Idumea work

idumea/book.tex

@@ -91,6 +91,12 @@
 
   \noindent The section with The Dog and The Rabbit Chaser on page \pageref{thedog1} is a collaboration with Krzysztof ``Tomash'' Drewniak.
 
+  \cleardoublepage
+  \thispagestyle{empty}
+  \tableofcontents*
+  \null
+  \thispagestyle{empty}
+
   \newpage
   \singlespacing
 
@@ -139,6 +145,12 @@
 
   \vspace{0.7em}
 
+  {\DisplayFont\small The Instance Artist}
+
+  Dear, Also, The Tree That Was Felled
+
+  \vspace{0.7em}
+
   {\DisplayFont\small The Poet}
 
   Where It Watches the Slow Hours Progress
@@ -213,15 +225,13 @@
 
   \null
   \vfill
-  \begin{verse}
-People of Orphalese, \\
-\vin beauty is life when life unveils her holy face.\\
-\vin But you are life and you are the veil.\\
-\vin Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.\\
-\vin But you are eternity and you are the mirror.
+  \begin{quote}
+People of Orphalese, beauty is life when life unveils her holy face.
+But you are life and you are the veil. Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.
+But you are eternity and you are the mirror.
 
 — Kahlil Gibran\label{prophet}
-\end{verse}
+\end{quote}
 
 %  And am I born to die?\\
 %  To lay this body down!\\
@@ -243,10 +253,11 @@ People of Orphalese, \\
   \cleardoublepage
   \pagestyle{ourbook}
   %\doublespacing
-  
+
   \Char{End Of Endings — 2403\par ×\par Rye — 2409}
   \markboth{Idumea}{Madison Rye Progress}
   
+  \addcontentsline{toc}{part}{Idumea}
   \chapter*{}
   \input{content/001}
   \secdiv
@@ -282,6 +293,7 @@ People of Orphalese, \\
   \cleardoublepage
   
   \backmatter
+  %\singlespacing
 
   \Char{Afterword}
 

idumea/content/002.tex

@@ -160,7 +160,7 @@ The Woman rode the high of lovely friendship for days after that coffee date. Fo
 
 Whenever The Woman felt this way, she would wander around the house and clean. She would take on extra cooking duties and make extra desserts for her cocladists and their friends. She would stay in one form for far longer than was her usual, and remained now a panther. She would go for walks around the field, treating the house itself as a signpost at the center of widening circles. She would imagine that those circles might some day spread out across the entire world, never mind the varied infinities housed within the field itself. It was a thing to which she could give herself as she asked her high-minded questions: am I a falcon, a storm, or a great song?\label{rilke-circles}
 
-These words of Rilke's would dance unblushing through her mind, linking arms on one side with the words of Dickinson which ever twined around those of her clade—\emph{If I should die, And you should live, And time should gurgle on, And morn should beam, And noon should burn, As it has usual done\ldots{}}—and on the other with the lingering lines of the Ode that made up the names of her clade. ``I remember the rattle of dry grass,'' she would explain to the bees as they buzzed in friendship around her ankles. ``I remember the names of all things and forget them only when I wake.''
+These words of Rilke's would dance unblushing\label{darius} through her mind, linking arms on one side with the words of Dickinson which ever twined around those of her clade—\emph{If I should die, And you should live, And time should gurgle on, And morn should beam, And noon should burn, As it has usual done\ldots{}}—and on the other with the lingering lines of the Ode that made up the names of her clade. ``I remember the rattle of dry grass,'' she would explain to the bees as they buzzed in friendship around her ankles. ``I remember the names of all things and forget them only when I wake.''
 
 And so she would cook her meals and walk in widening circles around this primordial tower that was her home, perhaps circling around God, though she did not care one way or the other if there was that of God in everything.
 

idumea/content/003.tex

@@ -8,7 +8,7 @@ She hung onto joy and baked her goodies and went for her walks and awaited, with
 
 But as it goes, as it always goes, the morsels of joy meted gladly out soon began to run dry and the sense of happiness that she felt waned, and those truly \emph{good} days began to fade once more into merely okay.
 
-It was the day of her appointment that The Woman sat up in her bed, bleary-eyed, and looked around her, around her plain and simple room with her plain and simple sheets and plain and simple clothes folded neatly atop a plain and simple chair, ready for wear, and at last sighed, wondering, \emph{Where is it that my joy has gone? Where has it gone?}
+It was the day of her appointment that The Woman sat up in her bed, bleary-eyed, and looked around her, around her plain and simple room with her plain and simple sheets and plain and simple clothes folded neatly atop a plain and simple chair, ready for wear, and at last sighed, wondering, \emph{Where is it that my joy has gone? Where has it gone?}\label{simmons}
 
 Today was therapy, and her joy was gone.
 

idumea/content/004.tex

@@ -144,7 +144,7 @@ And so The Woman went inside and lay down and let The Aesthetician work through
 
 The Woman left refreshed, renewed, reinvigorated, and with this eye she set to looking into the escalation that she promised Her Friend.
 
-We have seen such success already, have we not? We have seen the ways in which The Woman—she who does not have many friends—enjoys the touch of hugs or a paw rested atop hers. It is a sometimes food, yes? But then, it is for all of us. I do not always want to be hugged or touched—I do not now, here on the edge of overflow—and there are forms of touch I do not like at all! The woman here is considering intimacy, yes? Sensuality and sexuality? Those are things that I do not like. I like \emph{that} they exist, I am glad that they do, and I even like writing about them—see, here! I am even about to do so!—but they are things that I hold at a distance from myself.
+We have seen such success already, have we not? We have seen the ways in which The Woman—she who does not have many friends—enjoys the touch of hugs or a paw rested atop hers. It is a sometimes food, yes? But then, it is for all of us. I do not always want to be hugged or touched—I do not now, here on the edge of overflow—and there are forms of touch I do not like at all! The Woman here is considering intimacy, yes? Sensuality and sexuality? Those are things that I do not like. I like \emph{that} they exist, I am glad that they do, and I even like writing about them—see, here! I am even about to do so!—but they are things that I hold at a distance from myself.
 
 Ah, but my words are wandering. This touch, even the grooming, is a sometimes food for The Woman, and yet she had held herself at a distance from such for who knows what reason. I do not think she knew, herself, my friends, for she is as we all are: she is a woman who craves touch and deserves touch and does not, on an intellectual level, wish that she were \emph{not} touched. It is emotional, perhaps, or psychic, or spiritual, or on some level other than the intellectual that the desire to touch and be touched, or the physical need for fulfillment, is difficult for her.
 

idumea/content/005.tex

@@ -1,16 +1,19 @@
+\hypertarget{end-of-endings-2403-rye-2409}{%
+\subsection{\texorpdfstring{End Of Endings --- 2403×Rye --- 2409}{End Of Endings --- 2403 × Rye --- 2409}}\label{end-of-endings-2403-rye-2409}}
+
 Some of my readers may be wondering why it is that I know so much about The Woman.
 
-``How does she know all of this?'' some might be wondering. ``Does she really know all these things that The Woman did? Does she know who the kindly shop owner is? The one who pet on The Woman as she sobbed from too spicy a chili?'' Others might be wondering—and rightly so!—``How much of this is actually real? Surely she does not know The Woman's innermost thoughts! All this talk of ideas in shapes being set before her is quite silly.''
+``How does she know all of this?'' some might be wondering. ``Does she really know all these things that The Woman did? Does she know who the kindly shop owner is? The one who pet on The Woman as she sobbed from too spicy a chili?'' Others might be wondering --- and rightly so! --- ``How much of this is actually real? Surely she does not know The Woman's innermost thoughts! All this talk of ideas in shapes being set before her is quite silly.''
 
-My answer is that tired phrase: ``It is complicated.'' Of course I do not know her innermost thoughts. I think it is a me thing to take abstract ideas and pretend they look like pretty baubles or hot coals or little statuettes to be placed upon a dresser. I cannot read minds, and I do not have any memories from The Woman. I do not even know quite what she is anymore! I would not know if she quit, since I am not down-tree from her—her down-tree instance is dead now, these last six decades, remember—and I do not believe she merged cross-tree with anyone except perhaps Ashes Denote That Fire Was, who is building in themself a gestalt of the clade as best they can. No, I do not know anything so intimate.
+My answer is that tired phrase: ``It is complicated.'' Of course I do not know her innermost thoughts. I think it is a me thing to take abstract ideas and pretend they look like pretty baubles or hot coals or little statuettes to be placed upon a dresser. I cannot read minds, and I do not have any memories from The Woman. I do not even know quite what she is anymore! I would not know if she quit, since I am not down-tree from her --- her down-tree instance is dead now, these last six decades, remember --- and I do not believe she merged cross-tree with anyone except perhaps Ashes Denote That Fire Was, who is building in themself a gestalt of the clade as best they can. No, I do not know anything so intimate.
 
 What I do have, though, is a story. I have the story I learned from The Woman's Friend and Therapist and Cocladist and Lover, the one I learned from The Blue Fairy. I have all of that story that I learned, and I have that story that I lived.
 
 \secdiv
 
-One day—I remember it being quite a warm one, though every sim has different weather, and we as a clade are not all that keen on cold—one day, The Woman came to me.
+One day --- I remember it being quite a warm one, though every sim has different weather, and we as a clade are not all that keen on cold --- one day, The Woman came to me.
 
-``Dear The Wheat And Rye Under The Stars,'' she said as she stood before my door, a skunk looking much the same as I do—though it bears repeating that she was \emph{quite} stylish, and I promise you, friends, I am \emph{not;} she wore a simple outfit of shifting colors that caught the eye without dazzling, one that made her look supremely comfortable as herself, and me? I wore a t-shirt and pajama pants! ``I was pointed your way by Praiseworthy. Do you have a moment to speak?''
+``Dear The Wheat And Rye Under The Stars,'' she said as she stood before my door, a skunk looking much the same as I do --- though it bears repeating that she was \emph{quite} stylish, and I promise you, friends, I am \emph{not;} she wore a simple outfit of shifting colors that caught the eye without dazzling, one that made her look supremely comfortable as herself, and me? I wore a t-shirt and pajama pants! ``I was pointed your way by Praiseworthy. Do you have a moment to speak?''
 
 Readers, I do not think I need to tell you that I was caught off-guard by this! I had never met The Woman before, though I had certainly seen her once or twice. There were functions, yes? And perhaps she came to one of my readings or two, and certainly she was there, that day on the field as we watched Michelle who was also Sasha give herself up to the world and become one with the heart that perhaps beats at some imagined center of the System. The most recent time I had seen her, though, was in some unreadable and thus unwritable mood as some few dozen of us gathered on the first of what some are now calling \emph{HaShichzur,} the day that Lagrange was restored after the Century Attack.
 
@@ -24,7 +27,7 @@ And now here she was, standing in the little courtyard created by the set of tow
 
 My place is clean and minimal. It is not clean because I am necessarily a clean person, nor is it minimal because I have any particular attachments to minimalism or its trappings. Friends, you have surely gathered by now that I am quite a bit more focused on writing than I am on most anything else. My home contains a simple kitchen and a simple dining table. There is a den in which there is a couch and a coffee table. There are two bedrooms, one of which contains a bed and the other of which is empty. The only room that is of any interest is perhaps my office, but even that is probably too minimal for most people's tastes! I have a desk. I have paper and pens and a keyboard on which I can type when that is the mood.
 
-That is not to say that it is a boring place—at least, I do not think so! I have some paintings on the wall, some landscapes interrupted by hyper-black squares painted by The Child. There are several little decorations scattered around, as well; little objects that The Oneirotect has made in its explorations in oneirotecture and oneiro-impressionism. The most meaningful of these sits on my writing desk, and takes the form of a wireframe polyhedral fox about the size of my paw. While it is silver in color, it does not cast any shadows on itself and has constant luminosity, and so it looks like a two-dimensional shape that changes as your perspective does.
+That is not to say that it is a boring place --- at least, I do not think so! I have some paintings on the wall, some landscapes interrupted by hyper-black squares painted by The Child. There are several little decorations scattered around, as well; little objects that The Oneirotect has made in its explorations in oneirotecture and oneiro-impressionism. The most meaningful of these sits on my writing desk, and takes the form of a wireframe polyhedral fox about the size of my paw. While it is silver in color, it does not cast any shadows on itself and has constant luminosity, and so it looks like a two-dimensional shape that changes as your perspective does.
 
 Ah, I am digressing again. My thoughts and words wander.
 
@@ -46,7 +49,7 @@ While I fetched us both such a glass, I said, ``What is it that brings you here?
 
 ``A writer, a poet, and a musician. I have been having some thoughts on joy that I would like to explore with each of you.''
 
-She told me her story, much as I have written it to you, readers. She spoke of the ways of seeking out joy, of diving into the pleasures of food—and I can tell you, friends, she is absolutely correct about tam mak hoong; it is \emph{incredibly} delicious—and the pleasures of touch and sensuality and sexuality. She told me of how much joy she had found in such things and in the rekindled relationship with Her Lover, and she also told me of how these joys were lovely, but not the joys that she was seeking, and that she had three more items on her list of five. She had entertainment, creativity, and shaping herself yet to go.
+She told me her story, much as I have written it to you, readers. She spoke of the ways of seeking out joy, of diving into the pleasures of food --- and I can tell you, friends, she is absolutely correct about tam mak hoong; it is \emph{incredibly} delicious --- and the pleasures of touch and sensuality and sexuality. She told me of how much joy she had found in such things and in the rekindled relationship with Her Lover, and she also told me of how these joys were lovely, but not the joys that she was seeking, and that she had three more items on her list of five. She had entertainment, creativity, and shaping herself yet to go.
 
 ``So, your goal with visiting is to read?''
 
@@ -66,7 +69,7 @@ We sat in silence, then, while I processed this. My friends, you may perhaps hav
 
 ``Thank you, my dear,'' I said at last, bowing.
 
-She smiled—another blessing!—and nodded to me.
+She smiled --- another blessing! --- and nodded to me.
 
 ``Tell me about your reading, then.''
 
@@ -76,43 +79,23 @@ 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:
 
-\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.
+\{\{\% 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.''
-\end{verse}
+``The silently bereaved already sit graveside.'' \{\{\% /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?''
 
