Edits from PDF

content/and-flowers-wreathe-your-sleeping-form/autumn.md

@@ -76,7 +76,7 @@ For Autumn, we are greeted by the vision of plenty and naught in the form of fal
 
 And we, perhaps, are food for that ground.[^26] This idea that we, too, might be a feast of plenty to someone is not a new one --- 'food for worms' is an idiom for a reason. It isn't for the world at large, and it isn't for poets. Even Dwale tackles this in the poem that will be used for Winter.[^27]
 
-And yet there is another layer of lacking here: we lack the absent interlocutor. *We* have buried *our* dreams, here, those dreams where *I* know the scent of *you*. This, as before, features a turn from the external and impersonal to the internal and personal. Toward the end of the first verse, after language surrounding the world around us, we get not only an action that we take (and how delightful, that homonym in 'tears'), but the feeling of despairing that comes with it.
+And yet there is another layer of lack here: we lack the absent interlocutor. *We* have buried *our* dreams, here, those dreams where *I* know the scent of *you*. This, as before, features a turn from the external and impersonal to the internal and personal. Toward the end of the first verse, after seeing only language surrounding the world around us, we get not only an action that we take (and how delightful, that homonym in 'tears'), but the feeling of despairing that comes with it.
 
 Autumn is, it seems, a dialectic: two things can be true at the same time. Plenty and paucity. Alive and dead. Impersonal and personal. There is an eternity between each of those sets of truths, as though Autumn, more so than the rest of the seasons, holds on the longest. "How hard the year dies: no frost yet," Graves writes in *Intercession in Late October*. {{% cite source="graves_intercession" page="23" %}} "Spare him a little longer, Crone / For his clean hands and love-submissive heart."[^28]
 
@@ -112,7 +112,7 @@ As the years advance
 
 We think of it. We don't smile when we do.
 
-[^19]: Or perhaps a fear. Halloween lies there, doesn't it? There is a terror to your work, something existential, but you were also a fan of horror. You always asked for 'Halloween music'. Your story was going to be the one that started that other fiction podcast we were planning on, where bummers were welcome to complete the dichotomy[^19-1] with The Voice of Dog where there were none.
+[^19]: Or perhaps a fear. Halloween lies there, doesn't it? There is a terror to your work, Dwale. Something existential, but you were also a fan of horror. You always asked for 'Halloween music'. Your story was going to be the one that started that other fiction podcast we were planning on, where bummers were welcome to complete the dichotomy[^19-1] with The Voice of Dog where there were none.
 
     I don't know why I associate you so heavily with both terror and horror. You were a delight to be around, and your work is not *all* terror or horror. I wouldn't call your personality dark, or at least no darker than fallen leaves-- but I am getting ahead of myself.
 
@@ -124,11 +124,19 @@ We think of it. We don't smile when we do.
 
 [^20-1]: ⚠ They said it was just a lipoma, and then they stopped looking. Even though we told them she'd had a lipoma removed from atop her head back when we adopted her, back when she was a puppy, they stopped looking. They stopped looking! They said she was too fat, said as they peered over their imagined glasses at us, as though it were our fault that she was no longer so svelte, and then they sent us home. They sent us home! They said it was a benign lump and that German Shepherds just get those sometimes, that she was just too fat because they can be such couch potatoes, and then they stopped talking to us because they were too busy, too busy, too busy. A year later, she had slowed down to the point where she refused to go outside. She began spending all day, all night in the bathroom. That last day, her gums turned white and her belly was visibly swollen. That last night, she died[^20-2] in my arms.
 
