---
layout: single
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="epigraph"/>

#### *But you are eternity and you are the mirror.*

From *The Prophet.*

I had originally intended to use the lyrics from the hymn titled "Idumea", which is included at the end of the text, 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...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 *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.

<hr id="part-1"/>

#### *Once upon a time there was--*

Cf. Carlo Collodi:

> Once upon a time there was--
>
> "A king?" my little readers will immediately say.
>
> No, children, you are mistaken. Once upon a time there was a piece of wood. It was not fine wood, but a simple piece of wood from the wood yard, — the kind we put in the stoves and fireplaces so as to make a fire and heat the rooms.
>
> I do not know how it happened, but one beautiful day a certain old woodcutter found a piece of this kind of wood in his shop. The name of the old man was Antonio, but everybody called him Master Cherry on account of the point of his nose, which was always shiny and purplish, just like a ripe cherry...

When first I began to write, back when some saner me put pen to paper, I had intended to write the story of Pinocchio in reverse. "Ah!" I thought. "Perhaps I can very heavy-handed with it, too. Should the main character be named Occhioni P.? Will they try turning themselves into a literal puppet? Will they design sims to include the big fish? Perhaps they will find their Geppetto — G. from Oteppe, Belgium — who unmakes them, and then a blue fairy, a sympathetic systech, kicks them into quitting. Will I tell it as a fairy tale?"

We see how well I have stuck to that plan, yes?

I spoke of this with writer friends, and one of them, the ever delightful Seras of the CERES clade, quipped that this sounded just like the escape from samsara, the cycle of suffering, and I was, as the saying goes, off to the races.

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 akin to the bodhisattvas in her life.

<hr id="part-2"/>

#### \[...\] *am I a falcon, a storm, or a great song?*

From Rainer Maria Rilke:

> Ich lebe mein Leben in wachsenden Ringen,\
> die sich über die Dinge ziehn.\
> Ich werde den letzten vielleicht nicht vollbringen,\
> aber versuchen will ich ihn.
>
> Ich kreise um Gott, um den uralten Turm,\
> und ich kreise jahrtausendelang;\
> und ich weiß noch nicht: bin ich ein Falke, ein Sturm\
> oder ein großer Gesang.
>
> -----
>
> I live my life in ever-widening circles\
> that stretch themselves out over the world.\
> I may not complete this last one\
> but I will give myself to it.
>
> I circle around God, around the primordial tower.\
> and I circle for thousands of years\
> and I still don't know: am I a falcon,\
> a storm, or a great song?

-----

#### [...] dance unblushing [...]

Cf. Darius Halley:

> 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

<hr id="part-3"/>

#### *Where is it that my joy has gone?*

Cf. Dan Simmons:

> 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 *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. <span style="font-variant: small-caps">Shit,</span> it printed out, <span style="font-variant: small-caps">What did I do with my muse?</span>

The loss of the intangible stings the most.

<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.

<hr id="part-5"/>

#### \[...\] *and I do not believe she merged cross-tree with anyone except perhaps Ashes Denote That Fire Was, who is building in themself a gestalt of the clade as best they can.*

From Dickinson:

{{% verse %}}Ashes denote that Fire was —
Revere the Grayest Pile
For the Departed Creature's sake
That hovered there awhile —

Fire exists the first in light
And then consolidates
Only the Chemist can disclose
Into what Carbonates.{{% /verse %}}

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.

-----

#### *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.*

Cf. Dwale:

> 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.

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.

-----

#### On The Child's paintings

I have written extensively on these hyper-black shapes that The Child paints and more about her besides in [*Motes Played*](https://motes-played.post-self.ink). 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.

-----

#### Miss Michelle Hadje, five foot four.

Cf. John Keats:

> I do think better of womankind than to suppose they care whether Mister John Keats five feet high likes them or not.

-----

#### On The Oneirotect's pronouns

The Oneirotect uses for itself several pronouns — though the set you see here in this text are 'she', 'they', 'ey', and 'it' — which serves as a reflection both of its critter nature and the fluidity of eir engagement with gender– no, with the slipperiness of identity as a whole. This is the role of language with identity: to be a poor reflection through some imperfect mirror, a version of the self seen through some glass, darkly.

