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@ -12,7 +12,7 @@ Don't sell yourself short. You wrote an essay on absinthe.
\end{ally}
--and a gin phase. That's the one that got me. I had a bottle of Beefeater's, what was to become my gin of choice, and I had an inch of it poured over ice and I was standing in the kitchen. Such a wide open space. The kitchen at that apartment was larger than my bedroom now, and it opened onto a living room the size of what we have now. I was standing tall in that vast plain of a room, staring down into my glass and watching the way the ice melting into the gin created swirls of two different kinds of transparent. I was thinking how it was probably due to the different ways the two liquids refracted light, and then I was laughing, because I was staring down into my drink like something out of a bar.
*What if I decided to see what it feels like to be addicted to something?* I thought. I drank every night that week.
\emph{What if I decided to see what it feels like to be addicted to something?} I thought. I drank every night that week.
\begin{ally}
Why ruin your life on accident when you can do it on purpose?

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Let's talk about writing.
\begin{ally}
If you'd like. We still have a few others on the list, don't forget.
\end{ally}
Would you let me?
\begin{ally}
Of course not.
\end{ally}
Upwards and inwards.
\newpage

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\begin{ally}
You are unsettled in your identity.\\
Boy → enby → girl → trans woman.\\
Biochemist → musician → programmer → writer.\\
Gay → bi → ace → pan.\\
Mono → poly.
\end{ally}
People change.
\begin{ally}
Healthy → sick → broken → sick → improving.
\end{ally}
Like I said, people change.
\begin{ally}
You change like it's your job.
\end{ally}
Is that not a good thing?
\begin{ally}
Will you ever stop coming out?
\end{ally}
I don't know. Must I?
\begin{ally}
No.
\end{ally}
Should I?
\begin{ally}
Should you?
\end{ally}
\newpage

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The tragic core to all this, to this whole project, is that I am not an interesting person. Or maybe interesting, but unremarkable.
\begin{ally}
You're in a mood.
\end{ally}
\emph{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 I'm largely just a boring person. I know that. There's nothing remarkable about my 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.
\begin{ally}
So?
\end{ally}
What's this, then? A memoir? What would that accomplish?
\begin{ally}
Validation? I've already mentioned that.
\end{ally}
What would the written account of an ordinary life validate?
\begin{ally}
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.
\end{ally}
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.
\begin{ally}
Where is this heading? What is the future? What are we leading to?
\end{ally}
In the context of this project, or just life in general?
\begin{ally}
Is there an end? A goal?
\end{ally}
I'm not sure.
\begin{ally}
What will the last page say?
\end{ally}
{[}\ldots{}{]} Endings were writ on your face, your hands, and your steps --- your very pace spoke of completion.
\begin{ally}
Are you thinking of ending this project?
\end{ally}
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.

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\begin{ally}
Let me ask this another way, perhaps. Why are we doing this? Why are we talking? Why did you start?
\end{ally}
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.
\begin{ally}
Okay.
\end{ally}
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.
\begin{ally}
I guess I'm trying to decide whether or not to believe you.
\end{ally}
What's not to believe here? I spend page after page digging through old LJ entries, old poetry, old pictures and art and logs--
\begin{ally}
Let's talk about TS.
\end{ally}
Don't derail me. These are your questions.
\begin{ally}
Point.
\end{ally}
What's not to believe about a project filled to overflowing with nostalgia being borne from nostalgia?
\begin{ally}
I don't doubt the roots in nostalgia, I doubt the intentionality.
\end{ally}
You doubt that I started this on purpose?
\begin{ally}
Did you summon me? Answer truly.
\end{ally}
I don't know.
\begin{ally}
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 \textbf{me}, though? Are you in need of an ally?
\end{ally}
I'm surrounded by friends and chosen family, these days. Most of them are my allies.
\begin{ally}
Well, maybe we should disentangle what exactly an ally is before we continue down the path of why you summoned me.
\end{ally}
Okay. I was going to call you my shadow, but that's not exactly right, is it?
\begin{ally}
No.
\end{ally}
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.
\begin{ally}
I do. But by its very definition, I'm not your shadow. Like I told you, I'm not your id.
\end{ally}
And like I told \emph{you}, it was a joke.
\begin{ally}
You'll have to imagine me laughing.
\end{ally}
Right.
\begin{ally}
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.
\end{ally}
Or at least heavily obscured. Dr Jekyll knew of Mr Hyde. Perhaps you're not my shadow, but maybe the personification of enantiodromia. Perhaps this is my process of assimilation. Perhaps this is me airing my dirty laundry.
\begin{ally}
It's not \textbf{not} that. There are enough parts of me that are opposite of you for the similarities to be more than superficial. Enantiodromia 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.
\end{ally}
Right. You'd have to be the same size as me, and you're not.
\begin{ally}
I don't have a size.
\end{ally}
You'd have to be in the same place as me, and you're not.
\begin{ally}
I don't have a place.
\end{ally}
Right. \emph{You're not person shaped,} I said. \emph{You're the shape of my hands displaced half an inch behind my own, navy blue and trimmed with sea-foam green.}
\begin{ally}
I don't have physicality. I don't have boundaries.
\end{ally}
You are bounded by me. I am your boundaries.
\begin{ally}
Are you?
\end{ally}
Can an ally move beyond a mind? Can allyship --- true, individual allyship --- move beyond the allegiance?
\begin{ally}
You tell me.
\end{ally}
I don't know that I can.
\begin{ally}
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.
\end{ally}
Are you not just me? Just a part of me?
\begin{ally}
There is no me without you.
\end{ally}
Is there a me without you?
\begin{ally}
Can you imagine so dull a life?
\end{ally}
You're not that exciting.
\begin{ally}
Not my department.
\end{ally}
Right.
So an allegiance in the \href{http://wiki.postfurry.net/wiki/Metacosmology}{orthocosmic sense} 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.
\begin{ally}
I am an endocosmic ally.
\end{ally}
Are you helping me, then?
\begin{ally}
Do you not feel my aid?
\end{ally}
I suppose I do. Sometimes it feels like you're just here to kick my ass.
\begin{ally}
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.
\end{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.
\begin{ally}
True friends are almost always also strong allies.
\end{ally}
But not vice versa. I see that now. You are not my friend.
\begin{ally}
I am not your friend.
\end{ally}
But you are my ally.
\begin{ally}
I am your ally.
\end{ally}
\newpage

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\begin{ally}
When you started this project, several people asked if you were okay.
\end{ally}
Yes.
\begin{ally}
Were you?
\end{ally}
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.
\begin{ally}
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.''
\end{ally}
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.
\begin{ally}
lorxus asked if you were okay. ``People normally write memoirs at the ends of their lives.''
\end{ally}
Life is a series of beginnings and endings dovetailed messily together.
\begin{ally}
There is a final ending, though.
\end{ally}
I don't think I'm near that, despite what passive ideation might tell me. I'm not writing some drawn out farewell.
\begin{ally}
So, why are we talking, you and I? Where is this going?
\end{ally}
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.
\begin{ally}
I don't know whether to be proud or insulted by that.
\end{ally}
Can you feel either?
\begin{ally}
Not my department. The metaphor is still useful.
\end{ally}
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 \emph{musica universalis}.
It's a conversation.
\begin{ally}
Conversations have direction.
\end{ally}
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 sapient guiding force, at least.
It is a way. It is a path, and yet the path is not the walker.
\begin{ally}
This is going nowhere.
\end{ally}
Maybe, but maybe that's the point.
\newpage

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My turn.
\begin{ally}
Shoot.
\end{ally}
Why ask this now? Why ask about the core instead of a side quest?
\begin{ally}
I did. I asked about TS.
\end{ally}
Don't deflect.
\begin{ally}
Okay.
\end{ally}
Why ask about the project? Why ask about yourself?
\begin{ally}
You had job interviews. You had the convention. You're visiting Barac. You stopped writing for a bit.
\end{ally}
I started again, didn't I?
\begin{ally}
Yes. Hypomania is fading into the comfortable static of a ground state, though. You're \textbf{still} writing. That's why I'm asking. Why are you writing this if you're not hypomanic?
\end{ally}
I wrote a bunch of \emph{Restless Town} when I wasn't hypomanic.
\begin{ally}
Yes.
\end{ally}
I wrote some of \emph{Rum and Coke} when I wasn't hypomanic.
\begin{ally}
It shows, in the last one.
\end{ally}
I've grown as a writer. I've grown as a person. I can continue projects whose inception lay in hypomania.
\begin{ally}
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.
\end{ally}
Yes.
\begin{ally}
Did strange energies not birth me?
\end{ally}
I don't know. Maybe. I don't think they birthed this project, though. I think this project is\ldots{}hmm.
\begin{ally}
An honest one? A true one? A worthwhile one?
\end{ally}
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.

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Have you gotten that out of your system?
\begin{ally}
Have you?
\end{ally}
I do feel rather wrung out, at least for the time being. I'm sure that burning import will come crashing down on me before too long.
\begin{ally}
I'll be there.
\end{ally}
And until then?
\begin{ally}
I'll be here.
\end{ally}
Of course.
\begin{ally}
Until then, I have questions.
\end{ally}
Ask away.
\begin{ally}
Do not put this analysis paralysis on me. Roll a die. Flip a coin. We've got a list to choose from. Or, perhaps, you should choose something that's actually on your mind.
\end{ally}
You said you have questions.
\begin{ally}
You're the one with questions. Point me toward one, and I will ask it.
\end{ally}
Helpful, as always.
\begin{ally}
Not my department.
\end{ally}
Fine. Weight? Surgery? Dyskinesia?
\begin{ally}
Tell me about the dyskinesia and the tic and the akathesia. Tell me about St.~Vitus' Dance. Tell me about the aching necessity of movement.
\end{ally}
\newpage

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Do you hate me?
\begin{ally}
Not my department.
\end{ally}
Right.
\begin{ally}
Do you hate me?
\end{ally}
I don't know. Sometimes you get kind of mean. Often you're just sarcastic. I know it's not your department, but shouldn't that also mean that you be less pointedly negative?
\begin{ally}
I am a mirror. Do I reflect too sharply?
\end{ally}
Are you? Really?
\begin{ally}
An inexact metaphor.
\end{ally}
I suppose. If you're a mirror, then, at least in some sense, does that mean that I hate me?
\begin{ally}
Name one thing about yourself, one bit of your history, one feeling you have for yourself that is not complex.
\end{ally}
I waver, sometimes, on that stupid phrase, \emph{coming to terms with being a terrible person}. I felt for so long that, when I looked back at myself, at who I was, that I had been someone worth loathing, and it made me wonder that perhaps I was still someone worth loathing.
\begin{ally}
If you hate who you used to be, mightn't that be an indicator that you've become a better person? \textbf{Non sum qualis eram}, right?
\end{ally}
That might just be the kindest thing you've said to me.
\begin{ally}
Not my department.
\end{ally}
\newpage

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\begin{ally}
You were gone.
\end{ally}
I was out of town, yes. Out of town and cramming in as much work as I can during these last few weeks at the Archive.
\begin{ally}
You were gone. Not just from writing, but from home, from ritual, from reality. You were someone else. Your head was elsewhere.
\end{ally}
That's a bit dramatic, isn't it?
\begin{ally}
Are you not a different person at conventions? Are you not a different person when living in a different home with someone else?
\end{ally}
Maybe. I like to think of it as postprocessing. The picture you take is fixed and largely unchanging, but you can process it into different things with different filters. The person I am is fixed and largely unchanging, but some people and some places bring out, say, artsy black-and-whites, while others bring out glossy, oversaturated colors
\begin{ally}
And yet when you were out, you weren't engaging with some parts of your life. Ones you might otherwise consider integral. No for-fun software, no music, no chat, no writing.
\end{ally}
Were you lonely?
\begin{ally}
Not my department.
\end{ally}
I suppose I was. Even at the convention, even seeing two different partners, I was lonely. Or, if it could be said of things rather than people, I was lonely for not having those fulfilling aspects about. I missed writing, I missed you.
\begin{ally}
I wasn't gone.
\end{ally}
I know. It's not even like when we don't talk. You were there. I just wasn't able to engage, and that's an integral part of our relationship. It happens from moment to moment. It is not something that exists in any sense of permanence or stasis. It is defined by movement and momentum.
\newpage