-[^20-2]: ⚠ I know that I'm trying to square what I have of Dwale with its death, but when Falcon died in my arms less than six months later, then I really, *truly* knew what death looked like, and now I have to square that with Dwale's passing as well. Did it, too, cry? Did it, too, try to hide? When it breathed its last, did it slump over to the side and stay warm far longer than one might expect? There was no one there to chide us and send us home that I can blame; there's no cancer, if that ephemeral mention is to be believed, that lurked beneath the surface. It was and then it wasn't, and the only referent I have is a dog who died too young. I'm ashamed that I can't help but make the comparison.
+[^20-2]: ⚠ I know that I'm trying to square what I have of you with your death, but when Falcon died in my arms less than six months later, then I really, *truly* knew what death looked like, and now I have to square that with your passing as well. Did you, too, cry? Did you, too, try to hide? When you breathed your last, did you slump over to the side and stay warm far longer than one might expect? There's no one who chided us over our imaginings of you that I can blame; there's no cancer, if that ephemeral mention from your girlfriend is to be believed, that lurked beneath the surface. You were and then you were not, and the only referent[^20-3] I have is a dog who died too young. I'm ashamed that I can't help but make the comparison.
+
+[^20-3]: ⚠ Ah, but then there was Turtle, yes? Our cat? Her face drooping down to the towel on which she rested and her heart stopping? And Zephyr, did he not fall asleep on my lap nearly two years later and then stop breathing?
 
 [^21]: This, after all, is what I'm trying to do, I think. I can't ask you where Autumn lies. I can't ask you if you feel the same way about the onrushing cold that I do, about saying farewell to the heat of Summer. I can't ask you if your moods are still defined by the school year, as mine are, these many years gone, with stress peaking around what used to be the end of term and depression creeping in around that first week of school. I can't ask you many things. I can't ask you anything.
 
-[^22]: By its absence, I feel its presence, and yet I continue to try and gaslight myself into believing that it never existed. Is it gone? It must be. Was it ever there, though? Was it a real person? Was it someone so grounding that I felt childish before it? Was it someone I had the chance to meet back in 2015, where I stared longingly at its kosovorotka in gold-trimmed black, wishing I was brave enough to wear something like that? We'll never know, I suppose. One more thing I'll never be able to ask you.
+[^22]: By your absence, I feel your presence, and yet I continue to try and gaslight myself into believing that you never existed. Are you gone? You must be. Were you ever there, though? Were you a real person?[^22-1] Were you someone so grounding that I felt childish before you? Were you someone I had the chance to meet back in 2015, where I stared longingly at your *kosovorotka* in gold-trimmed black, wishing I was brave enough to wear something like that? We'll never know, I suppose. One more thing I'll never be able to ask you.
+
+[^22-1]: > There was no more Codrin in the L<sub>5</sub> System. Ey was only here. Ey couldn't remember being there, for were the sims not the same? And if ey had never been there, had ey ever really existed there? Ey was only memories, and perhaps that is all ey had ever been. Navel gazing and existential crises mixed with the glee of having actually *done* something. No longer just the passive amanuensis, but now the active participant.
+    >
+    > {{% cite source="toledot" page="51" %}}
+
+    Clearly a perennial fear.
 
 [^23]: Maybe I will, some day. I'd sure like to think so.
 
@@ -136,11 +144,11 @@ We think of it. We don't smile when we do.
 
 [^25]: Even if that something is time.
 
-[^26]: Were you buried, Dwale? I realize that I don't actually know. When Idun passed on news of your passing, she also asked what observances should be made for a Muslim who has passed. I know that expressing one's wishes for when one dies is not always something does with one's partner --- hell, I don't know that any of my partners and I have talked about it, though it *is* in my will --- but it does make me wonder: were those customs upheld?[^26-1] I realized, also, that I don't know how much of your identity was known by your family. I have to interpret your life only to the extent that I can interpret your poetry: I haven't the ear, I have only the words, and you are not around to ask.
+[^26]: Were you buried, Dwale? I realize that I don't actually know. When Idun passed on news of your passing on, she also asked what observances should be made for a Muslim who has passed. I know that expressing one's wishes for when one dies is not always something does with one's partner --- hell, I don't know that any of my partners and I have talked about it, though it *is* in my will --- but it does make me wonder: were those customs upheld?[^26-1] I realized, also, that I don't know how much of your identity was known by your family. I have to interpret your life only to the extent that I can interpret your poetry: I haven't the ear, I have only the words, and you are not around to ask.
 
