7 and edits

idumea/content/006.tex

@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 The Woman has always been The Woman. This is the way of the world.
 
-The Woman was born Michelle Rachel Hadje in 2086. On a January night, she was born. Anna Judith Hadje screamed and screamed and breathed and breathed and breathed and, with a gasp or sigh or groan or moan, Michelle took a breath and, after a scant few seconds, wailed.
+The Woman was born Michelle Rachel Hadje in 2086. On a March night, she was born. Anna Judith Hadje screamed and screamed and breathed and breathed and breathed and, with a gasp or sigh or groan or moan, Michelle took a breath and, after a scant few seconds, wailed.
 
 The Woman does not remember this, for how many of us remember our first breath, our first wail? She does not remember, but the fact is unassailable. From that point, she \emph{was}.
 
@@ -16,7 +16,7 @@ The Woman's superlative friend followed with her and then soon surpassed her. Ey
 
 The Woman and her superlative friend moved together as one. They were the same person twice over, they would say. Michelle who was Sasha --- a name chosen for who knows what reason --- and RJ who was AwDae --- a name that was a corruption of eir name --- a name I feel no shame now in sharing. They were the pair who loved each other in their own way and who surrounded themselves with others. They were the pair who found each other and, when the world deemed them in some way unworthy of consideration, got lost together, for they fell among a crowd of politically active friends, as they were active themselves, and how inconvenient! Inconvenient people should be set aside, some bureaucrat thought. They should be put up high on a shelf in some forgotten storage. And so they were.
 
-The Woman and her superlative friend, when next they clicked their implants into place and delved into the familiar second home that was the 'net, they were shunted away into dreams and left there to wilt, to languish, to dessicate and wither and be blown away by who cared what wind. They were both torn asunder in some ineffable way. For Michelle who was Sasha, those two identities were carved apart, though only halfway, and, when her superlative friend, her beloved RJ, gave of emself to create the world that was Lagrange, a System for those minds who chose to upload, she dove in as soon as she could afford.
+The Woman and her superlative friend, when next they clicked their implants into place and delved into the familiar second home that was the 'net, they were shunted away into dreams and left there to wilt, to languish, to desiccate and wither and be blown away by who cared what wind. They were both torn asunder in some ineffable way. For Michelle who was Sasha, those two identities were carved apart, though only halfway, and, when her superlative friend, her beloved RJ, gave of emself to create the world that was Lagrange, a System for those minds who chose to upload, she dove in as soon as she could afford.
 
 The Woman and her superlative friend were ever bound up in each other, for they were the same person twice over, and since this world was in some ineffable way made \emph{of} em, Michelle who was Sasha and The Woman who was Michelle felt she had no other choice, even if the unique trauma of getting lost meant that she ever felt that split that inextricable Sasha-ness and Michelle-ness that someone, some bureaucrat that wanted her lost, inadvertently tried to extricate, and it was not until the ability to fork was added to the System that she was able to alleviate herself of such. Or, if not herself, at least those new copies of herself, the Ode clade, would be without such pain.
 
@@ -28,7 +28,7 @@ But I digress.
 
 The Woman wandered far from home. She picked a direction --- east, if the entrance to that Gothic house on the field was due north --- and began to walk. She walked for an hour. Then she walked for two, for four, for eight. She walked until the sun set and then she lay down in the grass and looked up to the stars and remembered all of these things and wept and smiled and laughed and sobbed.
 
-She remembered these things, and I remember these things, just as I, in dreams, remember the sands beneath my fight and the rattle of dry grass in the wind and the names of all things and forget them only when I wake. She wandered the field and lay down and looked at the stars and bathed in memories and I pace the empty rooms of my home, listening to nothing, looking at nothing, clenching and unclenching my fists as I struggle not to reach for my pen, my paper, and instead write in my head.
+She remembered these things, and I remember these things, just as I, in dreams, remember the sands beneath my feet and the rattle of dry grass in the wind and the names of all things and forget them only when I wake. She wandered the field and lay down and looked at the stars and bathed in memories and I pace the empty rooms of my home, listening to nothing, looking at nothing, clenching and unclenching my fists as I struggle not to reach for my pen, my paper, and instead write in my head.
 
 Why do we so often do this? Why are there times when, overflowing or not, we wrap ourselves up in our memories like the most comforting blanket in the world, and yet still cry? Why do we cry after loved ones? Why do we cry after ourselves? Why do we look up to the stars --- stars we made! --- and cry so bitterly? Why do the tears leave tracks in the fur on our cheeks or down over the skin of our faces? Why do birds, as the poet says, suddenly appear every time we feel such nearness as is left of our superlative friend?