update from sparkleup

writing/post-self/idumea/005.md

@@ -91,16 +91,38 @@ She smiled — another blessing! — and nodded to me.
 > Who knows how well they knew him,
 > their backs turned, studiously
 > deciding that he is no longer of them?
-> one could never guess.
+> One could never guess.
 > We can say his suit was very fine, perhaps,
 > that the room is tastefully furnished,
 > the coffin silver, the bar, open,
 > quite good, and none of them are drunk yet,
 > or at least none look it.
-> “Good man, good man,” they mutter,
+> "Good man, good man," they mutter,
 > doing all they can to convince each other
 > through well-rehearsed performances,
 > that this must be the case.
 > The silently bereaved already sit graveside."
 
+I turned those words over and over in my head for a minute, since The Woman had seemed quite comfortable sitting in silence with me. She used that time to drink her water while I played back the words again and again, looking down at my paws, and then returned my gaze to hers. "There is a difference between the performance of grief and grieving, is there not?"
 
+"It is as you say. There is performed grief and performative grief. We of the tenth stanza were quite sad when Lagrange came back with us but not Should We Forget. We received condolences from many, some flowers and many kind words. Ever Dream came over and spoke with me about grief as we sat out on the field, where she said, "It is quite sad, is it not? To lose someone you have known for so long is quite sad." I agreed, and then drew a line around the topic." She performed such a motion now, describing an arc before her with one of her well kept claws, before dismissing it with a wave. "This was grief performed."
+
+I nodded, and in my heart, I think I knew what was coming next, for I found my muscles bunching up as in in preparation for something — flight, perhaps? I do not know, my friends.
+
+"And Warmth In Fire came over, too, so that it could sit at our table and weep rather than eat. Ey wept, and then asked to retreat, and we guided her up to Should We Forget's room so that they could lay in her bed for a while in silence. When it came back downstairs, ey thanked us kindly and left, and when we went back upstairs to look, there was a flower wrought out of some subtly glowing metal left on Should We Forget's pillow. It lays there still."
+
+"I remember that day," I said. "I will admit that I only met Should We Forget a handful of times, and always mediated through Warmth, so I do not have the context for that grief, other than the fact that ey was left in pain for some time after the restoration."
+
+"That was performative grief," The Woman said. "That was grief that, through its expression, was made real. Warmth In Fire's grieving allowed us to grieve as well. Ever Dream and all of those who sent us flowers performed a grief that was only intellectual. I appreciate them for that, but I love Warmth In Fire for what ey gave us."
+
+We as a clade cry easily, and it is a thing that we all like about ourselves. I like the fact that I can cry! I like that I can cry over my own writing, go back and read a scene I wrote wherein a character experiences too many feelings or some form of growth and cry along with them. 
+
+So it is perhaps no surprise that I cried then, and that, for the third time, The Woman sat with me in silence.
+
+When I was once more able to speak, after I had taken a moment to clean up, I asked, "You went into this experience with Slow Hours to explore joy, yes? What did you find, in the end?"
+
+"I did not read only this one poem. I read several more with her that day, and took home several books to read in such a way. Slow Hours talked me through the joy of stories — even the small ones — and left me with some assignments. 
+
+"I did not like all of the books, but Slow Hours instructed me to read them anyway, unless they started to make me truly bored. None did, however, so I finished every book I took with me.
+
+"Of the five books I brought home, one made me quite upset for how viscerally uncaring the protagonist was. I found them acting for reasons that I did not understand, as though they were a being solely of habits and not of thoughts or emotions. One made me cry for the way the protagonist was torn down and yet built herself into someone new.