78 lines
2.5 KiB
TeX
78 lines
2.5 KiB
TeX
\label{ally:21}
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\begin{paracol}{2}
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\begin{leftcolumn}
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\begin{ally}
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When you started this project, several people asked if you were okay.
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\end{ally}
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Yes.
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\begin{ally}
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Were you?
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\end{ally}
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I think so. I was swinging up toward hypomania, and plowing heedlessly through nostalgia\index{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.\index{Mental health!bipolar!mania|(}
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\begin{ally}
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Robin\index{Relationships!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.''\index{Numinous!birds}
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\end{ally}
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Perhaps this has a similar feel to it. A similar scent of ritual, a similar flavor of mysticism\index{Numinous}, a similar sense of some other reality vignetting my vision.
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\begin{ally}
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lorxus\index{Relationships!lorxus} asked if you were okay. ``People normally write memoirs at the ends of their lives.''
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\end{ally}
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Life is a series of beginnings and endings dovetailed messily together.
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\begin{ally}
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There is a final ending, though.
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\end{ally}
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I don't think I'm near that, despite what passive ideation might tell me. I'm not writing some drawn out farewell.
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\begin{ally}
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So, why are we talking, you and I? Where is this going?
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\end{ally}
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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.
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This is going nowhere.
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\begin{ally}
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I don't know whether to be proud or insulted by that.
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\end{ally}
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Can you feel either?
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\begin{ally}
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Not my department. The metaphor is still useful.
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\end{ally}
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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.
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It's not a directed thing.
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It is a river.
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It is the movement of the tides.
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It's guided only by gravity and the lay of the land.
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It is its own \emph{musica universalis}.
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It's a conversation.
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\begin{ally}
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Conversations have direction.
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\end{ally}
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Not all of them.
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It's one of those late-night conversations that go where they will, in which sometimes very little is said.
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It is not a minded thing. It has no autonomy and yet has no guiding force. No sapient guiding force, at least.
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It is a way. It is a path, and yet the path is not the walker.
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\begin{ally}
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This is going nowhere.
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\end{ally}
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Maybe, but maybe that's the point.
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\newpage
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\end{leftcolumn}
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\end{paracol}
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