You will note the same is also true of The Dog, who, yes, is prone to a critter nature, but who also sometimes views himself as 'it' and sometimes itself as 'he'. For better or worse the identity of animals, of 'low beasts', is entwined with that of *things,* and for some, that is a joy.

-----

#### *It is* enjoyable, *and often it is* loved, *but it is not really* beloved.

Cf. David Rakoff:

> 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.

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.

-----

#### \[...\] *all the world's a horror.*

Cf. William Shakespeare:

> All the world's a stage,\
> And all the men and women merely players;\
> They have their exits and their entrances \[...\]

-----

#### \[...\] *through a glass, darkly.*

Cf. 1 Cor 13:12-13 (KJV)

> <sup>12</sup> 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. <sup>13</sup> And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.

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:

> <sup>4</sup> Love *[as recent versions translate the 'charity' above. —Rye]* is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant <sup>5</sup> or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable; it keeps no record of wrongs; 6 it does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth. <sup>7</sup> It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
>
> <sup>8</sup> 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. <sup>9</sup> For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part, <sup>10</sup> but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end.

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:

> <sup>11</sup> 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.

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.

-----

#### *The Sightwright suffered as I do, as The Oneirotect does, and perhaps even as The Woman did.*

Cf. John Winthrop

> 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. (1 Cor. 12:26) If one member suffers, all suffer with it; if one be in honor, all rejoice with it.

I have little care for sermons written by 17<sup>th</sup> century imperialist Christian politicians but for these occasional little quips. It is, perhaps, a thing belonging more to sermons than it is 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.

-----

#### *With art comes fear.*

I had originally intended referencing I book I used for a season when teaching, *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.

<hr id="part-6"/>

#### *Why do birds, as the poet says, suddenly appear* \[...\]

Cf. The Carpenters:

> 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

-----

#### \[...\] *that sweet field arrayed in living green* \[...\]

Cf. Samuel Stennett:

> Oh, the transporting, rapturous scene\
> That rises to my sight!\
> Sweet fields arrayed in living green,\
> And rivers of delight!

And yet, considering the role the climate crisis played in making the System our own little heaven, consider also a later verse:

> No chilling winds or poisonous breath\
> Can reach that healthful shore;\
> Sickness and sorrow, pain and death,\
> Are felt and feared no more.

But, ah–! I will doubtless speak more on the System as heaven to come...

-----

#### \[...\] *a Blakean energetic hell.*

Cf. William Blake:

> Without contraries is no progression. Attraction and repulsion, reason and energy, love and hate, are necessary to human existence.
>
> From these contraries spring what the religious call Good and Evil. Good is the passive that obeys reason; Evil is the active springing from Energy.

-----

#### [...] *some scene, some dream within a dream within a dream* [...]

Cf. Slow Hours:

> **To — in the days after her death**
> 
> A dream within a dream within a dream\
> and fell visions sidling up too close\
> both woo me. Sweet caramel and soft cream\
> sit cloying on their tongues, and I, Atropos\
> to such dreams as these, find shears on golden thread.
> 
> I would not cut, nor even could, had I but wished\
> to sever this golden thread — and every thread\
> is golden — and end a friend and send to mist\
> and sorrow ones so dear. Dead! Dead! She is dead\
> and gone, for her own shears were sharper still.
> 
> And so she cut, and so they watched, and so I watched\
> such love as this cease. I yearn to say that she returned\
> to me, became a part of me, but a tally notched\
> among the lost was all that stayed when life was spurned\
> by the call of death — supposedly ended.
> 
> So, she is gone and now our lives are darker for it,\
> and now this world is where the shadows lie,\
> and all the light that still remains is forfeit,\
> and so much green still stabs towards the sky,\
> and yellowed teeth of lions still snap at the air.

