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content/prelim/003.md

@@ -40,8 +40,6 @@ The Woman thought long on this. I would like to imagine she was turning her thou
 
 "Was it a complex sort of joy, End Of Endings?"
 
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 She sipped her soy milk in an attempt to maintain control over herself, as sometimes all you need is a thing that you can do deliberately. "It is, yes. It is a joy to see one's friends, is it not? To give energy and to receive in turn? We sat down at our favorite coffee shop and chatted about this and that. We talked of empty chairs at the table. We talked of moods and therapy. I believe– yes?"
 
 Her therapist lowered her hand from where she had raised it. "I do not know No Hesitation as well as I might, for which I feel some regret, but In Dreams confided with In Memory, and my down-tree confided in me that she had some fears that she had offended em. Given the structure of our stanza, I think it perhaps unwise that I know too much of that particular conversation until No Hesitation speaks to me emself."

content/prelim/005.md

@@ -154,8 +154,6 @@ Readers, I am not ashamed to say that I cried again. How could I not, after all?
 
 I cried, and through it all, The Woman sat in kind silence.
 
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 When, now for the second time, I was able to sit up straight again, able breath slowly, able to look at The Woman instead of my paws as I covered my face, I bowed to her and said, "Thank you for telling me these things. I did not realize just how much I needed to hear them."
 
 "Why?"
@@ -374,7 +372,7 @@ I chuckled, shrugged.
 
 "Not █████? Not Codrin and Dear's partner?" The Woman asked. She asked, of course, after one remembered fondly, and one whose name is not yours to know, dear readers, or perhaps you know it intimately, but with a wink and a nudge like a joke kept between us. "Are they not the chef?"
 
-The Oneirotect smiled wryly. "Well, sure, but my interest lies more in the food that others love to their core. █████'s food is delightful, yes. It is _enjoyable,_ and often it is _loved,_ but it is not really _beloved._ I would rather focus on the food those remember with fondness their mothers and grandmothers cooking. Remembered foods. Cherished foods, yes?"
+The Oneirotect smiled wryly. "Well, sure, but my interest lies more in the food that others love to their core. █████'s food is delightful, yes. It is _enjoyable,_ and often it is _loved,_ but it is not really _beloved._\label{rakoff} I would rather focus on the food those remember with fondness their mothers and grandmothers cooking. Remembered foods. Cherished foods, yes?"
 
 "I suppose this is where the nostalgia comes in, then, yes? Reaching back for the things that others loved, rather than simply ate out of necessity?"
 
@@ -420,7 +418,7 @@ It did not talk to her, friends, you must understand. It did not talk to her, an
 
 "I sat with a good book while it took that dire walk between skunk and fennec, and when it returned, it had become something unrecognizable to me. I could see the direction it took, but not the road it followed; it had become something alien, and the prospect of disappearing after that felt rather a lot more like dying than becoming, and so I chose to yield my name to it — for that Dear was that of me who had already become, yes? —  and spent some months working to earn the name Warmth In Fire."
 
-The Woman furrowed her brow in that ineffably still way of hers. "I remember that there was talk within the clade about names, yes, and the general shape of what had happened, that there was some furor about the fact that a down-tree might accept a later line than an up-tree, though I never did understand the import that some placed on that." There was a smile, a hint of a bow, and a quiet addition: "You are so incredibly yourself, though, I cannot picture you as a Dear, and certainly not as a fennec."
+The Woman furrowed her brow in that ineffably still way of hers. "I remember that there was talk within the clade about names, yes, and the general shape of what had happened, that there was some furor about the fact that a down-tree might accept a later line than an up-tree, though I never did understand the import that some placed on that." There was a smile, a hint of a bow, and a quiet addition: "You are so incredibly yourself, though, I cannot picture you as ever having been a Dear, and certainly never as a fennec." <!-- check wrt annihilation -->
 
 There followed a moment of The Oneirotect visibly mastering a note of annihilation upon hearing this. It was, I think, one of those things which hurts to hear, and yet which is completely right: ey is not yet another instance of The Instance Artist, nor has ey been for centuries, and yet there is that of The Instance Artist still within em, is there not? "When I stepped from that sim," ey explained, "I did so with the commitment, both to myself and to it, that what was Dear had changed, and that who was Dear must embrace that. I am unsure, however, that I have ever quite addressed the fact that, often when I hear about Dear from others, there is a rankling within me. Sometimes, when I am feeling particularly bad about myself, I feel like it stole my very name from me. I feel like a leftover, a shadow on the floor of the stage of my own show."
 
