Notes

idumea/book.tex

@@ -89,7 +89,7 @@
   \noindent The section with Warmth In Fire on page \pageref{warmth} is a collaboration with Samantha Yule Fireheart.
   \vspace{1em}
 
-  \noindent The sections with The Dog and The Rabbit Chaser on pages \pageref{thedog1} and \pageref{thedog2} are a collaboration with Krzysztof ``Tomash'' Drewniak.
+  \noindent The section with The Dog and The Rabbit Chaser on page \pageref{thedog1} is a collaboration with Krzysztof ``Tomash'' Drewniak.
 
   \newpage
   \singlespacing
@@ -274,7 +274,7 @@ People of Orphalese, \\
   \vfill
   
   \begin{center}
-  \Huge ×
+  \Huge ×\label{x}
   \end{center}
 
   \vfill

idumea/content/004.tex

@@ -182,7 +182,7 @@ As was their wont in decades passed, The Woman met Her Lover onboard rather than
 
 Somewhere near the front of the train, they met, and here they felt that welcome surprise. The ``chance meeting'' may have been deliberately constructed, and yet it was not without a sense of newness. The Woman was a familiar panther that day and Her Lover a human as always, but The Woman, who had been so focused on her stasis until now, realized at once that she \emph{had} changed over the years. Slowly, to be sure, and perhaps not in the ways that she wished, but she had changed. Today, she wore a silver-gray wrap of a shirt, all shot through with purple threads, and a gray-silver wrap of Thai fisherman's pants, all shot through with threads of blue. Her fur may have been the same black, short and glossy, and she may have lingered in suffering as the tenth stanza had in her own way, but she was hardly the type to fully languish, nor wear the same thing for years or decades at a time!
 
-``Kitty,'' Her Lover said, leaning on old affections and wide smiles, ``you look amazing. Never thought I'd see you in something quite so\ldots so chic!''
+``Kitty,'' Her Lover said, leaning on old affections and wide smiles, ``you look amazing. Every time I see you I'm always so surprised to see you looking so\ldots so chic!''
 
 The Woman, caught up in the infectious ebullience of the greeting, smiled and bowed, tail lashing about with delight. ``Thank you, Farai. You are looking well.''
 
@@ -230,7 +230,7 @@ They leaned on each other as they stepped lightly from the train to the station,
 
 There was no rush to their movements, for both The Woman and Her Lover had always been methodical in their sensuality. Perhaps it fit the mold of one of The Woman's rituals—she must touch here, first, and then she would kiss there, and only then would she brush her fingers there, across the cheek—and perhaps not—a logical progression remains a logical progression without the hint of ritual.
 
-There was no rush to their movements, and so they sat first on the couch, sharing their kisses, refamiliarizing themselves with each other. The Woman felt within a subtle twisting, a stirring, a clockwise motion that dragged with it two colors of emotions. There was the love rekindled, there, yes, and there was along with it a growing anxiety: there was something less than worry and more than thought. In the middle, there was a spot between joy and fear, a place of too much meaning that she could not pin down. Arousal, perhaps? For there was that, there, too. That was perhaps of that clockwise turning: the slow swell of warmth low in her belly and the gentle pressure within her chest and bristle of whiskers. Excitement, maybe? Anticipation?
+There was no rush to their movements, and so they sat first on the couch, sharing their kisses, refamiliarizing themselves with each other. The Woman felt within a subtle twisting, a stirring, a clockwise motion that dragged with it two colors of emotions. There was the love rekindled, there, yes, and there was along with it a growing anxiety: there was something less than worry and more than thought. In the middle, there was a spot between joy and fear, a place of too much meaning that she could not pin down.\label{timo} Arousal, perhaps? For there was that, there, too. That was perhaps of that clockwise turning: the slow swell of warmth low in her belly and the gentle pressure within her chest and bristle of whiskers. Excitement, maybe? Anticipation?
 
 Here was another thing for The Woman to set before herself where she might observe it, describe its shape by the way the orange and blue of love and anxiety swirled around it.
 

idumea/content/005.tex

@@ -76,17 +76,37 @@ She smiled—another blessing!—and nodded to me.
 
