Notes

idumea/content/009.tex

@@ -244,11 +244,11 @@ The Poet! The Musician! The aesthetician and that kindly restaurateur who petted
 
 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 ghosts in broad daylight cling to passers-by.\label{baudelaire}
+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--
 
-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''?
+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}
 
 Because if that is so, what of us? My little readers may be rubbing the tears from their eyes or tilting their heads in confusion as I wonder at them: what of us? If that really \emph{is} her, if she really \emph{is} The Tree, and if she really \emph{is} finally—finally!—still, then what does that mean for me, who cries ink down into her fur—a skunk! Is it really any wonder that black fur suits me so? What does that mean for my clade? For Her Friend, who struggles and strives to reclaim that which has failed and turn it into some bijou and yet who, when ey falls, feels that all the work ey has done is not just for naught, but has hurt those who ey sought to help?
 

idumea/content/afterword.tex

@@ -84,7 +84,7 @@ una muchacha y un muchacho.\\
 Comen naranjas, cambian besos\\
 como las olas cambian sus espumas.
 
-Tendido en la playa\\
+Tendidos en la playa\\
 una muchacha y un muchacho.\\
 Comen limones, cambian beso\\
 como las nubes cambian espumas.
@@ -233,7 +233,7 @@ And she felt growth accelerate as, bound now to the earth, her bones became wood
 
 \noindent Do I repeat myself? Very well, I repeat myself. I am beholden to my dreams.
 
-And yet, ah–! 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.
+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.
 
@@ -250,7 +250,11 @@ I will say, however, that that letter surrounded nasturtiums and was written the
 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.
 
 \paragraph{Page \pageref{psalm13}}
-From Psalm 13:2--4:
+\emph{How long,} Adonai, \emph{will You forget me always?}
+
+\vspace{1em}
+
+\noindent From Psalm 13:2--4:
 
 \begin{verse}
 How long, \emph{Adonai}, will You forget me always?\\
@@ -262,8 +266,11 @@ Regard, answer me, \emph{HaShem}, my God.\\
 \vin Light up my eyes, lest I sleep death.
 \end{verse}
 
-\paragraph{Page \pageref{qohelet}}
-From Qohelet (Ecclesiastes) 1:17:
+\paragraph{Page \pageref{qohelet}} (quoted directly)
+
+\vspace{1em}
+
+\noindent From Qohelet (Ecclesiastes) 1:17:
 
 \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.
@@ -282,7 +289,11 @@ Everything was from the dust, and everything goes back to the dust.
 \end{quote}
 
 \paragraph{Page \pageref{milosz}}
-Cf. Miłosz:
+\emph{The blood of deer ripped to shreds by wolves!}
+
+\vspace{1em}
+
+\noindent Cf. Miłosz:
 
 \begin{verse}
 a nastąpią niewinne wschody słońca\\
@@ -322,7 +333,11 @@ evil (and good) comes from man.
 \end{verse}
 
 \paragraph{Page \pageref{rilke-doyousee}}
-Cf. Rilke:
+\emph{Do you see now the connection?}
+
+\vspace{1em}
+
+\noindent Cf. Rilke:
 
 \begin{verse}
 Weißt du's \emph{noch} nicht? Wirf aus den Armen die Leere\\
@@ -337,7 +352,11 @@ will feel the expanded air in more spirited flight.
 \end{verse}
 
 \paragraph{Page \pageref{ashes}}
-From Dickinson:
+[\ldots] \emph{beyond providing an instance for Ashes Denote That Fire Was.}
+
+\vspace{1em}
+
+\noindent From Dickinson:
 
 \begin{verse}
 Ashes denote that Fire was —\\
@@ -353,8 +372,14 @@ Into what Carbonates.
 
 \noindent We have always borne an obsession with Emily Dickinson. For years and years, and years and years and years she has lived within us, a remnant of some stage play we performed with our superlative friend, centuries back now.
 
+Is it so surprising, then, that after cross-tree merging had been introduced as an option for us, that the one who would seek to collect within themself the entirety of the Ode clade—those who remain, dear readers!—would take for a name a line of Dickinson? We will be ever ourselves.
+
 \paragraph{Page \pageref{baudelaire}}
-Cf. Baudelaire via Eliot:
+[\ldots] \emph{perhaps like those leaves that skitter within the city, that unreal city} [\ldots]
+
+\vspace{1em}
+
+\noindent Cf. Baudelaire via Eliot:
 
 \begin{verse}
   \emph{Fourmillante cité, cité pleine de rêves,\\
@@ -367,15 +392,49 @@ Cf. Baudelaire via Eliot:
 \end{verse}
 
 \paragraph{Page \pageref{graves}}
-Cf. Graves:
+\emph{She, then, like so many leaves} [\ldots]
+
+\vspace{1em}
+
+\noindent Cf. Graves:
 
 \begin{verse}
   She, then, like snow in a dark night\\
   Fell secretly.
 \end{verse}
 
+\paragraph{Page \pageref{enough}}
+\emph{``Oh! Oh, I do believe this is some plentiful enough for me.''}
+
+\vspace{1em}
+
+\noindent Cf. Rilke:
+
+\begin{verse}
+Und plötzlich in diesem mühsamen Nirgends, plötzlich\\
+die unsägliche Stelle, wo sich das reine Zuwenig\\
+unbegreiflich verwandeldt—, umspringt\\
+in jenes leere Zuviel.\\
+Wo die vielstellige Rechnung\\
+zahlenlos aufgeht.
+
+\secdiv
+
+And suddenly in this toilsome nowhere, suddenly\\
+the unutterable place where the merely too little\\
+inscrutably mutates—, swings round\\
+into that empty too much,\\
+where the calculation to many digits\\
+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}}
-Cf. Cummings:
+[\ldots] \emph{breathe in a million billion trillion years} [\ldots]
+
+\vspace{1em}
+
+\noindent Cf. Cummings:
 
 \begin{verse}
   i put him all into my arms\\
@@ -384,7 +443,11 @@ Cf. Cummings:
 \end{verse}
 
 \paragraph{Page \pageref{x}}
-I used for this work a multiplication sign (×) for the section dividers, and, my dear friends, I am still coming to terms with this decision.
+{\large ×}
+
+\vspace{1em}
+
+\noindent I used for this work a multiplication sign (×) for the section dividers, and, my dear friends, I am still coming to terms with this decision.
 
 There are so many possible meanings!
 
@@ -401,23 +464,31 @@ Perhaps, though, perhaps the × stands for the decision that I made. It is the r
 I am so, so incredibly sorry, and also rather proud of what I have done, of helping The Woman in so noble an endeavor, in equal measure.
 
 \paragraph{Page \pageref{notes}}
-Cf. Nabokov's \emph{Pale Fire.}
+\emph{Appendix I — Notes}
+
+\vspace{1em}
+
+\noindent Cf. Nabokov's \emph{Pale Fire.}
 
 % Make sure this is verso
-\newpage
-\null
-\thispagestyle{empty}
-\newpage
+%\newpage
+%\null
+%\thispagestyle{empty}
+%\newpage
 \includepdf[fitpaper=true]{hymn.pdf}
 
 \chapter*{Appendix II — 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.
 
+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}
 
+TODO: rewrite in Rye's voice.
+
 Post-Self is a science fiction setting involving uploaded consciousnesses and all of the daily dramas that go into their everlasting lives.
 
 This primer is broken into two parts: