Afterword

idumea/content/notes.tex

@@ -302,7 +302,7 @@ On The Oneirotect's pronouns
 
 \noindent The Oneirotect uses for itself several pronouns—though the set you see here in this text are `she', `they', `ey', and `it'—which serves as a reflection both of its critter nature and the fluidity of eir engagement with gender– no, with the slipperiness of identity as a whole. This is the role of language with identity: to be a poor reflection through some imperfect mirror, a version of the self seen through some glass, darkly.
 
-You will note the same is also true of The Dog, who, yes, is prone to a critter nature, but who also sometimes views himself as `he' and sometimes itself as `it'. For better or worse the identity of animals, of `low beasts', is entwined with that of \emph{things,} and for some, that is a joy.
+You will note the same is also true of The Dog, who, yes, is prone to a critter nature, but who also sometimes views himself as `it' and sometimes itself as `him'. For better or worse the identity of animals, of `low beasts', is entwined with that of \emph{things,} and for some, that is a joy.
 
 \paragraph{Page \pageref{rakoff}}
 \emph{It is} enjoyable, \emph{and often it is} loved, \emph{but it is not really} beloved.
@@ -366,6 +366,7 @@ And it is not without beauty, yes? For this passage is beautiful, and so too is
 \end{quote}
 
 \noindent Such bitterness! Words as a weapon! I write below of how we loathe our connections, and here was a moment of that loathing, for I remember well the pain that we all felt at that cruelty, but this is not that story, and so I will linger on the ideas of glasses darkly.
+\pagebreak
 
 \paragraph{Page \pageref{winthrop}}
 \emph{The Sightwright suffered as I do, as The Oneirotect does, and perhaps even as The Woman did.}
@@ -393,7 +394,7 @@ And yet, we are still one body. We are still all of us Michelle Hadje who was Sa
 Imagine such on the scale of the System, though! All of us members of one body! 2.3 trillion of us live here, and we are all beholden to the same piece of hardware, the same Dreamer dreaming us all in all of our love and all of our stupid, petty little squabbles that make us who we are–
 
 I have gotten carried away. The Sightwright suffered as I do, as The Oneirotect does, and perhaps even as The Woman did, and so we all suffered with them, and the fallout of their loss is with us still.
-\pagebreak
+%\pagebreak
 
 \paragraph{Page \pageref{artandfear}}
 \emph{With art comes fear.}
@@ -423,7 +424,7 @@ Just like me,\\
 they long to be\\
 close to you
 \end{verse}
-\pagebreak
+%\pagebreak
 
 \paragraph{Page \pageref{sweet-prospect}}
 [\ldots] \emph{...that sweet field arrayed in living green} [\ldots]
@@ -479,6 +480,7 @@ and fell visions sidling up too close\\
 both woo me. Sweet caramel and soft cream\\
 sit cloying on their tongues, and I, Atropos\\
 to such dreams as these, find shears on golden thread.
+\pagebreak
 
 I would not cut, nor even could, had I but wished\\
 to sever this golden thread — and every thread\\
@@ -511,6 +513,7 @@ Because I could not stop for Death —\\
 He kindly stopped for me —\\
 The Carriage held but just Ourselves —\\
 And Immortality.
+\pagebreak
 
 We slowly drove — He knew no haste\\
 And I had put away\\
@@ -599,7 +602,7 @@ your gentle apotheosis.
 \end{verse}
 
 \noindent I have also written here that I put this dream into prose, and this is also true, for here is a segment from a short story:
-\pagebreak
+%\pagebreak
 
 \begin{quote}
 And finally, the mirroring was broken as the \emph{her} that was not her slid \emph{her} fingers up over her wrist and gently guided her hand down toward the soil, loamy and damp, and she knew then that she must spread her fingers and dig them down into the earth, there by the stairs which were a finger pointing at God such that she was in turn pointing at…at what? At the owner of that hand? At the owner of that finger?
@@ -656,7 +659,7 @@ And on citing these, I am realizing just how much I am built up of obsessions, o
 \noindent 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.
-\pagebreak
+%\pagebreak
 
 \paragraph{Page \pageref{psalm13}}
 (quoted directly)
@@ -709,6 +712,7 @@ wystarczy pozwolić człowiekowi\\
 wytruć swój rodzaj\\
 a nastąpią niewinne wschody słońca\\
 nad florą i fauną wyzwoloną
+\pagebreak
 
 na pofabrycznych pustkowiach\\
 wyrosną dębowe lasy\\
@@ -737,6 +741,7 @@ upon a rabbit
 Evil will disappear from the world\\
 once consciousness does
 \end{verse}
+\pagebreak
 
 \paragraph{Page \pageref{rilke-doyousee}}
 \emph{Do you see now the connection?}
@@ -763,7 +768,7 @@ will feel the expanded air in more spirited flight.
 \noindent And yet I had also in mind the cadence of Nabokov: ``Give me now your full attention.'' A plea that one be understood.
 
 I am no poet, but I will not deny the utility in verse when it comes to scratching the itch of words:
-\pagebreak
+%\pagebreak
 
 \begin{verse}
 Give me now your full attention.\\
@@ -811,7 +816,7 @@ Never have relish in the faery power\\
 Of the wide world I stand alone, and think,\\
 Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.
 \end{verse}
-%\pagebreak
+%%\pagebreak
 
 Is it so surprising, then, that after cross-tree merging had been introduced as an option for us, that the one who would seek to collect within themself the entirety of the Ode clade—those who remain, dear readers!—would take for a name a line of Dickinson? We will be ever ourselves.
 
@@ -845,7 +850,7 @@ Is it so surprising, then, that after cross-tree merging had been introduced as
   She, then, like snow in a dark night\\
   Fell secretly.
 \end{verse}
-\pagebreak
+%\pagebreak
 
 \paragraph{Page \pageref{threadgall}}
 \emph{That unfalling ones are trapped within that last falling!}
@@ -910,7 +915,7 @@ I \emph{have} to imagine it! I have to imagine that Lagrange, the System, our em
   and staggered banged with terror through\\
   a million billion trillion stars.
 \end{verse}
-\pagebreak
+%\pagebreak
 
 \paragraph{Page \pageref{bees}}
 [\ldots] \emph{unbitter sweetness} [\ldots]