---
title: Notes
---

How do I explain such a page 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 *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.

<hr id="part-4"/>

#### \[...\] *as the poet says, shared* \[...\]

(Also in part 9.)

Cf. Octavio Paz:

> Tendidos en la yerba\
> una muchacha y un muchacho.\
> Comen naranjas, cambian besos\
> como las olas cambian sus espumas.
>
> Tendidos en la playa\
> una muchacha y un muchacho.\
> Comen limones, cambian beso\
> como las nubes cambian espumas.
>
> Tendidos bajo tierra\
> una muchacha y un muchacho.\
> No dicen nada, no se besan,\
> cambian silencio por silencio.
>
> -----
>
> Lying in the grass\
> a girl and a boy.\
> Eating oranges, exchanging kisses\
> like the waves exchanging their foam.
>
> Lying on the beach\
> a girl and a boy.\
> Eating limes, exchanging kisses\
> like the clouds exchanging foam.
>
> Lying underground\
> a girl and a boy.\
> Saying nothing, nor kissing\
> exchanging silence for silence.

-----

#### \[...\] *a subtle twisting, a stirring, a clockwise motion* \[...\]

> They lay next to each other. The dead man's armor was cold against Kassad's left arm, her thigh warm against his right leg. The sunlight was a benediction. Hidden colors rose to the surface of things. Kassad turned his head and gazed at her as she rested her head on his shoulder. Her cheeks glowed with flush and autumn light and her hair lay like copper threads along the flesh of his arm. She curved her leg over his thigh and Kassad felt the clockwise stirring of renewed passion. The sun was warm on his face. He closed his eyes.

The tone, here, is quite different, but it is notable that 'clockwise' would so catch my attention to lodge itself in my mind, when it comes to the topic of sexuality. Perhaps arousal is an unwinding, then, and orgasm the *ding!* when the timer hits zero, and that is why we say 'pent up'.

Perhaps it is simply the nerves I feel about so blatantly describing a sexual act within a supposed fairy tale that leads to a twisting in my own stomach.

I do not know, my friends.

-----

#### \[...\] *there was a spot between joy and fear, a place of too much meaning* \[...\]

Cf. Slow Hours:

> Inter ĝuo kaj timo\
> Estas loko de tro da signifo.\
> Apud kompreno, ekster saĝo,\
> Tamen ĝi tutampleksas.\
> Mi kompareble malgrandas\
> Kaj ĝi tro granda estas.\
> Nekomprenebla\
> Nekontestebla,\
> Senmova kaj ĉiam ŝanĝiĝema.
>
> -----
>
> Between joy and fear\
> Is a place of too much meaning.\
> Next to understanding, outside wisdom,\
> It nonetheless expands.\
> I am so small beside it\
> and it is too big.\
> Incomprehensible,\
> Incontestible,\
> Unmoving and always changing.

-----

#### [...] *the orange and blue of love and anxiety* [...]

When one writes of that which is alien in the context of morality, one might say that it escapes even the concepts of black, white, and gray, and instead lies on the axis of blue and orange. Blue-orange morality is that which is so far removed from our on conceptions of good and evil that one whose morals fall along such a spectrum may escape definition of 'good' or 'evil' at all, and so too do they evade 'order' and 'chaos'.

Here, then, may well be your narrator's own complex engagement with romance and sensuality and sexuality peeking through. Here, then, may be a glimpse into the mind of someone who just does not quite get it. It is lovely. I know this. I *know* this, and yet anticipation and anxiety are not black and white to me, they are blue and orange.

The writer, as ever, is a character in their own works, no matter the role they actually play.

-----

#### [...] and she knew that Her Lover would be by her side for some time to come if she let her — and she would let her — and that, too, was a joy.

Cf. Echo:

> She is to me a cherished thing,\
> A queen to a throne, with the wit to reign regent.\
> So, to say that she is mine is indeed a crime.\
> But if she has asked me to so infringe —\
> And she has asked me to so infringe —\
> Then mine she shall be\
> For she has me woven around her finger\
> As she is all the way around mine.

