The Woman wanted to unbecome.

We know this, you and I. We know this because that is the story that I have been telling this whole time, is it not? I have written thousands of words, now, about how she was seeking joy. I wrote of her eating wonderful things, of having sex with her lover and holding hands with her friend, of reading and listening to music, of the conversation she had about creation with me and my beloved up-tree, The Oneirotect, of the mournful prayer she shared with Her Cocladist. I wrote about all of her successes and how each was tainted by an incompleteness, a failure to find the joy she sought, but I have made it so tenuous as to why these two ideas of joy and unbecoming are connected.

The Woman was too much herself, and becoming ever more so always. With each day, each hour, each minute and second, she was becoming ever more herself. She did not just become older—and, dear ones, you remember, of course, that we are \emph{very} old—though she also became that—but she became yet more The Woman than she had been before. My clever readers will remember when I said: I think she would say that she was \emph{too} full, too much, too alive. Those readers will remember when I said: she is too much herself, too human, too embodied within her vessel as it spirals out of control, too stuck in her mind as it twists in on itself. And, yes, those same readers will remember when I said: It is hard to experience peace, hard to experience joy when one is too much oneself, is it not?

Do you see now the connection?\label{rilke-doyousee}

If you sense within The Woman's words and actions a haste to find some joy, some way to unbecome, before some unknown future calamity, I do not think you would be wrong, but neither do I think you would be wholly correct. I think there is a haste within all of us to do what we will before death. Even those of us who live with what we had assumed was functional immortality have found that there is calamity in our lives, for we have now lived through death. No one who uploads even this very day will not remember the calamity that was the Century Attack, the way that a virus had been loosed within Lagrange, within the System in which we dwell, and crashed every single instance. No one who uploads even this very day will not know what terrors we have lived through, the grief of losing one percent of a society 2.3 trillion strong.

I write this in systime 285, in 2409 common era, in 6169 of the Hebrew calendar. If one were to upload as soon as they could, as soon as they turned eighteen, then they would have been nine during the Century Attack, during that one year, one month, and ten days that Lagrange remained offline, all of us functionally immortal rendered functionally dead.

All of us, even those who are uploading today, know that there is haste to do what one will before death.

Oh, it is not so bad as it was at first. Even now, I am finding that I am no longer racing quite so much to spend as much time with my stanza, to get every hug that I can from my beloved up-tree, to eat every good food I can or visit all of the lovely sims out there. I still spend time with my stanza and hug my beloved up-tree and eat good foods and see lovely places, and my beautiful, beautiful readers will certainly recognize the urgency in me writing down all the words I have to say, but it no longer comes with the knife-edge at my throat.

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.

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.

\secdiv

The Woman wanted to unbecome.

I am doing my best to tell you, dear readers, this story from front to back like any good fairy tale. I am, of course, failing at times to do so like any good author must. Our lives are full of doublings-back and loop-the-loops even when we are bound by time's oh-so-strict arrow, yes? For our lives are circuitous and the progression of the world, as we know, spirals and coils around us.

And so it is that I must once more step back from my notes—and here you must imagine me the type to have notes—and trace my finger up along the timeline of what I have so far told you so that we may sit together and consider why it is that stillness, for The Woman, has so much to do with unbecoming.

We must first of all unlearn the idea that unbecoming is an active process. There may be agency involved—in fact, I think The Woman would insist that there \emph{must} be agency involved, though I think she might hesitate if you were to ask whose agency—but that does not mean that this is a process of undoing-of-self. It is not, as The Woman stated so explicitly, dying, of course, but neither is it coming apart.

The agency, then, comes mostly in the act of choice. I mentioned above or perhaps some pages back that The Woman held onto the thought that stillness lay in choice. I said this because we are so beholden to what we were and what we have become and what we fear we may yet be that we so often lack choice. Perhaps this is an issue faced by all of humanity, but for me and for The Woman and for my beloved up-tree and for all of our clade, it is of the utmost importance, for we are so often and in so many subtle ways unable to make choices ourselves. Oh, I can choose what to wear, perhaps, or what pen to pick up, or when to schedule one of those lovely picnic lunches that the ninth stanza so enjoys, with Praise's music and Warmth's food and Praiseworthy's inscrutable smiles and all of the varied ways in which we love each other.

There is agency, yes, and there is choice and there is a movement toward, for such is the nature of seeking change, but there is also passivity, a moving into passivity, an acceptance of passivity. The Woman, this beautiful woman whose smiles are blessings and whose life is a story—this story! Dear readers, this story!—wished to be still. She wished her unbecoming to be a stillness of her form, perhaps, and her thoughts, to be sure, but also of her very self. She wanted a self locked in joy. She wanted to be as Michelle was in that moment, that final moment, that moment when she looked up to the sun, looked up to our \emph{HaShem}, looked up to The Dreamer, and became a fount of joy, of memory, of thousands of collective years of existence compressed into one self, and she wanted to be in that moment: laid bare and elongated and eternal and forever and unceasing and forever entwined.