 ``We sat in the solarium and spoke about what reading \emph{is.} She spoke of taking a story or a poem and wrapping oneself up in it. She gave me an example. She recited a poem:
 
-\{\{\% verse \%\}\} ``Too many suits move in too many lines. They circle banquet tables, hawk-eyed, hunting crudites, canapés, bruschetta. Fingers ferry food—fish, perhaps—finding slack-jawed mouths already open, squawking at wayward children or bemoaning The Market, whatever that may be.
+\begin{verse}
+``Too many suits move in too many lines.\\
+They circle banquet tables, hawk-eyed,\\
+hunting crudites, canapés, bruschetta.\\
+Fingers ferry food—fish, perhaps—finding\\
+slack-jawed mouths already open,\\
+squawking at wayward children\\
+or bemoaning The Market,\\
+whatever that may be.
 
-``At some point, who cares how long ago, death surfaced, claimed one, submerged again. Who knows how well they knew him, their backs turned, studiously deciding that he is no longer of them?
+``At some point, who cares how long ago,\\
+death surfaced, claimed one, submerged again.\\
+Who knows how well they knew him,\\
+their backs turned, studiously\\
+deciding that he is no longer of them?
 
 ``One could never guess.
 
-``We can say his suit was very fine, perhaps, that the room is tastefully furnished, the casket silver, the bar, open, quite good, and none of them are drunk yet, or at least none look it.
+``We can say his suit was very fine, perhaps,\\
+that the room is tastefully furnished,\\
+the casket silver, the bar, open,\\
+quite good, and none of them are drunk yet,\\
+or at least none look it.
 
-````Good man, good man,'' they mutter, doing all they can to convince each other through well-rehearsed performances, that this must be the case.
+````Good man, good man,'' they mutter,\\
+doing all they can to convince each other\\
+through well-rehearsed performances,\\
+that this must be the case.
 
-``The silently bereaved already sit graveside.'' \{\{\% /verse \%\}\}
+``The silently bereaved already sit graveside.''
+\end{verse}
 
 I turned those words over and over in my head for a minute, since The Woman had seemed quite comfortable sitting in silence with me. She used that time to drink her water while I played back the words again and again, looking down at my paws, and then returned my gaze to hers. ``There is a difference between the mere performance of grief and grieving itself, is there not?''
 
@@ -218,7 +238,7 @@ When it had lived here on Lagrange, though, it had contracted my other up-tree,
 
 And so there on my wall sat a painting that I had asked The Child to make, small by her standards at only the size of both of my paws held flat, wherein she had painted the house, the endless prairie, and the sky that somehow managed to be something beyond endless. There was the gray of the concrete that matched so well the gray-tan stalks of grass in fall, the gray-green stalks in spring, and glass. There was the plain, the sky.
 
-And there, right in the center, hovering a scant claw-width above the house, a perfectly black perfect square.
+And there, right in the center, hovering a scant claw-width above the house, a perfectly black perfect square.\label{motes}
 
 Readers, you must understand that, when I say perfectly black, I do mean it! There is this color, or non-color, \emph{Eigengrau} that is perhaps the darkest you are used to seeing. If you are in a perfectly dark room, or you are out beneath the stars at night and you close your eyes, or you are hiding under two layers of blankets from the monsters that haunt us still, even in this afterlife that we have built up into our nigh-perfection, what you see is not pure black, but \emph{Eigengrau.} It is the darkest color, I am told, that our eyes can see, phys-side! This is because, even when there is no light, the nerves of our eyes still fire occasionally. Perhaps it is because this is something that is required for nerve cells to feel healthy, and when those cells are in our muscles and it is just one or two at a time, it does not yank our hand away from our pen and paper like they were burning hot, but when they are in our eyes, every little firing is still perceived as a photon hitting this rod or that cone. Perhaps it is because there is some fundamental state of being for us that is \emph{not} stillness, but that is movement at some molecular level. Perhaps it is simply because they are lonely! I do not know, I do not know. I do not know.
 

idumea/content/007.tex

@@ -2,7 +2,7 @@ When at last The Woman returned home, she performed a new ritual. She performed
 
 This, you see, was the start of her final task. Her set of five tasks, of food, of physical pleasure, of entertainment, of creation, of change was not quite complete, and had within it one more step, and she felt most a connection to the spiritual in the act of mourning and hoped in that to seek change.
 
