update from sparkleup

writing/3/seasons/spirals.tex

@@ -66,7 +66,7 @@ that this must be the case. \\
 The silently bereaved already sit graveside.\par
 \parencite{penguins}
 \end{verse}\par
-But grief, true bereavement, is almost reflexive. It is \emph{performative} in that way. By grieving, we grieve. Add in the fact that I'm helpless before my compulsive explanation and beholden to my graphomania, and this was my grief over Dwale. I could not sit, silent, by the graveside. I could not sit \emph{shiva}. I could not bury myself in a community that is willing to support me, but what I could do is use the framework of words to pull meaning from that which feels too big to make sense. I \emph{do} have tools, even if it may not feel like it when grief burns particularly bright.} but our meager attempt to put into words what we are feeling when what we are feeling is still too hot.
+But grief, true bereavement, is almost reflexive. It is \emph{performative} in that way. By grieving, we bring grief into being. Add in the fact that I'm helpless before my compulsive explanation and beholden to my graphomania, and this was my grief over Dwale. I could not sit, silent, by the graveside. I could not sit \emph{shiva}. I could not bury myself in a community that is willing to support me, but what I could do is use the framework of words to pull meaning from that which feels too big to make sense. I \emph{do} have tools, even if it may not feel like it when grief burns particularly bright.} but our meager attempt to put into words what we are feeling when what we are feeling is still too hot.
 
 Despite mentions of Hell,\footnote{And I sure hope that the torment of plagues and politics doesn't last eleven more years, much less for perpetuity.} it is comforting to see here that grief has transmuted into sadness. We have climbed that year-long spiral eleven times,\footnote{And while this may have been longer than Falcon lived, longer than she made our lives a joy, we got to make her entire life a good one.} we have had our period of lamentation, the soul has been purified, and we can see what it is to live life without them.\footnote{And it will live on at least as long as I do, will it not? I would that it had not died at all, but as it had to, at least I have the ability to think about it, love it from across that infinite gulf in my own, awkward way. I have the privilege of being able to memorialize it. I have my threnody, and through that, its works are set for those to see who might not otherwise.} Sure, we will always hunt their breathing voice, their kind words remain with us, we will never kiss them farewell, but it is now comprehensible. We can intellectualize their loss. We can pull it into words and set it before us. We can read our grief from top to bottom and then start once more at the top. We know it well, our sadness, and each time we take our trip\footnote{This is not a new idea, of course. In my choral conducting courses, we talked about taking `the seven trips through the score' in order to tease it apart so that we could put it back together with our students. Again, though, that Madison has passed.} through the text, we can feel its impact soften. It does not leave us, but it becomes  a part of us.
 
@@ -74,7 +74,7 @@ And now, when we spiral around once more to the top of the poem, we can look dow
 
 We can look up, too. We can look up and see all of the other times we \emph{will} read the poem and imagine who we might be. Might we be someone who can read through this poem and only \emph{remember} the us who was so torn by grief that they couldn't breathe for sobbing? A hazy memory, one where we remember that us as some different person.
 
-And so we read the poem again and see something new --- aha! Is ``I sift to find again your breathing voice'' an anaphora? --- and it all becomes a little softer, a little more abstract. We read and read. We come back to our poem years later and it inspires nostalgia in us. Nostalgia! Simpler times for simpler versions of ourselves. A little younger, a little dumber, but no less capable of feeling.
+And so we read the poem again and see something new --- aha! Is ``I sift to find again your breathing voice'' an anaphora? --- and it all becomes a little softer, a little more abstract. We read and read. We come back to our poem years later and it inspires nostalgia in us. Nostalgia! Simpler times for simpler versions of ourselves. A little younger, a little dumber, but no less capable of feeling.\pagebreak % Whyyy do I need this - seems to be just for the solo, letter version
 
 Issa says,