Idumea work

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 ×}