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\hypertarget{systime-28746}{%
\section*{systime 287+46}\label{systime-28746}}
\hypertarget{systime-27847}{%
\section*{systime 278+47\blfootnote{16 February, 2402 (Shabbat)}}\label{systime-27847}}
I met today with a longtime friend of mine in the hopes that he would be the first among my interviewees. Why after all, should I not figure out the shape of this project through some known thing?
I have decided that I will work on this project I have been assigned longhand.
For that is the problem I am running into, after all: knowing the shape of this project.
This is a thing that I will go through phases on, the ways in which I work. Sometimes, I will work with a pen in my paw and paper on my desk, books all scattered around. At other times, my desk will bear a great screen and I will type on a keyboard adapted to work with the digger claws I bear as a skunk, all of my research in buffers and panes scattered across the view. Rarely, I will work solely in my head, words committed directly to an exocortex, sources bubbling up through my mind from the libraries at the heart of our System like so much fizz in a drink.
Rav From Whence came to me with the vaguest of suggestions, and the proposal document that she offered the next day clarified little. Her suggestion was that I ought to interview those within the congregation first, then those without and yet who might have some thoughts on just what life after the Century Attack might look like. In particular, she was suggesting that I collect for her not just the interviews but also my very particular take on them. A Jew's take. An autistic woman's take. The take of this disaster by someone who might very well be called a disaster, herself.
These phases will last a year or ten, and then meld seamlessly into the next. That is where I am now. I am in the midst of a dovetail. I am coming off a period of working in my head, because my paw craves the weight of a pen.
But why?
This is not strictly true, I think, now that I put it to words. I do not think this change is wholly natural. The world ended for some baker's dozen months and now I am unsettled.
Not just why me --- though also why me --- why is my down-tree interested in a project like this? Why does she want this thing from me? What purpose would it serve?
All of life comes in phases, overlapping and intertwined. It is a braid. It is a melody. It is a story that we tell ourselves from day to day about who we are. We are the book of life, and our stories are written by us.
I ran through the list of associations that I know she has.
It is a braid and a story and there are phases within our lives, and yet there still exists the world around us, gently impinging here, wrenching us into some new reality there.
She is the rabbi here at Temple Beth Tikvah She is on several committees with the Association of New Reform Congregations, and heads up several. She was for several decades, the \emph{chair} of the ANRC. She is well connected. She is well collected. She is who I was. I remember being this person. I remember being the type of person who could change hearts and minds through this very Odist mode of interaction. She is the type like so many of us to speak in accidental five paragraph essays. She is the type to deep canvas without thinking, to show the world what it is doing to those within.
We were wrenched. We were ripped from being and it was only through the tireless efforts of who knows how many engineers both embodied and embedded, that we were slowly mended, woven back into the fabric of life. When we crashed, all 2.3 trillion of us, we were all in the middle of \emph{something,} and now we must take into account that the universe continued without us for some time. We must take into account that, no matter what our \emph{something} was, it was interrupted.
None of this tallies with this project.
I had been working on an essay at the time of the crash. It took me nearly nine months to return to the act of writing, for even though it lingered there in an exo, I could not bring myself to write it. There was too much to do, and there was too much that was fraught with life, for we all, I think, had our worries that the apocalypse was not yet finished with us.
I am to speak with people about this broad topic and pull together their responses and my impressions in a report. More than that, I am to be entirely myself throughout this process. I am to\ldots be seen? Is that it? Is that the subtext of what she told me in front of the shul? Her document told me that it was to be ``a chance for outreach as well as research'', which tells me precious little and yet which hints at much the same.
I am now unsettled, because the world ended, and so instead of writing this report for Rav From Whence in my head, as I did for my last few papers, I will write it out by hand.
I am to be seen. I am to remain this version of myself that is cherished by me and tolerated by others, and I am to place that self in from the bereaved and\ldots I do not know! I do not know. Why am I to be as myself as possible in front of these mourners?
But that is not my only project, is it? There is \emph{this} one, too. There is this story that I am telling myself about who I am and who I was, and that is being written close to my heart. It will live in an exo and, if I am honest with myself, likely never see the light of day. I will write it in my thoughts in those moments between, the minutes before I sleep at night and before I rise in the morning, the slow walks I might take to clear my head. I will wrangle my thoughts, lasso them together, coerce them into words and then think them directly into my memory that I may draw upon them for\ldots whatever. I do not know what I might need these thoughts for, but I nonetheless feel compelled to note them down.
I asked, thus, this of my friend.
My therapist has guided me towards journaling several times over the years to greater or less effect. When last we met, she did not bring it up, and yet here I am, essentially journaling.
``I imagine there are a few takes on that,'' he said. ``One is a strange sort of outreach like the proposal says. You go out and chat with the people and they see a skunk furry with a tic disorder and a double helping of anxiety.''