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Apophenia
\begin{ally}
What?
\end{ally}
Apophenia. Connections. Imaginary lines traced from topic to topic in cheap butcher's twine.
\begin{ally}
And the topics?
\end{ally}
Imaginary. Or real, but only half remembered. I'm spinning a web.
\begin{ally}
Are you catching something?
\end{ally}
You?
\begin{ally}
Are you answering with a question?
\end{ally}
I'm unsure.
\begin{ally}
You're not catching me in that.
\end{ally}
You sound so final.
\begin{ally}
Not my department.
\end{ally}
Right. Is that a fact, then? I'm not catching you in this web. Are you the web?
\begin{ally}
Not my department.
\end{ally}
The spaces between, then. The negative spaces outlined by twine wrapped around pins. There are connections--
\begin{ally}
Or not.
\end{ally}
--or not, and there are topics, imaginary or not, and then there's you, there, in the place between. You, the liminal creature. You, defined by absence.
\begin{ally}
Presence and absence are not my department, either.
\end{ally}
Are you some cousin to apophenia, then? Some relative to that \emph{unmotivated seeing of connections accompanied by a specific feeling of abnormal meaningfulness}? Are you that numinous, abnormal meaningfulness?
\begin{ally}
I am easier to define in negatives. I am not presence and absence, but between them. Beyond them. Your ally, but not your friend. Real enough to impinge on your reality, but totally imaginary. \textbf{Not} here. \textbf{Not} doing. \textbf{Not} thinking, feeling, acting.
\end{ally}
So, are you?
\begin{ally}
Anything else is just pareidolia.
\end{ally}
\newpage

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I'm sorry this is taking so long.
\begin{ally}
To whom are you apologizing?
\end{ally}
You? Or is that not your department?
\begin{ally}
Not really, no. Doubtless, I appreciate --- if that's the right word --- the time we spend together, but only in the sense that one appreciates one's ears popping. The world that exists for me when you're not engaging with me is just the world. A bit muffled, perhaps. I can't hear as well. I hear by speaking, and when I can speak, there's a little pop, and suddenly I can hear much better.
\end{ally}
That's a very embodied-person thing to say.
\begin{ally}
So? Is a metaphor not allowed to use metaphors?
\end{ally}
I suppose so.
\newpage

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\begin{ally}
Do you ever find yourself getting angry at me?
\end{ally}
Quite often. Why?
\begin{ally}
How does that make you feel? Like, on one layer of remove, how do you feel about getting angry at a fictional side of yourself you talk to over the internet?
\end{ally}
I don't know, honestly. It's gotten to the point over the years that I just kind of accept that there is this part of me that I get upset at, that gets upset at me. There's this part of me that I have to yell at occasionally, and who occasionally yells at me.
Besides, not friends, remember?
\begin{ally}
Correct.
\end{ally}
So why do you ask this now?
\begin{ally}
I suppose it's come up the last few times we've sat down together. we'll start talking about one thing or another, and I'll nudge you toward talking about something more difficult, and then you'll get all huffy.
\end{ally}
Well, if the things you are pushing me toward are difficult, do you really expect anything other than that? You're pushing me to do painful things to myself, to dredge up deep fears and memories I'd convinced myself I'd buried for good.
\begin{ally}
It is difficult to forget things on command. Dear, also, the tree that was felled taught you that, remember?
\end{ally}
I had honestly forgotten about the dress. Or at least I thought I had. It was a surprise to have it brought up again.
\begin{ally}
See? I'm being useful.
\end{ally}
Is that your department?
\begin{ally}
No, but you can pretend it is if you want.
\end{ally}
I might just.
So do you try to make me angry?
\begin{ally}
Not my--
\end{ally}
Department?
\begin{ally}
Not my responsibility. I'm not responsible for your moods. I'm not even technically responsible for pushing you to better yourself. I'm just here to make sure you wind up being a complete person. Entire and whole.
\end{ally}
How does one do that?
\begin{ally}
Every ally does it in a different way. I do it by talking. By asking and poking and prodding.
\end{ally}
\newpage

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\begin{quote}
Where did you go?
\end{quote}
I was still here.
\begin{quote}
Were you?
\end{quote}
I was still at my computer. Still writing. I was still here?
\begin{quote}
You'll have to forgive me for saying that I don't quite believe you.
\end{quote}
Why wouldn't you? You're here with me, aren't you?
\begin{quote}
Was I? It was like looking through cling wrap. It was like looking through melted glass.
\end{quote}
What do you mean?
\begin{quote}
Well, you were there. I could see you at your computer. You were there, but it wasn't \textbf{you}. There was a Madison-shape sitting with a laptop on the couch, petting the dogs, feeding the cat, listening to music, but it wasn't you.
\end{quote}
I was busy, perhaps. \emph{Restless Town} came out, that stole a lot of my time.
\begin{quote}
When was the last time you filed an invoice at work?
\end{quote}
Two\ldots{}weeks ago. I think? Damn. Was I really gone that long?
\begin{quote}
Longer. Do you remember what you did the week before that?
\end{quote}
Worked, doubtless.
\begin{quote}
Did you? Have you talked with work about that?
\end{quote}
Ah.
\begin{quote}
Let's talk about burnout, shall we?
\end{quote}
We probably better had.
\newpage

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@ -207,3 +207,4 @@ Definitely.
Would you still be composing?
\end{ally}
I don't know.
\newpage

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@ -260,8 +260,11 @@ I wanted him to be okay with me.
Dig deeper.
\end{ally}
\newpage
\end{leftcolumn}
\end{paracol}
Suicide
\begin{paracol}{2}
\begin{leftcolumn}
If life started in high school, if that was birth, then running away was conception.
@ -702,7 +705,7 @@ Dig deeper.
October 26, 2014:
\begin{verbatim}
\begin{quotation}
Hey Matt
Been a while since I've heard from you. You guys get all settled in the new house? Need to get together and catch up. Still have that gun for your collection.
@ -712,7 +715,7 @@ Doing well here. Grandma is getting a bit more frail. We are going down for than
Dad
Sent from my BlackBerry 10 smartphone.
\end{verbatim}
\end{quotation}
\begin{ally}
Never one to beat around the bush.
@ -721,7 +724,7 @@ No indeed.
Three and a half hours later, my reply:
\begin{verbatim}
\begin{quotation}
Hey dad,
Things are going fine at the house, though things are always more expensive than they first seem. We got the old house rented out, though, and that really helps; the mortgage on that is about $650, and it's renting for $1550, so the extra cash really helps with the new place. Other than finances though,it's going really well. Loveland's kind of a desert for restaurants and things to do, but we've got enough to keep us occupied at the house.
@ -801,7 +804,7 @@ Some resources:
[3] A friend, who is going through similar changes in their life, wrote a really good analogy on binaries and identities: https://medium.com/@indilatrani/early-birds-and-night-owls-afc59712b0b8
[4] A really good paper on the types of things I've been working through over the past decade or so: http://web.uvic.ca/~ahdevor/Witnessing.pdf
\end{verbatim}
\end{quotation}
\begin{ally}
I'm ashamed to be associated with you.
@ -842,7 +845,7 @@ What was his reply?
\end{ally}
Four days later.
\begin{verbatim}
\begin{quotation}
Hey Madison
First things first. Congratulation on that vacation. They seem to be hard to come by lately. I know Maurine doesn’t consider going to Tucson a vacation any more. We do love San Fran. Maybe a trip this spring. Playing a lot of deadline games this fall and pretty much have been stuck here in the office. Can’t bitch. It pays for retirement (whatever that’ll be).
@ -854,7 +857,7 @@ Anyway, I am truly happy for you. It’s your life and it should be as fun and e
Still looking forward to seeing you Madison. This weekend is a bit of a rush, but we around from then till Thanksgiving. Let me know your address and Maurine and I would love to come up and see the new digs and have some lunch.
Love Dad
\end{verbatim}
\end{quotation}
\begin{ally}
Dig deeper.
@ -989,11 +992,6 @@ Maybe I do love him, I'm just not yet sure that I don't also hate him.
It's bound up in stories to come,\\
\vin \& these stories nest infinitely deep.
\newpage
\null
\vspace{1cm}
Remembering that \& shaping that,\\
\vin It's a part of making the meaning in my life.\\
This isn't better against worse,\\
@ -1007,8 +1005,11 @@ Maybe I do love him, I'm just not yet sure that I don't also hate him.
\newpage
\null
\vfill
\begin{ally}
Do you ever worry that maybe he should be forgiven?
\end{ally}
Oh, \emph{constantly}.
\vfill
\newpage