@@ -433,9 +431,9 @@ My beloved up-tree spent some time pensively structuring its thoughts, trying to
 
 The Woman laughed — and what a blessing a laugh is in comparison to a smile! — and, with no effort expended on her own part, fell right into that very shape: a kitty. Kitty! And what a delightful little name. You will remember, my friends, that not every instance of her changing shape was occasion for weariness or discomfort; she fell joyfully into felinity, into this pantherine shape. "I like that you call me kitty, my dear," she said, still smiling. "And I am always happy when I think of becoming such as occasion for you to do so."
 
-It beamed, smug and sly and looking quite pleased for the change it had had a paw in working. It was not very Dear in that moment — it was (and is!) very Warmth In Fire because, while it inherited some of that quippiness, it had long since lost much of my 'motherly warmth' as it put it. It did not inherit quite so much of me, so long ago. 
+It beamed, smug and sly and looking quite pleased for the change it had had a paw in working. It was very *not* Dear in that moment — it was (and is!) very Warmth In Fire because, while it shared some of that quippiness that Dear was so well-known for, Dear shared little of my 'motherly warmth', as it put it. Dear did not inherit such from me — or perhaps had lost it over long years with too many quips — but my beloved up-tree did.
 
-And yet here was The Oneirotect being warm. Here was The Oneirotect being insightful and supportive. Here was she taking control for The Woman's sake. Here was it looking for some way to stop trauma-dumping on her and start guiding her closer towards self-understanding, towards a resolution, towards peace.
+Here was The Oneirotect being warm. Here was The Oneirotect being insightful and supportive. Here was her taking control for The Woman's sake. Here was it looking for some way to stop trauma-dumping on her and start guiding her closer towards self-understanding, towards a resolution, towards peace.
 
 "But no, I imagine myself being other than just She Who Is Kitty From Time To Time. I imagine myself as someone who has found a purpose within her life other than, as Rejoice put it, simply being one who is built to suffer. Suffering may well be inescapable, but would that I were aught else than She Who Suffers."
 

content/prelim/008.md

@@ -20,6 +20,24 @@ 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.
 
+Time is a story I tell myself. Sentences twine around seconds like tendrils of loveliness or despair or energy or lethargy. Minutes are paragraphs of weal or woe. My hours are scenes that I live out. Days: drabbles. Months: novellas. Years: novels.
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+But a life? What is a life, anymore? Three centuries and no sign of quitting, and a lifetime seems to have lost meaning. Perhaps someday my life will end, and I will have left behind a finite oeuvre. Perhaps I will simply decide that I have had enough and draw a line across the end of the page and, however many bookshelves of story are left behind shall be all that ever was.
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+Not yet, though. Not this year, I suspect not this decade, and I hope not even this century.
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+I have joys to counter all of my sorrows. My head is, yes, in clouds stormy or peaceful, but my feet remain firmly planted on the ground. My arms are full of the love of life. My home makes room for those I see as my family. Our lawns are for picnics and our beds are for dreams.
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+And so I sit in my office and write my stories. I sit on the couch and dream them up in my head. I cook with my beloved up-tree and watch em and The Child play in the grass while building my ballads after our picnics. I host my joys and languish in my sorrows, and I fall apart into distortion when I overflow. Cuckoo for Cocoa-Puffs, The Oneirotect calls me, and we laugh together.
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+That is now. That is when I wander the empty rooms of my house and drown in words with tears of ink upon my cheeks and the blood of helplessness still in my paws.
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+Time is a story I tell myself and this is nothing special. Time is a story *we* tell *ourselves.* Time is a story that Michelle who was Sasha told herself, and her ending was one of — I hope — joy. Time is a story that Qoheleth told himself and his ending was one of — would that it were not — agony. Time is a story that The Woman told herself and her ending was...
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+Was it? Was hers an ending?
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+That is her own joy. That is her story. Her story is one of ambiguities and unanswered questions. Her ending is a question mark and a faint smile.
+
 There is a burning, and there is helplessness, but there is no longer *haste,* I mean to say, and I do not think The Woman felt haste. She, like me, felt *compulsion.*
 
 She was compelled to seek a way to unbecome and make room for joy.