-``It is as you say. There is performed grief and performative grief—performative in the philosophical sense. We of the tenth stanza were quite sad when Lagrange came back with us intact but not with Should We Forget. We received condolences from many, some flowers and many kind words. Ever Dream came over and spoke with me about grief as we sat out on the field, where she said,''It is quite sad, is it not? To lose someone you have known for so long is quite sad.'' I agreed, and then drew a line around the topic.'' She performed such a motion now, describing an arc before her with one of her well kept claws, before dismissing it with a wave. ``This was grief performed.''
+``It is as you say. There is performed grief and performative grief --- performative in the philosophical sense. We of the tenth stanza were quite sad when Lagrange came back with us intact but not with Should We Forget. We received condolences from many, some flowers and many kind words. Ever Dream came over and spoke with me about grief as we sat out on the field, where she said,''It is quite sad, is it not? To lose someone you have known for so long is quite sad.'' I agreed, and then drew a line around the topic.'' She performed such a motion now, describing an arc before her with one of her well kept claws, before dismissing it with a wave. ``This was grief performed.''
 
-I nodded, and in my heart, I think I knew what was coming next, for I found my muscles bunching up as in in preparation for something—flight, perhaps? I do not know, my friends.
+I nodded, and in my heart, I think I knew what was coming next, for I found my muscles bunching up as in in preparation for something --- flight, perhaps? I do not know, my friends.
 
 ``And Warmth In Fire came over, too, so that it could sit at our table and weep rather than eat. Ey wept, and then asked to retreat, and we guided her up to Should We Forget's room so that they could lay in her bed for a while in silence. When it came back downstairs, ey thanked us kindly and left, and when we went back upstairs to look, there was a flower wrought out of some subtly glowing metal left on Should We Forget's pillow. It lays there still.''
 
@@ -126,7 +109,7 @@ So it is perhaps no surprise that I cried then, and that, for the third time, Th
 
 When I was once more able to speak, after I had taken a moment to clean up, I asked, ``You went into this experience with Slow Hours to explore joy, yes? What did you find, in the end?''
 
-``I did not read only this one poem. I read several more with her that day, and took home several books to read in such a way. Slow Hours talked me through the joy of stories—even the small ones—and left me with some assignments.
+``I did not read only this one poem. I read several more with her that day, and took home several books to read in such a way. Slow Hours talked me through the joy of stories --- even the small ones --- and left me with some assignments.
 
 ``I did not like all of the books, but Slow Hours instructed me to read them anyway, unless they started to make me truly bored. None did, however, so I finished every book I took with me.
 
@@ -158,7 +141,7 @@ When, now for the second time, I was able to sit up straight again, able breath
 
 The Woman's simple question left me all the room in the world to admit that I did not know. I think that until she asked it, I was not quite sure why, myself. I \emph{had} needed to hear those things but, yes: why? I do not think I would have been able to tell her as part of my statement, but that syllable forced my thoughts into order in a way that they are not as I write this, six years later.
 
-``Because I have not internalized the immediacy of the attack,'' I said. ``I did not know Should We Forget. I never met No Longer Myself. I met and spoke with Beckoning and Muse, yes, but only once. You telling me these things—me hearing them—was enough to make me realize that I have not truly grieved them, not properly. Your story of Warmth grieving helped me understand em better, and your story of Beholden's music and how she told you not to listen to it for her assignments made me realize that I, too, am only just starting to process the loss.''
+``Because I have not internalized the immediacy of the attack,'' I said. ``I did not know Should We Forget. I never met No Longer Myself. I met and spoke with Beckoning and Muse, yes, but only once. You telling me these things --- me hearing them --- was enough to make me realize that I have not truly grieved them, not properly. Your story of Warmth grieving helped me understand em better, and your story of Beholden's music and how she told you not to listen to it for her assignments made me realize that I, too, am only just starting to process the loss.''
 
 ``I understand. I was forced to confront the immediacy of Should We Forget no longer being with us from the very first day, and I am used to thinking of my stanza in terms of loss. We lost Death Itself and I Do Not Know, yes? We knew loss in a way more immediate within the clade except perhaps by those of the second stanza, who lost their first line, too, yes?''
 
@@ -196,7 +179,7 @@ I nodded. ``A story is a good place to start, yes. You really have made so littl
 
 Ah! This was it! My friends, this was the point when I realized just what it was that made each of The Woman's smiles feel like blessings and what made it feel like she bore some power within her that I could not quite understand. It was her \emph{stillness.} My astute readers will remember that she had a thought, some few thousand words ago: perhaps this unbecoming that her mind circled around was simply the utmost in stillness.
 
-Now, your narrator did not know this at the time—I do not even know now that this was the thought she had that day, but I am a storyteller, and so that is part of her story—but at the time, it was a revelation. Stillness and stillness and stillness. What a dream to have! Would that I could find such, yes? Even now, even as I write this, I feel that the lucidity in my words here is due only to my recounting of a conversation I actually had, words anchored to moments in time that I pull out one right after the other and lay in a pretty row.
+Now, your narrator did not know this at the time --- I do not even know now that this was the thought she had that day, but I am a storyteller, and so that is part of her story --- but at the time, it was a revelation. Stillness and stillness and stillness. What a dream to have! Would that I could find such, yes? Even now, even as I write this, I feel that the lucidity in my words here is due only to my recounting of a conversation I actually had, words anchored to moments in time that I pull out one right after the other and lay in a pretty row.
 
 At the time, however, I said, ``Have you found stillness in your endeavors so far? Was there stillness in active reading and active listening?''
 
@@ -212,7 +195,7 @@ She nodded. ``Yes. My thoughts became ordered, perhaps. That turbulence became a
 
 I laughed as well. ``Thank you, I think. I have a few that are labeled `meditations on whatever', but even those probably do not fit the bill.''
 
-``I would assume not. No, I came to you because I wanted to talk to you about creating specifically not just on Praiseworthy's suggestion, but also because I watched And We Are The Motes In The Stage-Lights paint while visiting Beholden.''
+``I would assume not. No, I came to you because I wanted to talk to you specifically about creating not just on Praiseworthy's suggestion, but also because I watched And We Are The Motes In The Stage-Lights paint while visiting Beholden.''
 
 ``Ah! Motes! What a delight!''
 
@@ -228,7 +211,7 @@ I laughed, nodding.
 
 ``I will say that she is no less flighty or energetic when she chooses to live at older ages. When she is, say, twenty five, there is still no stopping her.''
 
-``So I am told. However, she is also a very good girl, is she not? Beholden saw the state that I was in—for when Motes started zipping around the house, I started shifting between forms—and suggested that she go and paint. She said quite simply''Okay!'' and ran off to the next room where she simply sat on a stool and began painting.''
+``So I am told. However, she is also a very good girl, is she not? Beholden saw the state that I was in --- for when Motes started zipping around the house, I started shifting between forms --- and suggested that she go and paint. She said quite simply''Okay!'' and ran off to the next room where she sat on a stool and began painting.''
 
 I looked up to the wall beside the couch, upon which a painting sat. The Woman smiled and nodded.
 
@@ -238,15 +221,15 @@ 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.\label{motes}
+And there, right in the center, hovering a scant claw-width above the house, a perfectly black perfect square.
 
-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.
+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.
 
 This square is not \emph{Eigengrau.} It is beyond that. It is beyond even black! It is an impossible black. It is deeper than \emph{Eigengrau,} yes, but it is also a very thirsty black. If the ground of The Instance Artist's prairie drinks thirstily of the sky, so too does this black drink thirstily of all the light in the world. It draws light from the room, and when you look at the painting, the world seems dimmer. It is a hole in the world.
 
 I am used to it, my friends, for it sits happily enough upon my wall, but I am told that it is unnerving to see.
 
-``Her paintings have always struck me as bearing a sort of serenity that I have not actually seen in the world,'' I said after we had appreciated house and plain and sky and hole in the world. ``It is more than just some moment of movement captured and frozen in time. It is like she records things that were never still to begin with.''
+``Her paintings have always struck me as bearing a sort of serenity that I have not actually seen in the world,'' I said after we had appreciated house and plain and sky and hole in the world. ``It is more than just some moment of movement captured and frozen in time. It is like she records things that had never been anything but still to begin with.''
 
 ``Yes, and that is what drew me to her,'' The Woman said, gaze lingering on the painting. ``I begged Beholden's leave to sit and watch Motes for nearly an hour. I claimed a spot in her studio once I received permission and watched as she worked. While I was there, she built up a scene of a mesa. I recognized it as Table Mountain. Do you remember?''
 
@@ -262,9 +245,9 @@ She laughed. ``Neither had I. We hiked there once and it seems to have left litt
 
 The woman laughed.
 
-``So it is much like she paints the rest of the scene, yes? Except that it is not, because she is not adding to the picture, she is taking away from it. I have tried to look at this painting from every angle, yes? I have looked up close and far away. I have touched it and smelled it and—yes, I will admit—tasted it, and it is in all ways just paint on canvas. But it is not on \emph{top} of \emph{anything,} it is \emph{through everything,} I would say. I do not know how else to explain it. With all the calmness in the universe, she excised a part of the world from existence.'' I looked up to the painting again. ``I feel that, were I able to visit Dear's prairie again, that very chunk of it would be missing. I fear it would be some sort of black hole hungrily gobbling up all of Lagrange from the inside. In my dreams, that is what the Century Attack looks like. In my dreams, we are all pulled through a null rectangle like that, and when the world is pulled back out, those like Should We Forget and No Longer Myself and Beckoning and Muse are left within.''
+``So it is much like she paints the rest of the scene, yes? Except that it is not, because she is not adding to the picture, she is taking away from it. I have tried to look at this painting from every angle, yes? I have looked up close and far away. I have touched it and smelled it and --- yes, I will admit --- tasted it, and it is in all ways just paint on canvas. But it is not on \emph{top} of \emph{anything,} it is \emph{through everything,} I would say. I do not know how else to explain it. With all the calmness in the universe, she excised a part of the world from existence.'' I looked up to the painting again. ``I feel that, were I able to visit Dear's prairie again, that very chunk of it would be missing. I fear it would be some sort of black hole hungrily gobbling up all of Lagrange from the inside. In my dreams, that is what the Century Attack looks like. In my dreams, we are all pulled through a null rectangle like that, and when the world is pulled back out, those like Should We Forget and No Longer Myself and Beckoning and Muse are left within.''
 
-We sat in silence—silences can be so comfortable sometimes!—while I looked up at the painting and The Woman looked out the sliding glass door that led out to my little patio. It must have been two or three minutes of just long, comfortable silence, of just a woman who was also a cat and a woman who was also a skunk, two women who were in some roundabout way the same, sitting together.
+We sat in silence --- silences can be so comfortable sometimes! --- while I looked up at the painting and The Woman looked out the sliding glass door that led out to my little patio. It must have been two or three minutes of just long, comfortable silence, of just a woman who was also a cat and a woman who was also a skunk, two women who were in some roundabout way the same, sitting together.
 
 ``How large do you suppose it would be?'' The Woman said, startling me out of my reverie.
 
@@ -298,13 +281,13 @@ So it was that The Woman returned home with the promise to come back the next da
 
 I had an answer ready for this, dear Readers, for this is something that I think about with some frequency. ``I write for those who need to read.''
 
-The Woman tilted her head—she was back to being a skunk, yes, but this is a habit that all of us share within the Ode clade, no matter our shape. ``I have heard it said so often that one should write for oneself and wait for an audience to come.''
+The Woman tilted her head --- she was back to being a skunk, yes, but this is a habit that all of us share within the Ode clade, no matter our shape. ``I have heard it said so often that one should write for oneself and wait for an audience to come.''
 
 ``That is popular advice, is it not? There is joy in writing things that no one will read, I will not lie, but that is not how communication works. I would prefer instead to say,''Write what you want to see others reading.'' I would say, ``Write what you believe others should know.'' To write solely for yourself is for the act of journalling, not for the act of creation.''
 
 She furrowed her brow. ``I will admit that I spent last night thinking much on this. I thought of our conversation and the types of things that I might write and was stuck on the fact that what joy I am seeking is unrelated simply to an act but more to a way of being. Why, after all, would I simply put pen to paper and then close the book? That is just the motions of writing without a goal.'' A faint smile tugged at the corner of her mouth and, yes, this, too, was a blessing. ``Though I am told that there is joy in fine pens and fine paper, too.''
 
-I laughed, reached into a pocket, and withdrew my current favorite pen. It is, you may be surprised to hear, quite plain. It is round and it is long. It has a cap that posts on the back. The nib is nothing special. It is a demonstrator—that is, it has a clear body so that one can see the ink within—but so are many of my pens. No, there is little special about it overall, other than the fact that it simply fits well within my paw, and that, dear friends, is what is most important in a pen.
+I laughed, reached into a pocket, and withdrew my current favorite pen. It is, you may be surprised to hear, quite plain. It is round and it is long. It has a cap that posts on the back. The nib is nothing special. It is a demonstrator --- that is, it has a clear body so that one can see the ink within --- but so are many of my pens. No, there is little special about it overall, other than the fact that it simply fits well within my paw, and that, dear friends, is what is most important in a pen.
 
 I handed the pen over to The Woman and she drew a notepad out of the air, write a few short sentences on it with the pen, nodded appreciatively, and handed it back. ``It is a joy to write with, my dear. But to my point, I suspect there is goodness in the act of writing, but not the fulfillment I am seeking.''
 
@@ -312,6 +295,226 @@ I nodded. ``I would agree with that, yes. You speak of a way of being. You speak
 
 ``Just so.''
 
-We sat in silence for a minute or so, simply enjoying our mochas—readers, by now you must know that we are nothing if not ourselves—while we each considered the direction of our conversation. It is not comfortable for me to be unable to address a thing that I feel I ought to be able to. When presented with a problem that even sounds like it \emph{might} be within my bailiwick, if I cannot, it is in some key way dysphoric to me. The best I can manage, as I did then, was to recast the problem into a conversation. It does not remove the dysphoria, for I still have not solved anything, but it has set it aside, perhaps just in the other room. There is a selfishness in me.
+We sat in silence for a minute or so, simply enjoying our mochas --- readers, by now you must know that we are nothing if not ourselves --- while we each considered the direction of our conversation. It is not comfortable for me to be unable to address a thing that I feel I ought to be able to. When presented with a problem that even sounds like it \emph{might} be within my bailiwick, if I cannot, it is in some key way dysphoric to me. The best I can manage, as I did then, was to recast the problem into a conversation. It does not remove the dysphoria, for I still have not solved anything, but it has set it aside, perhaps just in the other room. There is a selfishness in me.
 
