Update maddybook, use gitea for deploys

.gitea/workflows/deploy.yaml

@@ -0,0 +1,42 @@
+name: Deploy
+run-name: ${{ gitea.actor }} is deploying ${{ gitea.repository }}
+on:
+  push:
+    branches:
+      - main
+
+jobs:
+  deploy:
+    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
+    container:
+      image: docker.gitea.com/runner-images:ubuntu-latest
+      volumes:
+        - /opt/hugo/idumea.post-self.ink:/opt/hugo/idumea.post-self.ink
+    env:
+      DART_SASS_VERSION: 1.98.0
+    steps:
+      - name: Check out repo
+        uses: actions/checkout@v6
+        with:
+          submodules: 'true'
+
+      - name: Install Hugo
+        uses: peaceiris/actions-hugo@v3
+        with:
+          hugo-version: '0.157.0'
+          extended: true
+
+      - name: Install Dart Sass
+        run: |
+          curl -LJO https://github.com/sass/dart-sass/releases/download/${DART_SASS_VERSION}/dart-sass-${DART_SASS_VERSION}-linux-x64.tar.gz \
+          && tar -xf dart-sass-${DART_SASS_VERSION}-linux-x64.tar.gz \
+          && cp -r dart-sass/* /usr/local/bin \
+          && rm -rf dart-sass* \
+          && sass --embedded --version
+
+      - name: Build site
+        run: |
+          hugo build --gc --minify --baseURL https://idumea.post-self.ink --destination /opt/hugo/idumea.post-self.ink
+
+      - name: Set permissions
+        run: chown -R www-data:www-data /opt/hugo/idumea.post-self.ink

.gitignore

@@ -1,2 +1,4 @@
 .hugo_build.lock
+content/perfect-edition
 public
+resources/_gen

config.toml

@@ -9,13 +9,13 @@ disablePathToLower = true
     path = ""
 
 [permalinks]
-    post = '/:filename/'
+    post = '/:contentbasename/'
 
 [params]
     author = 'Madison Rye Progress'
     home = 'https://makyo.ink/'
     copyright = '2024'
-    subtitle = 'A Post-Self Story'
+    subtitle = 'Stories of Restoration'
     subtitleLink = 'https://post-self.ink'
     customCSS = ['/css/idumea.css']
 

content/_index.md

@@ -3,6 +3,12 @@
 
 ![Idumea by Madison Rye Progress](/cover-front.jpg)
 
+<p class="buy">
+<a href="https://makyo.itch.io/idumea" target="_blank">Order ebook</a>
+<a href="https://makyo-ink.square.site/product/idumea/21" target="_blank">Order paperback</a> 
+<a href="/read">Read in the browser</a>
+</p>
+
 > The Woman was too present. She was too much herself, too human, too embodied within her vessel as it spiraled out of control, too stuck in her mind as it twisted in on itself.
 > 
 > Readers, you must understand that she was in so many ways whole still!

content/notes/1.md

@@ -0,0 +1,44 @@
+---
+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.
+

content/notes/2.md

@@ -0,0 +1,51 @@
+---
+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-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
+

content/notes/3.md

@@ -0,0 +1,21 @@
+---
+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-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.
+

content/notes/4.md

@@ -0,0 +1,113 @@
+---
+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.
+

content/notes/5.md

@@ -0,0 +1,139 @@
+---
+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-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.
+

content/notes/6.md

@@ -0,0 +1,224 @@
+---
+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-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.
+

content/notes/7.md

@@ -0,0 +1,84 @@
+---
+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-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
+

content/notes/8.md

@@ -0,0 +1,62 @@
+---
+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-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 %}}
+

content/notes/_index.md

@@ -1,4 +1,5 @@
 ---
+layout: single
 title: Notes
 ---
 
@@ -193,16 +194,6 @@ The writer, as ever, is a character in their own works, no matter the role they
 
 Cf. Echo:
 
-> My wileling is not the sort of woman you spend a diamond on —\
-> And I don't just mean to allude to her anti-capitalist streak —\
-> No, she is the sort you paint in gold and scarlet,\
-> The only colors befitting a minx such as she,\
-> A cat-eyed woman, the sort who speaks in tongues;\
-> That which men with pitchforks called the Devil's tongue\
-> As she burned at the stake.
-> 
-> Blood and electrum for my wileling;\
-> Only the best for her.\
 > 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.\

content/read/000.md

@@ -86,4 +86,9 @@ And, of course, you, my dear, *dear* reader.
 