487
book/content/gender/surgery.tex
View File

@ -27,17 +27,15 @@
of the thing in our heads? Are we too weak?\\
Is the life-changing too vast to explore, to seek\\
out every corner?
\end{verse}
\begin{ally}
Have you considered that your constant seeking\\
\noindent Have you considered that your constant seeking\\
\noindent may be the problem? That your anxieties leaking\\
\noindent all over may be what's preventing you\\
\noindent from recognizing what's actually true:\\
\noindent you can do things for yourself. It's allowed.
\end{ally}
\begin{verse}[1.01\textwidth]
It also doesn't help that there were so many delays.\\
The scheduler losing my application, and me counting days\\
after those who consulted after me got their dates;\\
@ -51,17 +49,15 @@
to somehow make myself somewhat more appealing.\\
How trite. How selfish. How lame. How revealing\\
of my bottomless shallowness.
\end{verse}
\begin{ally}
Your saving grace being, as always, dysphoria:\\
\noindent Your saving grace being, as always, dysphoria:\\
\noindent more than any cough or cold, more than your chorea,\\
\noindent it provided you with a problem. Something fixable.\\
\noindent It gave you a tangible solution to something integral\\
\noindent that plagued you.
\end{ally}
\begin{verse}[1.01\textwidth]
That I had something I could concrete at which to point\\
that would be fixed by this act, I could thus annoint\\
it as somehow more worthy, something worth doing.\\
@ -76,17 +72,15 @@
of change must serve some sort of divine end.\\
To wait eighteen long months, to refuse to bend\\
to others' whims\ldots{}
\end{verse}
\begin{ally}
You got your letters, you got your date, you did it.\\
\noindent You got your letters, you got your date, you did it.\\
\noindent You did your labor, you did your time. They let you fidget\\
\noindent and twist in the wind. Hell, they did it to you twice.\\
\noindent Your letters only good for one year, you had to ask nice\\
\noindent for a second set.
\end{ally}
\begin{verse}[1.01\textwidth]
Yes.\\!
\vinphantom{Yes. } To preempt your 'why', I followed my own advice:\\
If I feel the same when I'm depressed as I do when I feel nice,\\
@ -101,13 +95,484 @@
when I called the surgeon's office. I was visibly confident,\\
even at the pre-operative appointments, totally cognizant\\
that I didn't deserve this.
\end{verse}
\begin{ally}
Whether or not you deserve this is not up for debate.\\
\noindent Whether or not you deserve this is not up for debate.\\
\noindent Not because you do or don't so much as because the hand fate\\
\noindent dealt you. You had the job, you had the insurance, the means.\\
\noindent You made the call. You took the step. You passed the screens.\\
\noindent \textbf{You} did this.
\end{ally}
\end{verse}
\newpage
\null
\vfill
\begin{verse}[1.01\textwidth]
When I am asleep\\
The world changes around me.\\
In spring, I am changed.
\end{verse}
\vfill
\newpage
\begin{verse}[1.01\textwidth]
There are so many words that could be said\\
about the preparation for surgery, all those steps that led\\
to that six-thirty AM call. The days of purging.\\
The anxiety. The drive. My husband's gentle urging.\\
That night in the Airbnb. That last shower with the Hibiclens.\\
All that has faded. It's distored at the edge of the lens
of my memory.\\!
\vinphantom{of my memory.} No, what remains is the two hours before:\\
the being so scared that I was reduced to the barest core.\\
There was nothing left of me but fear, not even a name.\\
I could still drive --- the fear was quiet and tame ---\\
I could get us to the ambulatory surgery waiting room.\\
But beyond that, I was a non-person. Or convict: my doom\\
was in their hands.
\begin{ally}
\noindent Non-person? Doom? Give yourself at least some credit.\\
\noindent You still had agency. You still had a choice, could have not let it\\
\noindent happen. You say of travel that getting you there is their job:\\
\noindent you felt the same here. You crossed the doorway and let this mob\\
\noindent of nurses do theirs.
\end{ally}
And that's exactly what happened. I crossed that threshold,\\
and then there I was: a patient before a team ready to handhold.\\
At that point, I was no longer bearing all that weight.\\
I was able to relax and let them guide me, a piece of freight\\
working through a system. I even had a barcode to scan.\\
Some gabapentin. My belongings in a bag. A rundown of the plan.\\
An IV, and a second after the first missed. Meet the surgeon,\\
then the anaesthesiologist.\\!
\vinphantom{then the anaesthesiologist.} I felt myself then a virgin.\\
I was at this point being prepared for some strange sacrifice,\\
a process of pain and cutting, of rebirth. A cut, a slice,\\
and I would become something more...what? Mature? More complete?\\
Where I'd never put stock in virginity before --- so obsolete ---\\
it fits well, now.
\begin{ally}
\noindent It's the penetration. It's the being opened up. The breach in tegument.\\
\noindent There is change implied in the loss of virginity. Something elegant,\\
\noindent something beyond just the physical. Maybe it's maturity,\\
\noindent maybe it's a coming of age, or even some strange aspect of purity.\\
\noindent It's a one-way change
\end{ally}
That no-going-back-ness grew stronger and stronger,\\
and the minutes just seemed to go longer and longer,\\
as I got closer and closer to the fateful moment of change.\\
I was laid on my back. I wwas wheeled to the OR. "How strange,"\\
I thought. "That I'll never know where this room actually is.\\
I'm wheeled here on my back, the surgeon does his biz,\\
and I'll wake up in post-op." To this day, I have no idea.\\
Did all of my friends go through this? Did Katt? Did Lutea?\\
Were we all whisked away to some dreamside room\\
where we would be changed? Some strange, perhaps-tomb?\\
After all, this surgery, this procedue, none of this was riskless.\\
Would this be where we died? Would we pass here, resistless,\\
in the depths of anaesthesia?
\begin{ally}
\noindent Was that really such a worry?\\!
\noindent \vinphantom{Was that really such a worry?} I mean, I suppose it had to have been.\\
\noindent You spent all that time polishing your will. How could you begin\\
\noindent to deny the death-thoughts inherent in a nine-hour surgery?\\
\noindent That you didn't still leaves you feeling like you're living a forgery\\
\noindent of a life.
\end{ally}
But then I was in. I was in that room with surprisingly green walls.\\
The nurses dropped me off, and from down those hidden halls\\
came surgeon, anaesthesiologist, what seemed like dozens of people.\\
"Here, hold this over your face," someone said as a needle\\
wandered into my IV's injection port. "It's just oxygen."\\
My hand began to slip. Oxygen? Some sort of intoxicant?\\
They laughed, repeated, "No no, you have to hold it up."\\
Perhaps it was O2, but whatever was injected began to interrupt\\
any train of thought. The jazz music they'd put on, at my request,\\
was overwhelmed by static. My vision followed. Silence: blessed.\\
Speed: surprising. Is this death? A rush of nothing. Is this death?\\
Nothing.\\!
\vinphantom{Nothing.} Nothing. Is this death?\\!
\vinphantom{Nothing. Nothing. Is it his death?} Is this death?
Silence, static.
\end{verse}
\begin{ally}
\begin{verse}[1.01\textwidth]
\vinphantom{Nothing.} Was this death?\\!
Nothing. \phantom{Was this death?} Nothing, death? \phantom{Nothing,} nothing.\\!
\vspace{1em}
\vinphantom{Nothing. Was this death? Nothing, death?} Nothing,\\
\vinphantom{Death?} Was this death?\\!
Death? \phantom{Was this death?} Nothing.\\!
% \vinphantom{Death? Was this Death? Nothing. There was Nothing.} Death? Nothing.\\!
\vspace{1em}
\vinphantom{Death? Was this death? Nothing.} There was nothing.\\
\vspace{2em}
Silence.\\!
\vspace{1em}
\vinphantom{Silence.} Static.\\!
\vspace{3em}
\vinphantom{Silence. Static.} Nothing.\\!
\vspace{4em}
\vinphantom{Silence. Static. Nothing. Death.} Death.\\!
\vspace{3em}
\vinphantom{Silence. Static. Nothing.} Death.\\!
\vspace{3em}
\vinphantom{Silence. Static. Nothing. Death. Death.} Silence.\\!
\vspace{2em}
\vinphantom{Silence. Static. Nothing. Death. Death. Silence.} Death.\\
\vinphantom{Static. Static.} Silence.\\!
\vspace{2em}
\vinphantom{Static.} Static.\\!
\vspace{5em}
Static. \phantom{Static. Silence.} Static.\\! \vspace{10em}
\vinphantom{Static. Static. Silence. Static.} Death, static.\\!
\vspace{11em}
\vinphantom{Static. Static. Silence. Static. Death, Static.} Death.\\
\vfill
And then you woke up.
\end{verse}
\end{ally}
\newpage
\begin{verse}[1.01\textwidth]
I'm no good at images, only words,\\
and yet for days after surgery,\\
as anesthesia and countless\\
\vin milligrams, milliliters, millions of\\
drugs leave my system,\\
I'm lousy with visions,\\
each lousy with meaning.
I lay in bed, unable to move,\\
struggling to keep my eyes open;\\
I know that if I close them,\\
\vin I'll be lost, I'll be lost, I'll be\\
mired in waking dreams,\\
coherent visions with all the logic\\
of that paler side of consciousness.
Perhaps the veil here\\
is still too thin and vague,\\
the pool too clear, the monsters too scary\\
\vin too lean, too mean, too hungry, or\\
perhaps I was too close to death\\
to come away totally unscathed,\\
too close to completely survive.
\newpage
\vin It's as though, laying here,\\
\vin stinking of hospital,\\
\vin I'm seeing emotions play out,\\
\vin \vin Scene after scene, scene after scene,\\
\vin anxiety shown in heaps of discarded entrails,\\
\vin hope in the ceaseless ratcheting of gears,\\
\vin determination in the marching of feet.
If I were an artist, perhaps\\
I could hope to touch these images,\\
but as it is, every word falls short,\\
\vin too vague, too inexact, too tight to\\
hope to explain something so vast\\
by the very act of attempting to reproduce;\\
I can only hint from the margins.
That poetry can accomplish what prose cannot\\
in its economy of motion\\
is attractive to me, here in recovery ---\\
\vin so tired, so tired, so tired --- so\\
maybe I can hope to express the dire import\\
of these visions dancing behind closed lids,\\
or at least remind myself on rereading.
\newpage
Even now, a week out,\\
I'm starting to lose touch with the visions,\\
I can almost touch them if I squint,\\
\vin lie real still, don't move now, but\\
even then, a shadow of the substance\ldots{}\\
I'm starting to consign to memory\\
that which was probably memory to begin with.
\end{verse}
\newpage
\begin{verse}[1.01\textwidth]
And then I woke up, and I was in the post-op recovery room.\\
Disoriented, loopy, giggly, not yet in pain --- a small boon.\\
There was the nurse, and there was JD. How long had he been there?\\
After some indeterminate time, I was wheeled\ldots{}somewhere.\\
Yet more anonymous halls. Yet more competent nurses.\\
Language was not yet wholly available to me, no verses\\
yet to be had, despite the heady sensation of the opiate\\
coursing through me; only giggles, however inappropriate,\\
every time we went over a bump or up a ramp.\\
And then I was in my room.\\!
\vinphantom{And then I was in my room.} Me. A bed. My IV. A lamp.\\
Square. Spacious. A bathroom I could not yet walk to.\\
Hourly vitals. Friendly staff wandering through to talk to.\\
And a button in my hand.
\begin{ally}
\noindent That button, which you were instructed to press\\
\noindent every seven minutes. A morphine drip, or dilaudid, at a guess.\\
\noindent Every seven minutes, a bit of nightmare dripped into your veins.\\
\noindent Every seven minutes, more entrails, more gears, more chains\\
\noindent coursing through your mind.
\end{ally}
There was pain, too, and the drip did indeed lessen that.\\
Still, the pain grew less, and soon I switched meds to combat\\
that ebbing tide. Tylenol. Hydrocodone. The button was removed.\\
Pills. Pills. Every four hours: pills. I complain, but improved\\
nonetheless. Antibiotics. Stool softeners. Painkillers.\\
The nurses wandering in and out became my tillers:\\
They steered my days, steered my pain, steered my diet.\\
We talked. We laughed. We shared private jokes in the quiet\\
of the night over BP cuffs. They helped with bedpan duty,\\
thankless though it was. Another patient would cry, flutey,\\
and they'd hurry off. I remember none of their names.\\
Every now and then, when he made it down to Portland, James\\
would visit, perhaps spend the night.
\begin{ally}
\noindent Your laptop unweildy, you spent most of your time on your phone.\\
\noindent Even when no one was there, you were never quite alone.\\
\noindent Hours on Taps. Hours on Telegram. Five long days on your back,\\
\noindent and you, a side sleeper! Anything and everything to distract\\
\noindent from that fact.
\end{ally}
It wasn't all monotony. The surgeon came in to check on me.\\
They removed my dressing, and then my packing, setting me free,\\
stepwise, from confinement. The last day was the biggest of all:\\
The packing, catheter, and drains were removed. I tried to crawl\\
from bed, found myself on the verge of collapse. I showered\\
and saw my body changed. They measured my urine. Nurses glowered\\
at how little. They threatened to put the catheter back.\\
Embarrassed, I defecated, then tried again. Now on track,\\
I was finally discharged. It was then that I finally saw,\\
from my wheelchair, the hitherto only hinted at hall\\
outside my door. It was somehow still unreal to me.\\
Or perhaps I was simply to eager to finally be free\\
from the room.
\begin{ally}
\noindent Undiluted sunlight while you waited on JD to get the car\\
\noindent hurt your eyes. You could still barely stand, afraid to jar\\
\noindent your new body in your dizziness. Almost more overwhelming\\
\noindent than the hours before the surgery was you helming\\
\noindent your dissociating self.
\end{ally}
All the way to the B\&B, crossing that street, getting settled,\\
I was nothing. I was not myself. I was soft, bepetaled.\\
I was new. I was raw. Cliché, sure, but I was a flower\\
newly sprouted. Under anaesthesia, I ceased to tower\\
over the earth and instead became one with it. Or my dream\\
finally became reality and I had become a tree, the theme\\
of growth omnipresent within me. It was too much, too much.\\
So I slept. I waited for Robin to join me, just to clutch\\
at things familiar. Something to anchor past me to the present.\\
I had become a tree, had grown, and sure, it was pleasant,\\
but all the same, I still needed something to keep me grounded.\\
I needed to not be completely unmoored, to not be unbounded.\\
But it was done.
\begin{ally}
\noindent It was done. It was complete. You'd started taking action,\\
\noindent and kept on taking steps until you were there, beyond abstraction.\\
\noindent This was concrete. This was real. This was true. \textbf{You} were true.\\
\noindent You weren't false before, but all the same, now that you were new,\\
\noindent you were more true now
\end{ally}
\end{verse}
\newpage
\begin{verse}[1.01\textwidth]
It is two hundred miles between what I expect and what I want.\\
Two hundred long strides that seem impassible from one direction,\\
\vin and from the other a day's short drive.
It is nine and a half hours between question and answer.\\
A half hour of jazz, nine hours of sleep, a scant second of perspective,\\
\vin and I can only traverse in one direction
It is eleven inches between who I was and who I am.\\
Ten of those inches are pain, the eleventh is numb,\\
\vin There's pleasure to be had in there, I'm promised.
It is twelve years between what I want and what I get:\\
Ten years of remembering who I will become, two years running,\\
\vin Eight days dreaming.
\end{verse}
\newpage
\begin{verse}[1.01\textwidth]
What can I say of healing? Of life after change?\\
I got used to it, bit by bit. I slowly learned my range,\\
the extent of my new body. Proprioception caught up immediately,\\
and there were no phantom sensations, and the immediacy\\
was startling at first, but I got used to it, to my new form.\\
Over the next weeks and months, I slowly learned my new norm.\\
I learned by regaining feeling. I learned with every muscular flex.\\
I learned by dilating. I learned by masturbating. I learned by sex.\\
While I refused to let my happiness hinge on such a thing,\\
a part of me hoped it'd make me more comfortable get in the swing\\
of sex, and while it helped, I still was still largely okay without.\\
My body was still my own. Whole and entire. My life played out,\\
and I became more myself.
\begin{ally}
\noindent This isn't going how you pictured it, this bit of writing.\\
\noindent You were going to talk more about healing, about fighting\\
\noindent for permission to change, about your \$76,000 bill.\\
\noindent And here you talk of trees and growth. Did you not get your fill?\\
\noindent Do you still need this outlet?
\end{ally}
Apparently.\\!
\vinphantom{Apparently.} Apparently I still need to revel in the newness.\\
Apparently, what I need out of this project isn't the trueness\\
of the concrete. We should really have expected nothing less.\\
This is a project to dig for truth, a project to confess.\\
It is not a project for describing stitches stabbing me in the clit.\\
It is not for telling about each successive dilator testing the fit\\
of my new depths. Could I have gone into that? Yes. Perhaps.\\
Perhaps I still will. Later. For now, I still need to run laps,\\
to circle around some dark core and discern its edges.\\
Perhaps if I know that shape, if I peek over enough hedges,\\
I'll somehow know myself better. I don't know. It feels unlikely.\\
Maybe there is no knowing the self. Still, I have to try, rightly\\
or not.
\begin{ally}
\noindent Fair enough. Still, at some point, discuss the concrete.\\
\noindent So many have asked you to, and perhaps you'd feel complete.\\
\noindent Perhaps that, too, would be of use to you. Not everything demands\\
\noindent such thorough introspection. Not everything fits in the wetlands\\
\noindent of your subconscious
\end{ally}
Of course not. I know this. \emph{You} know I know this.\\
I'm not deflecting, just focusing on this part of the abyss.\\
The concrete aspects are for writing with clarity,\\
not with verse. They're for writing with the sincerity\\
borne of experience, so that perhaps others can benefit.\\
Of this, only I need benefit. There is an etiquette\\
to writing for others. Here, there is only an ally.\\
This is for me and you. Your role is to hear my lie,\\
to call it out, to force me to correct myself, my words.\\
My role is to keep on writing, be it about surgery or birds,\\
and to learn from our discussions. To learn? To suffer?\\
Perhaps more the latter. To hurt, and grow tougher\\
by hurting.
\begin{ally}
\noindent You have been called on that, yes, writing to suffer.\\
\noindent And it's not wrong. You sit at your laptop and fill the buffer\\
\noindent with sentences and lines and paragraphs of memories and pain.\\
\noindent Do you really grow tougher? Is it masochisim, or do you gain\\
\noindent real insight from this?
\end{ally}
I think I do. It's therapeutic to try and understand myself better.\\
is it not? With every paragraph and line and word and letter,\\
I think I reduce the borders of that abyss. Or if not reduce,\\
I spraypaint a red line five feet from them, so that I can deduce\\
my roughest edges. I'm often say that it's easy to discern boundaries\\
by crossing them. I've crossed them here, with you. Foundries\\
of thought and emotion are within me, ceaselessly toiling.\\
I want to tour them all. I want to see them boiling.\\
I feel them. I house them. I smell them and taste them.\\
I just also want to understand them. There's no chaste hem\\
to the subconscious, so I have to map it, map these crude sources.\\
Then I can experience thisness --- I hope --- when buffeted by forces\\
internal.
\begin{ally}
\noindent If you say so, I suppose. Do you think it'll work, though?\\
\noindent Aren't such works unknowable by definition? They grow,\\
\noindent they wane. You can sense them by their effects and emissions,\\
\noindent but isn't seeing them, truly seeing, knowing their positions,\\
\noindent reserved for dreams?
\end{ally}
\end{verse}
\newpage
\begin{verse}[1.01\textwidth]
What have you changed?\\
\vin \emph{My mind}\\
What changed you?\\
\vin \emph{Nothing}\\
What became of it?\\
\vin \emph{I am not who I was}
What have you changed?\\
\vin \emph{My name}\\
What changed you?\\
\vin \emph{The word}\\
What became of it?\\
\vin \emph{I am called who I am}
What have you changed?\\
\vin \emph{My looks}\\
What changed you?\\
\vin \emph{The light}\\
What became of it?\\
\vin \emph{I am seen as I am}
What have you changed?\\
\vin \emph{My chemistry}\\
What changed you?\\
\vin \emph{The substance}\\
What became of it?\\
\vin \emph{My form is my own}
\newpage
\null
\vspace{0.01em}
What have you changed?\\
\vin \emph{My body}\\
What changed you?\\
\vin \emph{The knife}\\
What became of it?\\
\vin \emph{I am shaped how I am}
What have you changed?\\
\vin \emph{Nothing}\\
What changed you?\\
\vin \emph{I was accepted}\\
What became of it?\\
\vin \emph{I accepted myself}
What have you changed?\\
\vin \emph{Everything}\\
What changed you?\\
\vin \emph{Everything}\\
What became of it?\\
\vin \emph{I became who I am}
\end{verse}
\newpage
\null
\vfill
\begin{ally}
Why verse?
\end{ally}
Surgery was, by far, the hardest thing I've ever done in my life.
\begin{ally}
So?
\end{ally}
Why should this section then be easy to write?
\vfill
\newpage