-My friends, I think it may well have been our conversation, that of The Woman and The Oneirotect and I, that set her mind thus in motion, for was it not then that we spoke so freely of my beloved up-tree and the way it mourned over Should We Forget? Did not the pair of long lost tenth stanza lines come up as well? Death Itself and I Do Not Know? They, too, perhaps felt some of this too-full-ness that The Woman struggles with, for back and back and back and back and back and back, six decades back, they lay still in thought and, before long, before the week was up, quit. They bowed out. They dipped. Committed suicide. Quit the big one. They push now up some perhaps daisies perhaps columbines perhaps nasturtiums in the mind of The Dreamer who dreams us all.
+My friends, I think it may well have been our conversation, that of The Woman and The Oneirotect and I, that set her mind thus in motion, for was it not then that we spoke so freely of my beloved up-tree and the way it mourned over Should We Forget? Did not the pair of long lost tenth stanza lines come up as well? Death Itself and I Do Not Know? They, too, perhaps felt some of this too-full-ness that The Woman struggles with, for back and back and back and back and back and back, six decades back, they lay still in thought and, before long, before the week was up, quit. They bowed out. They dipped. Committed suicide. Quit the big one. They push now up some perhaps daisies perhaps columbines perhaps nasturtiums\label{nasturtiums} in the mind of The Dreamer who dreams us all.
 
 There is loss in our lives and in our hearts and in our minds.
 
@@ -146,7 +146,7 @@ It explored a forest, sometimes running, sometimes sniffing thoughtfully, withou
 
 It prepared for tomorrow, if it absolutely must, by instinct and routine, or perhaps it did not.
 
-The joys and tragedies of its home drifted past its mind and into its too-perfect memory. Loves! Pleasures! Sorrows! Lives! Deaths! The laments of starving wolves outmaneuvered by deer! The blood of deer ripped to shreds by wolves! It did not determine what of what its eyes, ears, nose, tongue, paws took in was good, was evil, was just, was improper---it beheld what was, not what ought be, and there was a peace in that.
+The joys and tragedies of its home drifted past its mind and into its too-perfect memory. Loves! Pleasures! Sorrows! Lives! Deaths! The laments of starving wolves outmaneuvered by deer! The blood of deer ripped to shreds by wolves!\label{milosz} It did not determine what of what its eyes, ears, nose, tongue, paws took in was good, was evil, was just, was improper---it beheld what was, not what ought be, and there was a peace in that.
 
 It experienced each moment as it came and moved on, not stopping to analyze or categorize or name.
 
@@ -228,7 +228,7 @@ The Woman did so, and was startled to find that her feet, too, described lines i
 
 And so The Woman did, wandering along a few paces behind The Child. They played together in this way, talking quietly as they went. They found that if they walked in a lazy, wavering line, it looked like someone had twisted a rope out of vines of chalk. They found that if The Child orbited the Woman as she walked, the loops that she created were pleasing to behold. They found that, when The Child walked beside The Woman, when they held paws and walked and talked, a pair of parallel railroad tracks blossomed behind them, leaves scattered more sparsely on the two that trailed along after The Woman than those that followed The Child.
 
-The Woman knew that The Child did not have the answer that she sought, not really, but that was not to say that there was not joy to be found. There was joy in the walk they took. There was joy in the way that they sat on the swings and swayed back and forth. There was joy in watching The Child make little bets with herself and the world around her—``I bet I can make it to the top of the jungle gym in five seconds!'' or ``I bet I can go down the slide backwards and not die!''—even when she lost those bets—though she did not die that day.
+The Woman knew already that The Child did not have the answer that she sought, not really, but that was not to say that there was not joy to be found. There was joy in the walk they took. There was joy in the way that they sat on the swings and swayed back and forth. There was joy in watching The Child make little bets with herself and the world around her—``I bet I can make it to the top of the jungle gym in five seconds!'' or ``I bet I can go down the slide backwards and not die!''—even when she lost those bets—though she did not die that day.
 