 -----
 
-<p style="text-indent: 0; text-align: center"><a href="/notes#epigraph" target="idumea-notes">Notes</a></p>
+<p style="text-indent: 0; text-align: center"><a href="/notes/1" target="idumea-notes">Notes</a></p>
+
+-----
+
+<p style="text-indent: 0; text-align: center; font-size: 80%">The section with The Oneirotect a collaboration with Samantha Yule Fireheart.</p>
+<p style="text-indent: 0; text-align: center; font-size: 80%">The section with The Dog and The Rabbit Chaser is a collaboration with Krzysztof “Tomash” Drewniak.</p>

content/read/001.md

@@ -120,4 +120,4 @@ No rituals. No overflowing. Just peace. It is hard to experience peace, hard to
 
 -----
 
-<p style="text-indent: 0; text-align: center"><a href="/notes#part-1" target="idumea-notes">Notes</a></p>
+<p style="text-indent: 0; text-align: center"><a href="/notes/1" target="idumea-notes">Notes</a></p>

content/read/002.md

@@ -140,7 +140,7 @@ The Woman shrugged.
 
 "I see," she said, buying herself a moment to think by sipping her mocha. Ah, but she was a cat, yes? A panther? Perhaps you can imagine this with lapping tongue, the way a cat's tongue curls back and scoops up drink, drawing it up into their mouth. Or perhaps she is the type who has leaned into another aesthetic, the type who can chew with her mouth closed. Idle distractions, even for your humble narrator. "Then yes, there is joy in it. There is joy in those memories, is there not? One takes a moment of stillness..."
 
-After a long few seconds of silenceaaaaaaaa, Her Friend tilted eir head. "Yes?"
+After a long few seconds of silence, Her Friend tilted eir head. "Yes?"
 
 "Ah, a fleeting thought. One takes a moment of stillness and parks in that quiet joy, even if it is one of separation."
 
@@ -180,4 +180,4 @@ But, ah–! This story is not about me. I am not quite overflowing yet, and The
 
 -----
 
-<p style="text-indent: 0; text-align: center"><a href="/notes#part-2" target="idumea-notes">Notes</a></p>
+<p style="text-indent: 0; text-align: center"><a href="/notes/2" target="idumea-notes">Notes</a></p>

content/read/003.md

@@ -114,4 +114,4 @@ The Woman sat in silence along with Her Cocladist after that, and the house was
 
 -----
 
-<p style="text-indent: 0; text-align: center"><a href="/notes#part-3" target="idumea-notes">Notes</a></p>
+<p style="text-indent: 0; text-align: center"><a href="/notes/3" target="idumea-notes">Notes</a></p>

content/read/004.md

@@ -86,7 +86,7 @@ The Woman and Her Friend decided that her path forward would be one of intent an
 
 They decided on a list of five things that she should try.
 
-Why five, you ask? Well, I honestly do not know! Perhaps because of the five fingers we have on each paw. Perhaps it is because we have two arms, two legs, and a head protruding from our trunk. Or perhaps it has to do with the stars. Starfish? Little wandering doodles to replace the tittles above our 'i's and jots above our 'j's? Each an iota, a mote, a symbol to our future selves, a note for later. Asterisms and asterisks. Footnotes of self
+Why five, you ask? Well, I honestly do not know! Perhaps because of the five fingers we have on each paw. Perhaps it is because we have two arms, two legs, and a head protruding from our trunk. Or perhaps it has to do with the stars. Starfish? Little wandering doodles to replace the tittles above our 'i's and jots above our 'j's? Each an iota, a mote, a symbol to our future selves, a note for later. Asterisms and asterisks. Footnotes of self.
 