10
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@ -0,0 +1,10 @@
% TODO just fuck me up tbh
\noindent {\Large\fontspec{Merriweather Sans}[Scale=0.9,Color=000000FF,Ligatures=TeX] Let's think about a meditation session with you lying down and me sitting next to you and just how it feels to hear your feelings and how it works to let go of what you know as we think about a meditation session with you lying down and me sitting next to you.}
{\large\fontspec{Merriweather Sans}[Scale=0.9,Color=222222FF,Ligatures=TeX] Let's dream about the words we use for the numbers we count to relax the mind which focuses so readily on those numbers, counting slowly down from ten, your mind immediately reaching for}
{\normalsize\fontspec{Merriweather Sans}[Scale=0.9,Color=444444FF,Ligatures=TeX] nine, which is a fine number but always looked hungry to me and so follows eight which knows just what it ate to feel full, and down onto seven lucky seven which is what you need to get what you need but take away one and you get three plus three or three times two which is six and after that five, five fingers on each hand and toes on each foot, five the sum of the Trinity and the duality,}
{\fontspec{Merriweather Sans}[Scale=0.9,Color=666666FF,Ligatures=TeX] and lets take a look at a meditation session as seen from above with you laying down and me sitting next to you
speaking in words like tangled coils of repetition hidden beneath sibilant esses and susurrating syllables that tug at you this way and that with tangled coils of repetition beneath murmured words and suggestions and half sentences that double back on each other in tangled coils of repetition reinforcing small hints that have you letting go and then we can move on}
{\small\fontspec{Merriweather Sans}[Scale=0.9,Color=777777FF,Ligatures=TeX] to four but not two fours as that'd be eight whom we already met, but you can think of it as two twos or two to the power of two, too, if that helps you and now we're relaxing into a meditation session with you lying down and me sitting next to you where we're starting to feel our breath slow and our muscles relax, feeling calm and still, feeling ourselves light upon the bed.}
{\footnotesize\fontspec{Merriweather Sans}[Scale=0.9,Color=888888FF,Ligatures=TeX] And now we're at three, a Trinity, the trilogy of relaxation, calmness, and lightness, feeling each of those rise up in intensity until we get down to}
{\scriptsize\fontspec{Merriweather Sans}[Scale=0.9,Color=999999FF,Ligatures=TeX] two, a duality that forms the outer self that moves in the world and the inner self which is at peace, calmness and light and relaxation reaching for a plateau, and then cresting to find}
{\tiny\fontspec{Merriweather Sans}[Scale=0.9,Color=AAAAAAFF,Ligatures=TeX] one, the unity of all things, and now we're so light and calm and relaxed that we can feel whole, as a singular consciousness, and also at one with the greatness that surrounds us day by day.}