 There was, last of all, joy when a piercing whistle broke the quiet of the late afternoon and Motes immediately hopped down from a balance beam and ran up to The Woman. ``That was Ma!'' This, you see, is what she called My Friend, her down-tree instance who had taken a role not dissimilar from a mother for her. ``Dinner is ready. I think Bee--'' This, you see, is what she called The Musician, her other guardian and My Friend's partner. ``--made meatloaf. Can I give you a hug?''
 

idumea/content/009.tex

@@ -56,7 +56,7 @@ And so here she was, \emph{here,} Standing before my door, my second visitor in
 
 ``It is not all on me, at least. We are learning the ins and outs of the new tech they have given us while bringing Lagrange back up from the Century Attack. So many crashes after long-diverged forks merged cross-tree out of fun, so many instances of people accidentally messing up their new ACLs and locking themselves out of their own rooms.'' She laughed, sipped her mocha, and added, ``The world feels strange and new.''
 
-``It does, at that,'' I said, smiling. ``I do not think I am at risk of either of those, at least. I have little interest in cross-tree merging, beyond providing an instance for Ashes Denote That Fire Was.''
+``It does, at that,'' I said, smiling. ``I do not think I am at risk of either of those, at least. I have little interest in cross-tree merging, beyond providing an instance for Ashes Denote That Fire Was.''\label{ashes}
 
 ``Same, on both counts. I believe they have picked up nearly twenty Odists now. They look\ldots well, they certainly have plenty going on, yes?''
 

idumea/content/afterword.tex

@@ -1,13 +1,14 @@
 \chapter*{Appendix I — Notes}
+\label{notes}
 
 \paragraph{Page \pageref{prophet}}
 From \emph{The Prophet.}
 
-I had originally intended to use the lyrics from the hymn titled ``Idumea'', which is included in the next appendix, but– ah! For some reason, it did not fit. I could not tell you why, dear reader. Perhaps it was the strong Christian nature of the text after a certain point, which fit strangely for the Odists, notably Jewish as they are. It, after all, is what spurred the language at the end of my\ldots we sall call it a little meltdown at the end, there, yes?
+I had originlly intended to use the lyrics from the hymn titled ``Idumea'', which is included in the next appendix, but– ah! For some reason, it did not fit. I could not tell you why, dear reader. Perhaps it was the strong Christian nature of the text after a certain point, which fit strangely for the Odists, notably Jewish as they are. It, after all, is what spurred the language at the end of my\ldots we shall call it a little meltdown at the end, there, yes?
 
 Perhaps it was that, as the story filled out within the middle, it just did not fit. I, Rye, suffered, perhaps. I wailed, ``What will become of me?'' I am the one who was overcome by overflow. I promise you, my friends, I \emph{promise} you, however, that this is not my story. The judgment is upon my head for what I have done, but it is not my story. This story belongs to The Woman.
 
-No. Instead, I chose the words of Almustafa, the chosen and the beloved. The Woman was life and she was the veil. We are eternity and the System is the mirror.
+No. Instead, I chose the words of Almustafa, the chosen and the beloved. The Woman was life and she was the veil. We are eternity and the System is the mirror.\pagebreak
 
 \paragraph{Page \pageref{pinocchio}}
 Cf. Collodi:
@@ -42,7 +43,9 @@ aber versuchen will ich ihn.
 Ich kreise um Gott, um den uralten Turm,\\
 und ich kreise jahrtausendelang;\\
 und ich weiß noch nicht: bin ich ein Falke, ein Sturm\\
-oder ein großer Gesang. 
+oder ein großer Gesang.
+
+\secdiv
 
 I live my life in ever-widening circles\\
 that stretch themselves out over the world.\\
@@ -55,6 +58,33 @@ and I still don't know: am I a falcon,\\
 a storm, or a great song? 
 \end{verse}
 