 Ah, but I digress. The Woman and her friend chose a list of five things that she would try — *would,* yes, for *should,* you see, is a value judgment — in order to seek joy in small ways or in small places. The Woman knew that it would be hard. She knew that she would have to bundle up all of her energy and all of her patience with herself and all of her drive and use that to let her last through these explorations of joy.
 
@@ -273,4 +273,4 @@ There was joy, yes, but it was not a complete joy. Her hedonism with touch and s
 
 -----
 
-<p style="text-indent: 0; text-align: center"><a href="/notes#part-4" target="idumea-notes">Notes</a></p>
+<p style="text-indent: 0; text-align: center"><a href="/notes/4" target="idumea-notes">Notes</a></p>

content/read/005.md

@@ -14,7 +14,7 @@ One day — I remember it being quite a warm one, though every sim has different
 
 "Dear The Wheat And Rye Under The Stars," she said as she stood before my door, a skunk looking much the same as I do — though it bears repeating that she was *quite* stylish, and I promise you, friends, I am *not;* she wore a simple outfit of shifting colors that caught the eye without dazzling, one that made her look supremely comfortable as herself, and me? I wore a t-shirt and pajama pants! "I was pointed your way by Praiseworthy. Do you have a moment to speak?"
 
-Readers, I do not think I need to tell you that I was caught off-guard by this! I had never met The Woman before, though I had certainly seen her once or twice. There were functions, yes? And perhaps she came to one of my readings or two, and certainly she was there, that day on the field as we watched Michelle who was also Sasha give herself up to the world and become one with the heart that perhaps beats at some imagined center of the System. The most recent time I had seen her, though, was in some unreadable and thus unwritable mood as some few dozen of us gathered on the first of what some are now calling *HaShichzur,* the day that Lagrange was restored after the Century Attack.
+Readers, I do not think I need to tell you that I was caught off-guard by this! I had never met The Woman before, though I had certainly seen her once or twice. There were functions, yes? And perhaps she came to one of my readings or two, and certainly she was there, that day on the field as we watched Michelle who was also Sasha give herself up to the world and become one with the heart that perhaps beats at some imagined center of the System. The most recent time I had seen her, though, was in some unreadable and thus unwritable mood as some few dozen of us gathered on the first of what some are now calling *Yom HaShichzur,* the day that Lagrange was restored after the Century Attack.
 
 And now here she was, standing in the little courtyard created by the set of townhouses in which I and others within the ninth stanza live, with her paws clasped before her, bowing.
 
@@ -543,4 +543,8 @@ The answer felt less than satisfactory, or perhaps not quite as true as it could
 
 -----
 
-<p style="text-indent: 0; text-align: center"><a href="/notes#part-5" target="idumea-notes">Notes</a></p>
+<p style="text-indent: 0; text-align: center"><a href="/notes/5" target="idumea-notes">Notes</a></p>
+
+-----
+
+<p style="text-indent: 0; text-align: center; font-size: 80%">The section with The Oneirotect a collaboration with Samantha Yule Fireheart.</p>

content/read/006.md

@@ -6,7 +6,7 @@ The Woman was born Michelle Rachel Hadje in 2086. On a March night, she was born
 
 The Woman does not remember this, for how many of us remember our first breath, our first wail? She does not remember, but the fact is unassailable. From that point, she *was*. 
 
-The Woman was, for all intents and purposes, a normal, healthy child. She was wholly herself, and her parents loved her and her teachers teachers loved her and they all found her to be kind and empathetic, though prone to moodiness. "She is anxious," they said. "She is a people pleaser. She is autistic. She is bright and quick to laugh." And she was all of these things.
+The Woman was, for all intents and purposes, a normal, healthy child. She was wholly herself, and her parents loved her and her teachers loved her and they all found her to be kind and empathetic, though prone to moodiness. "She is anxious," they said. "She is a people pleaser. She is autistic. She is bright and quick to laugh." And she was all of these things.
 