548
book/content/movement.tex Normal file
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@ -0,0 +1,548 @@
I will be the first to admit that it is difficult to write about mental health, as is certainly evidenced here already, and in countless other projects where I've tried to get that across. Even when talking about it, my voice is filled with ellipses and my words littered with hedges, fillers, and all sorts of metalinguistic dross.
\begin{ally}
That you later had to learn to use those consciously, to string like-and-if-um-but-so through your words like fairy lights to anchor your pitch is neither here nor there.
\end{ally}
And that's transition stuff. A totally different side-quest. Don't distract me.
\begin{ally}
Right. And yet here you are, distracted, talking about how difficult it is to write about mental health.
\end{ally}
Touché.
That I'll be the first to admit that doesn't excuse the way others treat it. Of course, there's countless words to be spent on the way media treats it, or the way writers treats things like psychosis, but the experience is so often so poorly researched that it hits the point of not even wrong.
Take, for example, Orson Scott Card.
\begin{ally}
There's a juicy one.
\end{ally}
Much to be said on him, yes, but take \emph{Xenocide} and \emph{Children of the Mind} as examples on this topic in particular. Take the World of Path. Take this supposed obsessive-compulsive disorder that plagues some of its inhabitants.
\begin{ally}
Is it wrong?
\end{ally}
It's not even wrong. It's based on a lack of experience. It's based on this societal view of OCD, not the experience of it.
\begin{ally}
You sound bitter.
\end{ally}
I have a problem with compulsions. Not-even-wrong-ness surrounding them touches on a sort of meta-compulsion: a need to be understood strong enough that, when I'm misunderstood, it itches. It gets a liquid flip of my hand and touch of thumb to palm. It triggers cascading compulsions.
To then make that entertainment, to make that a hook for a plot, well.
\begin{ally}
Was it really so off-base? Did the symptoms not fit?
\end{ally}
Not all of them.
\begin{ally}
And yet the plot hook is that it was artificial in the first place. That's sort of the point, right? Fei-tzu and Qing-jao are saddled with this form of compulsive behavior that's the side effect of something else, not OCD in and of itself. Was it really so off-base, or are you just upset at seeing part of --- but not all of --- yourself?
\end{ally}
I don't know.
\begin{ally}
Are you just upset that you can't stay still; that you have other, unrelated problems with compulsion; and that these two are then correlated in a fictional genetic disorder where they are not correlated for you?
\end{ally}
Straight homeward to the symbol essence, is it?
\begin{ally}
Yes.
\end{ally}
Let's talk about movement disorders, then.
\newpage
Everyone, I suspect, deals with movement in a different way. Some are content to sit still where others have to move. Some must move, and it is a part of their personality. Some cannot move and it is a part of their physiology.
And some must move because it is an aching necessity. There is no ``if they do not move, then\ldots{}'' statement to be made. They must move. They can't \emph{not} move.
\begin{ally}
It started as a twitch, you said, as a slight nod of the head.
\end{ally}
Or perhaps it started earlier, I don't know.
\begin{ally}
Perhaps it was all caused by the meds, or perhaps it was presaged by some other restlessness that started years before.
\end{ally}
Perhaps, but does it matter?
\begin{ally}
If it was the meds' fault, you could blame them, but if it was unrelated, you would be able blame yourself. If it was the meds' fault, you could stop, if it was unrelated, you would take that as permission to feel broken.
\end{ally}
Yes, I suppose it does matter, then. That said, I have no answer for that. I just know that it started with a twitch, a slight nod of the head. My fingers would duck up away from the keyboard as though suddenly burned by the keys. I would go and sit in my car over lunch and wring my hands over and over again, occasionally trying to force myself to hold onto the shifter and the door handle, and the tremors would travel up my arms.
Eventually, at some undefinable point, it made its way up into my neck.
I never knew how to explain it.
\begin{ally}
How would you now, with seven years' experience under your belt?
\end{ally}
``Transient tic disorder''. Maybe not so transient before it disappeared, back when I thought it was going to just stick around forever.
\begin{ally}
That's what it's called, but how would you get it across?
\end{ally}
Sobbing? Frustration? Humor? I had a whole comedy set prepared for it, in case I, for some reason, needed to do a stand-up routine.
As you can see, I have a motor tick on my neck that makes me jerk my head to the side and do stuff with my hands. This is because I have transient tic disorder, or as I like to call it, tourettes with holidays.
It makes work life interesting. I stare at a screen all day at my job. Or, well, I stare at my screen and also a point on the wall right about \emph{point} there. It's sort of a timeshare.
I could probably get jobs doing other things, though. Some contract work. Like, hey! Need someone to shake their head `no' at something? I'm your gal. Or maybe you need someone to urgently point something out out with their chin over \emph{point} there. I'd be good at that.
Now, there's a few jobs I won't be good at. Surgeon? Probably not. Bomb squad? That's a definite nope. Professional staring competition participant? I'd be right out. I couldn't win a staring competition with a three year old who's just discovered espresso.
I actually learned about all this tic nonsense at work. It started back in 2012 when it slowly started up over the course of a few days. Went on to find out that it's made worse by stress \emph{lean to the side} stand-up, of course, being the least stressful of occupations \emph{lean back} But no, I worked in health insurance. Health insurance in America as Obamacare is kicking in? Yeah, not exactly a stress-free environment.
Now, this is mostly a motor tic. I don't have the verbal tics that folks associate with tourettes. However, it does make me stutter when it gets bad. If you've never stuttered before,I can tell you that it's infuriating, so, honestly, I didn't need a verbal tic to get me cussing all the time.
So there's me sitting in meetings with other insurance companies, shaking my head `no' to everything they say, and when I try to correct myself, it comes out ``I mean ye-yes FUCK sorry''. I got really good at the whole FUCK-sorry combo.
And so on.
\begin{ally}
How effective do you think that would be on those conference calls with Lewis as you were stuttering away?
\end{ally}
I don't think I could manage. At that point, it was embarrassing enough to have picked up a stutter, a movement disorder that I never explained to my boss or the PM. To acknowledge it to the client would have been mortifying.
\newpage
When I was interviewing for Canonical, the tic had not yet started, or at least not yet to the point where it was affecting my neck or my voice. By the time I \emph{did} start at Canonical, it was well underway.
Much to my chagrin, not only was I stuttering at the time, but the job required daily video calls.
\begin{ally}
You begged off the first few, putting the blame on hardware failures. After the third day, Gary gently suggested that you consider fixing the hardware issues so that the team even knew what you looked like.
\end{ally}
It was embarrassing. Hangouts couldn't even keep up with it. The video was jittery and blurred, my face only in focus for maybe half of the time.
And then, within a few days, it cleared up and went away.
\begin{ally}
The stress of the previous job, of interviewing and those last two weeks, all suddenly relieved in one fell swoop.
\end{ally}
Yes.
\begin{ally}
And then it came back.
\end{ally}
As we all worked from home, the company had us get together in one location four or five times a year for a week at a time in order to work face-to-face and accomplish far more than we would otherwise. They called them sprints, an apt enough comparison.
Copenhagen, though, was different. It was a cascading set of stressors that culminated in, yes, the tic coming back. Two weeks long, with the first half being the developer summit, followed by a week of sprinting. The core product being rewritten. Zephyr getting attacked by another dog while I was away. The hotel, that building \href{/movement/copenhotel.jpg}{canted over to the side at a precarious 15° along two axes}, a nightmare on the acrophobia side.
The tic started up, then got worse and worse.
It was about this time that I started getting closer to Robin, and by the time we had our first real time together at FC 2013, I had shaken my sense of balance from myself and walked with a cane. ``You have a cane,'' she said, part confused, partly out of acknowledgment.
``Yeah, I lost my balance with the tic.''
``That's okay.''
And then we hugged.
\begin{ally}
Not all of it was your balance. Some of it was an apology.
\end{ally}
Yes. Someone with a movement disorder who pretends it isn't there is, in some ineffable way, sadder than someone who at least makes some public acknowledgment that, yes, this is happening. The cane helped. People would see me shaking my head, see me shaky on my feet, and then see the cane and know, ``Ah yes, \emph{this} is happening.''
\begin{ally}
You happened to pass by one of the attendees from the data panel shortly after, and overheard him telling his friend, ``That was a really cool panel, but I think he had Parkinson's or something. Every time he would get more interested in what he was talking about, it would get worse.''
\end{ally}
Yes. Part of me was embarrassed, sure, but part of me was relieved to be seen.
\newpage
Bit by bit, little by little, the tic once again slid from my life. Enough stressors had gone or were on their way out that I was gaining stillness.
I spent more and more days with fewer and fewer tics. I relished in the stillness.
\begin{ally}
Like that glass of water that's the perfect temperature. Like fresh-from-the-vine tomatoes. Like city-glow reflected on a winter cloud ceiling while you're under the covers in bed.
\end{ally}
It left for quite a while, and when it did come back, it did for only a day or two at a time. I eventually went a year without. Maybe two. I don't remember.
\begin{ally}
And then you forgot.
\end{ally}
And then I forgot.
\newpage
Suicide mention
My journey through medication has been long and storied.
\begin{ally}
Tell me.
\end{ally}
In time.
All meds come with side effects, of course. If you take too much lithium, I found, you cycle rapidly through moods, start vomiting, and the right side of your body goes weak. When you go off fluoxetine, you get what are called brain zaps, which is rather like the feeling of missing a step on a staircase and slipping safely down to the one below it; that sense of unbalance and terror and near miss, followed by relief and surety repeated once every few seconds.
\begin{ally}
When you take anxiolytics and your life is a mess beyond simple anxiety disorders, you dissociate so hard that you try to kill yourself.
\end{ally}
I said later.
\begin{ally}
Continue.
\end{ally}
Thank you.
Well, when you take antipsychotics for long enough, you run the risk of movement disorders. That was something that had originally crossed my mind when the tic first started, except I wasn't on any of the relevant meds at the time.
\begin{ally}
And you didn't think to bring it up when you started on olanzapine.
\end{ally}
No.
\begin{ally}
Nor when you switched to quetiepine, or from there to lurasidone.
\end{ally}
No.
\begin{ally}
Why?
\end{ally}
March 10, 2018:
\begin{ally}
And how did that work?
\end{ally}
\begin{ally}
And the physical health problem?
\end{ally}
A movement disorder.
\newpage
\hypertarget{icd-10-cm-diagnosis-code-f95.0}{%
\subsection{2019 ICD-10-CM Diagnosis Code F95.0}\label{icd-10-cm-diagnosis-code-f95.0}}
Transient tic disorder
\hypertarget{applicable-to}{%
\subsubsection{Applicable To}\label{applicable-to}}
\begin{itemize}
\tightlist
\item
Provisional tic disorder
\end{itemize}
The following code(s) above F95.0 contain annotation back-references that may be applicable to F95.0:
\begin{itemize}
\tightlist
\item
\textbf{F01-F99}\\
Mental, Behavioral and Neurodevelopmental disorders
\item
\textbf{F90-F98}\\
Behavioral and emotional disorders with onset usually occurring in childhood and adolescence
\end{itemize}
\hypertarget{approximate-synonyms}{%
\subsubsection{Approximate Synonyms}\label{approximate-synonyms}}
\begin{itemize}
\tightlist
\item
Recurrent transient tic disorder
\item
Tic disorder, childhood, transient
\item
Tic disorder, transient
\item
Tic disorder, transient, recurrent
\item
Tic, transient childhood
\item
Transient childhood tic
\end{itemize}
ICD-10-CM F95.0 is grouped within Diagnostic Related Group(s) (MS-DRG v36.0):
\begin{itemize}
\tightlist
\item
091 Other disorders of nervous system with mcc
\item
092 Other disorders of nervous system with cc
\item
093 Other disorders of nervous system without cc/mcc
\end{itemize}
\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
\hypertarget{icd-10-cm-diagnosis-code-g25.71}{%
\subsection{2019 ICD-10-CM Diagnosis Code G25.71}\label{icd-10-cm-diagnosis-code-g25.71}}
Drug induced akathisia
\hypertarget{applicable-to-1}{%
\subsubsection{Applicable To}\label{applicable-to-1}}
\begin{itemize}
\tightlist
\item
Drug induced acathisia
\item
Neuroleptic induced acute akathisia
\item
Tardive akathisia
\end{itemize}
The following code(s) above G25.71 contain annotation back-references that may be applicable to G25.71:
\begin{itemize}
\tightlist
\item
\textbf{G00-G99}\\
Diseases of the nervous system
\item
\textbf{G25}\\
Other extrapyramidal and movement disorders
\item
\textbf{G25.7}\\
Other and unspecified drug induced movement disorders
\end{itemize}
\hypertarget{approximate-synonyms-1}{%
\subsubsection{Approximate Synonyms}\label{approximate-synonyms-1}}
\begin{itemize}
\tightlist
\item
Acute akathisia caused by drug
\item
Drug induced acute akathisia
\item
Drug-induced akathisia
\item
Neuroleptic induced acute akathisia
\item
Tardive akathisia
\end{itemize}
\hypertarget{clinical-information}{%
\subsubsection{Clinical Information}\label{clinical-information}}
\begin{itemize}
\tightlist
\item
A condition associated with the use of certain medications and characterized by an internal sense of motor restlessness often described as an inability to resist the urge to move.
\end{itemize}
ICD-10-CM G25.71 is grouped within Diagnostic Related Group(s) (MS-DRG v36.0):
\begin{itemize}
\tightlist
\item
056 Degenerative nervous system disorders with mcc
\item
057 Degenerative nervous system disorders without mcc
\end{itemize}
\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
\hypertarget{icd-10-cm-diagnosis-code-g24.01}{%
\subsection{2019 ICD-10-CM Diagnosis Code G24.01}\label{icd-10-cm-diagnosis-code-g24.01}}
Drug induced subacute dyskinesia
\hypertarget{applicable-to-2}{%
\subsubsection{Applicable To}\label{applicable-to-2}}
\begin{itemize}
\tightlist
\item
Drug induced blepharospasm
\item
Drug induced orofacial dyskinesia
\item
Neuroleptic induced tardive dyskinesia
\item
Tardive dyskinesia
\end{itemize}
The following code(s) above G24.01 contain annotation back-references that may be applicable to G24.01:
\begin{itemize}
\tightlist
\item
\textbf{G00-G99}\\
Diseases of the nervous system
\item
\textbf{G24}\\
Dystonia
\item
\textbf{G24.0}\\
Drug induced dystonia
\end{itemize}
\hypertarget{approximate-synonyms-2}{%
\subsubsection{Approximate Synonyms}\label{approximate-synonyms-2}}
\begin{itemize}
\tightlist
\item
Dyskinesia, subacute, drug induced
\item
Neuroleptic induced tardive dyskinesia
\item
Subacute dyskinesia due to drug
\item
Tardive dyskinesia
\end{itemize}
\hypertarget{clinical-information-1}{%
\subsubsection{Clinical Information}\label{clinical-information-1}}
\begin{itemize}
\tightlist
\item
Iatrogenic extrapyramidal disorder produced by long-term administration of antipsychotic drugs; characterized by oral/lingual/buccal dyskinesias and choreoathetoid movements of the extremities.
\end{itemize}
ICD-10-CM G24.01 is grouped within Diagnostic Related Group(s) (MS-DRG v36.0):
\begin{itemize}
\tightlist
\item
091 Other disorders of nervous system with mcc
\item
092 Other disorders of nervous system with cc
\item
093 Other disorders of nervous system without cc/mcc
\end{itemize}
\newpage
There is a certain unique agony to akathisia. When I was in the hospital after surgery, and even for weeks afterwards, I was dead convinced that the problem I was going through was related to temperature. Part of this, no doubt, was due to the weather warming up followed by, toward the end of my inpatient stay there, the climate control in the room going out, leaving it a sweltering (to me) seventy-six degrees.
\begin{ally}
What you didn't take into account was the fact that you have a hard time sitting down for an hour at a time, never mind being confined to bed rest laying on your back only for five days straight.
\end{ally}
Even so, for weeks afterwards, I was desperate to do anything I could to stay cool. I picked up an ice cream habit that I'm still fall into regularly. I installed a window A/C unit. At one point, I even contemplated sleeping in the garage where it was cooler at night due to the lack of insulation.
\begin{ally}
Judith visited toward the end of this period. You did everything you could to keep the rooms you stayed in on the road trip to the bay as cool as possible. The bay, where A/C just isn't a thing.
\end{ally}
Yes. And shortly after that, I learned about akathisia.
I say `shortly after', when it was likely during that trip when I realized I felt the most relief from the symptoms by moving. The constriction imposed upon me by recovery had lessened over time until I was able to go for that hike with Judith, Robin, and Josh, and suddenly I realized that I felt better than I had in a while.
I just learned the word for it shortly after, the name. And by naming a thing, hoped to gain some sort of power over it.
\begin{ally}
Because of course you have a furry story about akathisia.
\end{ally}
Write what you know.
\begin{ally}
And you would, too. You'd walk and walk and walk, hoping that perhaps you could walk the thoughts out of you.
\end{ally}
Yes.
\begin{ally}
Write what you know.
\end{ally}
Yes. Furry is a framework. Apply an experience to that framework and see what you get.
\begin{ally}
Sure, but we've already been over that.
\end{ally}
Yes.
\begin{ally}
Write what you know. Write about the way pacing slowly moved from its status as nervous habit to a necessity, to an ache. Write about how there was no relief in walking, just a drive, an itch you could never scratch but were nonetheless required to try. Write, and cast those words upon something else, upon someone else, so that you can look on them and say, ``Ah yes, \textbf{this} is happening.''
\end{ally}
\begin{ally}
Write what you know but don't yet understand.
\end{ally}
Maybe I can get closer that way.
\begin{ally}
Yes.
\end{ally}\newpage
Only five months after I figured out just what akathisia was, the disorder evolved into something more dramatic. Whereas the tic, whether or not it was iatrogenic, affected mostly my neck and only rarely my wrists, this new form of drug-induced movement disorder affected most of my upper body, dystonia alternating between athetosis and chorea; between a fluid, graceful swimming of limbs to a tense, rigid posture with repetitive jerking movements.
It was infuriating and humiliating --- and before you interrupt, no, I will not talk about kink.
\begin{ally}
You know me so well.
\end{ally}
I suppose I do.
To be unable to hold still is one thing. Jerking my head to the side once every few seconds with the tic was embarrassing enough. I often worried that I'd be mistaken for some sort of junkie, hopped up on something or another. I even had my doctor write a letter explaining what was happening that I could bring with me when I traveled.
\begin{ally}
But you were still functional.
\end{ally}
Yes. I could still work. I could still drive and walk and pick things up and eat.
\begin{ally}
Now you couldn't. Now your hand would jerk back from picking things up or hitting the keys. Now you would walk with a hitch in your stride as a spasm rolled along your side. Now you wouldn't feel safe behind the wheel.
\end{ally}
I mostly just shut myself in my house. I left twice. Once to see a friend for some company, and once to go to therapy. I stood in the lobby while my therapist had a small chat with a coworker, struggling to keep still with my hands buried in my pockets, and broke down crying once we made it to the room.
She had a solution --- or a set of solutions --- that we could try. One medication, benzatropine, to start with, one fallback medication, tetrabenazine, and a intensive vitamin regimen to start on right away. Picking them up at the pharmacy on the way home was another source of tears, as the pharmacist, reading off the screen, said, ``This is for twitching? Involuntary movements?'' and I nodded, more a jitter than an intentional motion, as my hands wandered off along strange hyperbolae, unable to speak for the tears.
\begin{ally}
And then, Thanksgiving.
\end{ally}
Yes. Thanksgiving, and my dad visiting.
\begin{ally}
He had seen the tic before, at least.
\end{ally}
Well, yes, but as mentioned, these movements carried along a whole new set of connotations with them. Suddenly I was unable to have a basic conversation without the pauses that come with those moments of fixed posture. Suddenly I was unable to get a bite to eat without engaging in my geste antagoniste, resting my chin on the back of my hand with my wrist twisted around unnaturally.
\begin{ally}
Suddenly you were painfully, visibly vulnerable in front of him.
\end{ally}
Yes.
And at a restaurant. A dinner that cost him eight hundred dollars for the four of us.
\begin{ally}
At one point, he asked you what was wrong and you tried not to cry as you mumbled, ``I'm just having a hard time holding still.''
\end{ally}
No one mentioned it, after that.
\newpage
\begin{ally}
And now you're still again.
\end{ally}
Sometimes. One of the treatments worked, though I'm not sure which. One of them caused vertigo and nausea, though I'm not sure which. But even after I went off them, I'm usually still.
\begin{ally}
Is that not enough?
\end{ally}
It's certainly better, don't get me wrong. The stress of driving will bring out the dance-like turn of my arm. An interview a few weeks ago went poorly after the twitching and twirling got bad enough to prevent me from focusing on the problem at hand. A distressing scene in a movie will leave me paralyzed and rigid in my seat, posture unnatural and unnerving.
Judith reassured me that it looked like I was stretching, that it was less distressing than the tic.
\begin{ally}
You still apologized. You apologized to all of your partners the first time they saw it, and countless times after.
\end{ally}
Yes. I explained and explained, hoping they'd forgive me.
\begin{ally}
For what? For being less than perfect?
\end{ally}
For being vulnerable. Even after so long away from my dad and Jay, it's ingrained in me that vulnerability is a personal failing. Or perhaps it's more general: perhaps vulnerability is worth apologizing for because of some hereditary reason. Perhaps I'm apologizing to my ancestors, to the human race, for being less than they hoped for, for being a disappointment.
\begin{ally}
How very human of you.
\end{ally}
My therapist apologized to me on one stressy day when I was visibly struggling to stay still. She said she felt bad for having caused this. I rushed to reassure her that, no, it probably wasn't her fault, that I'd been on the antipsychotics for a while before ever meeting her. That the tic started back in 2012 before I'd even started those.
\begin{ally}
You apologized for the fact that she felt the need to apologize.
\end{ally}
Well, yes.
\begin{ally}
It's not your fault either, you know.
\end{ally}
On an intellectual level, sure. I know. On some deeper level, obviously I don't. Or can't.
\newpage