I wonder why? Why is it that Rav's project belongs to the ink of a pen, yet the journal I keep belongs in my thoughts? Is it that it is so much more private? Do I worry about committing these words to paper?
``Yes, but\ldots{} ah, but what does that accomplish?'' I asked
Perhaps it is that there is some issue of privacy. Am I worried about my words being seen or read by another?
He shrugged, a wry smile on his face. ``No clue. That's where the supposition stopped. Is she asking you to do this so that the temple is viewed in a certain way? Is she hoping that you'll straighten yourself up in some way without realizing it? I really haven't the faintest.''
I do not think so. With some projects, when I have worked long-hand, I have taken joy in the act of writing and then simply committed the words to memory and dismissed the written sheets themselves. It is not that the words might exist in some tangible form, but the act of writing itself.
I pulled a sour face and glared down at my coffee. ``Straighten myself up. She\ldots{} ah, that is, I cannot imagine what I would straighten up into. Would I stop speaking so immediately that my thoughts race ahead of my words? Would I look my interlocutors in the eyes? Would\ldots{} ah, would I fuss with my shirt less?'' I gestured down at myself.
Perhaps it is that committing words to paper would mean that I would be setting them down in some way more concrete than simply thinking of them.
He laughed, waving his hands disarmingly. ``Like I said, no clue. You're all so\ldots so tricksy that--''
In this case, it is the \emph{committing} that is the important part. Am I perhaps afraid of my thoughts on the Century Attack and on this assignment from Rav? Would seeing my words, unchanging, on the page, whining of this or that, be too much akin to pinning these thoughts specifically to those grumpinesses, bitternesses?
I giggled. I could not help myself! I giggled and clapped my paws. ``\,`Tricksy'!''
This, I think is partially true. There is truth in the fact that, when writing by hand, part of the goal \emph{is} to pin down a meaning to a word. It is to write a thing into being. That is not the case with this journal, if journal it is.
Once more he laughed. ``Yes! You always have all these schemes, planning things that have layer after layer of meaning. It's\ldots well, I was going to say it's a wonder you all can even keep it straight, but clearly it's an individual thing, rather than a collective thing, if you're this confused.''
Perhaps, though, perhaps I am just embarrassed. Perhaps the feelings that drove me to start cataloguing these experiences are ones that I am merely too embarrassed to set to paper, too shy of what they might suggest. Am I really such a whiner? Do I really kvetch about every little thing?
I like him, Joseph Chace. He can poke gentle fun at me and it feels like no cruelty is behind it. Doubtless myriads of such people exist but this one is my friend, and I am glad for it
Apparently, and that is why I think this is the most true of these reasons yet.
We met some century and a half ago when he came to visit an evening Shabbat. He, a Quaker, stated that he was interested in sorting out his feelings over a whole set of beliefs not his own, that he had plans to visit all sorts of congregations of all sorts of faiths, that he was out about about several times over that night doing just that.
And besides, it is not as though I have any thought of anyone seeing the work aside from myself, and would not even if I were to write it out longhand or sit at my desk typing. To write as though that were the case would be to hem myself in, draw boundaries around these embarrassing thoughts and promise myself that they in particular will not see the light of day.
So ebulliently strange was he, so well read and delightfully weird, that he was nudged my way by From Whence. Strange, bookish man? Point him at the strange, bookish skunk!
Beyond these musings, however, I have rested, now, and thought yet more on my conversation yesterday. One thing I will say that Joseph and I spoke about is the moment of the attack. After all, he mentioned that the next day was Sunday --- First Day, as he called it, nerd that he is --- and so it was natural to all of him to meet, then, for worship.
It was a good estimation, for we have been friends since.
``I didn't notice anything had happened until nearly midnight,'' he said. ``I don't really do anything for New Years, after all. It's just another day for me. That's why I call it First Day rather than Sunday, right? It's the first day of the week, so why give it some special name?
I am realizing as I set these words down that I must sound terribly bitter about my existence. I must sound like I resent my cocladist, or mistrust her, or suspect her of unfairly coddling me.
``I was just scrolling through the feeds, hunting down little artsy performances that people had recorded. Some sensorium plays, some comedy sketches. Just stupid, boring, late-night, turn-the-brain-off nonsense.
I do not think this is the case. Not usually.
``I got a ping from Delta asking where Epsilon was and why he wasn't responding. We thought he was in a cone of silence or something, blocking incoming sensorium messages, but then we got a message saying that Mu was missing, along with one of our friends. The rest of the night was spent just panicked, sitting on the edge of the couch at home, trying to get in touch with as many people as I could.''
There are times --- and perhaps with this project more than usual --- when this does seem to be the case, that she is looking down piteously at me and saying, as did a teacher in grade school, ``Ay, pobrecita\ldots{}'' The poor little girl cannot quite handle the world\ldots{}
I told him at the time that my thoughts on that night were incomplete, and so now I am working through them here, that I may put them to words. I will write them down separately in a letter to send his way, as I have at times done.