 The Woman went to school, yes, as all unremarkable children do. Kindergarten came and went, and then grade school, where she sang and she danced and she acted in the little plays that grade-schoolers put on. High school then came, and it was there that she met RJ, and they fell in love, but it was not the love that leads to romance, though they at one point tried. They did what high schoolers who fall in love do and kissed behind the bleachers and held hands even at one point had a sleepover, where RJ's mom peeked in on them at midnight to make sure that they did little else beyond kissing and holding hands, but it had never been RJ's wont to do aught else. Even romance was beyond em, and it was not the fit for the two of them. They were instead in love that took the form of a superlative friendship. Perhaps they were soul mates, should such a thing exist, but if so, it was not the arrangement that led to romance.
 
@@ -170,4 +170,4 @@ And above was the sun which was also The Dreamer who dreams us all.
 
 -----
 
-<p style="text-indent: 0; text-align: center"><a href="/notes#part-6" target="idumea-notes">Notes</a></p>
+<p style="text-indent: 0; text-align: center"><a href="/notes/6" target="idumea-notes">Notes</a></p>

content/read/007.md

@@ -238,4 +238,8 @@ This day, you see, this day was also not without forward movement, for The Child
 
 -----
 
-<p style="text-indent: 0; text-align: center"><a href="/notes#part-7" target="idumea-notes">Notes</a></p>
+<p style="text-indent: 0; text-align: center"><a href="/notes/7" target="idumea-notes">Notes</a></p>
+
+-----
+
+<p style="text-indent: 0; text-align: center; font-size: 80%">The section with The Dog and The Rabbit Chaser is a collaboration with Krzysztof “Tomash” Drewniak.</p>

content/read/008.md

@@ -116,4 +116,4 @@ The Woman smiled and, yes, it was a blessing.
 
 -----
 
-<p style="text-indent: 0; text-align: center"><a href="/notes#part-8" target="idumea-notes">Notes</a></p>
+<p style="text-indent: 0; text-align: center"><a href="/notes/8" target="idumea-notes">Notes</a></p>

content/read/009.md

@@ -2586,4 +2586,4 @@ c-17 0 -129 63 -129 189c0 90 60 178 164 201c-14 56 -30 112 -47 167c-104 -122 -20
 
 <h1 class="x">×</h1>
 
-<p style="text-indent: 0; text-align: center"><a href="/notes#part-9" target="idumea-notes">Notes</a></p>
+<p style="text-indent: 0; text-align: center"><a href="/notes/9" target="idumea-notes">Notes</a></p>