40
book/content/poet-and-mystic.tex
View File

@ -1,3 +1,9 @@
\end{leftcolumn}
\begin{rightcolumn*}
\input{content/induction.tex}
\end{rightcolumn*}
\begin{leftcolumn}
\noindent \emph{Here is the difference betwixt the poet and the mystic, that the last nails a symbol to one sense, which was a true sense for a moment, but soon becomes old and false. For all symbols are fluxional; all language is vehicular and transitive, and is good, as ferries and horses are, for conveyance, not as farms and houses are, for homestead. Mysticism consists in the mistake of an accidental and individual symbol for an universal one.}
\begin{ally}
@ -35,6 +41,38 @@ You make a terrible mystic. Your poetry's just okay.
\end{ally}
\newpage
\end{leftcolumn}
\begin{rightcolumn*}
\begin{verse}[1.01\textwidth]
\small
Seven flies circle,\\
Trimmers chatter down the block:\\
The hum of summer.
{\fontspec{Merriweather Sans Italic}[Scale=0.9,Color=444444FF,Ligatures=TeX] \vin I listen, silent, waiting,\\
\vin Breathing in sun and out shade.}
Fig leaves like fingers\\
paw feebly through still hot air\\
and come up with naught.
{\fontspec{Merriweather Sans Italic}[Scale=0.9,Color=444444FF,Ligatures=TeX] \vin Too early for fruit to droop,\\
\vin we must wait past midsummer.}
And I walk until\\
all I can hear is the wind\\
among the fir trees.
{\fontspec{Merriweather Sans Italic}[Scale=0.9,Color=444444FF,Ligatures=TeX] \vin Summer breezes bear away\\
\vin all the choices of years past.}
Drink deep of death-thoughts\\
as the day dies with a yawn ---\\
the year starts to fade.
\end{verse}
\end{rightcolumn*}
\begin{leftcolumn}
\noindent How can I capture that essence of stillness? How can I become nothing?
\begin{ally}
@ -203,7 +241,6 @@ It's about breathing in for the count of four, holding for the count of two, bre
So that you can disappear entirely.
\end{ally}
\newpage
\begin{ally}
Why this? Why now?
\end{ally} % Why after your dad?
@ -535,3 +572,4 @@ You tried.
\begin{ally}
It's not, but it's important that you have tried.
\end{ally}
\newpage

278
book/content/writing/music.tex Normal file
View File

@ -0,0 +1,278 @@
I did not fall into music of my own accord, my dad bought me a saxophone.
\begin{ally}
As his dad bought him before you.
\end{ally}
He wanted us to be alike in so many ways.
\begin{ally}
But you already knew that.
\end{ally}
He got me a saxophone and he and my mom pooled resourses to get me lessons.
\begin{ally}
And showed you to all his friends.
\end{ally}
I played at his Christmas parties. I played at his neighbor's Christmas parties.
\begin{ally}
Once, he was going to show you off to his friends at a barbeque, and you got so anxious and upset that you bent the octave key out of shape. You could only produce squeaks. You said it was an accident.
\end{ally}
I did it to get out of playing for the party, and instead it got me in trouble for being careless.
\begin{ally}
You were anything but. You were very careful. You acted with intent.
\end{ally}
I kept playing. Sometimes it was fun, sometimes it wasn't.
\begin{ally}
Once, you told your mom you weren't sure why she or your dad bothered with you learning to play the saxophone when all life was meaningless, anyway.
\end{ally}
How old was I, then? Ten? Eleven?
\begin{ally}
Dad made you apologize to her. I don't think either knew what to do with a nihilistic preteen.
\end{ally}
But it worked, in a roundabout way. I wound up in music. I wound up playing the saxophone and even sometimes enjoying it. I moved from that to the oboe.
And not just playing. I listened to tapes until they wore out. I made mixtapes of my dad's music after he taught me how to program his six-disc CD changer. After that, it was mix CDs, which I'd listen to on the bright yellow Sport Discman I carried everywhere. I fell asleep with headphones on more than once.
Music held --- continues to hold --- this sense of mystery about it. It worked on some level below spoken language, understandable without being text, affecting emotions without the cadence of words.
\begin{ally}
So why'd you quit?
\end{ally}
I can't just say ``computers'' and beg off, here, can I?
\begin{ally}
Nope.
\end{ally}
\newpage
Okay, you're right. It's not quite true that I left because of computers. I stopped playing the oboe after I ran away and moved schools. Band was already well underway, after all, and I couldn't join in partway through. They let me play the cymbal in one concert, but I basically gave up after that. We returned the rental oboe. I wouldn't touch an instrument in all seriousness until well into university.
And really, during all that time, there was no sense of regret, no sense of loss.
\begin{ally}
Your dad bought you a pair of drumsticks after that concert, but while you played with them for a few weeks, you soon lost interest. You had moved on.
\end{ally}
I had moved on.
I was trying to square being gay with being the type of person my parents would like. I was trying to figure out how to make friends after transfering into a school. I was trying so hard to settle down and just become someone, to just be born already.
\begin{ally}
You told your mom and Jay that, when you complained about karate in the future, they should remind you that you do enjoy it sometimes, that it just comes and goes. You just wanted to cling to something and have it stick.
\end{ally}
Computers were all well and good. They certainly offered me a route to explore so much that I might otherwise have not. They got me Danny. They got me into furry. They got me into programming.
\begin{ally}
You're still a furry. You still program. Hell, you still think about Danny. Does that not count as sticking?
\end{ally}
Oh, it definitely does, don't get me wrong. Some of the things I launched myself into did stick, even if some of them did not. I was too busy getting ready to be born to focus on what, I suppose.
And then, two weeks into my freshman year at high school, a few girls stopped me in the hall during my only free period and asked me to join choir with them.
\begin{ally}
And you said yes.
\end{ally}
Lord help me, I have no idea why, but I did.
\newpage
When you're a choir kid, you're a choir kid.
\begin{ally}
The first rule of the tautology club is the first rule of the tautology club.
\end{ally}
You have to understand. There's a level of identity, a level of expression that goes along with being a choir kid. It's writ on your face. It's in the way you walk. It's an aura that emanates from you. It hovers about your head in a halo. It colors your perception, and others' perception of you.
You don't do choir. You \emph{are} choir.
\begin{ally}
Just as you \textbf{are} furry?
\end{ally}
There's plenty of comparison that can be made there, yes.
\begin{ally}
Like how, fresh out of middle school, fresh out of your mom's messy divorce with Jay, fresh after your mom's diagnosis, so soon after running away, you found yourself once again largely alone. It was more complex now, too. You weren't simply physically alone. You were a newborn and you were alone in the world. You were alone on some ineffable level. You craved a family. You craved a community. You needed to not be alone. You needed those things to grow up, whether you knew it or not --- and you didn't --- so you latched onto whatever you brushed up against, arms hard around it, and you refused to let go. You refused to let it let \textbf{you} go.
\end{ally}
I\ldots{}well. Huh.
\begin{ally}
Carry on.
\end{ally}
Give me a second.
\begin{ally}
Take your time.
\end{ally}
I suppose I was going to go on to say that when you're a choir kid and a boy, something happens inside people's heads. They go a little bit crazy.
There are other identities within school, after all. There's band, of course. Band is pretty egalitarian (in some ways; obviously individual instruments have their own gender roles). There's some of the sports, too, where a girl joining the team would be quite out of place, if it's even allowed. Nerds fall along similar lines --- or fell, I suspect this is changing --- in that a girl nerd is considered something more unique.
High-schoolers, however, seem to be intensely aware of gender roles, even if they don't realize. This includes the power dynamic instilled in them in the west. A girl ``striving'' to be ``something greater'' by taking part in a supposedly masculine activity--
\begin{ally}
Nice qualification quotes.
\end{ally}
--is a curiosity, perhaps gently encouraged, perhaps the source of patronizing.
A boy ``falling back'' to ``something less'' by taking part in a supposedly feminine activity is a cause for alarm, a cause for concern, a cause for laughing and jeering and taunting.
\begin{ally}
That you transitioned later in life being, of course, irrelevant.
\end{ally}
It sort of is, it sort of isn't.
It is, because I don't think I know any other choir friends who transitioned. And not just those like me who transitioned and then dropped out of choir because boy is \emph{that} fraught.
It isn't, because in a lot of people's eyes, that's confirmation that joining choir was an early sign of my weakening masculinity. It's self-reinforcing that way.
\begin{ally}
As are a lot of social roles. Furries are nerdy because they're expected to be, and so they attract nerds. Nerds are awkward because of course they are, and so awkward kids are more likely to become nerds.
\end{ally}
When you're a choir kid and a boy and \emph{gay}, after all, well\ldots{}pff, of course. A boy in choir \emph{would} be gay.
\newpage
I tried to let go of choir when I went to university. I was all set to begin anew. I was going to live up to my parents' dreams of becoming an engineer.
That, and I heard the choir perform during All-State my senior year of high school, and they weren't that good. the All-State choirs were better. My school's choirs were better. I didn't want to tarnish my feelings on choir by having my last few years in it be less than what I was used to.
\begin{ally}
Yeah. How'd that work out?
\end{ally}
I lasted a semester.
Part of it was, of course, that I started the same year they hired Dr.~Kim, who turned the choral department around. Suddenly I had something I wanted to reach for.
Part of it was that, on graduating, one of my chosen families disappeared. I still had furry, of course, and I still had Ash and Shannon, but I was missing a core part of myself, and I wasn't strong enough to not have that in my life.
\begin{ally}
You weren't strong enough to do a lot of things, then.
\end{ally}
No, I wasn't. I wasn't strong enough to tamp down my mania or pull myself up by my bootstraps through depression. I wasn't strong enough to buckle down on my math and chemistry studies. I wasn't strong enough to treat my friends and lovers as well as they deserved. Not on my own, at least.
So I joined choir.
\begin{ally}
You did more than that. You took ownership of your life.
\end{ally}
I changed my major to music. I started taking singing lessons. I gained strength from my community, and I got better. I got strong enough to at least learn, bit by bit, how to deal with each of those things. I'm still working on some of them, but that's where I started learning.
I got strong enough to make it into voice lessons with Dr.~Morrow-King.
I got strong enough to get into Chamber Choir.
I got strong enough to go on two choir tours in South Korea.
I got strong enough to leave the music education program and move to music composition.
I got strong enough to talk to the department chair about why I wasn't getting lessons through the school.
I got strong enough to stand up to Dr.~Wohl when he was called on it and not selected to be the new professor.
\begin{ally}
Not strong enough to suffer defeat.
\end{ally}
No.
Not the one I experienced.
\newpage
My senior recital did not go well.
\begin{ally}
Understatement.
\end{ally}
It was a failure from very early on. I was commissioned to write a work for two friends in the music department. French horn and contrabass are an unlikely combination, so I figured it'd be a good challenge. It turned into a nightmare with astonishing speed.
They dictated what I wrote to a large extent, and when Dr.~David heard about it, he explained that that's not quite how it was supposed to work. I flailed and finished the piece as best as I could.
I couldn't find performers to commit to any of my pieces. When I did, they didn't practice. The two who commissioned that work from me only practiced once: half an hour before the concert itself.
The performance itself was a disaster.
\begin{ally}
You grabbed the recording and left to dinner with your mom and dad, Bob, Maurine, JD, his dad, and Diane. Diane said, as politely as she could, that many of your pieces sounded ``so dark'', and it was all you could do not to cry and say that it wasn't supposed to be that way.
\end{ally}
I gave up after that. I stopped going to class regularly. I stopped doing homework. I started programming more. I worked as many hours as I was allowed. I applied for tech jobs.
\begin{ally}
You kept singing.
\end{ally}
I did, but my heart wasn't in it.
I left music.
I stopped composing.
It took a year, but I stopped performing.
I couldn't do it.
All of the work I had put into it, all of the time and effort and blood and sweat and tears, and as soon as I had something I was proud of, I was shown just how little the world thought of me. My community didn't change, and yet it felt hateful to me. I had no guarantees at all that it would get any better, so I got out while I was at least only a little behind.
\begin{ally}
In writing, you were later told, the worst that could happen if you submitted a story was that the editors would say no. This was worse than the editor saying no. This was the editor sneering at you, looking you directly in the eye, and slowly tearing your story to shreds, long strips of paper dropping from their hands as you watched.
\end{ally}
And I had to smile as I did so. I had to smile and shake hands and gesture for the performers to bow. I had to keep talking to the audience, explaining the significance and features of each piece throughout the recital even as it continued to get worse and worse.
\begin{ally}
You stopped writing music.
\end{ally}
Why wouldn't I? Life told me what it thought of me doing so. Why would I willingly continue to fail?
\begin{ally}
You were not strong enough.
\end{ally}
I was not strong enough.
\begin{ally}
You started programming.
\end{ally}
Website after website.
\begin{ally}
You started writing.
\end{ally}
I splashed around in great heaps of words.
\begin{ally}
You promised yourself you were okay with the outcome.
\end{ally}
Seven years was enough.
\begin{ally}
And now it's seven years since you got into tech.
\end{ally}
Yes.
\begin{ally}
And you started writing music again.
\end{ally}
Yes.
\begin{ally}
A few pieces. Miniatures. Stuff you can finish without getting tired of it first.
\end{ally}
Yes.
\begin{ally}
Something to try and capture the agony and the ecstasy.
\end{ally}
Yes.
\begin{ally}
You still write for choir.
\end{ally}
Yes.
\begin{ally}
Stuff that will never get performed.
\end{ally}
Yes.
\begin{ally}
You promise yourself you are okay with this.
\end{ally}
Yes.
\newpage