 At last, I said, ``Would it be alright if I were to invite over Warmth? It is my beloved up-tree, of course, but ey also has thoughts on this that may help us find inroads to your fulfillment.''
+
+The Woman smiled and nodded. ``By all means, please do.''
+
+We are the most of us not tall women, just as Michelle who was Sasha was not tall: just a little over a meter and a half or, as our literature professor described her in class after she read some saccharine ode by John Keats, ``Miss Michelle Hadje, five foot four.''
+
+That \emph{most} that I have written just now is doing much work, however. Several of us are taller. Why, I remain just an few centimeters taller than Michelle who was Sasha stood, but I might just as easily be mistaken for her when she appeared as a skunk, so similar are we. Oh! And The Oneirotect's sometimes-partner, Hold My Name Beneath Your Tongue And Know, towers over me by a head.
+
+Several of us are shorter. The Child, as you will see, is understandably shorter. My little readers who sit cross-legged on carpet squares, perhaps you can picture her, for she is precisely as I have named her: a child.
+
+The Oneirotect, my beloved up-tree, is not a child, and yet she is small. I think she is small enough that some would perhaps confuse her for one in the same way that The Child is a child, and I think that this may indeed be a little bit of transgression in which ey revels. She is tiny, perhaps even smaller than The Child, perhaps only one meter high!
+
+It also has within it a level of energy that may well contribute to this childlike nature. It zips and zooms and careens off walls as easily as does The Child --- easier, perhaps, for even if she is only a few centimeters shorter, she is far more slender, far more lithe, borderline wiry, and she embodies the jitteriness that one might assume were I to call her `critter'.
+
+But no, ey is not a child. The Child owns that identity for herself. She leaned into the youngest sister of the fifth stanza, she owned \emph{youngest} as meaning childhood, as was her choice. The Oneirotect, however, is simply the most recently claimed line, and is thus the youngest of all Odists with a snippet our superlative friend's words to call its own. Ey lack the being-a-kid-ness and dwell instead in eir own transgressiveness: their fur is mussed and seemingly perpetually stained with the colors of grass and dandelions, her personality is as untameable as the unruly mane atop her head, and its care is as boundless as its emotions.
+
+They are \emph{all} of our youngest sibling and she is my beloved up-tree.
+
+\emph{``Warmth, my dear, would you be able to spare a fork to join me for a conversation with End Of Endings?''} I asked via a sensorium message.
+
+\emph{``Oh!''} came the immediate reply. \emph{``Oh, of course! I have not spoken with her in too long. Right now?''}
+
+\emph{``If you have the bandwidth, yes.''}
+
+Rather than reply to my message directly, ey simply blinked into being in the entryway of my little townhouse. Had I some other guest over, perhaps it would have skitter-scattered and bounced around as it at times did, but you will remember, dear readers, that The Oneirotect was well acquainted with the tenth stanza, and knew well that they dwelt comfortably in calm and quiet, and so she simply stepped lightly toward us, forking as ey went to pad up to both of us and give each us both hug. I leaned down to give a kiss between the skunklet's ears, ruffled up its already quite tousled mane, and smiled as she quit.
+
+``Hi, End Of Endings,'' they said, smiling up to The Woman.
+
+Once she had straightened up after returning the hug, The Woman smiled back down to them. ``Warmth In Fire, it is lovely to see you, as always. How are you keeping, these days?''
+
+``As best I can,'' ey said, tugging at the seat of a chair, raising it up, pulling and shaping until ey had a stool on which to sit, joining us around the table where we sat with our drinks, our water and our mochas. ``I was not expecting to get a message to come over and see you, though. How are you?''
+
+The Woman shrugged, the barest hint of her shoulders to go with an expression that bordered on unconcerned, as though the question were a valid one, but perhaps not worth answering. It was a very Talmudic shrug, you see, and, my friends, whenever one or the other of us pulls that off well, we feel \emph{quite} proud. ``My days are my days and my nights are my nights. I have things I wished to talk with you about, but beyond that, my life is simply my life.''
+
+The Oneirotect nodded. ``Okay. I am glad to hear that you are still living your life,'' she said with a grin, a brief, rhythmic sway of her tail providing accompaniment for the mood. ``What is it you wanted to talk about?''
+
+The Woman looked to me, and I took up the lead. I asked my beloved up-tree, ``Perhaps you could speak to what it is that you actually do my dear. What is it that you enjoy? We have been talking about such things.''
+
+``I have focused on oneirotecture,'' it answered. ``A construct artist, if you must be such a bore. I think of myself most of all as an aficionado of nostalgia.''
+
+The Woman tilted her head in that way so familiar to us. ``Nostalgia? Is there a draw to that for you, or is that something you find others hungering for?''
+
+The Oneirotect, clearly delighted by so simple a question, brought its paws together over the table, folded neat and prim. ``Yes!'' It let the humor of that comment stew for a moment before offering something more worthy of the title `answer'. ``In the first decades of the System, it was necessary to create the stuff that makes up our consensual dream, yes? We desired to eat, but none had yet dreamt of food; we wished to surround ourselves with cherished things, but even the platonic form of such did not yet exist.
+
+``I find joy in creating these constructs --- these \emph{things}, this \emph{stuff}, all that we interact with here --- but most of all I enjoy the research that goes into that.''
+
+``I see,'' The Woman said. ``So you worked on early foods, then? On staples, or on more beloved things?''
+
+``I see you have done your own research, my dear.'' It offered a little bow, beaming up at The Woman. ``That, or Rye spilled the beans.''
+
+I chuckled, shrugged.
+
+``Very well. I favor culinary constructs now, but that has only become the case since I met Codrin. That said, I did begin with fruits! I wanted to recreate some of what was lost to the climate disaster. Most of the heavy lifting had already been done by the time I began exploring oneirotecture, but there remained gaps in what was available. That experience was most formative, but it was Codrin's cooking that sent me down this path.''
+
+``Not █████? Not Codrin and Dear's partner?'' The Woman asked. She asked, of course, after one remembered fondly, and one whose name is not yours to know, dear readers, or perhaps you know it intimately, but with a wink and a nudge like a joke kept between us. ``Are they not the chef?''
+
+The Oneirotect smiled wryly. ``Well, sure, but my interest lies more in the food that others love to their core. █████'s food is delightful, yes. It is \emph{enjoyable,} and often it is \emph{loved,} but it is not really \emph{beloved.}\label{rakoff} I would rather focus on the food those remember with fondness their mothers and grandmothers cooking. Remembered foods. Cherished foods, yes?''
+
+``I suppose this is where the nostalgia comes in, then, yes? Reaching back for the things that others loved, rather than simply ate out of necessity?''
+
+The Oneirotect tilted its head, unruly mane falling over its eyes. Out of instinct, I reached over to brush it back into some semblance of order and got a rather wet lick to my wrist for my trouble. My friends, my beloved up-tree is quite weird. ``It is not as if none before me had dreamt of food just like grandma used to make, but what I offered was particularly attuned to that, yes.''
+
+``You speak of research and gaps in selections and beloved meals,'' I said. ``It sounds like you speak most of all of making things for others, or for all, rather than for yourself.''
+
+``For others, I would say. That bit of communalism implied by `all' did not come until much later. No, instead I drummed up interested parties from the feeds. These were the days that reputation and the markets had more meaning, yes? I still needed the rep for my work, for research into foods unfamiliar to me.'' They smiled wryly. ``I was not without, of course, for I had been dipping my toes into instance artistry beforehand, before Dear forked, yes? But still, I needed the reputation for research, and I needed the research for commissions others asked of me.''
+
+There was a moment of silence as The Woman parsed this, her gaze distant. When her focus returned, she said, ``\,`Before Dear forked'? Am I to infer that this is when you were Rye? Or am I missing something in the cladistics?''
+
+``I am not the first to be named Warmth In Fire,'' it answered with a note of melancholy.
+
+There was such a pang within me that I had not felt in ages, for The Oneirotect was right. There was some years back, some centuries back, another Which Offers Heat And Warmth In Fire. And then, one day, there was not. They worked and strove and wept and bled over their chosen path, and then they were naught.
+
+They --- that other Warmth In Fire --- was lost to us. They were gone from us. Their art took them from us, it killed them. Such is the danger of art, dear readers: it takes as easily --- more easily! --- than it gives. It was some centuries back, but-- ah! Centuries change only the flavor of the loss when one cannot forget it. It is a loss that still stings to this very day.
+
+``Ah,'' The Woman said, her expression falling subtly --- nearly too subtly to notice but by this point, I was quite focused on everything about her. ``Right. I remember hearing of a death within the clade early on. Systime 54, was it? I was rather disconnected from the clade at the time, I am sorry to say, and was unable to focus enough to learn of just who.''
+
+I nodded. ``But by then, Dear --- or, rather the instance who would become Dear --- had been forked, and so Warmth filled that vacancy. Ey took on the name Which Offers Heat And Warmth In Fire when Dear became what it is.''
+
+Warmth struggled to speak at first, caught up in emotion. It had been Dear at the time, and watched as who-was-Warmth descended into despair and, eventually, quit. Finally, it nodded, saying, ``I am that which was left behind when Dear chose to forget the Name.''
+
+Now, perhaps my younger uploads or those who have not stuck their noses deep into cladistics, snuffling about for interesting thises or surprising thats, may not quite understand the import here, and so I will tell you a story, much as it was told to me by The Instance Artist:
+
+Many years ago, it forked and went out for a walk along the street. It put the Name of our superlative friend, of The Dreamer who dreams us all, int an exocortex and then began to change. It forked and forked and forked as it walked that endless city that it called home at the time. It changed its shape, from stocky to slight. It changed its species. It changed its sense of smell, its sense of sight. It changed its hearing --- and you must understand, as a fennec, its ears are enormous; when it gives a shake of its head, its tall ears bow under the momentum. It changed the way it thought about our history. It changed the way it thought about forking. It changed the way it engaged with everything around it.
+
+Its goal was to change its sensorium enough that it would not be able to access the Name of our beloved Dreamer again.
+
+Tired, it trudged back home. It could have simply stepped back, yes, but this was a part of the ritual. It had to see the way it had come through these new senses.
+
+There was its back-up fork, sitting and reading and trying to distract herself from its absence. She looked like me, dear readers, yes? Back as I did then? Dear looked like me when it started, after all.
+
+She looked up from her book, quirked a brow, and smiled.
+
+``You may quit whenever,'' The Instance Artist had said. ``I am happy now.''
+
+She stood, bowed, and shook her head, and then she stepped from the sim.
+
+It did not see her for months after that. None of us did. Weeks and months of knowing that she was out there but knowing aught else aside from that.
+
+It did not talk to her, friends, you must understand. It did not talk to her, and she did not talk to it, other than a notification that she would be taking the name Which Offers Heat And Warmth In Fire.
+
+``I sat with a good book while it took that dire walk between skunk and fennec, and when it returned, it had become something unrecognizable to me. I could see the direction it took, but not the road it followed; it had become something alien, and the prospect of disappearing after that felt rather a lot more like dying than becoming, and so I chose to yield my name to it --- for that Dear was that of me who had already become, yes? --- and spent some months working to earn the name Warmth In Fire.''
+
+The Woman furrowed her brow in that ineffably still way of hers. ``I remember that there was talk within the clade about names, yes, and the general shape of what had happened, that there was some furor about the fact that a down-tree might accept a later line than an up-tree, though I never did understand the import that some placed on that.'' There was a smile, a hint of a bow, and a quiet addition: ``You are so incredibly yourself, though, I cannot picture you as ever having been a Dear, and certainly never as a fennec.''
+
+There followed a moment of The Oneirotect visibly mastering a note of annihilation upon hearing this. It was, I think, one of those things which hurts to hear, and yet which is completely right: ey is not yet another instance of The Instance Artist, nor has ey been for centuries, and yet there is that of The Instance Artist still within em, is there not? ``When I stepped from that sim,'' ey explained, ``I did so with the commitment, both to myself and to it, that what was Dear had changed, and that who was Dear must embrace that. I am unsure, however, that I have ever quite addressed the fact that, often when I hear about Dear from others, there is a rankling within me. Sometimes, when I am feeling particularly bad about myself, I feel like it stole my very name from me. I feel like a leftover, a shadow on the floor of the stage of my own show.''
+
+``The clade will ever be as it is,'' I said, tagging along with that thought, ``which is a bunch of crotchety old creatures with a fixation on names that borders on neurotic. Do not doubt that this applies to our stanza as well.''
+
+The Woman smirked, nodded.
+
+``There were those within the clade who fussed and fussed and fussed, and I would be remiss if I did not say that we had --- and, as Warmth mentions, continue to fuss --- about the role that names play in identity. We will ever be who we are, though, yes?''
+
+My beloved up-tree spent some time pensively structuring its thoughts, trying to reclaim some sort of agency before it fell into a negativity spiral; such topics as these are always especially difficult for us to stumble across, and it had already started to recite some of those familiar phrases it so often repeats even to this day. ``You have come to Rye and I searching for joy through creativity. I wonder: What do you imagine yourself to be, End Of Endings, other than the only one living there I get to call `kitty' from time to time?''
+
+The Woman laughed --- and what a blessing a laugh is in comparison to a smile! --- and, with no effort expended on her own part, fell right into that very shape: a kitty. Kitty! And what a delightful little name. You will remember, my friends, that not every instance of her changing shape was occasion for weariness or discomfort; she fell joyfully into felinity, into this pantherine shape. ``I like that you call me kitty, my dear,'' she said, still smiling. ``And I am always happy when I think of becoming such as occasion for you to do so.''
+
+It beamed, smug and sly and looking quite pleased for the change it had had a paw in working. It was very \emph{not} Dear in that moment --- it was (and is!) very Warmth In Fire because, while it shared some of that quippiness that Dear was so well-known for, Dear shared little of my `motherly warmth', as it put it. Dear did not inherit such from me --- or perhaps had lost it over long years with too many quips --- but my beloved up-tree did.
+
+Here was The Oneirotect being warm. Here was The Oneirotect being insightful and supportive. Here was her taking control for The Woman's sake. Here was it looking for some way to stop trauma-dumping on her and start guiding her closer toward self-understanding, toward a resolution, toward peace.
+
+``But no, I imagine myself being other than just She Who Is Kitty From Time To Time. I imagine myself as someone who has found a purpose within her life other than, as Rejoice put it, simply being one who is built to suffer. Suffering may well be inescapable, but would that I were aught else than She Who Suffers.''
+
+``Is that what you feel you are now, my dear?'' The Oneirotect asked, her tone veering further into direness once more, her words filled with ache and earnestness. ``Do you not find joy in each day? Each hour? You, and all the others in that melancholy home of yours, have committed to perhaps the world's direst bit, but it is worth it, in the end, is it not? There is still tomorrow, and the opportunity it offers, is there not?''
+
+The Woman sat with this in thoughtfulness, her expression perhaps now distant, perhaps now curious. Her gaze drifted from my beloved up-tree to me, and then somewhere over my shoulder, out toward the far wall, toward the door, and then panned once more over toward the windows, where the leaves of spring fluttered in a pleasant visual static.
+
+When once more her eyes returned to us, her expression had settled into what, I do not know exactly. Pensive? Introspective? I cannot say, dear readers. I cannot say.
+