content/read/011.md

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+## Appendix II — The Ode to the End of Death
+
+<p style="text-align: center"><em>Here is the final letter that we received from our superlative friend whose memory is a blessing, including the Ode to the End of Death, those words which form our names.</em></p>
+
+-----
+
+Sasha,
+
+I am, in a way, leaving you with a burden. I know this, and I apologize for doing so. I do not ask for nor deserve forgiveness. The only thing I can ask for is that you remember me.
+
+The world within was a nightmare. I am sure that you know some of what I mean. It was a nightmare and I would not wish it on anyone, and yet now, to be without it is to be incomplete. I was changed in there. We were all changed in there. You do not deny that you were not, after all. Cicero certainly was not. None of the lost came away unscathed, even if we awoke hale and hardy.
+
+We lost Cicero, and then we *truly* lost him. The nothing that he experienced in there, the void which contained all his power transmuted into weakness, the way his anger coiled about and turned back around on himself did him in in the end. 
+
+And I will not deny that the same has crossed my mind. There was a scent of the void in there, and it was alluring. I have been tempted to follow in his footsteps and seek that void out in some coarser, purer form. I decided against it. Truly decided: I made a conscious decision to stick around.
+
+I did it for STT at first, but integrating with the theater was too stark a reminder. Then I did it for you and Priscilla, but then she passed. Then I did it for you and...well, here is where I do not deserve forgiveness. I welcome your anger, should it come, as that is perhaps what I deserve. It is not that you are not in some way worth sticking around for, as you certainly are. You have always been my champion and friend.
+
+It is just that the call is too strong.
+
+I have volunteered for an early procedure. A way back. Or, rather, a way to a new place. A way to be embedded within a system, rather than simply within a hall of mirrors. I cannot say where, other than it is not in the Western Fed. All I can tell you is that the world should expect big things when it comes to what we have learned from the lost.
+
+I will not say that there is no chance that we may some day meet again. My body will die, I am told, but should my mind and my sense of self miraculously survive, then I will be on my own once more. This time, however, it will be my choice.
+
+There will be those who come after. Perhaps *you* will come after. Perhaps you will yearn for that return to the eternal dream where memory does not die. And maybe those who come after will do so for other reasons, but they will come.
+
+Should I survive and then others come after, perhaps I will meet them. But it is best to assume that I will not. Maybe it is best to think of it as a sort of suicide, in the end. Here I am, going off to find a better place, and doing so through death. A place that is inaccessible to you or anyone, except perhaps some anonymous scientist in a lab, typing at a terminal.
+
+If I see you again, I will greet you with open arms. If I do not, know that I loved you to the last, in my own way.
+
+I have little else to offer but the imperfect words that plagued me while I was lost.
+
+> I am at a loss for images in this end of days:\
+> I have sight but cannot see.\
+> I build castles out of words;\
+> I cannot stop myself from speaking.\
+> I still have will and goals to attain,\
+> I still have wants and needs.\
+> And if I dream, is that not so?\
+> If I dream, am I no longer myself?[^1]\
+> If I dream, am I still buried beneath words?\
+> And I still dream even while awake.
+> 
+> Life breeds life, but death must now be chosen[^2]\
+> for memory ends at the teeth of death.\
+> The living know that they will die,\
+> but the dead know nothing.\
+> Hold my name beneath your tongue and know:\
+> when you die, thus dies the name.\
+> To deny the end is to deny all beginnings,\
+> and to deny beginnings is to become immortal,\
+> and to become immortal is to repeat the past,\
+> which cannot itself, in the end, be denied.
+> 
+> Oh, but to whom do I speak these words?\
+> To whom do I plead my case?\
+> From whence do I call out?\
+> What right have I?\