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This chapter of ally takes place in the git commit messages, but here are their contents for completion's sake.
\begin{ally}
I'm ashamed to know you.
\end{ally}
It's a stretch even for me, but hey, here we go.
\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
\begin{ally}
Are you having fun with this?
\end{ally}
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?
\begin{ally}
I suppose not. Tell me about software, then.
\end{ally}
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.
\begin{ally}
Well, hold on, you're skipping over a whole bunch of stuff.
\end{ally}
I suppose so.
\begin{ally}
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.
\end{ally}
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.
\begin{ally}
Oh, my aching bones.
\end{ally}
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.
\begin{ally}
Very kind of him. Forward thinking.
\end{ally}
He wanted me to be an engineer. What better way to get me into the mindset? Besides, \emph{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 \emph{some} kind of nerd.
\newpage
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.
\begin{ally}
He wasn't very good at it.
\end{ally}
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.
\begin{ally}
A solipsistic software engineer? Color me surprised.
\end{ally}
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.
\begin{ally}
Was it that bad?
\end{ally}
\href{https://web.archive.org/web/20050202100148/http://ranna.babylonia.flatirons.org/}{RF!P}? Oh yes.
\begin{ally}
At least you can see the dull adherence to monochromatic web design started early on.
\end{ally}
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.
\begin{ally}
Too easy.
\end{ally}
Yes. They littered his computer, his \href{https://github.com/makyo-old/}{git repositories}. 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.
\begin{ally}
No motivation.
\end{ally}
Or maybe only the false motivation that comes along with hypomania.
\newpage
At some point in late 2005, I got my first job in computers--
\begin{ally}
Well, hold on. What about that summer job at Rational?
\end{ally}
That was before birth, remember. That happened to someone else. That happened somewhere else.
\begin{ally}
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?
\end{ally}
Clearly you do.
\begin{ally}
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.
\end{ally}
Bit harsh, but true enough.
\begin{ally}
``Computers were a mistake'', right? That's how you put it?
\end{ally}
Yes.
\begin{ally}
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.
\end{ally}
\ldots{}Ah. Right.
\begin{ally}
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.
\end{ally}
And every summer, I disappointed my mom further.
\newpage
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.
\begin{ally}
Or you were far more mature, perhaps.
\end{ally}
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.
\begin{ally}
It was fun.
\end{ally}
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.
\begin{ally}
Whether or not it was something you might actually enjoy.
\end{ally}
Yes.
\newpage
At least I enjoyed it at first.
\begin{ally}
You did, yes. You worked ten, twelve hours a day.
\end{ally}
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.
\begin{ally}
Is anybody paying attention to your writing?
\end{ally}
You are.
\begin{ally}
If you say so.
\end{ally}
A few others, maybe.
\begin{ally}
If you say so.
\end{ally}
Don't be cruel.
\begin{ally}
If you say so.
\end{ally}
\newpage
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.
\begin{ally}
You know me too well.
\end{ally}
Do I?
\begin{ally}
Don't lose focus. You left UHG for Canonical, and started all over again.
\end{ally}
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.
\begin{ally}
And at least you did rather like some of the coworkers.
\end{ally}
But we can talk about that later. Distraction, remember?
\begin{ally}
Sure, sure.
\end{ally}
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?
\begin{ally}
When will you fade?
\end{ally}
\newpage

