getting you a job testing software with one of her friends? You have nothing to say about learning the boredom of menial tasks? You have nothing to say about the time you found a rendering bug in Java, some part of the windowing system, but you couldn't file it because the bug was that characters from the PuTTY screen showing your MUCK connection showed through, scattershot? You have nothing to say about bagel mornings, about the breakfast burritos you still think about, about stopping at the hot dog cart on the way home and getting to know Mikey, who sold them, about the countless jokes you shared about how awful ketchup was on a hot dog?
+
+Clearly you do.
+
+> You thought it was great at first. No restaurant work for your first job, but something in computers. Something you could be proud of. That pride your dad taught you. Then you learned about what goes into a QA tester's job. Then you learned about how boring computers could actually be. Then you learned how to resent them for how much of a mistake they were in the first place.
+
+Bit harsh, but true enough.
+
+> "Computers were a mistake", right? That's how you put it?
+
+Yes.
+
+> So you got your first job in computers shortly after you were born --- don't try to tell me it wasn't. It was the summer after your Freshman year. Your metaphor won't always hold up.
+
+...Ah. Right.
+
+> And then you never got a summer job again until university. You kept looking, but there was little for you to do that would hold your interest if computers were so spoiled for you. You applied at coffee shops. You applied at Blockbuster. You applied at the YMCA.
+
+And every summer, I disappointed my mom further.

content/writing/software/04.md

@@ -0,0 +1,22 @@
+---
+date: 2019-09-01
+weight: 4
+---
+
+Well, then I suppose my second job in computers was in late 2005, when I got that job at the library. That was far more comfortable.
+
+> Or you were far more mature, perhaps.
+
+Maybe. Either way, it was something that I was able to actually focus on, do a good job on. There was downtime, and sometimes it got crazy. Sometimes we'd come into the library long before it opened and blast music while we installed or reimaged whole swaths of computers.
+
+Sometimes we'd dick around. Nerf footballs, library cart racing. One time Josiah locked the surplus filing cabinet we had but did not have the key for and we had to drill out the lock. When we got it unlocked, the first thing he did was to lock it again. We hollered and chased him from the room as we struggled desperately to unlock the cabinet once again.
+
+> It was fun.
+
+For the most part, yes. I did some development for them, too. It was my first software job as well as my first job in computers. I did the Atmospheric Sciences Reading Room site. I did some campus mapping. I was enjoying it.
+
+Enjoying it enough that, when my future in music burned down around my ears, I was ready enough to jump on any job offer in tech that I could manage to pull off.
+
+> Whether or not it was something you might actually enjoy.
+
+Yes.

content/writing/software/05.md

@@ -0,0 +1,24 @@
+---
+date: 2019-09-01
+weight: 5
+---
+
+At least I enjoyed it at first.
+
+> You did, yes. You worked ten, twelve hours a day.
+
+I was doing something. I was actually producing something, and it was being recognized by people. Music was fine, sure, but no one really paid it much attention.
+
+> Is anybody paying attention to your writing?
+
+You are.
+
+> If you say so.
+
+A few others, maybe.
+
+> If you say so.
+
+Don't be cruel.
+
+> If you say so.

content/writing/software/06.md

@@ -0,0 +1,26 @@
+---
+date: 2019-09-01
+weight: 6
+---
+
+I enjoyed it until I didn't. It turned into a grind, it turned depressing. I started getting angry. I tried to commit suicide --- we'll get to that later, just to preempt you distracting me.
+
+> You know me too well.
+
+Do I?
+
+> Don't lose focus. You left UHG for Canonical, and started all over again.
+
+I lasted longer this time, in terms of burnout. I was productive for a lot longer. I liked the job a lot better. Even after I left, I think I liked it better at its worst than I liked IA at its worst.
+
+> And at least you did rather like some of the coworkers.
+
+But we can talk about that later. Distraction, remember?
+
+> Sure, sure.
+
+But it's been seven years, and it appears that's all I'm good for. I was good for music for seven years. It's been seven years, and I'm not sure I'm good for programming. Will writing fade from me, too? Seven years down the line?
+
+When will you fade?
+
+> When will you fade?

content/writing/software/_index.md

@@ -0,0 +1,4 @@
+---
+type: serial
+back: /18
+---

static/map.dot

@@ -2,19 +2,6 @@ digraph Map {
     node[shape="box"]
     label=""
 
-    node[group="aside",style="",fontcolor="#111111"]
-    "Aside 1" [href="/aside/1"]
-    "Aside 2" [href="/aside/2"]
-    "Aside 3" [href="/aside/3"]
-
-    node[group="birds",style="",fontcolor="#111111"]
-    "Birds 1" [href="/birds"]
-    "Birds 2" [href="/birds/2"]
-    "Birds 3" [href="/birds/3"]
-    "Birds 4" [href="/birds/4"]
-    "Birds 5" [href="/birds/5"]
-    "Birds 1" -> "Birds 2" -> "Birds 3" -> "Birds 4" -> "Birds 5"
-
     node[group="ally",style="",fontcolor="#111111"] // `core` folder
     "ally 1" [href="/"]
     "ally 2" [href="/2"]
@@ -34,11 +21,28 @@ digraph Map {
     "ally 16" [href="/16"]
     "ally 17" [href="/17"]
     "ally 18" [href="/18"]
+    "ally 19" [href="/19"]
+    "ally 20" [href="/20"]
+    "ally 21" [href="/21"]
+    "ally 22" [href="/22"]
     "To be continued..." [shape="none"]
     "ally 1" -> "ally 2" -> "ally 3" -> "ally 4" -> "ally 5" ->
     "ally 6" -> "ally 7" -> "ally 8" -> "ally 9" -> "ally 10" ->
     "ally 11" -> "ally 12" -> "ally 13" -> "ally 14" -> "ally 15" ->
-    "ally 16" -> "ally 17" -> "ally 18" -> "To be continued..."
+    "ally 16" -> "ally 17" -> "ally 18" -> "ally 19" -> "ally 20" -> "ally 21" -> "ally 22" "To be continued..."
+
+    node[group="aside",style="",fontcolor="#111111"]
+    "Aside 1" [href="/aside/1"]
+    "Aside 2" [href="/aside/2"]
+    "Aside 3" [href="/aside/3"]
+
+    node[group="birds",style="",fontcolor="#111111"]
+    "Birds 1" [href="/birds"]
+    "Birds 2" [href="/birds/2"]
+    "Birds 3" [href="/birds/3"]
+    "Birds 4" [href="/birds/4"]
+    "Birds 5" [href="/birds/5"]
+    "Birds 1" -> "Birds 2" -> "Birds 3" -> "Birds 4" -> "Birds 5"
 
     node[group="dad",style="filled",fillcolor="#cccccc",fontcolor="#222222"]
     "Dad 1" [href="/dad/1"]

themes/ally/layouts/core/list.html

@@ -1,7 +1,7 @@
 {{ define "main" }}
 <main id="main">
     {{ .Content }}
-    {{ $paginator := .Paginate (and (where .Pages ".Params.date" "!=" nil) (where .Pages ".Type" "==" "core")) 1 }}
+    {{ $paginator := .Paginate (and (where .Pages ".Params.date" "!=" nil) (where .Pages ".Type" "==" "ally")) 1 }}
     {{ range $paginator.Pages.ByWeight }}
     {{ .Content }}
     {{ end }}