-----

#### She passed, perhaps, the setting sun

Cf. Emily Dickinson:

> Because I could not stop for Death —\
> He kindly stopped for me —\
> The Carriage held but just Ourselves —\
> And Immortality.
> 
> We slowly drove — He knew no haste\
> And I had put away\
> My labor and my leisure too,\
> For His Civility —
> 
> We passed the School, where Children strove\
> At Recess — in the Ring —\
> We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain —\
> We passed the Setting Sun —
> 
> Or rather — He passed Us —\
> The Dews drew quivering and Chill —\
> For only Gossamer, my Gown —\
> My Tippet — only Tulle —
> 
> We paused before a House that seemed\
> A Swelling of the Ground —\
> The Roof was scarcely visible —\
> The Cornice — in the Ground —
> 
> Since then — 'tis Centuries — and yet\
> Feels shorter than the Day\
> I first surmised the Horses' Heads\
> Were toward Eternity —

-----

#### \[...\] *that has been my dream.*

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 have set this dream into verse and this is true, for here is a segment from a longer work:

> We'd long since stopped, there by the pond,\
> and your smile was, yes, sad, but still fond\
> as you settled down wordlessly to your knees,\
> took a slow breath, looked out to the trees,\
> and closed your eyes.
>
> Beginnings are such delicate times\
> and I very nearly missed it, no chimes\
> to announce the hour of your leaving.\
> As it was, there was no time for believing\
> or not in the next moments.
>
> Your fingers crawled beneath the soil\
> and sprouted roots, flesh starting to roil.\
> Coarse bark spiraled up your wrists and arms,\
> Spelling subtle incantations and charms\
> to the chaos of growth.
>
> You bowed your head and from your crown\
> sprouted a tender shoot covered in fine down,\
> soon followed by crenelated leaves and fine stems.\
> The pace was fast, implacable, and leaves like gems\
> soon arched skyward.
>
> You sprouted and grew, taking root\
> in one smooth motion, fixed and mute.\
> Your clothing fell away, rotting in fast-time.\
> Naked now, you sat still, committing one last crime\
> of indecency.
>
> Your face, your face! In your face was such peace\
> as I'd never seen, even as you gave up this lease\
> on life, echoed also in my heart of hearts.\
> I did not cry out, nor even speak, witnessing such arts\
> as your final display showed.
>
> Soon, you were consumed, transformed as a whole.\
> Your head a crown of leaves, your heart a bole\
> bored in rough bark and sturdy wood,\
> your fingers, knees, and toes stood\
> as thirsty roots.
>
> I stood a while by the tree that was you,\
> then sat at your roots and thought of all I knew\
> about time, transformation, death and change.\
> I thought about you, your life, your emotional range,\
> your gentle apotheosis.

I have written, too, here that I put this dream into prose, and this is also true, for here is a segment from a short story:

> And finally, the mirroring was broken as the *her* that was not her slid *her* fingers up over her wrist and gently guided her hand down toward the soil, loamy and damp, and she knew then that she must spread her fingers and dig them down into the earth, there by the stairs which were a finger pointing at God such that she was in turn pointing at...at what? At the owner of that hand? At the owner of that finger?
>
> And as she did so, she felt that the dirt beneath her fingernails took root, that her nails themselves must have been rootlets and that her arm a stolon, that her whole body was the runner for some tree, some entity other than herself, for at that point, she took root.
>
> And her fingers crawled beneath the soil, and drank of the water there, and tasted the nutrients, and found purchase beneath the layer of loam and humus.
>
> And there, her fingers curled around the God-stone, and indeed, she knew it as she felt it, amber with a kernel of pain embedded within.
>
> And even as the bark crawled up her arm, she saw her Doppelgänger stand and smile to her. A dreamy smile; not kind, not cruel, not knowing, not ignorant. Just a dreamy, inevitable smile.
>
> And she felt growth accelerate as, bound now to the earth, her bones became wood and her muscles loosened, unwound, and thus unbound began to lengthen, to strengthen, to arch skyward, seeking stars, seeking God.

Do I repeat myself? Very well, I repeat myself. I am beholden to my dreams.

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 *too* indulgent.

I strive still to stifle that puritanical worrywart within, even so many years on.

-----

#### [...] *and so we live within a fractally cyclical tangle of time*

Another perpetual theme that holds me in its claws. I wrote in an essay:

> A year spirals up.
> 
> A day, a week, a month, they all spiral, for any one Sunday is like the previous and the next shall be much the same, but the you who experiences the differing Sundays is different. It is a spiral, proceeding steadfastly onward. A day is a spiral, with each morning much the same as the one before and the one after. A month, following the cycle of the moon.
> 
> But a year, in particular, spirals up. It carries embedded within it a certain combination of pattern, count, and duration that delineates our lives better than any other cyclical unit of time. Yes, a day is divided into night, day, and those liminal dusks and dawns, but there are so many of them. There are so many days in a life, and there are so many in a year that to see the spiral within them does not come as easily.
> 
> Our years are delineated by the seasons, though, and the count of them is so few, and the duration long enough that we can run up against that first scent of snow late in the autumn and immediately be kicked down one level of the spiral in our memories. What were we doing the last time we smelled that non-scent? What about the time before?
> 
> Or perhaps one thinks across the spiral. One, stuck in Winter, thinks back to Summer — ah, such warmth! — and tries to remember what it was one was doing then. "Only silhouettes show / in the billowing snow," Dwale writes. "Remembering months, now / gone when new blooms would grow."