There are times when I feel she pities me, but those feelings never quite stand up against reality, and so I am left wondering where it is that \emph{I} am picking up such feelings. How is it that \emph{I} trust myself so little that I expect others, even those who are in some way myself, most feel this way about me?
There is a part of me that wishes I had experienced in my entirety the moment the world fell apart. This part of me is the same part that dreams so often of death. It is the part that looks at finality and cannot look away. It is the part that wonders: will I cry out, in my final moments? It is the part that remembers when Michelle quit with wonder and replays that moment over and over and over again, that tries to peer through remembered tears and see the wonder and joy on her face --- faces, for, by then, she was so split in twain that she was two more often than she was one --- to perk remembered ears that were also numbed by the horror of those around and listen for the way she said, ``Oh\ldots oh\ldots{}'' and then disappeared.
No one likes the feeling of being patronized, and yet the defensiveness within me prompts me to read such into every little interaction. It is a thing that am realizing perhaps I ought to watch out for, to approach consciously.
There is a part of me that wishes I had seen with my own eyes and heard with my own ears the moment the world fell apart. I was there, yes, and I survived, as this work attests, but I remember that moment only from the quiet of the basement and the eyes and ears of another instance.
But, ah--! I have lost track of the thread. I was speaking with Joseph today, and so I asked him, ``Well\ldots{} ah, would it be alright if I were to interview you, then? Perhaps there is some goodness that I may yet find in this project, and who better to seek that with than\ldots{} ah, than a friend, yes? Perhaps you may nudge my questions this way or that, that I may find more\ldots{} mm, I suppose edification in the act of asking.''
She, too, survived, this other What Right Have I. She survived and merged down within minutes, but me, I was in the basement in the quiet of a break in a discussion after the Kabbalat Shabbat service with Rav From Whence and Rav Sorensen, and so all of her memories are mixed up with that slow quiet in front of the synagogue. I do not have undiluted memories of the end of the world.
While he often bore a slight smile on his face, the tenor of it was labile and his moods discernible through its intricacies. Now, it slipped closer to a smirk. ``Edification?''
There is a rhythm to it all. There is a rhythm to the movement of debate, to the back-and-forth nature of arguing about the way that life flows, ought to slow. It is and ever has been a wrestling with God. With each other, yes, for there was back-and-forth, but it was ultimately a show, a performance that took the form of a debate in order to wrestle with God, with Adonai, Elohim, El-Shaddai?
``Well, yes. That is what we are discussing, is it not? That\ldots{} ah, that perhaps From Whence has some ideas as to the fact that I might do this project for myself, rather than for the world.''
That is what we are, is it not? The people of Israel? Not just that ancient state, gone these long centuries. Not the land, \emph{Eretz Yisrael,} left behind on Earth. We are the people, \emph{Am Yisrael,} the people of Israel who was Jacob. Jacob, who wrestles with God, yes?
``You're just being very \emph{you} about the whole thing,'' he said, laughing. He sat up, shooting imaginary cuffs and straightening imaginary tie. ``Alright. Ask away, What Right Have I.''
I had long ago requested that these discussions --- beautiful or stressful or somewhere in between --- take place in one of the smaller rooms of the synagogue, that they take place among soft cushions and softer wall-hangings, take place around a circular table with no corners to fiddle with, take place with enough space that I could pace.
``Very well. Can\ldots{} ah, can you tell me what you were doing on that New Year's Eve? The night of the Attack?''
I needed that. It was not a want.
``You know, when you brought up this whole venture, I was imagining that'd be the first question you'd ask.''
I needed to be seen, to be perceived as an entire being who was an integral part of our ceaseless debates, and yet as someone who did not need \emph{accommodation.} I was an entire person, not most of a person for which they must find a way to fill in the rest. These were not demeaning accommodations that they needed to make for me to take part, they were a part of my participation that this might be some fuller experience, some work that still would have been complete if it had taken part in a noisy, brutalist hall or out in some park.
``Is it\ldots{} ah, perhaps I should change it?''
Could I take part in those places? Yes. Probably. Could I have provided a completed task that would stand up to the test of time? Probably. Maybe. I do not know.
He shrugged. ``It depends on the vibes you're going for. If you're looking to lead people into an interview where they can give the same answers they've thought of in their heads for a year now, it's a great one.''
But I could provide insight that I might hope would shine with the sages if they would only do this in a place where I could pace among soft things, where I could fidget and tic, where my little chirps and yelps and twitches would be at least glossed over and at best taken as a sign --- a rainbow! A raven! A plague! --- that the topic had veered or become mired in stress rather than remaining within the soothing track that we had laid out for ourselves.
I frowned. ``Should I not, then?''
Rav From Whence was tightly in control of herself. She was more tightly in control than \emph{anyone} else I have had ever met, never mind just among the Odists.