+\paragraph{Page \pageref{timo}}
+Cf. my own work:
+
+\begin{verse}
+Inter ĝuo kaj timo\\
+Estas loko de tro da signifo.\\
+Apud kompreno, ekster saĝo,\\
+Tamen ĝi tutampleksas.\\
+Mi kompareble malgrandas\\
+Kaj ĝi tro granda estas.\\
+Nekomprenebla\\
+Nekontestebla,\\
+Senmova kaj ĉiam ŝanĝiĝema.
+
+\secdiv
+
+Between joy and fear\\
+Is a place of too much meaning.\\
+Next to understanding, outside wisdom,\\
+It nonetheless expands.\\
+I’m so small beside it\\
+and it is too big.\\
+Incomprehensible,\\
+Incontestible,\\
+Unmoving and always changing.
+\end{verse}
+
 \paragraph{Page \pageref{blake}}
 From Blake:
 
@@ -137,6 +167,18 @@ And she felt growth accelerate as, bound now to the earth, her bones became wood
 
 \noindent Do I repeat myself? Very well, I repeat myself. I am beholden to my dreams.
 
+And yet, ah–! When writing the final chapter, even through the heat of the moment and the blood rushing in my ears, I began to feel within a flush of embarrassment. How indulgent it is to share this again! How indulgent, my friends, to let the dream take me again that it might shape my words! Even as I wrote, even as I cried, sitting at my desk (or trying to!), sobbing in front of my words, I struggled with feeling like this was somehow \emph{too} indulgent.
+
+I strive still to stifle that puritanical worrywart within, even so many years on.
+
+\paragraph{Page \pageref{nasturtiums}}
+The Musician shared with me a letter and My Friend several journal entries, but, ah–! If I share them here, I will fall once more to crying. You may find them in their entirety in \emph{Marsh}, a work written by a braver me.
+
+I will say, however, that that letter surrounded nasturtiums and was written the night Muse quit, and those diary entries were written by My Friend, a recounting of Beckoning's memories, to comfort The Musician in her grief.
+
+\paragraph{Page \pageref{motes}}
+I have written extensively on these hyper-black shapes that The Child paints and more about her besides in \emph{Motes Played}. A little book for little skunks, yes? For she deserves her story told—and just so! Just like this! A tale written in a style befitting her—as much as does The Woman.
+
 \paragraph{Page \pageref{psalm13}}
 From Psalm 13:2--4:
 
@@ -169,6 +211,46 @@ What gain is there for man in all his toil that he toils under the sun?
 Everything was from the dust, and everything goes back to the dust.
 \end{quote}
 
+\paragraph{Page \pageref{milosz}}
+Cf. Miłosz:
+
+\begin{verse}
+a nastąpią niewinne wschody słońca\\
+nad florą i fauną wyzwoloną
+
+na pofabrycznych pustkowiach\\
+wyrosną dębowe lasy\\
+krew rozszarpanego przez wilki jelenia\\
+nie będzie przez nikogo widziana\\
+jastrząb będzie spadać na zająca\\
+bez świadków
+
+zniknie ze świata zło\\
+kiedy zniknie świadomość
+
+rzeczywiście panie Tadeuszu\\
+zło (i dobro) bierze się z człowieka
+
+\secdiv
+
+the innocent sunrise will illuminate\\
+a liberated flora and fauna
+
+where oak forests reclaim\\
+the postindustrial wasteland\\
+and the blood of a deer\\
+torn asunder by a pack of wolves\\
+is not seen by anyone\\
+a hawk falls upon a hare\\
+without witness
+
+evil disappears from the world\\
+and consciousness with it
+
+Of course, dear Tadeusz,\\
+evil (and good) comes from man. 
+\end{verse}
+
 \paragraph{Page \pageref{rilke-doyousee}}
 Cf. Rilke:
 
@@ -177,11 +259,30 @@ Weißt du's \emph{noch} nicht? Wirf aus den Armen die Leere\\
 zu den Räumen hinzu, die wir atmen; vielleicht daß die Vögel\\
 die erweiterte Luft fühlen mit innigerm Flug.
 