-[^26-1]: Every time I take the long way home from the store because traffic sucks or highway 2 is too much, I think about stopping by the mosque that I pass and asking about this. It's always also couched in that selfish desire to also ask after a framework for dealing with grief.
+[^26-1]: Every time I take the long way home from the store because traffic sucks or highway 2 is too much on the senses, I think about stopping by the mosque that I pass and asking about this. It's always couched in that selfish desire to also ask after a framework for dealing with grief.
 
-    When I was talking about lack of framework in the context of this essay, a friend sent me a link to a tweet wherein the poster states "An american *(sic)* is told a thousand different ways that experiencing grief is abnormal, improper, and something to be done in private on your own time." {{% cite source="grief1" %}} This is stated in contrast to the Jewish practice of sitting shiva and the following sheloshim which provides a structured procedure for engaging with grief. Another user replied that this might just be a white, middle-class American thing: "White Anglo Saxon Protestant based communities may lack rituals for mourning. I don't know that world. But everyone from Black Americans to Latinx to AAPI to ethnic white  communities (Polish, Italian, Ukrainian etc) have ways to mourn that aren't exactly hidden." {{% cite source="grief2" %}}.
+    When I was talking about lack of framework in the context of this essay, a friend sent me a link to a tweet wherein the poster states "An american *(sic)* is told a thousand different ways that experiencing grief is abnormal, improper, and something to be done in private on your own time." {{% cite source="grief1" %}} This is stated in contrast to the Jewish practice of sitting *shiva* and the following *shloshim* which provides a structured procedure for engaging with grief. Another user replied that this might just be a white, middle-class American thing: "White Anglo Saxon Protestant based communities may lack rituals for mourning. I don't know that world. But everyone from Black Americans to Latinx to AAPI to ethnic white  communities (Polish, Italian, Ukrainian etc) have ways to mourn that aren't exactly hidden." {{% cite source="grief2" %}}.
     
     So here am I, bathed in white cultural protestantism and puritan work ethics, having nothing to hang my grief on but a desire for resolution, for even a hint at a framework. Five years after Margaras's death, when I was still trying to process what life without him would actually be like, I wrote:
     
@@ -158,7 +166,7 @@ We think of it. We don't smile when we do.
 
 [^28]: Who knows how much of my skittishness around winter is a me thing or an us thing. Spare me a little longer.
 
-[^29]: After all, I think our well was out into Autumn, or maybe it had *just* recovered. We were borrowing water from the neighbors for the dogs --- Falcon, who was dying, and Zephyr, who probably knew. I had burnt out so hard at work I had to take a leave of absence, had to spend sixteen hours a week in therapy, and on going back to work realized I still hated everything. I'm unsure even now whether life would have been easier without that grief. There is now dialectic between you being alive, of course, but there is this dialectic within me being unsure of whether or not I've processed your death.[^29-1] Sometimes I have, and sometimes I have to stop writing this essay for five days because looking at it makes me cry.
+[^29]: After all, I think our well was out into Autumn, or maybe it had *just* recovered. We were borrowing water from the neighbors for the dogs --- Falcon, who was dying, and Zephyr, who probably knew, whose own lymphoma perhaps already sat latent. I had burnt out so hard at work I had to take a leave of absence, had to spend sixteen hours a week in therapy, and on going back to work realized I still hated everything. I'm unsure even now whether life would have been easier without that grief. There is no dialectic between you being alive and dead, of course, but there *is* this dialectic within me being unsure of whether or not I've processed your death.[^29-1] Sometimes I have, and sometimes I have to stop writing this essay for five days because looking at it makes me cry.
 
 [^29-1]: ⚠ Ditto with Falcon. Sometimes I'm able to make it an entire day not thinking about her, and then I'll be laid low by an evening of flashbacks, the way she slumped to the side, just how long her body stayed warm...