``No, no, that's what I mean. That's valid and useful, too, because you can get the things that people have been cycling over for a year. That tells its own story.''
I am sure that the True Name of yore, Rav's most beloved friend, had probably been yet more in control, and yet I had spoken with her only a handful of times while she was alive. After all, I had been no one. I \emph{am still} no one.
``And the alternative?''
I am that part of From Whence that needed out of the cage of control. I am the part of her that loathed the social interaction inherent in being a rabbi. I am the part of her that rankled when confronted with this desire to mask and thus appear a confident spiritual leader.
He laughed, not unkindly. ``No clue, What Right Have I. You tell me.''
I am that part of her set free.
I did my best to cover a tic, a release of slowly building anxiety, with a dramatic eye-roll. ``Humor me, Joseph.''
I am the part of her who could give up that life of leadership and sink down into the comfort of texts.
``I really don't know, is the thing, because I don't know what you're going for. Are you going for making them cry by the end? Do you want them to express hope for the future? Are you aiming to rouse righteous anger?''
I am the part of her that splashed about in that collection of idiosyncrasies that had been bundled up in Michelle Hadje, that collection of identities and desires that reached for ever more, the bits that had been left behind that had not been crushed to a fine powder by whatever forces within the Western Federation there were that had deemed us nobodies to have been transitively lost.
Here, I must stop to put a pin in something. The conversation continued, and is worth recounting, and I \emph{will} recount it, but I have to put a pin in the final question there: \emph{are you aiming to rouse righteous anger?} Joseph's habit of alliteration aside, this was an astute question that raised my hackles in the moment, raises them even now as I put these words to memory.
``What Right Have I?''
I must put a pin it to speak of later, because there is an essential anger in me that only at times feels righteous, and that is perhaps why, above all other reasons, I am undertaking this exercise.
I squeaked and jumped at the sudden intrusion of words. ``Ah\ldots yes?''
Now, though --- as I did at the time --- I must swallow that anger until I am through with the moment.
``You were chirping,'' my down-tree instance said to me, smiling. ``I was wondering if you had further thoughts, my dear.''
``I am\ldots{} ah, in this, I am directionless,'' said. I knew that my tone was clipped, that my lips were threatening to curl, that my tail was bristled and hiked. I know that I have said that I exist to unmask, but I am not ignorant of the realities of communication, the little lies we tell, both verbal and non. I spent a moment quelling this sensation. I sat up straighter. I un-splayed my ears. I with a sweep of the paw brought my tail up into my lap that I might comb my claws through the stiff fur, there, brushing out imagined accumulated dust. Self-soothing. ``I am sorry. That I am directionless is\ldots{} ah, it is stressful, yes?''
I shook my head, then bowed to From Whence. ``My apologies. No, my thoughts had wandered.''
He smiled most kindly and nodded. He knows me well, Joseph, and I am pleased that he is in my life. Despite my abrasiveness, despite when I have at times snapped at him --- as any friend might after centuries --- despite the end of the world, he is still in my life.
``Do you think we have had enough of this topic, then?''
``If I were to perhaps\ldots{} ah, well, let us say that perhaps I switch it up with each interview, yes? Perhaps I wrong-foot some of those with whom I speak, and with others, I walk the straight and narrow path? Perhaps with some I will play twenty questions, yes?''
I shrugged.
``Twenty questions? Like the game where you have to guess what someone's thinking of, and you have twenty questions to do so?'' He raised his brows, an expression that somehow involved his whole face moving in opposite directions. It is quite charming. ``I hadn't considered that as an interview technique.''
``A verbal response would help me better move forward one way or another.''
I laughed, waved a paw, and set back to the self-soothing grooming of my tail. ``No.~There was a time when\ldots{} ah, when Michelle was invited to play --- this was early on after uploading, you see, before our sensoria were locked into consensus --- and she had forgotten that such a game existed. She decided, instead, to offer twenty questions that pushed primarily discussion. We as a clade have\ldots{} ah, we have kept a list of such circulating.''
``Ah, sorry.'' I shook my head again. ``No, ah\ldots Yes. I am sorry, Rav From Whence, Rav Sorensen. I think we have had enough of the topic.''
``Oh? Like what?''
Both of them sighed, nodded, and reached their arms up above their heads in unison to stretch. I hid a secret smile at the synchronicity.
``Perhaps\ldots{} ah, perhaps you may tell me this: what is your most treasured, and yet completely inconsequential memory?''
``Fair enough,'' From Whence said, pushing her paw up through the front portion of her mane and ruffling out the already mussed white fur there. ``I could do with a little bit of silence, honestly. Or fresh air. Or something. Erin?''
He sat up straighter. ``\emph{In}consequential?''
Rav Sorenson nodded. ``Fresh air sounds good. We could start making our way up to the hilltop the long way around.''