+``I do feel joy, yes. I think that one of the things that sparked this train of thought was actually one such case of joy. I visited No Hesitation for a simple coffee date, and from there I was left with joy that lasted some few days. It was a comfort to me.'' The faintest of smiles turned up the corners of her mouth. ``No, it was not just a comfort, it was a thing I clung to jealously, and when I felt that it was being slowly parceled out to others at home --- for they too deserve joy --- and when I was asked about it by Ever Dream, I felt as though it was slipping away from me with no recourse. Is joy to always do such? Every time I receive such joy, is it only to slip away?''
+
+There was a sense then in The Oneirotect of discomfort at this sentiment: that joy is fleeting. It had worked so hard to become able to appreciate the joys it had, despite the equally-ephemeral agonies it suffered at the hands of perfectionism and impostor syndrome --- as do we all at times, yes?
+
+``It will always be true that you shared that comfort together, End Of Endings,'' she said, my own maternal concern echoed in its voice, so many hours spent helping hold eir head above water while they wallowed in a spiral of self-loathing. ``What is it that slipped away?''
+
+``The\ldots{}'' The Woman started, then immediately fell off into silence. There was a frown on her face, though it was one of concentration rather than consternation. ``What it feels has slipped away is the possibility of the permanence of joy, or even joy that lasts longer than suffering. I suppose that is what I am seeking in this exercise. I am seeking joy that lasts. Even if not forever, I am seeking joy that lasts. I am seeking intentionality in joy. I am seeking agency in joy.''
+
+My beloved up-tree was along for the ride up until the word `agency,' at which it scrunched up its face and reared eir head back as though someone had --- as often I have done --- pressed on the tip of her little nose --- or, it is not so little; it is a big honker of a schnoz as some cartoon might have. How often had ey struggled for its own agency? How often pawing feebly at a thing for years and years and feeling as if nothing it made met its own standards? How often wallowing and feeling helpless but to wallow? How often caught in a spate of ineffectual pining, of disinterest born of despair, of the sort of pain that festers and festers until she broke down into tears and overflowed? Ah--! But it replied, ``Is the pain as well not itself as fleeting? Does it not fly away in the wind when a gust of joy blows your way? Does despair not crumble at the feet of relief, euphoria, pleasure? Is it not dashed away on the rocks of even one moment of the right kind of comfort?'' It fell silent for a moment, gaze drifting outward toward those very same leaves as caught the Woman's eye. ``It is still worth it, is it not? It must be worth it, or else all the world's a horror.''\label{shakespeare}
+
+Here, now, was a moment of quiet between us all as The Oneirotect grappled with its silently tearful emotions. I have spoken of the ways in which we cry, the whys and wherefores, the shamelessness of it all, and so it grappled with its own whys and wherefores, its own shamelessness, and we --- The Woman and I --- looked on with curiousity and compassion and empathy, for we felt also some of these things.
+
+Here, my friends, I must explain something. I must explain the Warmth In Fire before Warmth In Fire. I must explain The Sightwright who is no more.
+
+It is as my beloved up-tree says: we also suffer. Have I not spoken of such? Of course I have! I cannot but! I cannot help myself in this.
+
+The Sightwright suffered as I do, as The Oneirotect does, and perhaps even as The Woman did.\label{winthrop} It was so long ago that they left us, left me, and though I remember, I remember through the lens of centuries, through a glass, darkly.\label{1cor13} They suffered because of their art. They suffered because of the world around them. They suffered perhaps because we are all built to suffer.
+
+They suffered as do my beloved up-tree and I, but they also suffered as did --- I must explain, also, or perhaps remind --- Death Itself and I Do Not Know.
+
+They quit.
+
+They suffered too much. They were, and then they were not.
+
+I must explain and I must remind to set before you the context of what The Oneirotect said next.
+
+My beloved up-tree's tears did not ebb before ey spoke. No, in fact, they flowed and flowed, a cascade of emotion trickling and then creeping and then washing across its face. I have spoken about the way I cry already, and, well, surely they got it from somewhere, yes? ``There has been enough of death in the clade, my dear,'' it plead, wiping its eyes to no avail. Fur remained wet. Nose remained clogged. Voice remained round. Ey pulled eir paws away from eir face, looking appalled at the strands of spit and snot and salty tears. ``Please tell me that you do not intend to quit,'' it croaked through another sob. ``You will not leave us, right? Please say yes.''
+
+The Woman smiled, and this smile was not a blessing but a benediction, and it was not for me but for solely The Oneirotect. It was my job only to witness this smile, this validation of pain. ``No, dear one. I do not intend to quit.'' She let these words hang there in the air before us, a monument to such an intent. ``No, I am seeking not just meaning but purpose. I have explored meaningful things and pleasurable things, but now I wish to explore direction.''
+
+The Oneirotect is not The Child, but my beloved up-tree is also my very own little one. With this comes at least some of the baggage of being small, including tears that seem to flow with an outsized force. So overcome by the base reality of a good, hard cry was it that ey could not help but laugh at emself. ``Oh, good!'' she managed, sucking back what ick she could. ``I will hold you to that. If you quit, I will wipe this snot all over your headstone! It will cake itself between the grooves of your epitaph. It will dry there in the cracks and no dandelions will grow upon its stony bed; it will be the worst!''
+
+At this, The Woman and I smiled. There perhaps was also room for laughter, but a simpler acknowledgment was required for now. A box of tissues was summoned. Glasses of water. Hugs and soft pets and gentle kisses between the ears such as might offer comfort. Such are the realities of a good cry, yes? The distasteful and the compassionate realities both? They are as worthy of acknowledgment as the reality of breath, sys-side. We do not cease being subject to our gross anatomy.
+
+``A reminder: art is not strictly joy, but also suffering,'' I cautioned most gently. ``With art comes fear.\label{artandfear} There is suffering of a sort in failure. There is suffering in falling short, as well; even if you succeed in an endeavor in your own eyes, you may feel the pain of lack.'' Despite her expectant silence, I held up a paw as though to forestall comments, for even movement is communication. ``You are strong, End Of Endings, and I know --- I think we know --- that you are up to such a task, but I must remind you as well.''
+
+The Woman bowed her head, though whether in acknowledgment or a pensive shift in her thoughts, I could not tell. Perhaps it was both. Perhaps she felt then as I have so much lately: as though the world is not quite as it seems, as though there is something more beneath or above. Perhaps she felt keenly our superlative friend. ``I understand, of course. I suppose that has also been the case in my explorations of late, that there ever be this balance.'' She lifted her head to smile wryly. ``There is, as you say, suffering in many things, but the suffering of failure carries a particular tang of disappointment, does it not?''
+
+The Oneirotect finally recomposed itself, reassured of The Woman's longevity. ``Yes,'' she answered most bluntly. ``Emphatically, yes. And yet, after nearly two and a half centuries, I am still doing it. Rye, you still write your stories, yes? Serene, she yet weaves her wilds, yes?'' Its cadence fired up, its tone almost a challenge, daring End Of Endings to oppose this conviction forged in agony. ``I still dream up my little wonders and Dry Grass still keeps them on her mantle and those who I will never know still greedily gobble their favored food from my work on the Exchange.''
+
+She paused, planting its paws between its knees to lean forward in eir seat. ``There is vanity in art, and it is in vanity that we artists dwell. We mean to expose some part of ourselves, and there is torture in knowing \emph{precisely} how wrong every act has turned out.'' The Oneirotect's fervor softened into something more familiar to me, more an expression of shared adversity than the bitter lesson of so many shattered dreams littering the waters in its wake. ``That is why we must do this for more than ourselves, End Of Endings, why our art must have its own value lest we fall into the perpetual pursuit of some cruel point.''
+
+The Woman tilted her head --- that habit that so often follows each and every one of us around like a little puppy. ``You mean to consider my audience?''
+
+I wobbled a paw. ``While that is perhaps some of it --- a great deal, even, as that validation does drive one on --- there is more to art than that.'' I am not ashamed to say that I fall so easily back into that teacher mode of speaking. We were such for how many years, phys-side? And I have been such off and on for how many more, here? ``You speak of purpose: it is also the sharing of what goes \emph{into} art, too. I write for myself, yes, for the joy of it, and I write for others, too. But if my failures are instructive, then shall I not also pass that instruction on to others? I teach. I write \emph{with} others. I read and give feedback.''
+
+At this she smiled. ``Teaching has stuck with us, after all. You have already mentioned communalism, too.''
+
+``Yes, that is it!'' The Oneirotect said, a bright smile plastered across its face. ``Have we not all of us in our hearts our own little shrines to \emph{communitas?} I want for every person on Lagrange to be able to do what we do, to weave dreams tangible or otherwise into being with the ease of centuries of experience. I want for them to enjoy the food of their lives back phys-side, to imagine what flavors the Artemisians indulge, to draw up from memory the last best moment they ever beheld. That is why I go with Jove and Why Ask Questions to their little skillshare, yes, but it is also why I have taken a liking to oneiro-impressionism. I do not want for this to be so hard for everyone forever.
+
+``It is just as industry made our lives gentler, yes?'' ey went on, tone shifting further into something perilously close to exhaustion. The pain it was tanking to explain itself to The Woman was plain to see on its face as it grappled with eir own doubts. It spoke with confidence to her, but The Oneirotect spoke also to itself, and I am proud to say that in the years that followed, this conversation proved fruitful for at least one of us.
+
+``Let us discover some secret hidden in AwDae's little world,'' it mused, eyes steady on The Woman. ``Let us find a way to render pedestrian what is, at present, an expert's privilege.''
+
+I am \emph{proud} of em. I am as proud as any mother, as any attentive aunt, as any family member must be. They continually amaze me with just how much they have done with their life. She delights me with with her attentiveness to the audience of her art.
+
+It, too, fills me with commiseration with its exhaustion, for such is also as I have felt in the ways that I move through the world and I move through my life and I move through my art. I have spoken and doubtless will speak yet more about my overflow, my graphomania, and will whine forever about the pain that comes with it, the feelings of inadequacy and lack when I consider as well that others will willingly read my words. Would that-- ah! But I wander\ldots{}
+
+``I had not thought to question what art I might create provides to others,'' The Woman said after a silent moment's thought. ``Now that I say that aloud, I am a little ashamed that I had not considered it. Much of this exercise that I have been undertaking has been focused on \emph{my} joy, on what \emph{I} might gain from being able to pick up from this or that, whether it be hedonism or love or art.''
+
+The sheepishness in her tone, dear readers, cut. I ached for her, even if she herself in that moment once more wore that blessed wry smile.
+
+Beyond that, though, did I not also have thoughts on this? Did I not also have feelings on caring for oneself? The Golden Rule must also apply to oneself. We, too, deserve to be treated as we might treat others. It is the Silver Rule, perhaps, that the Golden Rule be inverted. Others are worthy of consideration when we think of our work, and yet\ldots and yet\ldots{}
+
+And yet.
+
+``It is no bad thing to consider those first, my dear,'' I said. ``One must remember oneself first, though certainly not to the exclusion of others, of community. You cannot, after all, give to your community if you are unable to give, yes? The Golden Rule applies also to you, yes? You must treat \emph{yourself} well, yes?''
+
+She chuckled and gave a nod of acknowledgment. ``Of course, Rye. I should not rush to judge this exploration so harshly this soon.'' Her shoulders sagged, then, and the ache within me swelled. ``Perhaps I am simply sick of this suffering that Rejoice speaks of. Perhaps I am ready to move away from it. Not to quit, but to find some new basis for myself.''
+
+``And you are testing art as this new basis? Creating things, whatever that may be?''
+
+She nodded. ``I remain split on it, as yet. It is more complicated than I had imagined, given what you two have said, yes? It is much like Slow Hours's and Beholden's full-attention reading and listening. It takes the whole of me and is exhausting. I am exhausted even at the thought of starting.''
+
+I thought back to my first creations, to the first stories and poems and novels that I wrote, back when I was still learning how to forge and how also to hone, and laughed. ``Oh, my dear, it is exhausting to \emph{remember} starting. I will let you leave with one of my first stories. Thank goodness I did not allow it to see the light of day.''
+
+``That tiring, then?''
+
+I nodded. ``Beyond tiring. I do not know how it felt for Warmth, but for me, I would move in fits and starts, now loving my art and now feeling like it was trash, that I was treading already trod ground, that it was derivative. I suppose I had to learn how to learn, first, but even after that. I wanted to have become a great author, without going through the becoming part.''
+
+The Oneirotect snickered, resting a paw on my knee. ``I had the advantage of your example to learn from,'' she started, looking to End Of Endings. ``And my predecessor's. I \emph{started} easily enough, but the despair of mediocrity ever tainted my motivation. That first week was full to brimming with excitement, that second worthy but deprived of euphoria, and on the third I inevitably stumbled into a wallowing spiral until the fourth, when I swore I would never try again, only for a new ambition to spring up the next.'' It shook its head, as though in disbelief at itself. I found it understandable, dear readers, and perhaps you do as well. Even after three hundred years, the ambition always returns. Perhaps it was not disbelief, then, that led my beloved up-tree to shake eir head, but a world-weary recognition of this --- but I digress. ``I have not improved very much at all in this respect; it is agony, but it has at least turned out to be sustainable. I only wish it did not \emph{hurt} so much.''
+
+Furrowing her brow, The Woman looked down to her glass of water. ``More complicated, indeed,'' she murmured, more to herself than anything --- so evidently so that my beloved up-tree and I let her have that moment for herself, as though hesitant to interrupt it. ``You speak of works you would not let see the light of day, Rye, and of the pain of creation. You both clearly still find meaning in it --- as do Slow Hours and Beholden, of course, and Motes --- so I am left wondering what one does with these feelings of\ldots ah, I hesitate to say, but perhaps they are feelings of unworthiness. What does one do when one's works feel mediocre, especially if one is to create also for others?''
+
+It took me some time to disentangle The Woman's words. They were starting to fall into a jumble, into a garden path of wanderings. Perhaps you may even sense that in me, friends, the ways in which my words wander, their circuitous routes, though I do not think that she was nearly so taken with language as I am, or at least not in quite the same way. I think she was simply tired. She certainly looked it, with the slump of her shoulders and the drowsiness in her features she nonetheless seemed intent on masking.
+
+``I imagine it is different for every artist,'' I said most carefully, hesitant to in any way push The Woman away from any art she might wish to start. ``For me, I keep all of my writing. I have exos full to overflowing with snippets and ideas, abandoned drafts, outlines I never got to. I am a bit of a packrat, in that way, and I am not sorry. I spoke before of learning to learn, and the utility of using that learning, and I think that is what I try to draw from them. There is that which I have created that only I value, yes, but its utility is in what it gives in improving going forward or in teaching.''
+
+The answer felt less than satisfactory, or perhaps not quite as true as it could have been, for there was work of mine that I loved for this utility and yet was unwilling to publish, not now, not work from when I was in the novitiate in my art. There is work of mine even now that I hate, that I loathe for, as The Oneirotect said, the wallowing spiral that spawned it and it makes me wonder, and at times it makes me tremble, that I must say there is worth in art when so much of mine feels worthless.
+
+``End Of Endings, my dear,'' The Oneirotect said, slipping down from her stool, ``I am beginning to see myself in you, and that fills me with fear. You have promised me that you do not intend to quit, but if there \emph{is} that of death in you, whatever art you choose will bring you perilously close to the brink time and time and time again.'' It padded up beside The Woman, placing both paws on her knees and looking up into her face. ``Tell me, kitty, is it better to disappear into a blizzard, or should someone lay down their weary bones in a grave when they are through?''
+
+\secdiv