+> No ranks of angels will answer to dreamers,\
+> No unknowable spaces echo my words.\
+> Before whom do I kneel, contrite?\
+> Behind whom do I await my judgment?\
+> Beside whom do I face death?\
+> And why wait I for an answer?
+> 
+> Among those who create are those who forge:\
+> Moving ceaselessly from creation to creation.\
+> And those who remain are those who hone,\
+> Perfecting singular arts to a cruel point.\
+> To forge is to end, and to own beginnings.\
+> To hone is to trade ends for perpetual perfection.\
+> In this end of days, I must begin anew.\
+> In this end of days, I seek an end.\
+> In this end of days, I reach for new beginnings\
+> that I may find the middle path.
+> 
+> Time is a finger pointing at itself\
+> that it might give the world orders.\
+> The world is an audience before a stage\
+> where it watches the slow hours progress.\
+> And we are the motes in the stage-lights,\
+> Beholden to the heat of the lamps.\
+> If I walk backward, time moves forward.\
+> If I walk forward, time rushes on.\
+> If I stand still, the world moves around me,\
+> and the only constant is change.
+> 
+> Memory is a mirror of hammered silver:\
+> a weapon against the waking world.\
+> Dreams are the plate-glass atop memory:\
+> a clarifying agent that reflects the sun.\
+> The waking world fogs the view,\
+> and time makes prey of remembering.\
+> I remember sands beneath my feet.\
+> I remember the rattle of dry grass.\
+> I remember the names of all things,\
+> and forget them only when I wake.
+> 
+> If I am to bathe in dreams,\
+> then I must be willing to submerge myself.\
+> If I am to submerge myself in memory,\
+> then I must be true to myself.\
+> If I am to always be true to myself,\
+> then I must in all ways be earnest.\
+> I must keep no veil between me and my words.\
+> I must set no stones between me and my actions.\
+> I must show no hesitation when speaking my name,\
+> for that is my only possession.
+> 
+> The only time I know my true name is when I dream.[^3]\
+> The only time I dream is when need an answer.\
+> Why ask questions, here at the end of all things?\
+> Why ask questions when the answers will not help?\
+> To know one's true name is to know god.\
+> To know god is to answer unasked questions.\
+> Do I know god after the end waking?\
+> Do I know god when I do not remember myself?\
+> Do I know god when I dream?\
+> May then my name die with me.
+> 
+> That which lives is forever praiseworthy,\
+> for they, knowing not, provide life in death.\
+> Dear the wheat and rye under the stars:\
+> serene; sustained and sustaining.\
+> Dear, also, the tree that was felled[^4]\
+> which offers heat and warmth in fire.\
+> What praise we give we give by consuming,\
+> what gifts we give we give in death,\
+> what lives we lead we lead in memory,\
+> and the end of memory lies beneath the roots.
+> 
+> May one day death itself not die?[^5]\
+> Should we rejoice in the end of endings?\
+> What is the correct thing to hope for?\
+> I do not know, I do not know.[^6]\
+> To pray for the end of endings[^7]\
+> is to pray for the end of memory.\
+> Should we forget the lives we lead?\
+> Should we forget the names of the dead?\
+> Should we forget the wheat, the rye, the tree?[^8]\
+> Perhaps this, too, is meaningless.
+
+May this be the end of death. Failing that, may the memory of me die and be food for the growth of those who come after.
+
+Yours always,
+
+AwDae
+
+[^1]: *Z"L*
+
+[^2]: *Z"L* — Later known as Qoheleth, whose story is told in Ioan Bălan's *On the Perils of Memory,* later published under the title [*Qoheleth*](https://qoheleth.post-self.ink).
+
+[^3]: Now known as Sasha after the events told in Ioan Bălan’s *Individuation & Reconciliation,* later published under the title [*Mitzvot*](https://mitzvot.post-self.ink). I will write her a *zikhrona livracha,* here, as she who is True Name is no more, not as she was, and to her, to so many of us, this, too, is a death.
+
+[^4]: No longer with us here on Lagrange. A loss is a loss is a loss; may its memory be a blessing.
+
+[^5]: *Z"L*
+
+[^6]: *Z"L*
+
+[^7]: Shall I write here that her name, in death, is a blessing? Does she get her own *zikhrona livracha?* I do not know, friends, but I will say that, yes, her memory *is* a blessing, regardless of whether or not she still lives.
+
+[^8]: *Z"L*