``Yes. What memory that\ldots{} ah, that others would find completely mundane and unimportant is a joy to you?''
``Not the worst idea.''
There was a moment of silence before he let out a baffled chuckle. ``You're all \emph{very} weird, you know that?''
Some part of me felt stymied. We were \emph{here,} though. We were talking. We were working. We were pounding our fists against divinity and begging it to provide for us some sense of greater truth. We were pushing our way through reality at a constant pace and so learning --- learning or refinement or perfection or whatever it was that we were doing --- ought to proceed at precisely that pace, not stopped by walking up the hill.
I smiled smugly, nose poking up in the air with a bit of haughtiness. ``I do, yes.''
``What Right Have I?''
Where before he had raised his brows, now they sank in concentration, and once more, I was struck by the way that this involved his whole face coming together. ``Alright. Well\ldots I suppose that, if we're talking about the Century Attack, then I'll restrict my memories to around that.'' He settled back in his seat once more. ``I lost two up-trees in the attack, Epsilon and Mu. They--''
I hid away any sullenness in my posture as I bowed to the two rabbis. Some small bit of masking did at times serve the purpose of merely letting me out of yet more interaction that I did not feel equipped to handle. After all, they were tired from the service earlier, and it was New Year's Eve, yes?
``Do you then have no more than\ldots{} ah, then twenty-four up-trees?''
``Very well,'' I said, and followed them out the door of this particular meeting room.
``I only have thirteen.'' He winced. ``Had. There are eleven Josephs Chace now.''
The cool air of the night was a blessing. I had not realized just how warm the room had gotten, not until provided with contrast. We stepped out into a garden --- one of my favorites within the sim and a large part of why I preferred this particular meeting room.
I nodded, silent.
The cool air was a blessing, and the perpetually springtime scent of it a comfort. There was the sharp-sweet honeysuckle. There was the baked goods warmth of the day-closing dandelions. There was the floral chill of lilacs.
He continued, more slowly now. ``We lost Epsilon and Mu. And I say \emph{we,} here, deliberately. We may all be our own people, but we are also a unit all together. I'm Prime, and Epsilon and Mu were each their own, but we are still all Joseph Chace.''
The cool air was a blessing and the Jonah plant --- my most selfish of contributions to the sim --- was in full flush. When, at times, I was feeling particularly peaky, I would sit in the shade its leaves in the heat of the day, the shadows so deep as to not even be dappled, and then, knowing, by my weight on the bench beneath it, my presence, it would shortly wither away and I would be blasted by the full force of the sun, for even if it was not directly overhead, some trick of the glass on the buildings that formed the courtyard would ensure that this one location was always subject to those rays, and thus I would be confronted with the plight of Jonah --- poor, stupid Jonah --- who cared more about his comfort than the fate of a city so much larger than he.
``Were.'' I winced as soon as I said it, though if Joseph felt any pain by it, he did not say so.
I was called away from standing still, snout pointed up in the air to take in the scents, that I might follow From Whence and Erin up the hill, this time and two or three times more. I do not know why I was surprised that I needed a break in context, nor why both of my interlocutors had recognized such before I did. Such things will never cease to surprise me, though, and I suppose one upside to this is that I will forever have reason to be thankful for.
``We're all together in being Joseph Chace, and we're all members of the same meeting. Some of us have fallen away from regular attendance of course, not everyone has maintained the same interest in Quakerism --- or even spirituality --- that I have, but we're all still members of the Brookside Friends' Meeting. First Days come around, and so many of us see each other there. Some First Days, we'll even get the whole clade there. You can tell at a glance that that's the case if you count the empty chairs.
We wove our way up to the synagogue the long way around, never once entering a building, for there was a path, if you knew it, that let you go the whole way outdoors. You would step from this courtyard to that following some colonnaded walk or exposed breezeway, climbing stairs and ramps, walking through some ivy-shaded alley where one might touch the walls of the buildings to either side with both paws outstretched.
``I'm like you, you know. I'll always merge down to be singular for meeting for worship, if I can. I like the feeling of living life in parallel as much as any dispersionista, so it feels almost titillating that I take this time to live so singularly.''
The narrowest of these was the final path around the side of the synagogue itself, an entry to that alleyway that was hidden by some clever trick of the architecture and light. Here, one might even be tempted to turn sideways and edge, crablike, down the path, so close together were the buildings.
``I think that\ldots{} ah, that you may simply be a nerd.''
And at last we stood outside the front entrance, the three of us simply breathing deep of the night air --- midnight not far off, now, and the sounds of bustle nearby from those preparing for the celebration. The exertion of the climb lingered with us, and to stop and stand still was a quiet comfort as the chill of the night began to fully set in.
He laughed, waved a hand dismissively. ``Pot. Kettle. Black.''
``Do you think\ldots ah, that is, shall I perhaps go get us some coffees? Some drinks? We can have a little bit of warmth, yes?''