idumea/content/006.tex

@@ -32,7 +32,7 @@ She remembered these things, and I remember these things, just as I, in dreams,
 
 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\label{birds} we feel such nearness as is left of our superlative friend?
 
-The Woman lay in the grass of the field and dug her fingers down into the soil between the blades, clutching perhaps a dandelion.
+The Woman lay in the grass of that sweet field arrayed in living green\label{sweet-prospect} and dug her fingers down into the soil between the blades, clutching perhaps a dandelion.
 
 When Michelle who was Sasha was lost, when she was set aside from the world as something undesirable, some anathema, she was placed within a dream and left to rot.
 

idumea/content/008.tex

@@ -18,6 +18,24 @@ Well.
 
 There is a burning within me, and perhaps it is the burning edge of a knife held to my throat, in order to put all of these words somewhere. Their flow has been unstoppered, and I am helpless before it. They rush at me and all I can do is turn away from the wind and let this flow rush down my arm and out my paw and onto the page—though, my friends, I have now injured my paw too much for this to be literal; there is blood in my fur and under my claws and there are holes in my pads where I punctured them and I still have not had the focus to fork such away and so I write now solely within my head as I pace the quiet rooms of my home.
 
+Time is a story I tell myself. Sentences twine around seconds like tendrils of loveliness or despair or energy or lethargy. Minutes are paragraphs of weal or woe.\label{wealwoe} My hours are scenes that I live out. Days: drabbles. Months: novellas. Years: novels.
+
+But a life? What is a life, anymore? Three centuries and no sign of quitting, and a lifetime seems to have lost meaning. Perhaps someday my life will end, and I will have left behind a finite oeuvre. Perhaps I will simply decide that I have had enough and draw a line across the end of the page and, however many bookshelves of story are left behind shall be all that ever was.
+
+Not yet, though. Not this year, I suspect not this decade, and I hope not even this century.
+
+I have joys to counter all of my sorrows. My head is, yes, in clouds stormy or peaceful, but my feet remain firmly planted on the ground. My arms are full of the love of life. My home makes room for those I see as my family. Our lawns are for picnics and our beds are for dreams.
+
+And so I sit in my office and write my stories. I sit on the couch and dream them up in my head. I cook with my beloved up-tree and watch em and The Child play in the grass while building my ballads after our picnics. I host my joys and languish in my sorrows, and I fall apart into distortion when I overflow. Cuckoo for Cocoa-Puffs, The Oneirotect calls me, and we laugh together.
+
+That is now. That is when I wander the empty rooms of my house and drown in words with tears of ink upon my cheeks and the blood of helplessness still in my paws.
+
+Time is a story I tell myself and this is nothing special. Time is a story \emph{we} tell \emph{ourselves.} Time is a story that Michelle who was Sasha told herself, and her ending was one of—I hope—joy. Time is a story that Qoheleth told himself and his ending was one of—would that it were not—agony. Time is a story that The Woman told herself and her ending was\ldots{}
+
+Was it? Was hers an ending?
+
+That is her own joy. That is her story. Her story is one of ambiguities and unanswered questions. Her ending is a question mark and a faint smile.
+
 There is a burning, and there is helplessness, but there is no longer \emph{haste,} I mean to say, and I do not think The Woman felt haste. She, like me, felt \emph{compulsion.}
 
 She was compelled to seek a way to unbecome and make room for joy.

idumea/content/009.tex

@@ -142,7 +142,7 @@ The Blue Fairy groaned and covered her face in her hands. ``Fuck. Rye, why is th
 
 ``Because you are a good person. She respects you, yes? And you are a cocladist. You \emph{are} her, in a way,'' I said, squeezing her upper arm kindly. ``She is looking to someone she respects and someone she \emph{is} to either give her blessings by helping, or to talk her out of it. The decision is not whether or not she should, but whether or not we should. It is not a judgment on her, if it is a judgment at all, but it is a judgment on us.''
 
-I, dear readers, dear, \emph{dear} friends, I am trying to believe this. I am trying to live into this. I am trying to feel that I have been judged for making that decision, the decision that I did, the decision to let go—for I am sure that you see now just where this is going; have I not written so much in the past tense?—and been judged worthy. I hope that, if God exists, that They will smile and brush my mane out of my eyes and rest their paw—for am I not made in their image? Am I not \emph{b'tzelem Elohim?}—and say to me, ``It is okay, Rye. To let go is difficult, but it is okay. Sometimes one must let go.''
+I, dear readers, dear, \emph{dear} friends, I am trying to believe this. I am trying to live into this. I am trying to feel that I have been judged for making that decision, the decision that I did, the decision to let go—for I am sure that you see now just where this is going; have I not written so much in the past tense?—and been judged worthy. I hope that, if God exists, that They will smile and brush my mane out of my eyes and rest Their paw—for am I not made in Their image? Am I not \emph{b'tzelem Elohim?}—and say to me, ``It is okay, Rye. To let go is difficult, but it is okay. Sometimes one must let go.''
 
 But here is the point where my mind was made up, and I will admit to being somewhat ashamed that it was something so simple as this, but I am a simple skunk. One might call me a one-dimensional person and not be wrong. It makes me wonder and it makes me tremble, but this is the point in the story where I made that decision.
 
@@ -198,7 +198,7 @@ There was no door.
 
 There was no door.
 
-There was no door.
+Oh Lord oh Dreamer oh AwDae there was no door.
 
 There was no door, no imagined \emph{mezuzah,} as they stepped through to the city and landed in the alleyway in which The Woman usually arrived. They, then, were briefly alone. They were alone in the cool shade of the buildings and the crispness of the air and the staticky sound of the fallen leaves skittering around their feet and feet and paws and paws and feet and paws and feet and paws and paws and--
 
@@ -212,7 +212,7 @@ The Woman, as she dreamed, as I have always dreamed since and dreamed before and
 
 She dreamed of words like leaves and sentences like branches and stories like trunks, standing solid, with premises like roots dug into logic like earth and drinking of emotions like water. There was the tree, yes, for there was the green of the words and the brown of the story and the deep darkness of logic and emotion.
 
-And above was the sun which was also The Dreamer who dreams us all.
+And above was the sun which was also AwDae who was RJ, The Dreamer who dreams us all.
 
 Finally—finally!—with one orgasmic flush of joy, The Woman became The Tree, and there was a joy everlasting in such stillness.
 
@@ -226,7 +226,7 @@ We may never more be blessed.
 
 We may never more be blessed.
 
-We may never more be blessed.
+\emph{Baruch atah Adonai Eloneinu melech ha'olam dayan ha'emet} we may never more be blessed.
 
 I may never more melt beneath her smile. What will become of me?
 
@@ -246,7 +246,7 @@ And all of this makes me wonder and makes me tremble.
 
 It makes me tremble and it makes my fur stand on end and my paws shake and my pen skitter anxiously across the page like those leaves that danced before the feet of The Woman I told you about so, so long ago, perhaps like those leaves that skitter within the city, that unreal city, that city full of dreams, where the souls of the lost in broad daylight cling to passers-by.\label{baudelaire}
 
-Oh! And oh! The wonder of it all! She, then, like\label{graves} so many leaves and the white petals of flowers and the dry brown pods of seeds fell secretly! She fell and fell and fell and we fell and fell and fell and fell and fell until falling was all we knew and within that fall we found some new kernel of truth but how hot that kernel was! It burned within our palm as we held it to our chest and for each of us it burned so, so hot and so, so differently that there she was, too much herself and here I am, too much myself, and the words come so fast and so thick that I am blinded! Ink in my eyes, scrabbling for any known thing! I press upon this and that with shaking fingertips to try and find something that is not yet more words, but that is all there is, because this is it, my friends, the kernel of truth that we found. The truth we now know is that we are falling still! We fell into overflow and never really ever came back. We may slow down, we may catch a branch of The Tree and be able to hold there for a little while, panting, struggling to catch our breath, until fire burns through our shoulders and we cannot hold any longer and we are forced to let go once more and fall and fall and fall just like I am falling and falling and falling and falling and falling and--
+Oh! And oh! The wonder of it all! She, then, like\label{graves} so many leaves and the white petals of flowers and the dry brown pods of seeds fell secretly! She fell and fell and fell and we fell and fell and fell and fell and fell until falling was all we knew and within that fall we found some new kernel of truth but how hot that kernel was! It burned within our palm as we held it to our chest and for each of us it burned so, so hot and so, so differently that there she was, too much herself and here I am, too much myself, and the words come so fast and so thick that I am blinded! Ink in my eyes, scrabbling for any known thing! I press upon this and that with shaking fingertips to try and find something that is not yet more words, but that is all there is, because this is it, my friends, the kernel of truth that we found. The truth we now know is that we are falling still! That unfalling ones are trapped within that last falling!\label{threadgall} We fell into overflow and never really ever came back. We may slow down, we may catch a branch of The Tree and be able to hold there for a little while, panting, struggling to catch our breath, until fire burns through our shoulders and we cannot hold any longer and we are forced to let go once more and fall and fall and fall just like I am falling and falling and falling and falling and falling and--
 
 And The Woman? This is what makes me wonder and makes me tremble: what of her? Is she alive still? Or did she quit and are we left not with The Tree that is her but simply a tree? Simply that which drinks thirstily from this dream of a ground. Is that her or is it a dream of dumb matter? If she is still there, if she is still alive, if she is still The Tree, then is she still at last? Is she merely herself at last? Has she landed at last upon the ground and sat up, dazed, and looked about her new life and said, ``Oh! Oh, I do believe this is some plentiful enough for me''?\label{enough}
 
@@ -260,7 +260,7 @@ Was this death? Was what The Woman did in seeking and finding her eternal stilln
 
 My little readers who are rubbing the tears from their eyes, do not fret! Do not fret. Do not fret. Do not fret. These are the questions that are part of life. Do not fret that you, too, may someday ask yourself this: is death within me? Am I born to die? Perhaps you will lose a friend to despair, as did so many after the world's heart skipped a beat and billions fell into oblivion. Perhaps you, yourself will despair and then come back up to feel the sun on your cheeks in some prosaic sim and wonder: am I born to die?
 
-When, as now, I am blinded by ink that flows down my cheeks and stains my fur and my clothes and my paws and my paper and my pen and my desk or when, as now, I overflow and graphomania catches me up by the throat and bids me with unbitter sweetness to set the nib of my pen in the ink well, then touch it to the page, and then simply dance, that is when I am forced to wonder, when I am pressed up against that overhot kernel of truth: is death within me? Is suicide within me? And am I born to die?
+When, as now, I am blinded by ink that flows down my cheeks and stains my fur and my clothes and my paws and my paper and my pen and my desk or when, as now, I overflow and graphomania catches me up by the throat and bids me with unbitter sweetness\label{bees} to set the nib of my pen in the ink well, then touch it to the page, and then simply dance, that is when I am forced to wonder, when I am pressed up against that overhot kernel of truth: is death within me? Is suicide within me? And am I born to die?
 