And I wrote in a story:

> Lyut lives his life in prayer and devotion. It is a life that is lived ascending in a steady spiral of years, for time moves upward and yet is echoed below by the change of days, the change of weeks, the change of seasons. This year, this day, this soft spring is an echo of last soft spring beneath it. It is antipodal to the autumn that will come
> 
> Cycles within cycles, spirals within spirals. This morning, too, is an echo of the day beneath it, behind it, in the past. His days are defined by the cycle of incense, prayer, fishing, foraging, meditating. He knows that it is day when he wakes when he feels the warmth from the sun. He knows when it is night when he feels the warmth fade. He knows when it is morning because he hears the birds sing. He knows that it is night when the birdsong of the day settles into the chorus of insects.

And on citing these, I am realizing just how much I am built up of obsessions, of rituals and ideas that cleave and cling and stick and meld.

<hr id="part-7"/>

#### \[...\] *perhaps columbines perhaps nasturtiums* \[...\]

The Musician shared with me a letter and My Friend several journal entries, but, ah--! If I share them here, I will fall once more to crying. You may find them in their entirety in *Marsh*, a work written by a braver me.

I will say, however, that that letter surrounded nasturtiums and was written the night Muse quit, and those diary entries were written by My Friend, a recounting of Beckoning's memories, to comfort The Musician in her grief.

-----

#### (words of prayer quoted directly)

From Psalm 13:2--4:

> How long, *Adonai*, will You forget me always?\
> How long hide Your face from me?\
> How long shall I cast about for counsel,\
> sorrow in my heart all day?\
> How long will my enemy loom over me?\
> Regard, answer me, *HaShem*, my God.\
> Light up my eyes, lest I sleep death.

-----

#### (words from Qoheleth quoted directly)

From Qohelet (Ecclesiastes) 1:17:

> And I set my heart to know wisdom and to know revelry and folly, for this, too, is a herding of the wind.

From Qohelet 2:22:

> What gain is there for man in all his toil that he toils under the sun?

From Qohelet 3:20:

> Everything was from the dust, and everything goes back to the dust.

-----

#### *The blood of deer ripped to shreds by wolves!*

Cf. Czesław Miłosz:

> wystarczy pozwolić człowiekowi\
> wytruć swój rodzaj\
> a nastąpią niewinne wschody słońca\
> nad florą i fauną wyzwoloną
>
> na pofabrycznych pustkowiach\
> wyrosną dębowe lasy\
> krew rozszarpanego przez wilki jelenia\
> nie będzie przez nikogo widziana\
> jastrząb będzie spadać na zająca\
> bez świadków
>
> zniknie ze świata zło\
> kiedy zniknie świadomość
>
> -----
>
> Simply let mankind\
> extinguish itself\
> And then innocent sunrises will illuminate\
> liberated flora and fauna
> 
> 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 will disappear from the world\
> once consciousness does

<hr id="part-8"/>

#### *Do you see now the connection?*

Cf. Rilke:

> Weißt du's *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.
>
> -----
>
> Do you not understand *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.

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: 

{{% verse %}}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.{{% /verse %}}

And here am I within a System of selves interlinked within selves interlinked within selves interlinked within one dream.

-----

#### Not  yet, though. Not this year, I suspect not this decade, and I hope not even this century.

I speak, of course, of functional immortality and the balm it provides against the fears artists of old faced. Keats has it:

{{% verse %}}When I have fears that I may cease to be
    Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,
Before high-piled books, in charact'ry,
    Hold like rich garners the full-ripen'd grain;
When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,
    Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
    Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour!
    That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
    Of unreflecting love!—then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think,
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.{{% /verse %}}

<hr id="part-9"/>

#### \[...\] *perhaps like those leaves that skitter within the city, that unreal city* \[...\]

Cf. Charles Baudelaire via Eliot:

> *Fourmillante cité, cité pleine de rêves,*\
> *Où le spectre en plein jour raccroche le passant.*
>
> -----
>
> Unreal city, city full of dreams,\
> Where ghosts in broad daylight cling to passsers-by.