I preened.
Both Rav Sorenson and Rav From Whence turned their smiles upon me from where they had been before pointed up to the stars.
``Anyway. The 11th was First Day, the day after we got back, and everything was so crazy that a bunch of us met at the meetinghouse, and that's where we learned that Epsilon and Mu were gone. Lots of tears, lots of big feelings. That was before we knew it was an attack; we just thought some huge crash had happened. Still, we all agreed that we'd meet on the 18th, the next First Day, and have an actual, honest-to-God meeting. We could figure out a memorial meeting later, but maybe we could actually just\ldots fucking\ldots pray.''
``That would be lovely, my dear,'' From Whence said.
He was getting heated. This was not new. He is a passionate man, and I have seen him soapbox gleefully and angrily both. This was not new, but what \emph{was} was a brightness to his eyes that I'd never seen before, and so out of place was it that it took me some few moments to realize that they were tears not yet shed.
``Why not?'' Erin's smile grew all the brighter. ``Though a hot chocolate will do for me, I think.''
``The 18th comes around, and we all gather at the meetinghouse, and the mood is, obviously somber. We're all pretty fucked up by the ceaseless torrent of news.'' He laughed, and bitterly so. ``I don't remember the news cycle from phys-side with any fondness, but it was \emph{so} easy to fall back into. Checking the feeds every few minutes, just in case something new had come up. It was so easy\ldots{}''
I nodded, bowed, and forked.
I was rapt by now, and my tics had ceased.
It was What Right Have I\#Coffee who stepped to Infinite Café, arriving on one of the designated transportation pads, one of those rectangles tiled in a gently glowing white where all collision was turned off, and from there stepped out into the comfortably cool air of the night, warmer than that of Beth Tikvah.
He took a deep breath and continued. ``We were all messed up, and I was wondering how we'd be able to leave any room for silence. Surely we'd all be clamoring to speak, trying our damnedest to wait a minute or so between each message.
This was notable in part because it was never night in Infinite Café. Or, rather, it was only night twice a year: New Year's Eve and Secession Day night --- eve and night by systime, which I suppose must be UTC or some similar standard --- and then only for the fireworks. When your entire world is a thin ribbon of land, a literal ring road surrounding a bright star, the meaning of `night' shifts.
``But no. We just\ldots sat there. Twenty-fucking-five of us, two clades, and we just sat there in silence for the whole damn hour.''
And so here they were, New Year's eve and it was well and truly night on this road that ran who knew how many kilometers long, a road lined on either side by so, so many cafés and coffee shops and delightful little stalls offering coffee and little treats. Above, no moon shone, but instead there were countless strings of fairy lights, strung with no discernible pattern, casting a warm glow on those below.
He scuffed the heel of his palm against first one cheek, then the other.
It was well and truly night, and yet it was still busy. Crowds meandered under fairy lights and a dark sky that craved the diamond scars of fireworks etched across it. It begged for the blossoming lights that were promised by the evening.
``That's not even that rare. Once every\ldots I don't know, fifteen, twenty meetings or so, we'll have a fully silent one. No messages. No speaking. We all just sit there like a bunch of fucking idiots and it'll be the most impactful thing to happen to us for months to come.
Half an hour away.
``You don't really think of it, but fifteen weeks is a long time. More than a quarter of a year! And here we are, spending months thinking about sitting, silent, in a room for an hour or more. This is why I say idiots. You put it into perspective, and it seems so stupid.''
The fairy lights drew a crazed pattern above her, etching dotted lines across the black of night. \#Coffee stood for some time, simply staring up to them, trying to draw constellations out of linear groupings of stars. There were more letters than there were animals, given so many straight lines, and so she spent some time trying to spell out words.
``Inconsequential,'' I offered. I am ashamed to admit that there is a part of me that remains proud of this single word offered at just the right time.
Sweet scents still rode in her nostrils and clung to her fur. The cool of the night, just shy of chilly, still filled her body. The joy of the work contrasted still beautifully with the joy of the break and the re-grounding that followed. She was in love, at that moment, with the world, and she felt as though the world was in love with her.
He smiled, and shakily so. ``Yes. You see? Eleven Josephs Chace sat in a room in silence for an hour and fifteen minutes. I haven't spoken with the Kanewskis --- they're the other clade at Brookside. I haven't spoken with the other Josephs. This is just my memory. Maybe it's also theirs, I don't know.
There was time to feel this sensation. Time to tune down her hearing to lower the noise of the crowds to something a little more tolerable, and revel in the fact that other people exist, that this world was full of joy.
``My most important, least consequential memory is sitting in a dead silent room with twenty people, counting empty chairs over and over again.''
Twenty minutes away.
I bowed my head, both in thought and in politeness. The politeness ought to stand evident, but the thought was a picturing of the tableau that Joseph offered.