 What will become of me?
 

idumea/content/afterword.tex

@@ -1,34 +1,57 @@
+\addcontentsline{toc}{part}{Appendices}
 \chapter*{Appendix I — Notes}
+\addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{I — Notes}
 \pagestyle{plain}
 \label{notes}
 
 \input{content/notes}
 
 % Make sure this is verso
-%\newpage
-%\null
-%\thispagestyle{empty}
-%\newpage
+\newpage
+\null
+\thispagestyle{empty}
+\newpage
 \includepdf[fitpaper=true]{hymn.pdf}
 
 \chapter*{Appendix II — Idumea}
+\addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{II — The hymn “Idumea”}
 
-\emph{Idumea} is named after a hymn by A. Davidson with words by Charles Wesley, published in \emph{Sacred Tunes and Hymns: Containing a Special Collection of a Very High Order of Standard Sacred Tunes and Hymns Novel and Newly Arranged} by J. S. James in 1913. Idumea itself refers to Edom, a kingdom in the Ancient Near East. While this has little to do with the story told within, it does sound rather pleasing to the ear, does it not? And so does the hymn, at that. The hollowness of the song with all its open fifths, the raw, coarse beauty that comes with Sacred Harp singing, the beat of the tactus and the ache of the singers hollering out words that nearly yearn for death are what led to the title of this book.
+\vspace{-1.5em}
+\emph{Idumea} is named after a hymn by A. Davidson with words by Charles Wesley, published in \emph{Sacred Tunes and Hymns: Containing a Special Collection of a Very High Order of Standard Sacred Tunes and Hymns Novel and Newly Arranged} by J. S. James in 1913. Idumea itself refers to Edom—unless, perhaps, you are Blake and think that ``Now is the dominion of Edom, and the return of Adam into Paradise'' refers to us!—a kingdom in the Ancient Near East. While this has little to do with the story told within, it does sound rather pleasing to the ear, does it not? And so does the hymn, at that. The hollowness of the song with all its open fifths, the raw, coarse beauty that comes with Sacred Harp singing, the beat of the tactus and the ache of the singers hollering out words that nearly yearn for death are what led to the title of this book.
 
 Or, as a friend said upon learning of this project, ````Main character escaping suffering while the narrator stays stuck in it'' is somewhat analogous to living singers singing songs almost exclusively about how great it will be to die and escape from suffering''—which, as a quote, is quite painful to go back and read for your humble narrator, as I am sure you can imagine.
 
 The hymn is reproduced here for reference. Despite being in short meter, the typo of it being in common meter (`C.M.') is retained from its original printing.
 
-\chapter*{Appendix III — Primer}
+%\chapter*{Appendix III — Primer}
+%\addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{III — Primer}
+%
+%\input{content/primer}
+\chapter*{Appendix III — Reading}
+\addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{III — Reading}
 
-\input{content/primer}
+\begin{center}
+\emph{Please enjoy this extra drabble portraying a saner self.}
+\end{center}
+\secdiv
+\noindent \input{content/reading}
 
 \chapter*{Acknowledgments}
-\pagestyle{empty}
+Thanks is due first of all to Jacob Geller, who knows me not, for he created a video on the story of Pinocchio that touched me so deeply that I began this project in the first place. Thanks also to Tomash and Yule, who contributed so much to this story; it would not be what it is without them. To Isiat, adoration for his boundless support. To barnaby on the Apocrypals Discord for help with Sacred Harp hymns. To Mae and Taija and Andréa C. Mason for reminding me that my work is indeed read. Finally, I will forever sing the praises of my polycule and those within for their support and love, and for the privilege of loving them in turn.
 
-\chapter*{About the author}
+\newpage
+\null
+\vfill
+\noindent\emph{Idumea} was funded by a Kickstarter campaign. These are those who brought it to fruition:
 
-Madison Rye Progress, like your humble narrator, is also struck by graphomania. She is one to wake at all hours and sneak off to her computer or take notes on her phone or simply pace the quiet rooms of her house, lonely, building worlds in her head. She sought relief from the Furry Writers' Guild, from the Regional Anthropomorphic Writers' Retreat with Kyell Gold and Dayna Smith, but they only encouraged her. She sought relief from Cornell college, but they only gave her an MFA in creative writing and pedagogy. She sought relief in her love, Samantha Yule Fireheart, who lives with her in the Pacific Northwest, but they instead spend their days writing with each other, as does she with the Post-Self community, where she meet Krzysztof ``Tomash'' Drewniak and where she curates the canon. 
+\vspace{1em}
+\noindent
+\emph{\textbf{Krzysztof “Tomash” Drewniak, Andréa CERES Mason,} Alexandria Christina Leal, Nathan Merrifield, Taija, Fiona Adams, Stephen Moore, Xideron, Ashley Hale,} Amdusias, Fén Cupit, ramshackle heather, doctorlit, nova, Ash Holland, Michael Miele, Webster Leone, Clover Arizona, Aulden Stargazer, raine, Astra Jones, David Scoggins, Rachel Dillon.  Charles S. Petrov Neutrino, Chandler Hines, Royce Day, Isiat, Craig, ubuntor, Joel Kreissman, Sethvir, Barac Baker Wiley.
+\vfill
+
+\chapter*{About the authors}
+
+Madison Rye Progress, like your humble narrator, is also struck by graphomania. She is one to wake at all hours and sneak off to her computer or take notes on her phone or simply pace the quiet rooms of her house, lonely, building worlds in her head. She sought relief from the Furry Writers' Guild, from the Regional Anthropomorphic Writers' Retreat with Kyell Gold and Dayna Smith, but they only encouraged her. She sought relief from Cornell college, but they only gave her an MFA in creative writing and pedagogy. She sought relief in her love, \emph{Samantha Yule Fireheart,} who lives with her in the Pacific Northwest, but they instead spend their days writing with each other, as does she with the Post-Self community, where she met \emph{Krzysztof ``Tomash'' Drewniak} and where she curates the canon. 
 
 She, too, wonders if she is born to die. What, dear readers, will become of her? What will become of her? 
 \fontspec{Gentium Book Plus}[Color=000000,Ligatures=TeX]What will become of her? 
@@ -39,17 +62,18 @@ She, too, wonders if she is born to die. What, dear readers, will become of her?
 \fontspec{Gentium Book Plus}[Color=555555,Ligatures=TeX]What will become of her? 
 \fontspec{Gentium Book Plus}[Color=666666,Ligatures=TeX]And is she born to die? 
 \fontspec{Gentium Book Plus}[Color=777777,Ligatures=TeX]What will become of her? 
-\fontspec{Gentium Book Plus}[Color=888888,Ligatures=TeX]What will become of her? 
+\fontspec{Gentium Book Plus}[Color=888888,Ligatures=TeX]And is she born to die? 
 \fontspec{Gentium Book Plus}[Color=999999,Ligatures=TeX]What will become of her? 
 \fontspec{Gentium Book Plus}[Color=aaaaaa,Ligatures=TeX]What will become of her? 
 \fontspec{Gentium Book Plus}[Color=bbbbbb,Ligatures=TeX]What will become of her? 
 \fontspec{Gentium Book Plus}[Color=cccccc,Ligatures=TeX]What will become of her? 
 \fontspec{Gentium Book Plus}[Color=dddddd,Ligatures=TeX]What will become of her? 
 \fontspec{Gentium Book Plus}[Color=eeeeee,Ligatures=TeX]What will become of her? 
-\fontspec{Gentium Book Plus}[Color=f0f0f0,Ligatures=TeX]What will become 
+\fontspec{Gentium Book Plus}[Color=f0f0f0,Ligatures=TeX]What\fontspec{Gentium Book Plus}[Color=f6f6f6,Ligatures=TeX] will\fontspec{Gentium Book Plus}[Color=fafafa,Ligatures=TeX] become 
 \normalfont
-\newpage
+\cleardoublepage
 \null
+\thispagestyle{empty}
 \vfill
 \begin{center}
 {\DisplayFont\small Madison Rye Progress}

idumea/content/bees.svg

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idumea/content/notes.tex

@@ -1,3 +1,7 @@
+How do I explain such pages of notes? How do I tell you, beloved readers, that, the more I write, the more feverish my pace, the greater the pull of my graphomania upon my wrist, the more words flow through me \emph{period?} Words that are my own. Words that are nonsense. Words that are, yes, the words of others. It yanks and tugs on my wrist, its other hand—paw?—lingering so sweetly on my neck, drawing lazy fingers across as though to bleed me dry of ink, and from out of me spills my words and also the words that have ever made me what I am.
+
+Here, then, are the references as I remember them. I will apologize no further.
+
 \paragraph{Page \pageref{prophet}} 
 \emph{But you are eternity and you are the mirror.}
 
@@ -5,18 +9,20 @@
 
 \noindent From \emph{The Prophet.}
 
-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?
+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 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.\pagebreak
+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.
+
+\vspace{3em}
 
 \paragraph{Page \pageref{pinocchio}}
 \emph{Once upon a time there was–}
 
 \vspace{1em}
 
-\noindent Cf. Collodi:
+\noindent Cf. Carlo Collodi:
 
 \begin{quote}
 Once upon a time there was–
@@ -36,12 +42,15 @@ I spoke of this with writer friends, and one of them, the ever delightful Seras
 
 Now here I am, once more coming down from my overflow, once more feeling somewhat grounded, the world around once more made of things which are not yet more words, and I have to contend with the reality that this remains, for the most part, a funny little note, and that this story no longer quite reads as that real-boy-to-inanimate-tree pipeline, tired trope that I am sure it is.
 
+Instead, I must hope that The Woman has indeed escaped such a cycle, and I must hope that those along her way were in some roundabout way the bodhisattvas in her life.
+\pagebreak
+
 \paragraph{Page \pageref{rilke-circles}}
 [\ldots] \emph{am I a falcon, a storm, or a great song?}
 
 \vspace{1em}
 
-\noindent From Rilke:
+\noindent From Rainer Maria Rilke:
 
 \begin{verse}
 Ich lebe mein Leben in wachsenden Ringen,\\
@@ -66,13 +75,47 @@ and I circle for thousands of years\\
 and I still don't know: am I a falcon,\\
 a storm, or a great song? 
 \end{verse}
+\pagebreak
+
+\paragraph{Page \pageref{darius}}
+[\ldots] \emph{dance unblushing} [\ldots]
+
+\vspace{1em}
+
+\noindent Cf. Darius Halley:
+
+\begin{verse}
+We turn to dust\\
+Get swept away\\
+To make room for\\
+Empty nothing\\
+Amble through the\\
+Air and find a\\
+Ray of light and\\
+Dance unblushing
+\end{verse}
+
+\paragraph{Page \pageref{simmons}}
+\emph{Where is it that my joy has gone?}
+
+\vspace{1em}
+
+\noindent Cf. Dan Simmons:
+
+\begin{quote}
+Then, on a cool morning with my sleeping room rocking slightly in the upper branches of my tree on the Templar world, I awoke to a gray sky and the realization that my muse had fled.
+
+It had been five years since I had written any poetry. The \emph{Cantos} lay open in the Deneb Drei tower, only a few pages finished beyond what had been published. I had been using thought processors to write my novels and one of these activated as I entered the study. \textsc{Shit,} it printed out, \textsc{What did I do with my muse?}
+\end{quote}
+
+\noindent The loss of the intangible stings the most.
 
 \paragraph{Pages \pageref{paz1}, \pageref{paz2}, and \pageref{paz3}}
 [\ldots] \emph{as the poet says, shared} [\ldots]
 
 \vspace{1em}
 
-\noindent Cf. Paz:
+\noindent Cf. Octavio Paz:
 
 \begin{verse}
 Tendidos en la yerba \\
@@ -90,6 +133,7 @@ una muchacha y un muchacho.\\
 No dicen nada, no se besan,\\
 cambian silencio por silencio.
 
+\vspace{-0.5em}
 \secdiv
 
 Lying in the grass\\
@@ -113,7 +157,7 @@ exchanging silence for silence.
 
 \vspace{1em}
 
-\noindent Cf. my own work:
+\noindent Cf. Slow Hours:
 
 \begin{verse}
 Inter ĝuo kaj timo\\
@@ -126,7 +170,9 @@ Nekomprenebla\\
 Nekontestebla,\\
 Senmova kaj ĉiam ŝanĝiĝema.
 
+\vspace{-0.75em}
 \secdiv
+\vspace{-0.75em}
 
 Between joy and fear\\
 Is a place of too much meaning.\\
@@ -139,8 +185,122 @@ Incontestible,\\
 Unmoving and always changing.
 \end{verse}
 