-----

#### *She, then, like so many leaves* \[...\]

Cf. Robert Graves:

> She, then, like snow in a dark night\
> Fell secretly.

-----

#### *That unfalling ones are trapped within that last falling!*

Cf. Richard Threadgall:

> 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.

-----

#### *"Oh! Oh, I do believe this is some plentiful enough for me."*

Cf. Rilke:

> 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.
>
> -----
>
> 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.

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': perhaps it sits just outside that scale, as, I fear, I hope, The Woman sits now outside the scale running from joy to suffering, having relinquished such dichotomies and embraced them — become them! — in equal measure.

I imagine it, my friends. I *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, lest I engage too readily with the fleetingness of us, a perhaps futility, a spending of time in a toilsome nowhere. Thoughts spinning out into that nowhere, crammed into a too little, emptying with a burst into some too much...

-----

#### \[...\] *breathe in a million billion trillion years* \[...\]

Cf. E. E. Cummings:

> i put him all into my arms\
> and staggered banged with terror through\
> a million billion trillion stars.

-----

#### \[...\] *unbitter sweetness* \[...\]

Cf. Slow Hours:

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style="font-size:4.25673px;line-height:1.25;font-family:Alegreya;-inkscape-font-specification:Alegreya;stroke-width:0.266046" x="6.9274564" y="79.980873" id="text80062" transform="matrix(0.87081288,-0.49725115,0.50276405,0.86126425,0,0)"><tspan id="tspan80060" style="font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;font-stretch:normal;font-family:'Gentium Plus';-inkscape-font-specification:'Gentium Plus';text-align:center;text-anchor:middle;stroke-width:0.266046" x="6.9274559" y="79.980873">and still weep</tspan><tspan style="font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;font-stretch:normal;font-family:'Gentium Plus';-inkscape-font-specification:'Gentium Plus';text-align:center;text-anchor:middle;stroke-width:0.266046" x="6.9274564" y="85.316643" id="tspan80064">at parching-sweet</tspan><tspan style="font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;font-stretch:normal;font-family:'Gentium Plus';-inkscape-font-specification:'Gentium 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<p style="display: none" id="bees-desc">bees are those who give us sweet in exchange for the names of the dead  we whisper to their hives then wait a season for honey  licking it from sticky fingers when we steal a taste  is it any wonder then that honey can be so cloying  we may marvel at how unbitter distilled names can be  and still weep at parching-sweet memory</p>

-----

#### Idumea

*Idumea* is named after a hymn by A. Davidson with words by Charles Wesley, published in *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 — unless, perhaps, you are Blake and think that "Now is the dominion of Edom, and the return of Adam into Paradise" refers to us! — 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.

-----

#### ×

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!

Are we together, The Woman and I, multiplied? When she and I, when her story and mine, are intermingled, is it some greater story? My lovely readers, I hope so! I really do. I really hope, of course, that my myriad interruptions bear their own meaning and add to the whole of things, that we together are greater than the sum of the parts. I doubt and I hope in equal measure.

Are we crossed? Do we as ideas lay across each other perpendicularly? The Woman fell into stillness and I fall still through eternal, jittery, restless movement. The woman set aside her agency, in the end, and I strive for any sense of control over myself, my language, my words and sentences and paragraphs and stories. We are diametrically opposed in so many ways. We cross each other, our paths cross each other's, we approached at a ninety degree angle, and, in the end, departed at such an angle.

Are we set beside each other as some fictional love? Some two characters set within fan fiction who love each other in a way pure or unchaste in others' minds, star-crossed? Do I love her? Do I love The Woman? Did she love me?

I do not know, my dear readers. I do not know these things and I do not know many more.

Perhaps, though, perhaps it stands for that final decision: × marks the point at which I made up my mind. It is the role I played in letting The Woman, that beautiful soul who bestowed a blessing with every smile, step away from the world, for removing those blessings from us, that beauty from us, that life, that veil.

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.