She wanted to be defined by joy, not suffering.

\secdiv

``I want to unbecome,'' The Woman told Her Friend.

These two, these two skunks who were women who were both, at their very core, Michelle Hadje who was Sasha, these two sat around a small table not at the coffee shop but out on the field outside of the house where The Woman lived. My readers, most perceptive, will remember that this is where, once every two weeks, unless she was overflowing, unless she was in pain, unless she simply could not bring herself to go, she had an appointment for therapy.

The Woman had requested such, this time, and while it was far from the only time she had done so, the streak of good days, of those days when she felt up to stepping out of the house, out of the sim, out into the city so that they might meet up at a long-familiar coffee shop had been a long one. Her Friend had agreed readily, as ever ey did, but there was within that sensorium message the sense of an eyebrow raised, of a question unasked. And yet, ey said yes, and some ten minutes later arrived, standing out on the grass before the stoop with a mocha in each paw.

Waiting on the first step up from the grass, The Woman bowed and stepped down to greet her friend, and from there, they walked to the table in silence. They lifted down the chairs in silence. They sat down in silence, and sat in silence for some minutes after, until The Woman said, ``I want to unbecome.''

``So you have mentioned, my dear.''

The Woman nodded.

``Have you grown any closer to finding out just what that entails?''

``I have, yes.''

Her Friend smiled, raising her paper cup in a toast and tapping it gently to The Woman's own cup. ``Congratulations, End Of Endings. I am pleased to hear that. Is there more that you can tell me?''

``Of course, No Hesitation,'' The Woman said, sitting up straighter, as though by having her body more in order, her thoughts might be as well—would that this worked, my dear friends! Would that I could be so still and keep my thoughts like ducks: all in a row. Would that my emotions all faced the same direction. Ah, but The Woman continued, ``If becoming was the act of going from stillness to movement, then unbecoming might well be the act of going from movement to stillness.''

These words apparently caught Her Friend off guard, as ey, too, sat up straighter, furrowing eir brow. I am sure that you can see just how startling such an answer may be! We knew from the start, of course, that talk of unbecoming would be littered with little landmines labeled with such things as `suicide' or `self harm' or simply `the void', of course, but The Woman's words spoke of something more complicated.

``What, then does that stillness look like, to you?'' Her Friend asked carefully.

``There are some specifics I have yet to work out, but I can say now that it takes three forms.'' The Woman held up a paw with three of her fingers raised, and she ticked off each item as she went. ``The first form is a spiritual stillness. The second form is a mental stillness. The third form is a physical stillness.''

``This sounds a little like meditation.''

``There are meditative aspects about it, I would say, but I would not say that it \emph{is} meditation, for it lacks the intent.''

``How does it differ, then?''

``Each is an inversion of turmoil. Where there is spiritual unrest, there will be only rest. I do not pray, could not pray, and so this will be an act of becoming okay with that. I can feel RJ in the world, but within that I do not sense any sort of spiritual connection, and so I will become okay with that.

``Where my mind is unsettled, it will be settled. Rather than worrying about my day or about some routine not coming to fruition, I will settle into calm. Instead of thinking myself in circles, I will become a singular point: still and without direction.''

``And physically?'' Her Friend asked, brow still furrowed. ``Will you no longer shift forms?''

The Woman smiled, giving a slight bow. ``Yes, No Hesitation. All three of these must work together, yes? If there is turmoil in my thoughts, there will be turmoil in my spirit and I will shift form. If there is turmoil in my spirit, I will think and think and think and shift form. If I become but one form, my mind and my spirit will automatically become that much calmer without that distraction.''

Her Friend sighed, and in that sigh was a recognition of unknowing, of ignorance. Ey knew, I think—I think because ey has told me—that ey did not truly understand what it was that The Woman was aiming at. And yet, to ask--! How to ask questions such as what ey wished? There are words and words, and words and words and words that all feel so loaded, yes? They are overburdened with meaning and meaning and meaning. They are too hot, my beloved friends, they are much too hot, and so we must pick them up with tongs and wear thick gloves and perhaps dark glasses over our eyes as the coals glow ruddy-- cherry-- orange-- white-- no, blue hot.

And so there was nothing for it.

``End Of Endings,'' she said most delicately. ``I ask this as your friend, but are you safe?''

The Woman, sat in silence for some time, then. They both sat in silence, yes, frozen into a comic panel, those words hanging in the air between them in some invisible speech bubble.

``Yes,'' she said at last. ``Yes, I think I am. There is no death in me. I stand by my words that I do not wish to die, nor do I wish to break apart. I have an idea of what this will look like, and I have an idea of how to approach it, and now all I need is a path from here to there.''

Her Friend bowed. ``I trust you, my dear. I have no other choice, of course, but I really do trust you. I love you dearly and wish nothing but the best for you.''

The Woman smiled and, yes, it was a blessing.