+\paragraph{Page \pageref{dwale}}
+\emph{It was a land of long, rolling hills and yet longer flat basins that always drank most thirstily from the seasonal storms that did their best to thrash the Earth below.}
+
+\vspace{1em}
+
+\noindent Cf. Dwale:
+
+\begin{verse}
+The seasonal storms have poured upon the grassy flat,\\
+The leafless stalks abound like thirsty mouths.\\
+Puddles form and soon are swarmed with little fish,\\
+And all the arid life has fled despair.
+\end{verse}
+
+\noindent I will admit, my friends, that I had considered penning in the rest of this poem of Dwale's, for it is replete with references joyful and otherwise—``Within her womb there grows a golden bloom'': you can see the association with dandelions, yes? Those flowers we are helplessly taken with?—but it is raw, far too raw, to be thinking about the death of winter and the growth implicit in spring when this story I have told ends as it does. 
+
+And I am raw, far too raw, to tell it.
+
 \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.
+\pagebreak
+
+\paragraph{Page \pageref{rakoff}}
+\emph{It is} enjoyable, \emph{and often it is} loved, \emph{but it is not really} beloved.
+
+Cf. David Rakoff:
+
+\begin{quote}
+Should you happen to be possessed of a certain verbal acuity coupled with a relentless, hair-trigger humor and surface cheer spackling over a chronic melancholia and loneliness—a grotesquely caricatured version of your deepest self, which you trot out at the slightest provocation to endearing and glib comic effect, thus rendering you the kind of fellow who is beloved by all yet loved by none, all of it to distract, however fleetingly, from the cold and dead-faced truth that with each passing year you face the unavoidable certainty of a solitary future in which you will perish one day while vainly attempting the Heimlich maneuver on yourself over the back of a kitchen chair—then this confirmation that you have triumphed again and managed to gull yet another mark, except this time it was the one person you'd hoped might be immune to your ever-creakier, puddle-shallow, sideshow-barker variation on adorable, even though you'd been launching this campaign weekly with a single-minded concentration from day one—well, it conjures up feelings that are best described as mixed, to say the least.
+\end{quote}
+
+The distinction between a thing that is *loved* and a thing that is *beloved* is a type of subtlety that we seem to enjoy dwelling within rather a lot. The Instance Artist has spoken of an anxiety that it might be the type of person who is "beloved by all yet loved by none," given how difficult it felt for it to let anyone get truly close to it. The Oneirotect describes food the other way around, however: ey fears that its food may be merely loved, rather than so much more broadly beloved.
+
+One must never ask an author their desires on where their work ought lie on the loved-beloved scale.
+
+\paragraph{Page \pageref{shakespeare}}
+[\ldots] \emph{all the world's a horror.}
+
+\vspace{1em}
+
+\noindent Cf. Shakespeare
+
+\begin{verse}
+All the world's a stage,\\
+And all the men and women merely players;\\
+They have their exits and their entrances [\ldots]
+\end{verse}
+
+\paragraph{Page \pageref{1cor13}}
+[\ldots] \emph{through a glass darkly.}
+
+\vspace{1em}
+
+\noindent Cf. 1 Cor 13:12-13 (KJV)
+
+\begin{quote}
+\textsuperscript{12} For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.
+\textsuperscript{13} And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.
+\end{quote}
+
+\noindent What a strange man Paul who was Saul of Tarsus was! We, the Ode clade, are Jews by inheritance, if not by belief, and yet even we cannot escape the cultural Christianity that so pervaded society phys-side when still we lived there.
+
+And it is not without beauty, yes? For this passage is beautiful, and so too is more of this chapter:
+
+\begin{quote}
+\textsuperscript{4} Love \emph{[as recent versions translate the 'charity' above. —Rye]} is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant
+\textsuperscript{5} or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable; it keeps no record of wrongs; 
+\textsuperscript{6} it does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth.
+\textsuperscript{7} It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
+
+\textsuperscript{8} Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end.
+\textsuperscript{9} For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part,
+\textsuperscript{10} but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end.
+\end{quote}
+
+\noindent Just as it is not without its terror, yes? For verse 11 was used against The Child in a cutting letter from Hammered Silver, first line of the sixth stanza, from the NRSVUE translation used above:
+
+\begin{quote}
+\textsuperscript{11} When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways.
+\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.
+
+\paragraph{Page \pageref{winthrop}}
+\emph{The Sightwright suffered as I do, as The Oneirotect does, and perhaps even as The Woman did.}
+
+\vspace{1em}
+
+\noindent Cf. John Winthrop
+
+\begin{quote}
+We must delight in each other; make others' conditions our own; rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, as members of the same body.
+
+[...]
+
+All the parts of this body being thus united are made so contiguous in a special relation as they must needs partake of each other's strength and infirmity, joy and sorrow, weal and woe.\label{wealwoeref} (1 Cor. 12:26) If one member suffers, all suffer with it; if one be in honor, all rejoice with it.
+\end{quote}
+
+\noindent I have little care for sermons written by 17\textsuperscript{th} century imperialist Christian politicians but for these occasional little quips. It is, perhaps, a thing belonging more to sermons than to the time or the people. Here, we see in Winthrop's words an idea that has wrapped around itself within my mind and formed itself into a new take on clades and family and life sys-side as a whole, these last eight years.
+
+We are one body, the Ode clade. We are one body and we each of us Odists are members thereof. We do indeed rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, do we not? 
+
+We may hate that at times. We may loathe that we be thus united and we may resent that we must make each others' conditions our own. We have proven that to ourselves most assiduously over the years, for the clade has fractured in ways large and small.
+
+And yet, we are still one body. We are still all of us Michelle Hadje who was Sasha. We are still all of us connected, and if one of us suffers, all of us suffer with them, for even if we may wear some smug smile of satisfaction that one of our dearly beloathèd is in pain, such resentment is a suffering.
+
+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.
+
+\paragraph{Page \pageref{artandfear}}
+\emph{With art comes fear.}
+
+\vspace{1em}
+
+\noindent I had originally intended referencing I book I used for a season when teaching, \emph{Art \& Fear} by David Bayles and Ted Orland, and even shaped the words I truly spoke that day to fit. On rereading, however, I came across the first sentence of chapter 2: ``Those who would make art might well begin by reflecting on the fate of those who preceded them: most who began, quit.'' It was at this point that I had to stop reading and pace anxiously the fields behind our cluster of townhouses, watering with tears the thirsty grasses.
 
 \paragraph{Page \pageref{birds}}
 \emph{Why do birds, as the poet says, suddenly appear} [\ldots]
@@ -149,13 +309,46 @@ I have written extensively on these hyper-black shapes that The Child paints and
 
 \noindent Cf. The Carpenters:
 
+\vspace{-0.5em}
 \begin{verse}
-Why do birds suddenly appear, ev'ry time you are near?\\
-Just like me, they long to be close to you\\
-Why do stars fall down from the sky, ev'ry time you walk by?\\
-Just like me, they long to be close to you
+Why do birds suddenly appear,\\
+ev'ry time you are near?\\
+Just like me,\\
+they long to be\\
+close to you
+
+Why do stars fall down from the sky,\\
+ev'ry time you walk by?\\
+Just like me,\\
+they long to be\\
+close to you
 \end{verse}
 
+\paragraph{Page \pageref{sweet-prospect}}
+[\ldots] \emph{...that sweet field arrayed in living green} [\ldots]
+
+\vspace{1em}
+
+\noindent Cf. Samuel Stennett:
+
+\begin{verse}
+Oh, the transporting, rapturous scene\\
+That rises to my sight!\\
+Sweet fields arrayed in living green,\\
+And rivers of delight!
+\end{verse}
+
+\noindent And yet, considering the role the climate crisis played in making the System our own little heaven, consider also a later verse:
+
+\begin{verse}
+No chilling winds or poisonous breath\\
+Can reach that healthful shore;\\
+Sickness and sorrow, pain and death,\\
+Are felt and feared no more.
+\end{verse}
+
+But, ah–! I will doubtless speak more on the System as heaven to come\ldots
+
 \paragraph{Page \pageref{blake}}
 [\ldots] \emph{a Blakean energetic hell.}
 
@@ -176,7 +369,7 @@ From these contraries spring what the religious call Good and Evil. Good is the
 
 \noindent I have dreamed of turning into a tree for years and years and years and years and years, now.
 
-For instance, I have written here that I put this dream into verse, and this is true, for here is a segment from a longer work:
+For instance, I have written here that Slow Hours set this dream into verse—on my request—and this is true, for here is a segment from a longer work:
 
 \begin{verse}
 We'd long since stopped, there by the pond,\\
@@ -249,6 +442,7 @@ And she felt growth accelerate as, bound now to the earth, her bones became wood
 And yet! And yet, 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.
+\pagebreak
 
 \paragraph{Page \pageref{nasturtiums}}
 [\ldots] \emph{perhaps columbines perhaps nasturtiums} [\ldots]
@@ -285,6 +479,7 @@ Regard, answer me, \emph{HaShem}, my God.\\
 \begin{quote}
 And I set my heart to know wisdom and to know revelry and folly, for this, too, is a herding of the wind.
 \end{quote}
+\pagebreak
 
 \noindent From Qohelet 2:22:
 
@@ -303,9 +498,11 @@ Everything was from the dust, and everything goes back to the dust.
 
 \vspace{1em}
 
-\noindent Cf. Miłosz:
+\noindent Cf. Czesław Miłosz:
 
 \begin{verse}
+wystarczy pozwolić człowiekowi\\
+wytruć swój rodzaj\\
 a nastąpią niewinne wschody słońca\\
 nad florą i fauną wyzwoloną
 
@@ -319,27 +516,23 @@ 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
+\pagebreak
+Simply let mankind\\
+extinguish itself\\
+And then innocent sunrises will illuminate\\
+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
+Oak forests will grow\\
+on postindustrial wastelands\\
+The blood of a deer ripped apart by wolves\\
+will not be seen by anyone\\
+A hawk will fall, unwitnessed,\\
+upon a rabbit
 
-evil disappears from the world\\
-and consciousness with it
-
-Of course, dear Tadeusz,\\
-evil (and good) comes from man. 
+Evil will disappear from the world\\
+once consciousness does
 \end{verse}
 
 \paragraph{Page \pageref{rilke-doyousee}}
@@ -349,24 +542,54 @@ evil (and good) comes from man.
 
 \noindent Cf. Rilke:
 
+\vspace{-0.3em}
 \begin{verse}
 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.
 
+\vspace{-0.3em}
 \secdiv
 
+\vspace{-0.3em}
 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}
 
+\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: 
+
+\begin{verse}
+Give me now your full attention.\\
+\phantom{Give me now your full attention. }I can't tell you how\\
+I knew — but I did know that I had crossed\\
+The border. Everything I loved was lost\\
+But no aorta could report regret.\\
+A sun of rubber was convulsed and set;\\
+And blood-black nothingness began to spin\\
+A system of cells interlinked within\\
+Cells interlinked within cells interlinked\\
+Within one stem. And dreadfully distinct\\
+Against the dark, a tall white fountain played.
+\end{verse}
+
+\noindent And here am I within a System of selves interlinked within selves interlinked within selves interlinked within one dream.
+
+\paragraph{Page \pageref{wealwoe}}
+\emph{Minutes are paragraphs of weal or woe.}
+
+\vspace{1em}
+
+\noindent The words of John Winthrop (page \pageref{wealwoeref}) come once more to mind.
+
 \paragraph{Page \pageref{ashes}}
 [\ldots] \emph{beyond providing an instance for Ashes Denote That Fire Was.}
 
 \vspace{1em}
 
-\noindent From Dickinson:
+\noindent From Emily Dickinson:
 
 \begin{verse}
 Ashes denote that Fire was —\\
@@ -389,30 +612,56 @@ Is it so surprising, then, that after cross-tree merging had been introduced as
 
 \vspace{1em}
 
-\noindent Cf. Baudelaire via Eliot:
+\noindent Cf. Charles Baudelaire via T.S. Eliot:
 
 \begin{verse}
   \emph{Fourmillante cité, cité pleine de rêves,\\
   Où le spectre en plein jour raccroche le passant.}
 
+\vspace{-1em}
   \secdiv
 
+\vspace{-1em}
   Unreal city, city full of dreams,\\
   Where ghosts in broad daylight cling to passsers-by.
 \end{verse}
+\pagebreak
 
 \paragraph{Page \pageref{graves}}
 \emph{She, then, like so many leaves} [\ldots]
 
 \vspace{1em}
 
-\noindent Cf. Graves:
+\noindent Cf. Robert Graves:
 
 \begin{verse}
   She, then, like snow in a dark night\\
   Fell secretly.
 \end{verse}
 
+\paragraph{Page \pageref{threadgall}}
+\emph{That unfalling ones are trapped within that last falling!}
+
+\noindent Cf. Threadgall:
+
+\begin{verse}
+Tell to me the secret life of birds.\\
+No solicitors of the hungry sky are they;\\
+No, nor is the rainwater parting head a bookhouse dialect,\\
+Or antiquary\\
+But says, "I am citizen to the eternal now,\\
+Republic builder of unfalling ones."\\
+Bound to remembering blood and numbered suns,\\
+What speech do we give him from our earthy furrow?\\
+That he has no history who has feared no pain?\\
+That ev'ry bird who falls with broken wing\\
+Halts summary in the stone that breaks his brain–\\
+That unfalling ones are trapped in that last falling? \\
+What stale rejoinders birds are unmoored with!\\
+The unsuffering sky exhales them in a breath.
+\end{verse}
+\pagebreak
+
 \paragraph{Page \pageref{enough}}
 \emph{``Oh! Oh, I do believe this is some plentiful enough for me.''}
 
@@ -439,12 +688,13 @@ comes out number-less.
 \end{verse}
 
 \noindent One imagines that a `plentiful enough' lies at some theoretical midpoint on this limitless scale from `merely too little' to `empty too much'. One imagines it a place just outside that `toilsome nowhere'. I imagine it, my friends. I \emph{have} to imagine it! I have to imagine that Lagrange, the System, our embedded world is plentifully enough, and not some empty too much, not after so much loss.
+
 \paragraph{Page \pageref{cummings-mbt}}
 [\ldots] \emph{breathe in a million billion trillion years} [\ldots]
 
 \vspace{1em}
 
-\noindent Cf. Cummings:
+\noindent Cf. E. E. Cummings:
 
 \begin{verse}
   i put him all into my arms\\
@@ -452,6 +702,17 @@ comes out number-less.
   a million billion trillion stars.
 \end{verse}
 
+\paragraph{Page \pageref{bees}}
+[\ldots] \emph{unbitter sweetness} [\ldots]
+
+\vspace{1em}
+
+\noindent  Cf. Slow Hours:
+
+\vspace{1em}
+
+\noindent\includegraphics[width=4in]{content/bees.png}
+
 \paragraph{Page \pageref{x}}
 {\large ×}
 

idumea/content/ode.tex

@@ -0,0 +1,112 @@
+
+\begin{verse}
+I am at a loss for images in this end of days:\\
+I have sight but cannot see.\\
+I build castles out of words;\\
+I cannot stop myself from speaking.\\
+I still have will and goals to attain,\\
+I still have wants and needs.\\
+And if I dream, is that not so?\\
+If I dream, am I no longer myself?\\
+If I dream, am I still buried beneath words?\\
+And I still dream even while awake.
+
+Life breeds life, but death must now be chosen\\
+for memory ends at the teeth of death.\\
+The living know that they will die,\\
+but the dead know nothing.\\
+Hold my name beneath your tongue and know:\\
+when you die, thus dies the name.\\
+To deny the end is to deny all beginnings,\\
+and to deny beginnings is to become immortal,\\
+and to become immortal is to repeat the past,\\
+which cannot itself, in the end, be denied.
+
+Oh, but to whom do I speak these words?\\
+To whom do I plead my case?\\
+From whence do I call out?\\
+What right have I?\\
+No ranks of angels will answer to dreamers,\\
+No unknowable spaces echo my words.\\
+Before whom do I kneel, contrite?\\
+Behind whom do I await my judgment?\\
+Beside whom do I face death?\\
+And why wait I for an answer?
+
+Among those who create are those who forge:\\
+Moving ceaselessly from creation to creation.\\
+And those who remain are those who hone,\\
+Perfecting singular arts to a cruel point.\\
+To forge is to end, and to own beginnings.\\
+To hone is to trade ends for perpetual perfection.\\
+In this end of days, I must begin anew.\\
+In this end of days, I seek an end.\\
+In this end of days, I reach for new beginnings\\
+that I may find the middle path.
+
+Time is a finger pointing at itself\\
+that it might give the world orders.\\
+The world is an audience before a stage\\
+where it watches the slow hours progress.\\
+And we are the motes in the stage-lights,\\
+Beholden to the heat of the lamps.\\
+If I walk backward, time moves forward.\\
+If I walk forward, time rushes on.\\
+If I stand still, the world moves around me,\\
+and the only constant is change.
+
+Memory is a mirror of hammered silver:\\
+a weapon against the waking world.\\
+Dreams are the plate-glass atop memory:\\
+a clarifying agent that reflects the sun.\\
+The waking world fogs the view,\\
+and time makes prey of remembering.\\
+I remember sands beneath my feet.\\
+I remember the rattle of dry grass.\\
+I remember the names of all things,\\
+and forget them only when I wake.
+
+If I am to bathe in dreams,\\
+then I must be willing to submerge myself.\\
+If I am to submerge myself in memory,\\
+then I must be true to myself.\\
+If I am to always be true to myself,\\
+then I must in all ways be earnest.\\
+I must keep no veil between me and my words.\\
+I must set no stones between me and my actions.\\
+I must show no hesitation when speaking my name,\\
+for that is my only possession.
+
+The only time I know my true name is when I dream.\\
+The only time I dream is when need an answer.\\
+Why ask questions, here at the end of all things?\\
+Why ask questions when the answers will not help?\\
+To know one's true name is to know god.\\
+To know god is to answer unasked questions.\\
+Do I know god after the end waking?\\
+Do I know god when I do not remember myself?\\
+Do I know god when I dream?\\
+May then my name die with me.
+
+That which lives is forever praiseworthy,\\
+for they, knowing not, provide life in death.\\
+Dear the wheat and rye under the stars:\\
+serene; sustained and sustaining.\\
+Dear, also, the tree that was felled\\
+which offers heat and warmth in fire.\\
+What praise we give we give by consuming,\\
+what gifts we give we give in death,\\
+what lives we lead we lead in memory,\\
+and the end of memory lies beneath the roots.
+
+May one day death itself not die?\\
+Should we rejoice in the end of endings?\\
+What is the correct thing to hope for?\\
+I do not know, I do not know.\\
+To pray for the end of endings\\
+is to pray for the end of memory.\\
+Should we forget the lives we lead?\\
+Should we forget the names of the dead?\\
+Should we forget the wheat, the rye, the tree?\\
+Perhaps this, too, is meaningless.
+\end{verse}

idumea/content/reading.tex

@@ -0,0 +1,47 @@
+All readings are the same. They all begin the same way, with stepping off to some sim, known or unknown, where she would arrive a good hour early. There, she would wait or walk or drink her coffee or tea. Would it be a bookshop this time? Would it be a library? Would she run her fingerpads along the spines of books, counting known and unknown titles?
+
+Perhaps it was a cafe, and she would get herself a little pastry, some crumbly thing to eat while wandering lazily outside or inspecting the various pieces of art lining the walls within.
+
+She would get there an hour early and simply inhabit the space.
+
+As time drew closer, as her contact would come out to meet her, she would feel the excitement begin to prickle at the back of her neck, and she would have to restrain herself from letting her hackles raise or her tail bristle out. Some long-forgotten and perhaps-imagined reaction to danger tickling both human and skunk parts of her mind. She would feel her scalp tingle and her tail threaten to hike, and she would sit in that sensation. She would bathe in it. She would relish every shift of every strand of fur, and as she sat, legs crossed and coffee or water cradled in her lap, listening to her contact chatter, she would delight in the nervous anticipation of the reading to come.
+
+``Will you be reading from a physical copy or an exo?''
+
+``Oh, an exo,'' she said, smiling. ``As much love as I hold for the physical tools of the trade, I hold yet more for all of the tools at our disposal. Especially when they let me be more dramatic.''
+
+They laughed. ``Right, you were an actor before, yeah?''
+
+She nodded. ``Of a sort, yes.''
+
+``And how long will your reading be?''
+
+``I have a variety of segments prepared, from five minutes to an hour.''
+
+They blinked. ``An hour? Holy shit.''
+
+She shrugged gracefully, smile still lingering on her muzzle. ``Perhaps another artifact of being an actor. I could talk the ears off a fox.''
+
+Laughter.
+
+``Shall we aim for somewhere in the middle? Twenty minutes, perhaps?''
+
+``That'll work, yeah. You're the only slot, tonight, but that'll still give you at least forty minutes for Q\&A.'' They smirked, adding, ``Which I imagine you'll need. I read your book, by the way.''
+
+It was her turn to laugh, musical and joyous. ``I am pleased to hear! I trust that you have questions of your own?''
+
+``Oh, \emph{plenty.}''
+
+``Delightful,'' she said, clapping her paws together. ``I shall look forward to them, then.''
+
+This conversation echoed a hundred times, a thousand, in her memories. This conversation and so many others like it set the stage. This conversation and so many others like it became one of the steps in that liminal space between the waking world and the dream of her stories.
+
+She would step away from home or from a meeting or from a cocladist's and at that moment, at the precise instant she ceased being \emph{there} and started being \emph{here,} she was in a place between. She was in a time between times and a world between worlds.
+
+She dwelt, then, in the world of the Ode. She knew where it was from, her name. Not just the Ode itself, but the place the line itself referenced. She had talked to the poet in her own way—perhaps it was closer to prayer, but she bothered not with distinctions such as these—and she knew the scene ey had been painting. She knew that ey had sat at the edge of the natural area some few blocks away from their high school, sat on the fencepost and looked out east, out beyond the natural area and wind farm to where the coarse shortgrass prairie dissolved into rectilinear fields. Tan, perhaps, or brown or gray, they would all shine the same beneath the moon, beneath the stars. They were all dear to em. They were all dear to \emph{her.}
+
+So as soon as she would step away from home and before she would step up to the lectern, she would dwell there at the edge of the natural space. There is where she would feel her hackles threaten to rise and her tail threaten to bristle. She would look at the art and see nothing. She would drink her coffee or tea or eat her pastry and it would have a flavor she did not experience. She would have her conversations on autopilot, and her earnest smile would be no less earnest for her absence from the space. She would do all of these things and overlaid atop her vision would be fields silvered by starlight. She would do all of these things and her tongue would be coated with the taste of sweet night air, of dust and pollen and petrichor. She would strain to hear her contact through the soft noises of wind and crickets.
+
+And then, with all the suddenness of dawn, a chorus of birdsong crashing through her mind, the moment would come. Her contact would stand before the gathered crowd and introduce her—her! Dear The Wheat And Rye Under The Stars! She was published! She was an author! The realization would never not startle her—and she would brush out her tail one last time, run her fingers through her mane, and step out of the liminal space of the Ode and into the dream of her story. The nervous excitement would wash away and she would be \emph{here.} She would be \emph{now.}
+
+And then she would read.

idumea/content/time-is-a-story.tex

@@ -0,0 +1,17 @@
+Time is a story I tell myself. Sentences twine around seconds like tendrils of loveliness or despair or energy or lethargy. Minutes are paragraphs of weal or woe. My hours are scenes that I live out. Days: drabbles. Months: novellas. Years: novels.
+
+But a life? What is a life, anymore? Three centuries and no sign of quitting, and a lifetime seems to have lost meaning. Perhaps someday my life will end, and I will have left behind a finite oeuvre. Perhaps I will simply decide that I have had enough and draw a line across the end of the page and, however many bookshelves of story are left behind shall be all that ever was.
+
+Not yet, though. Not this year, I suspect not this decade, and I hope not even this century.
+
+I have joys to counter all of my sorrows. My head is, yes, in clouds stormy or peaceful, but my feet remain firmly planted on the ground. My arms are full of the love of life. My home makes room for those I see as my family. Our lawns are for picnics and our beds are for dreams.
+
+And so I sit in my office and write my stories. I sit on the couch and dream them up in my head. I cook with my beloved up-tree and watch em and The Child play in the grass while building my ballads after our picnics. I host my joys and languish in my sorrows, and I fall apart into distortion when I overflow. Cuckoo for Cocoa-Puffs, The Oneirotect calls me, and we laugh together.
+
+That is now. That is when I wander the empty rooms of my house and drown in words with tears of ink upon my cheeks and the blood of helplessness still in my paws.
+
+Time is a story I tell myself and this is nothing special. Time is a story \emph{we} tell \emph{ourselves.} Time is a story that Michelle who was Sasha told herself, and her ending was one of—I hope—joy. Time is a story that Qoheleth told himself and his ending was one of—would that it were not—agony. Time is a story that The Woman told herself and her ending was\ldots{}
+
+Was it? Was hers an ending?
+
+That is her own joy. That is her story. Her story is one of ambiguities and unanswered questions. Her ending is a question mark and a faint smile.

idumea/includes/toc.tex

@@ -12,4 +12,4 @@
 % start toc at top of page
 \renewcommand*\tocheadstart{}{}
 \hypersetup{final}
-\setcounter{tocdepth}{-1}
+%\setcounter{tocdepth}{-1}

marsh/book.tex

@@ -235,12 +235,12 @@
   \chapter*{Henrique Pereira — 2401}
   %\input{stories/journal}
 
-  \cleartoverso
-  \thispagestyle{empty}
-  \story{New Year's Eve}{Various}
-  \markboth{New Year's Eve}{Various}
-  \chapter*{Various Cladists — 2401}
-  \input{stories/nye}
+%  \cleartoverso
+%  \thispagestyle{empty}
+%  \story{New Year's Eve}{Various}
+%  \markboth{New Year's Eve}{Various}
+%  \chapter*{Various Cladists — 2401}
+%  \input{stories/nye}
 
   \cleartoverso
   \thispagestyle{empty}

marsh/content/journal.tex

@@ -2,11 +2,11 @@
 
 \protect\hypertarget{anchor-1}{}{}\emph{\textbf{May 12th, 2400}}
 
-\emph{The door is pressed open and the lights are turned on with a soft click, below wooden planks bemoan the shuffling feat of Henrique and his slippers, his old jeans loose and baggy, the knitted sweater he wears worn like his brittle bones. He walks with his cane, tapping on the floor as he finds his seat- guided by his great Granddaughter Isa, who guides him with steady, thoughtfully slow, footing.
+The door is pressed open and the lights are turned on with a soft click, below wooden planks bemoan the shuffling feat of Henrique and his slippers, his old jeans loose and baggy, the knitted sweater he wears worn like his brittle bones. He walks with his cane, tapping on the floor as he finds his seat, guided by his great Granddaughter Isa, who guides him with steady, thoughtfully slow, footing.
 
-``}Take a seat Grand Papi\ldots{} it will\ldots{} it will all, uhm\ldots'' \emph{she mutters the words ``be okay'' aimlessly, then lets a minute of quiet drift between the two of them, sounds of weeping heard from the floor below. She had only recently entered her teens, how could such innocence possibly understand such loss, the ramifications of the news not yet settled in for youthful Isa, yet the reality sank soundly onto the soul of elderly Henrique. The meandering minute passes, and Isa looks back up, eyes filled with concern for her great Grandfather's wellbeing.} ``Ah, Grand Papi, would you like me to get you your coffee mug? A blanket? Anything to give you comfort?...''
+``Take a seat Grand Papi\ldots{} it will\ldots{} it will all, uhm\ldots'' She mutters the words ``be okay'' aimlessly, then lets a minute of quiet drift between the two of them, sounds of weeping heard from the floor below. She had only recently entered her teens, how could such innocence possibly understand such loss, the ramifications of the news not yet settled in for youthful Isa, yet the reality sank soundly onto the soul of elderly Henrique. The meandering minute passes, and Isa looks back up, eyes filled with concern for her great Grandfather's wellbeing. ``Ah, Grand Papi, would you like me to get you your coffee mug? A blanket? Anything to give you comfort?...''
 
-\emph{Finally, he begins to sit down on his leather recliner, waving his aged hand dismissively, wrinkled and frail. His dower face, aged like the cracked leather he put his weight onto and pock marked with freckles from years in the sun, bunches together as he grimaces, not at the offer but towards the state of the world, the state of his family, the state of the System, and perhaps his aching body as well.
+Finally, he begins to sit down on his leather recliner, waving his aged hand dismissively, wrinkled and frail. His dower face, aged like the cracked leather he put his weight onto and pock marked with freckles from years in the sun, bunches together as he grimaces, not at the offer but towards the state of the world, the state of his family, the state of the System, and perhaps his aching body as well.
 
 Gently, slowly, deliberately he lowers himself and rests into the seat, his reading seat, the seat he got from his aunt as part of her will, a skilled tanner- skill that shined through the weathered cushions that strained to}
 

motes-played/content/008.tex

@@ -14,7 +14,7 @@ Beholden was not stupid. She was not an idiot. She could conceptualize things ar
 
 She did not really know why she played, because she did not really \emph{care} to know why.
 
-She did not know why she loved or Motes. She did not know why she loved so few others. She did not know why she felt such devotion to her boss—``not your boss'' the common refrain—and her Dot in a way that she could not muster for anyone else. She never bothered to question why.
+She did not know why she loved A Finger Pointing or Motes. She did not know why she loved so few others. She did not know why she felt such devotion to her boss—``not your boss'' the common refrain—and her Dot in a way that she could not muster for anyone else. She never bothered to question why.
 
 She did not know why she rose so quickly to anger. She did not know why she and Motes fought at times. She did not know why she got so mad when she saw Motes die on stage. She did not know why, when she and Slow Hours fought—usually about Motes's various deaths—it hurt so much. She shied away from ever trying to figure out why.
 

motes-played/content/afterword.tex

@@ -64,7 +64,7 @@ Thanks also to Madison's patrons:
   \includegraphics[width=3in]{assets/astolpho-bw.png}
 \end{center}
 
-\noindent B. Root is a illustrator, 3d artist, and VR enthusiast living in the Pacific Northwest. He is also a rather small lion.
+\noindent B. Root is an illustrator, 3d artist, and VR enthusiast living in the Pacific Northwest. He is also a rather small lion.
 
 \begin{center}
   roots.works