checkpoint

book/content/ally/005.tex

@@ -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?

book/content/ally/017.tex

@@ -0,0 +1,12 @@
+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

book/content/ally/018.tex

@@ -0,0 +1,33 @@
+\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

book/content/ally/019.tex

@@ -0,0 +1,45 @@
+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.

book/content/ally/020.tex

@@ -0,0 +1,146 @@
+\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

book/content/ally/021.tex

@@ -0,0 +1,70 @@
+\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

book/content/ally/022.tex

@@ -0,0 +1,53 @@
+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.

book/content/ally/023.tex

@@ -0,0 +1,41 @@
+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

book/content/ally/024.tex

@@ -0,0 +1,36 @@
+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

book/content/ally/025.tex

@@ -0,0 +1,30 @@
+\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

book/content/ally/026.tex

@@ -0,0 +1,56 @@
+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

book/content/ally/027.tex

@@ -0,0 +1,17 @@
+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

book/content/ally/028.tex

@@ -0,0 +1,53 @@
+\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

book/content/ally/029.tex

@@ -0,0 +1,45 @@
+\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