Coffee, though. That is why What Right Have I\#Coffee was here. Warm drinks to stave off the slight chill of the hilltop at Beth Tikvah.
I have been to two of his meetings for worship. The first was because it felt a fair exchange that, being his connection for a visit to Beth Tikvah, I also visit Brookside. Neither of the meetings that I attended were silent. In both cases, yes, we began in silence. There was a call to the egregore, in a sense, that we join together in prayerful silence until one of the members was moved to speak, to share some thought or feeling borne out of that of God within everyone, within those present. And, in both cases, someone stood and spoke. They shared an idea--
She wandered down the path that was Infinite Café, eyes scanning the storefronts --- or perhaps store-backs, as many of them were --- until one caught her eye.
Or --- and this is a point that I bear some shame over --- what felt like some \emph{head} of an idea. Some very beginning of a thought, with the expectation that we ought to simply fill in the rest.
The Bean Cycle advertised itself with a chaotic pile of bicycles bolted to the wall. It looked like ivy of some type, or a sort of ooze that threatened to overtake the building itself. Bicycles, wheels, frames, gears and chains, all bolted to the wall or to each other, climbing up beside a door and then oozing up over the low roof.
I will ever be as I am, though. If you provide me with an opening for anxiety, I will simply fill that opening with anxiety. It was not just a space that I might fill with anxiety over these half-truths, but an invitation to do precisely that.
Why not?
One of them might say, ``I was thinking this past week on the idea of community and the ways in which this has shifted to include our cocladists as well as those who are from other clades,'' sit down, and, five minutes later, I am fretting, ``Do I treat my up-trees with the respect owed any member of a community?''
She stepped inside and immediately turned her hearing down further, shutting out the rattle-clatter of a smattering of cyclists riding stationary on sets of rollers before a scoreboard, the whine-howl of steam wands frothing milk, and the dull chatter of those who spoke over it. Halogen lights shone above, at once too bright and not bright enough.
I am not built for this.
It was overstimulating, and yet all the more quaint and charming for it.
Give me, instead, the pillowy comfort of ritual. Give me the mumbled and, at times, indistinct chanting in Hebrew. Give me the rising, the sitting, the lifting of my paws. Give me the silence only when it is warranted: when the hand of the rabbi drifts across the congregation asking us to recite the names of the living in need of prayer or the names of the dead in need of remembering. Give me \emph{L'cha dodi.} Give me \emph{Barechu.} Give me \emph{Maariv aravim, Ahavat olam, Shema, Shema, Shema\ldots{}}
Ordering the drinks --- a hot chocolate and two mochas with extra whipped cream --- went smoothly, and she even let herself be talked into three of ``the best croissants in this sim'', because why not. She was riding along joy, now, like a train on rails, letting it carry her forward.
Ah, I grow overwhelmed. This bodes ill.
This --- not the coffee shop, not the noise, but her night, the debate and the walk, existing in the world --- was her joy. It was her calling in life to wrap herself up in the stories of old and then view the world through them like a kaleidoscope that she might then hold up a mirror to it through the lens of interpretation.
And yet, I am not so bereft of mysticism that I do not \emph{understand} the draw of silence, of the egregore of such a space.
Her drinks and croissants were set into a cardboard drink caddy, and at last she was free to step back out into the night air, away from the noise of the bikes and steam wands and halogen lights.
So visceral is his telling that I feel it now, even some hours later, the sitting in silence, with tears held at bay or not, looking around the room and counting empty chairs.
Fifteen minutes away.
Our conversation wound down from there. There is little of note --- or what is of note is that which belongs between merely Joseph and me --- and soon we parted ways with a hug, as has long been our custom.
Fifteen minutes away and, of a sudden, the crowd was reduced. Many of those who had once stood before her, this instance of me, in knots and gaggles of friends were simply not there. Not all; nor, perhaps, even most. Just many sudden absences.
I returned home, then, and sat for a while at my desk, trying and failing to read, and then went for a walk, where I sat beneath my Jonah tree until I started to feel warm despite the chill air, and then I returned to my room, where I languished in bed, which is where I remain even now.
There was a shout that fell to a murmur, and which then rose to a quiet roar, a wash of sound that led What Right Have I\#Coffee to set her tray of cups and treats on the ground beside her and cover her ears in a rush as she stood outside of a coffee shop. She hurried to turn down her hearing the down yet further and stifled a yelp, a squeak, a jerk of the head.
And, now that I have finished this telling, now that I have had some space from the initial memory, I may speak about anger without tears or that disgusting way in which I know my face contorts.
The words that made it through the pillowy softness of a sense running at 10\% were shouts and cries of alarm. They were names hollered out, presumably those of people no longer present. They were wide-eyed growls begging to know what the fuck had just happened.
There is in me, as I said, an essential anger which does not always feel righteous. We are all beholden at times to our frustrations, and oftentimes, this is the extent of such anger. I will grow frustrated at the world around me, at the way that I am treated, at the ways in which inanimate objects seem to at times disobey me or act counter to the way I think they ought.