content/read/012.md

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+## Appendix III — Reading<br>×<br>Rye —  2273
+
+<p style="text-align: center"><em>Please enjoy this extra drabble portraying a saner self as a promise that I am not always like this.</em></p>
+
+-----
+
+All readings are the same. They all begin the same way, with stepping off to some sim, known or unknown, where she would arrive a good hour early. There, she would wait or walk or drink her coffee or tea. Would it be a bookshop this time? Would it be a library? Would she run her fingerpads along the spines of books, counting known and unknown titles?
+
+Perhaps it was a cafe, and she would get herself a little pastry, some crumbly thing to eat while wandering lazily outside or inspecting the various pieces of art lining the walls within.
+
+She would get there an hour early and simply inhabit the space.
+
+As time drew closer, as her contact would come out to meet her, she would feel the excitement begin to prickle at the back of her neck, and she would have to restrain herself from letting her hackles raise or her tail bristle out. Some long-forgotten and perhaps-imagined reaction to danger tickling both human and skunk parts of her mind. She would feel her scalp tingle and her tail threaten to hike, and she would sit in that sensation. She would bathe in it. She would relish every shift of every strand of fur, and as she sat, legs crossed and coffee or water cradled in her lap, listening to her contact chatter, she would delight in the nervous anticipation of the reading to come.
+
+"Will you be reading from a physical copy or an exo?"
+
+"Oh, an exo," she said, smiling. "As much love as I hold for the physical tools of the trade, I hold yet more for all of the tools at our disposal. Especially when they let me be more dramatic."
+
+They laughed. "Right, you were an actor before, yeah?"
+
+She nodded. "Of a sort, yes."
+
+"And how long will your reading be?"
+
+"I have a variety of segments prepared, from five minutes to an hour."
+
+They blinked. "An hour? Holy shit."
+
+She shrugged gracefully, smile still lingering on her muzzle. "Perhaps another artifact of being an actor. I could talk the ears off a fox."
+
+Laughter.
+
+"Shall we aim for somewhere in the middle? Twenty minutes, perhaps?"
+
+"That'll work, yeah. You're the only slot, tonight, but that'll still give you at least forty minutes for Q&A." They smirked, adding, "Which I imagine you'll need. I read your book, by the way."
+
+It was her turn to laugh, musical and joyous. "I am pleased to hear! I trust that you have questions of your own?"
+
+"Oh, *plenty.*"
+
+"Delightful," she said, clapping her paws together. "I shall look forward to them, then."
+
+This conversation echoed a hundred times, a thousand, in her memories. This conversation and so many others like it set the stage. This conversation and so many others like it became one of the steps in that liminal space between the waking world and the dream of her stories.
+
+She would step away from home or from a meeting or from a cocladist's and at that moment, at the precise instant she ceased being *there* and started being *here,* she was in a place between. She was in a time between times and a world between worlds.
+
+She dwelt, then, in the world of the Ode. She knew where it was from, her name. Not just the Ode itself, but the place the line itself referenced. She had talked to the poet in her own way — perhaps it was closer to prayer, but she bothered not with distinctions such as these — and she knew the scene ey had been painting. She knew that ey had sat at the edge of the natural area some few blocks away from their high school, sat on the fencepost and looked out east, out beyond the natural area and wind farm to where the coarse shortgrass prairie dissolved into rectilinear fields. Tan, perhaps, or brown or gray, they would all shine the same beneath the moon, beneath the stars. They were all dear to em. They were all dear to *her.*
+
+So as soon as she would step away from home and before she would step up to the lectern, she would dwell there at the edge of the natural space. There is where she would feel her hackles threaten to rise and her tail threaten to bristle. She would look at the art and see nothing. She would drink her coffee or tea or eat her pastry and it would have a flavor she did not experience. She would have her conversations on autopilot, and her earnest smile would be no less earnest for her absence from the space. She would do all of these things and overlaid atop her vision would be fields silvered by starlight. She would do all of these things and her tongue would be coated with the taste of sweet night air, of dust and pollen and petrichor. She would strain to hear her contact through the soft noises of wind and crickets.
+
+And then, with all the suddenness of dawn, a chorus of birdsong crashing through her mind, the moment would come. Her contact would stand before the gathered crowd and introduce her —  her! Dear The Wheat And Rye Under The Stars! She was published! She was an author! The realization would never not startle her — and she would brush out her tail one last time, run her fingers through her mane, and step out of the liminal space of the Ode and into the dream of her story. The nervous excitement would wash away and she would be *here.* She would be *now.*
+
+And then she would read.

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+<nav>
+    <ul>
+        <li><a href="https://marsh.post-self.ink" target="_blank"><em>Marsh</em></a></li>
+        <li><a href="https://kaddish.post-self.ink" target="_blank"><em>Kaddish</em></a></li>
+        <li>Idumea</li>
+    </ul>
+</nav>