+\secdiv
+
 Do you not understand \emph{yet?} Fling from your arms the emptiness\\
 into the spaces we breathe. It may be that the birds\\
 will feel the expanded air in more spirited flight.
 \end{verse}
 
+\paragraph{Page \pageref{ashes}}
+From Dickinson:
+
+\begin{verse}
+Ashes denote that Fire was —\\
+Revere the Grayest Pile\\
+For the Departed Creature’s sake\\
+That hovered there awhile —
+
+Fire exists the first in light\\
+And then consolidates\\
+Only the Chemist can disclose\\
+Into what Carbonates.
+\end{verse}
+
+\noindent We have always borne an obsession with Emily Dickinson. For years and years, and years and years and years she has lived within us, a remnant of some stage play we performed with our superlative friend, centuries back now.
+
 \paragraph{Page \pageref{baudelaire}}
 Cf. Baudelaire via Eliot:
 
@@ -189,6 +290,8 @@ Cf. Baudelaire via Eliot:
   \emph{Fourmillante cité, cité pleine de rêves,\\
   Où le spectre en plein jour raccroche le passant.}
 
+  \secdiv
+
   Unreal city, city full of dreams,\\
   Where ghosts in broad daylight cling to passsers-by.
 \end{verse}
@@ -210,10 +313,30 @@ Cf. Cummings:
   a million billion trillion stars.
 \end{verse}
 
+\paragraph{Page \pageref{x}}
+I used for this work a multiplication sign (×) for the section dividers, and, my dear friends, I am still coming to terms with this decision.
+
+There are so many possible meanings!
+
+Are we together, The Woman and I, multiplied? When she and I, when her story and mine, are intermingled, is it some greater story? My lovely readers, I hope so! I really do. I really hope, of course, that my myriad interruptions bear their own meaning and add to the whole of things, that we together are greater than the sum of the parts. I doubt and I hope in equal measure.
+
+Are we crossed? Do we as ideas lay across each other perpendicularly? The Woman fell into stillness and I fall still through eternal, jittery, restless movement. The woman set aside her agency, in the end, and I strive for any sense of control over myself, my language, my words and sentences and paragraphs and stories. We are diametrically opposed in so many ways. We cross each other, our paths cross each other's, we approached at a ninety degree angle, and, in the end, departed at such an angle.
+
+Are we set beside each other as some fictional love? Some two characters set within fan fiction who love each other in a way pure or unchaste in others' minds? Do I love her? Do I love The Woman? Did she love me?
+
+I do not know, my dear readers. I do not know these things and I do not know many more.
+
+Perhaps, though, perhaps the × stands for the decision that I made. It is the role I played in letting The Woman, that beautiful soul who bestowed a blessing with every smile, step away from the world, for removing those blessings from us, that beauty from us, that life, that veil.
+
+I am so, so incredibly sorry, and also rather proud of what I have done, of helping The Woman in so noble an endeavor, in equal measure.
+
+\paragraph{Page \pageref{notes}}
+Cf. Nabokov's \emph{Pale Fire.}
+
 % Make sure this is verso
-%\newpage
+\newpage
-%\null
+\null
-%\newpage
+\newpage
 \includepdf[fitpaper=true]{hymn.pdf}
 
 \chapter*{Appendix II — Idumea}
@@ -313,7 +436,7 @@ If you have seen cladists out and about on the web, the chances are good that yo
 \section*{The story so far}
 \label{backstory}
 
-The story told within \emph{Idumea} is in many ways standalone. However, there are some references and names scattered throughout taken from other books in the setting. Here follows some basics leading up to this.
+The story told within \emph{Idumea} is in many ways standalone. However, there are some references and names scattered throughout taken from other books in the setting, and, should you not already know them, learning will deepen understanding.. Here follows some basics leading up to this.
 
 % * Sasha and AwDae
 % * The Ode
@@ -376,7 +499,7 @@ everdream.space
 \vspace{0.7em}
 {\DisplayFont\small Krzysztof “Tomash” Drewniak}
 
-cohost.org/krzysz00
+kdrewniak.com
 
 \vfill
 \end{center}