Fourteen minutes away, and What Right Have I\#Coffee realized she could not take it all in. Not all of this. Not here. Tray abandoned, she quit to merge back down.
Most often, however, I grow frustrated at myself. I grow frustrated at my own anxieties. I grow frustrated at my shortcomings. I grow frustrated with the fact that I have leaned so hard into this identity of unmasking and that unmasking is not necessarily any more comfortable than masking. More liberating, yes, but not more comfortable.
And yet I was dealing with my own worries, then, for at fifteen minutes until midnight, a din arose at the top of the hill, some fifty meters away, and it was as we were making our way toward the noise when the merge from \#Coffee landed on my mind with a startling sense of urgency.
And yet sometimes that frustration rises to anger, and, at its most righteous, I find it often directed towards some inequity. How dare the world be so unfair? That is what I might say, yes?
I incorporated the memories without a second thought, and then bolted towards the top of the hill, leaving Ravs From Whence and Sorenson calling after me in my wake.
At its least righteous, that is twisted around into: how dare the world be so unfair \emph{to me?}
The scene at the yard atop the hill was much the same as that at Infinite Café: names were called out. Disbelief and shock were expressed. Voices were tinged here with anger, there with fear.
How uncomfortable!
I stood on the low rise at the edge of the yard and gaped, where I was soon joined by the other two.
Yes, the world is unfair, and yes, I am part of that world, and yet, whenever I find myself veering perilously close to `tantrum', there is a part of me that cannot help but watch, helpless, in horror. Why is the skunk \emph{crying?} What is she \emph{doing?} Why is she like this? What right has she to be so unaccountably upset?
I remember little else from that night. Or I remember it, but through a dream-fog of panic.
Seeing myself fuss and cry and hide away and leave interactions because of my own shortcomings, feeling that I was not being heard, that I was cycling through anxieties and wrapping myself up in them as though that would somehow give me comfort or greater room to process\ldots{} Well, it was uncomfortable.
I remember how Rav From Whence sprung immediately into action --- or, rather, how she was already a whirlwind of motion and emotion, there in the thick of it all, and how the instance beside me, one who had existed to track our discussion, merged down as soon as she saw what was happening, and I remember how Rav Sorenson dashed in to help. The both of them had soon forked several times over and were corralling the crowd into knots of smaller groups that they might speak more easily with them, working on the level of family, perhaps, or friend-group.
Worse, when I would latch onto some slight, real or perceived, and be unable to let it go: I loathe this about myself. Why is it that so often I fall into consternation with my down-tree? Rav From Whence loves me, and I love her. Why is it that we occasionally fall to snippy comments at each other? Why do we both wind up in tears, sitting in some courtyard or hidden room or the synagogue itself, litigating and relitigating and relitigating yet again the same misunderstanding, talking over and past each other? Even now! Even these decades and centuries later!
I remember how I stood, once more, just as What Right Have I\#Coffee had done, gawking at the pandemonium
Yes, we will always sort through our feelings. Yes, we will always return to our friendship, will hug and take the other's paw in our own and vow to be better. And yes, we will be better! We do better by each other every week and every month and every year.
I remember most of all, though, the first wail --- the first recognition of loss and the first wail of despair and pain that rang out into the night --- and the bright arc of a firework soaring into the sky, bursting, and then the sudden disappearance as the show was canceled.
It is just that, yes, there is always some new thorn.
Why, why, why, I ask myself. So many questions, and there are indeed so many answers.
My therapist has brought up several over the decades. She has spoken of various ways to label these cognitive distortions and disordered thinking, and offered them not as some cruel diagnosis, but as frameworks through which I may understand myself and thus progress. My habit of relitigation falls out of perhaps some obsessive thought patterns, a ritual of attempting to say what I feel I must in the \emph{correct} way in order to be best understood, and so perhaps I might think of this as a form of obsessive compulsive disorder. Walk through the ramifications of this as a framework, consider how it fits, draw from it lessons but not a label.
Or perhaps it is merely generalized anxiety. Perhaps I am more than just anxious, I am \emph{pathologically} anxious. Perhaps the anxiety is the type that ruins a life rather than the type that keeps one safe.
Or perhaps this, or perhaps that.
I worry that perhaps I have gone down some blind alley and gotten lost. I worry that I have made myself into not just someone who has relinquished her grasp on herself that she might revel in unmasking, but into someone who has lost control of herself and thus spirals. I worry that all of this anger is pointed inward, in the end, and that its effects merely radiate outward in waves.
I have thought on anger a lot over the centuries, and yet it is this last thought that is new in these last three hundred seventy days.
Do I merely hate myself?
I remember hearing the wail, seeing the sparks and then sudden dark, and then stepping to my room to hide under my desk, letting flow tears of confusion, frustration, and terror.