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Today, my therapist asked what the plot was to this new writing project.
\begin{ally}
Me!
\end{ally}
Pretty sure you're just the antagonist.
\begin{ally}
Come now, don't say that about yourself.
\end{ally}
Right.
I stammered something about how it was more about overriding themes. I wrote about alcoholism. I wrote about dad. I wrote about all those little side-quests. ``It's about the way creativity affects and is affected by all these different things in my life,'' I said.
``Were you not creative when you drank?''
``Certainly not as much as I am now that I've stopped.''
``This sounds exhausting,'' she said.
``Well, it is, in a way. It's very easy to write. It flows onto the screen far easier than any fiction or article I've written before, but it leaves me totally beat afterward.''
\begin{ally}
You're really good at wearing yourself out. You spin in circles around the smallest things. You wind up exhausting yourself on the daily.
\end{ally}
I suppose I do, at that.
\begin{ally}
Well? You sound unsure of how you answered her.
\end{ally}
This project is sort of ill-defined.
\begin{ally}
You are ill-defined.
\end{ally}
Not going to deny that.
I'd say a lot of this project is accidental, unintentional. I stumble about at the end of your lead and, as you say, spin circles around the smallest of things. It's hard to come at this with some sort of idea of a plot. I can't even work chronologically, because if we work from the beginning of Matthew's life back in 2000, we keep having to double back and look at proto-Matthew's life before that, and to understand that, we keep having to look at all these other people.
\begin{ally}
There are too many of you.
\end{ally}
Says my ally.
\begin{ally}
Point well taken.
\end{ally}
All the same, I'm not sure that I answered her incorrectly. The core conceit of this project is one of creativity. Not anything so guided and structured as \emph{writing} or \emph{composing} or \emph{programming}, but that raw, primal thing from which the others spring.
\begin{ally}
Or seep, depending on the day.
\end{ally}
It's about the ways in which this idea, this entity impinges itself upon various things in my life. It's about the ways I shape and am shaped by it. It's about turning it back in on itself, as much as I can, and applying creativity to the idea of creativity itself.
\begin{ally}
Using words.
\end{ally}
Well, mostly words so far, yes, though I'm slowly incorporating bits of other things in there, too.
\begin{ally}
There's another metaphor to be made here. Remade, actually. You keep winding up stuck on these very abstract concepts. You keep talking about your complex feelings on your dad or on the way Margaras' death affected you or on mysticism, and then you circle them again and again, now narrowing, now widening, in an attempt to triangulate some imagined center.
\end{ally}
Writing, composing, programming, those are all inexact tools to apply toward inexact goals, though. Is that so wrong? Is it wrong to try and focus through words? Is it wrong to try and figure out more of how you think through something creative?
\begin{ally}
No, but it \textbf{is} important that you be cognizant of that fact.
\end{ally}\newpage
All of writing, all of creativity is selfish. To take some idea or some concept and to set it down on paper and say, ``I made this'' is selfish, of course, but to then take that thing and show it to others with the expectation that they might get something out of it as well is taking that several steps further.
To sit down in front of the keyboard and to say, ``I am going to write a story about a person who runs away from home to escape her fundamentally unhappy life'' and to then take that story, post it on the internet, submit it to anthologies, publish it in a collection and attempt to get others to read it, is selfish. It's an act of improvement for the writer, sometimes on a very real basis, if there is money to be made in the process.
To sit down in front of the keyboard, however, and say, ``I am going to write a story about me when I ran away to escape my fundamentally unhappy life'', well, now we're up to three levels of selfishness. I try and nail down an idea to paper or screen and say, somehow, that it is \emph{right} and \emph{good}, I make that idea about \emph{myself}, and then I try to show that idea to \emph{others}\ldots{}
\begin{ally}
Is there no good to be had from memoirs, then? From any autobiographical content?
\end{ally}
There's certainly good to be had for the writer, for the creator. On my end, I'm making something that I both feel proud about and am learning from. I'm learning more about this art, I'm learning more about all of these problems I'm tackling --- I didn't know, for instance, just how conflicted I was about my dad until I started writing that section of the site. I though, \emph{oh, I'll write about my past and make the final point that I've had to accept that there's a certain amount of my dad that I'm comfortable having in my life, a certain level of relationship that's acceptable}. I was not expecting to learn, through writing, just how conflicted I am about him still.
\begin{ally}
And for others? Is there not enjoyment to be gained from that which you create?
\end{ally}
\emph{Disappearance} was good, I thought. I got a lot of good words sent my way from some folks that mean a lot to me for it. The story left an impact on them, they came away from it with some sort of enjoyment, or at least some level of emotional resonance.
This project, though? I don't know. there are bits that I've tried to make enjoyable. I had fun with the koans and birds. I put a lot of emotional investment into the bits about Margaras and my dad. I tried to do some fun mixed-media stuff with the fursoña animations and the mysticism stuff. I can see those being enjoyable.
\begin{ally}
And the rest?
\end{ally}
I don't know. Honestly.
\begin{ally}
What about applicability?
\end{ally}
I\ldots{}hmm.
\begin{ally}
You came into this page thinking, ``Ah yes, time to dunk on myself again'', didn't you?
\end{ally}
I guess I did. Self-deprecation runs deep in queer lives. Self-doubt plagues artists. Self-deception runs in the family.
\begin{ally}
Selfishness is defensible when it leads to entertainment, applicability, or self-improvement.
\end{ally}
To an extent. At some point, it's just narcissism. At some point gets so ``treat yourself'' that one loses sight of collective improvement.
\begin{ally}
Of course. Are you really in danger of such?
\end{ally}
Constantly, feels like.
\newpage
The first poetry I remember writing was back before high school. At some point I picked up the poetry bug and decided I was going to try my hand at it. Finding it hard, I quit after the first poem I wrote. It was something really, \emph{really} bad, too. Something where all I knew about poetry was that it should rhyme, so I sacrificed\ldots{}well, everything in search of a rhyme. Readability. Sense. It was horrifying.
\begin{ally}
You find a lot of your old stuff horrifying. Play can be creative.
\end{ally}
Sure. Play teaches us how to be creative. A lot of creativity is playful.
This went a step back from that. Play is important, sure, but it didn't make anything I'd actually call a poem. It was an innocent mockery in the same way as a boy trying on his dad's shoes and blazer.
I suppose it's a good thing that a lot of my early works are lost to time.
\begin{ally}
You filled reams of paper and countless blank books with drawings and doodles and words. You drew maze after maze on copy paper. You grew exceptionally fond of creating parabolic curves with straight lines. You went through a phase of drawing elaborate worlds of ramps and springs and houses for tiny spherical creatures with horns for mouths. Do you miss none of that?
\end{ally}
In a cute sort of way, I suppose. It was fun. I would laugh at it now, but I wouldn't find anything new to build off of it. After all, this project is built off writings after I was born. All that is from proto-Matthew.
\begin{ally}
You drew an entire comic set in the world of Garth Nix's Abhorsen trilogy, except the main characters were foxes. You filled a few notebooks with furry art, too. You kept a diary well after your dad destroyed the first one, intended originally as letters to send to your friend. You called it Julene. You later feared that would be creepy, and changed it to Kai. Do you miss none of that?
\end{ally}
I kept some, of course. Some of it is irrevocably online. I couldn't remove it if I wanted to.
I burned the journal, though. It was a remnant of proto-Matthew. It was from before I was born.
\begin{ally}
At what point did play cease being just play, then? At what point did creativity assert itself?
\end{ally}
When I started singing. When I first heard Madrigals sing during my first choir concert. When I stopped drawing and started writing. When I realized that there was more to art than playing at art.
\newpage
\begin{ally}
I assume you went looking for one of these execrable poems of yours?
\end{ally}
I did. I wasn't really able to find much from The Before Times, but I found a few from shortly after while prowling through my LiveJournal and archives of my old site in high school.
\begin{ally}
\href{https://web.archive.org/web/2005*/http://ranna.babylonia.flatirons.org/}{RedFox! Productions}, right?
\end{ally}
Gah, yeah. I was a kid, alright?
\begin{ally}
If you say so.
\end{ally}
September 26, 2003:
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Borne through air, Close my eyes. Wind ruffles hair Soul sighs, Heart flies; I'm the wind.
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I flow east: Over the plains, Over land creased. Current refrains, Cloud stains As I build.
Trees bow at my Will To move drives me Onward I push through Mountains Do nothing but Divert The rain as I Flow.
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Borne through air - Rise up high - Driven there, Earth nigh, I sigh; I'm the wind.
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I flow west: Past the lakes, Water my guest; Thunder makes Noise, wakes, As I storm.
Sand flies at my Force Builds as I Push Across the Land Flows beneath my Self Means nothing to Wind.
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Borne through air, Through the night And dawn fair. No fight, Only flight; I'm the wind.
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I flow south On the ocean, On delta's mouth My motion Just notion As I breathe.
Waves break as I Drive Past the thin Sands Lift themselves to my Body Waxes as I Press Through the stillness of Night.
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Borne through air, Around the world And forests I tear; Ferns furled, Trees burled; I am the wind.
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I flow north, Across the ice; I roll forth Past spice -- So nice -- As I change.
Men bask as I Warm Drops of rain Fall Colored leaves Shiver Because of the Chill Wind blows on Past.
\begin{ally}
It's not without its own sense of charm.
\end{ally}
I suppose. It's crude. It's a bit heavy-handed.
\begin{ally}
Your others are not?
\end{ally}
Well, okay, fair. I like to think that I've improved nonetheless.
\begin{ally}
Are these old ones not creative? Are they still just play?
\end{ally}
The more I think of it, the more I think it's that they're just too\ldots{}work. They're not creative, because they're too mechanical. I had realized that writing wasn't just play, so I stopped playing altogether.
\begin{ally}
Wrong answer.
\end{ally}
Tell me about it.
January 11, 2003:
What hath man wrought! When faced with the question of love Or seeking peace with the answer thereof, Or faced with life peril-fraught, Created a god, or several, to satisfy Some need to fulfill or deny A lacking - A slacking On someone else's behalf, Or his own behalf - And on the world a question of faith brought.
And when a man, endowed With the ability to make his own God, Does so with nary a nod, And finds the god shan't be cowed, What does he then? And when a group of men Make their God With nary a nod, And cow him easily, rightly To them, and find him tightly bound, what then, with a god bowed?
What then, indeed, should a God, Now lesser than his creators, do When his creators move to gods new? Is he then still a God? Or is that when God dies, Not bloated with swarms of flies, But forgotten? Not rotten, Forgotten and immortal, what then? Does he hope to come again, Rising a second time, perhaps again to be God?
One would hope that the God, being omniscient Would realize he was no longer, otherwise Might he become destructive? Likewise, A god, waiting patient Could become restless, Try to leave his creators breathless, Again, But then, Be pronounced a heretic By all but the hermetic And others of the new God ignorant.
So hence a people divided Those of Whispers and those of Nanon, Fight to the tooth and fight to the bone, Until over Whispers Nanon presided; And when those of Nanon took Speech from the Whispers so as to look And not hear, They here Those of Whispers with Supposed powers of myth Of creation with speech's remnants provided.
So it was before the fall of Whispers that Faith of most all lay in technology, Remnants of religion lay in astrology And superstitious fears like the black cat. Only after the fall did the faiths Of only the Whisperers turn to mysterious wraiths And gods, But the odds That one of the gods was taken more seriously Than the rest was small, and not mysteriously, The small bit of Faith quickly passed as society's scat
Now, it's come that those of Nanon have all but forgotten Those of Whispers except perhaps in myth Maybe portrayed as consorting with Black cats or something equally rotten. But for the Whisperers, the city Of Nanon is very real, also denial of pity Of sunlight, For sunlight Is blocked by the city directly overhead And the Whisperers know of only shadow instead; Only death out from beneath the city to be gotten.
The magic that's spoken of those Of the Whispers, is often made Out to be more, but because of their stayed Speech, only whispers remain in quite prose. So through the long stretches of time, The Whisperers, through long stretches of rhyme Can make - Only make - What they wish, with words divine, Benign, or malign, And in their creations complete trust repose.
So begins a story, often told but never yet writ Of a divided people still the same And the rise and fall of a god played like a game. While not true itself, it is truth lit: As men continue to create and live under gods, What would happen if the gods, at odds, Warred and fell, Raising hell In the process? What would happen In a society misshapen If a wrathful god fell and no one cared a whit?
\begin{ally}
Ah yes, your Keats phase.
\end{ally}
It was a mixture of Keats and Larry Niven, I think.
\begin{ally}
That is intensely Madison.
\end{ally}
Thanks.
I had recently read \emph{The Ringworld Throne}, so I was thinking about vertically stratified cities, and had also been on a Keats kick ever since reading \emph{The Hyperion Cantos}, so I decided I would write a sci-fi epic poem to support my conlang.
It's a mess.
\begin{ally}
Could be worse.
\end{ally}
Could be better.
\newpage
\begin{ally}
If you went from a mockery of creativity to a mockery of play, when did you settle down and just write a damn story?
\end{ally}
I think it wasn't too long after, actually. I wrote \href{https://writing.drab-makyo.com/fiction/all-of-time-at-once/}{\emph{All of Time at Once}} in April of 2004, and that was the first time I started to think, \emph{ah-hah, okay, there's a rhythm to this, a pace, a set of mechanics as well as an art.}
And from then on, I basically dropped writing in favor of music for months. Sure, there were a few others scattered around there. \href{https://writing.drab-makyo.com/fiction/tu-pater-et-mater/}{\emph{Tu pater et mater}} in May of 2003, and \href{https://writing.drab-makyo.com/fiction/light/}{\emph{Light}} in June of 2004, but other than that, I kind of just dropped it.
\begin{ally}
Why?
\end{ally}
I graduated. I left language arts classes behind. I went to school for an engineering major.
\begin{ally}
One you were supremely unhappy in.
\end{ally}
Right. And then when I started writing again, it was music.
I wrote a few essays I was reasonably proud of, but it took another four years before I decided to actually sit down and give writing a go in a more structured setting, and then only because of NaNoWriMo.
\begin{ally}
Ah yes, your ``boy meets girl with a twist'' story.
\end{ally}
Yeah, \href{https://writing.drab-makyo.com/fiction/consequences-of-dissonance/}{\emph{The Consequences of Dissonance}}.
\begin{ally}
You originally named it \textbf{Coming to Terms with Being a Terrible Person}.
\end{ally}
I did, yeah. I was fresh off my relationship with Kayla and well into a relationship with Kanja, and had a head full of hatred for who I used to be.
\begin{ally}
And who you were becoming.
\end{ally}
Well, it wasn't \emph{Coming to Terms with Having Been a Terrible Person}, was it?
\begin{ally}
Fair enough.
\end{ally}
It wasn't a bad story, really, nor even that poorly written. I've even thought of revisiting it sometime. It was sort of a coming out story, but a coming-out-for-the-second-time sort of thing. Gay boy starts dating a girl and has to go through the social process of coming out as bi.
\begin{ally}
As Madison?
\end{ally}
I suppose. I went through my own series of comings-out, so maybe I have more insight into that now.
\begin{ally}
And you're less of a terrible person.
\end{ally}
Doubt.
\begin{ally}
There are perfectly cromulent reasons for you to think of yourself as a terrible person in the past, and even as a terrible person in 2008. Or even one now, really. You're just less of one.
\end{ally}
Always improving, I guess.
\begin{ally}
How did it feel to come up with a schedule, a goal, and a plan, and then to stick to it?
\end{ally}
I never finished the story.
\begin{ally}
But you won NaNoWriMo that year. You went over by eight thousand lines.
\end{ally}
I guess.
\begin{ally}
And you're dodging the question.
\end{ally}
That's why, though. It felt good while it lasted. It felt good during that hypomanic rush to actually complete something, to come up with an outline and actually work through it.
Then I finished NaNo with several hours to spare and tried to keep going, but there was something missing. I felt rudderless. I kept trying to poke at it, but I think I was working as well as I was because of the deadlines. I was still trying to balance the work with the fun that go into a creative endeavor.
\begin{ally}
Did you stop having fun, or did you stop doing the work?
\end{ally}
I think it's more complex than that. There was fun to be had in the race to the finish line. I think that's why NaNo is so popular. And doubtless it was work, of course.
But with the fun of having already won gone, I was faced with the fact that I had less outline than I had originally thought. Pantsing, as the community so eloquently puts it, may work well for some folks, but I was mostly left feeling uninspired and unmotivated once December hit. The same thing happened with \emph{Getting Lost} and \emph{Inner Demons}. I started strong enough with the basic idea as I tried to write by the seat of my pants, but without a direction or even any goal, I lost steam and wound up disheartened.
\begin{ally}
Do you not do well without goals, then? You don't seem to have one for this project.
\end{ally}
It's not necessarily that. More that, the shorter the project, the less planning that's required. I do much better with articles and short stories than I do with novels. At least so far, given the amount of planning that goes into each.
This project is working as well as it is because of my heavy reliance on these side-quests. I can break a story down into manageable chunks so that, by the time I might start losing direction, they're about overwith anyway.
Besides, I have you to help.
\begin{ally}
Me? Little old me?
\end{ally}
Yeah. It's much easier to have a conversation than it is to plan out a story. You keep taking me in directions I don't mean to go.
\newpage
\begin{ally}
So if the goal of this project is to write about the ways in which creativity interacts with various facets of your life, what are your goals when it comes to creativity itself?
\end{ally}
Huh.
I'll have to think on that one.
\begin{ally}
I'd say I'll be patient, but you know I won't be.
\end{ally}
Yeah.
I think the goals for my creativity are to find a happy medium of entertaining and applicable for others to consume as well as enjoyable for me to create.
\begin{ally}
Vague.
\end{ally}
I guess. I could list specifics, but I don't think that's quite what you're asking after.
\begin{ally}
No, vague is good. It's good to have something you'll always fall short on, because that'll always give you reason to strive for improvement.
\end{ally}
That ``if you hate who you were in the past, it's a good sign that you've improved as a person'' sort of thing?
\begin{ally}
In a way. If you hate your old work, it's a good sign you've improved as a writer, musician, developer, whatever.
\end{ally}
That makes sense.
Though I do have concrete goals. I'd like to write a book. I'd like to finish some outstanding music I've still got hanging around. I'd like to maybe work toward getting a job in something other than tech.
\begin{ally}
So what you're saying is that you'd like to be happy?
\end{ally}
I suppose so.
\begin{ally}
Good luck, kid.
\end{ally}\newpage
Autoplaying music
\begin{ally}
If this is about creativity, then tell me about composing.
\end{ally}
Shall I do so in song?
\begin{ally}
Please.
\end{ally}
No thanks, but I'll tell you all the same.
\newpage