Notes, some edits

content/prelim/005.md

@@ -216,7 +216,7 @@ She nodded. "Yes. My thoughts became ordered, perhaps. That turbulence became a
 
 I laughed as well. "Thank you, I think. I have a few that are labeled 'meditations on whatever', but even those probably do not fit the bill."
 
-"I would assume not. No, I came to you because I wanted to talk to you about creating specifically not just on Praiseworthy's suggestion, but also because I watched And We Are The Motes In The Stage-Lights paint while visiting Beholden."
+"I would assume not. No, I came to you because I wanted to talk to you specifically about creating not just on Praiseworthy's suggestion, but also because I watched And We Are The Motes In The Stage-Lights paint while visiting Beholden."
 
 "Ah! Motes! What a delight!"
 
@@ -232,7 +232,7 @@ I laughed, nodding.
 
 "I will say that she is no less flighty or energetic when she chooses to live at older ages. When she is, say, twenty five, there is still no stopping her."
 
-"So I am told. However, she is also a very good girl, is she not? Beholden saw the state that I was in — for when Motes started zipping around the house, I started shifting between forms — and suggested that she go and paint. She said quite simply "Okay!" and ran off to the next room where she simply sat on a stool and began painting."
+"So I am told. However, she is also a very good girl, is she not? Beholden saw the state that I was in — for when Motes started zipping around the house, I started shifting between forms — and suggested that she go and paint. She said quite simply "Okay!" and ran off to the next room where she sat on a stool and began painting."
 
 I looked up to the wall beside the couch, upon which a painting sat. The Woman smiled and nodded.
 
@@ -244,13 +244,13 @@ And so there on my wall sat a painting that I had asked The Child to make, small
 
 And there, right in the center, hovering a scant claw-width above the house, a perfectly black perfect square.
 
-Readers, you must understand that, when I say perfectly black, I do mean it! There is this color, or non-color, *Eigengrau* that is perhaps the darkest you are used to seeing. If you are in a perfectly dark room, or you are out beneath the stars at night and you close your eyes, or you are hiding under two layers of blankets from the monsters that haunt us still, even in this afterlife that we have built up into our nigh-perfection, what you see is not pure black, but *Eigengrau.* It is the darkest color, I am told, that our eyes can see, phys-side! This is because, even when there is no light, the nerves of our eyes still fire occasionally. Perhaps it is because this is something that is required for nerve cells to feel healthy, and when those cells are in our muscles and it is just one or two at a time, it does not yank our hand away from our pen and paper like they were burning hot, but when they are in our eyes, every little firing is still perceived as a photon hitting this rod or that cone. Perhaps it is because there is some fundamental state of being for us that is *not* stillness, but that is movement at some molecular level. Perhaps it is simply because they are lonely! I do not know, I do not know. I do not know.
+Readers, you must understand that, when I say perfectly black, I do mean it! There is this color — or non-color — *Eigengrau* that is perhaps the darkest you are used to seeing. If you are in a perfectly dark room, or you are out beneath the stars at night and you close your eyes, or you are hiding under two layers of blankets from the monsters that haunt us still, even in this afterlife that we have built up into our nigh-perfection, what you see is not pure black, but *Eigengrau.* It is the darkest color, I am told, that our eyes can see, phys-side! This is because, even when there is no light, the nerves of our eyes still fire occasionally. Perhaps it is because this is something that is required for nerve cells to feel healthy, and when those cells are in our muscles and it is just one or two at a time, it does not yank our hand away from our pen and paper like they were burning hot, but when they are in our eyes, every little firing is still perceived as a photon hitting this rod or that cone. Perhaps it is because there is some fundamental state of being for us that is *not* stillness, but that is movement at some molecular level. Perhaps it is simply because they are lonely! I do not know, I do not know. I do not know.
 
 This square is not *Eigengrau.* It is beyond that. It is beyond even black! It is an impossible black. It is deeper than *Eigengrau,* yes, but it is also a very thirsty black. If the ground of The Instance Artist's prairie drinks thirstily of the sky, so too does this black drink thirstily of all the light in the world. It draws light from the room, and when you look at the painting, the world seems dimmer. It is a hole in the world.
 
 I am used to it, my friends, for it sits happily enough upon my wall, but I am told that it is unnerving to see.
 
-"Her paintings have always struck me as bearing a sort of serenity that I have not actually seen in the world," I said after we had appreciated house and plain and sky and hole in the world. "It is more than just some moment of movement captured and frozen in time. It is like she records things that were never still to begin with."
+"Her paintings have always struck me as bearing a sort of serenity that I have not actually seen in the world," I said after we had appreciated house and plain and sky and hole in the world. "It is more than just some moment of movement captured and frozen in time. It is like she records things that had never been anything but still to begin with."
 
 "Yes, and that is what drew me to her," The Woman said, gaze lingering on the painting. "I begged Beholden's leave to sit and watch Motes for nearly an hour. I claimed a spot in her studio once I received permission and watched as she worked. While I was there, she built up a scene of a mesa. I recognized it as Table Mountain. Do you remember?"