update from sparkleup

writing/post-self/qoheleth/Ioan/003-b.md

@@ -11,9 +11,9 @@ You say that you all like old things, so perhaps you will be delighted to learn
 >
 > You know me. I will not tell you how, and I will not tell you why this secrecy is in place. Not yet. For now, though, you may refer to me as Qoheleth, or, at need, Hebel.
 >
-> I am sorry for having said --- or, rather, written --- the Name, but not too sorry. I need to get your attention. There is something serious going on, and I need your focused attention.
+> I am sorry for having said --- or, rather, written --- the Name, but not too sorry. I need to get your attention. There is something serious going on, and I need you focused on the matter.
 >
-> Let's meet, yes?
+> Let's meet, yeah?
 >
 > `-----BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY-----`
 
@@ -31,9 +31,9 @@ The passphrase for this encrypted message was *kemmer*. If the other Odists figu
 
 I did not originally find the passphrase, as the letter itself was decrypted through known weaknesses. None of the tools that I was able to find would (could?) give me the key, since all of the attacks were along direct avenues. Don't ask the details, I can hardly understand them..
 
-Instead, I found the passphrase by accident while doing a search on some of the contents of the letter. Notably, I searched on *Qoheleth*, and then *Hebel* in relation to that name. There's lots of juicy stuff here. *Qoheleth* is more title than name, and is used in a book in both the Christian and the Jewish bibles. Given the author's reference to the Hebrew word, I've been restricting myself to searches surrounding the Tanakh. I should add that, in the Tanakh, the book is called by the same name, while in the Christian bible, it is called *Ecclesiastes*, from the Greek.
+Instead, I found the passphrase by accident while doing a search on some of the contents of the letter. Notably, I searched on *Qoheleth*, and then *Hebel* in relation to that name. There's lots of juicy stuff here. *Qoheleth* is more title than name, and is used in a book in both the Christian and the Jewish bibles. Given the author's reference to the Hebrew word, I've been restricting myself to searches surrounding the Tanakh. I should add that, while in the Tanakh, the book is called by the same name, while in the Christian bible, it is called *Ecclesiastes*, from the Greek.
 
-*Qoheleth* can mean 'teacher', but also 'gatherer' or 'director of the assembled'. This last one, I suppose, fits in with their suggestion that the clade meet up. Perhaps all together? It is also referenced as *Ecclesiastes* in words such as ecclesiastical, 'relating to the church'.
+*Qoheleth* can mean 'teacher', but also 'gatherer' or 'director of the assembled'. This last one, I suppose, fits in with their suggestion that the clade meet up. Perhaps all together? It is also referenced as *Ecclesiastes* in words such as ecclesiastical, 'relating to the church *qua* assembly'.
 
 *Hebel*, in this case, appears to be an approximation of what is usually spelled *havél*, which translates to 'vapor', but is also interpreted as 'vanity' or, when taken metaphorically, 'meaningless'. For instance, the book begins:
 
@@ -47,7 +47,9 @@ Bleak, no?
 
 The entire book is quite fascinating, and the tone seems to waver between this comfortable sort of nihilism (I hesitate to say hopelessness, as hope does not seem to be a factor in play here) and education, with Qoheleth using their past experiences and meditations to offer instruction on how to live a full life.
 
-Back to the passphrase, though. I have found several references to the term *kemmer*, with the primary source being an ancient speculative novel by the name *The Left Hand of Darkness* by Ursula K. Le Guin. I forked and read this while investigating the Tanakh, and the book seems to surround the sociopolitical ramifications of a subspecies of humans which is androgynous most of the time, but which undergoes a biological process (*kemmer*) wherein they settle into one of two physiological sexes for the purposes of sex and procreation.
+Back to the passphrase, though.
+
+I have found several references to the term *kemmer*, with the primary source being an ancient speculative novel by the name *The Left Hand of Darkness* by Ursula K. Le Guin. I forked and read this while investigating the Tanakh, and the book seems to surround the sociopolitical ramifications of a subspecies of humans which is androgynous most of the time, but which undergoes a biological process (*kemmer*) wherein they settle into one of two physiological sexes for the purposes of sex and procreation.
 
 I was not able to deduce anything concrete out of this term, because I cannot tell where it is directed. While I do not presume to know the Name (nor do I wish to!), one possibility is that it refers to the author of the Ode. Another is that it refers to some aspect of the Ode clade itself. You are perhaps uniquely positioned to answer this, as I don't imagine the entirety of the Ode clade are agender foxes, given both what I know of Michelle Hadje and how you speak of your cocladists. A third possibility is that the term may apply to Qoheleth themself. A fourth is that it relates to the mystery at hand in some way. And, of course, it could be a bit of subtext that is meaningless (hah) in this case and does not apply beyond being a neat word.
 

writing/post-self/qoheleth/RJ/005-b.md

@@ -3,9 +3,9 @@
 
 The pit revealed little.
 
-There were twenty boxes set on a table in front of the snakehead. Twenty receivers for twenty wireless mics. Twenty cables neatly velcroed together into a bundle, contracting from the receivers and arcing catenary toward the dull grey plug-box. The cables were reduced to a four-by-five grid, arching up above the snakehead before plunging into it, XLR heads buried in XLR nests.
+There were twenty boxes set on a table in front of the snakehead. Twenty receivers for twenty wireless mics. Twenty cables neatly velcroed together into a bundle, contracting from the receivers and arcing catenary toward the dull grey plug-box. They were reduced to a four-by-five grid, arching up above the snakehead before plunging into it, XLR heads buried in XLR nests.
 
-All of the boxes on the table were dull. Mute LEDs simple bumps on their surface. Dark. All but one, that was. The first one. The one with a piece of masking tape on its face, scrawled with a '1'. That box had a single red light on the front, indicating that it was powered on, and a single green light, indicating that the corresponding mic was transmitting.
+All of the boxes on the table were dull. Mute LEDs simple bumps on their surface. Dark. All but one: the first. The one with a piece of masking tape on its face, scrawled with a '1'. That box had a single red light on the front, indicating that it was powered on, and a single green light, indicating that the corresponding mic was transmitting.
 
 "Great," AwDae murmured. "That leaves only half the school to search."
 
@@ -13,17 +13,17 @@ If it had been a wired mic, the search would have been over as soon as it began:
 
 And what?
 
-There would be the mic, and ey would still be stuck in a nightmare. In some parody of a nightmare. All dressed up for the high school pops festival and here, see? The auditorium is completely empty.
+There would be the mic, and ey would still be stuck in a nightmare. No, in some parody of a nightmare. All dressed up for the high school pops festival and, here, see? The auditorium is completely empty.
 
 The fox barked a laugh at how many cliches littered the situation. Turning away from the receivers, ey rested eir weight against the edge of the table that bore them. Ey leaned a moment, then hiked eir backside up onto the familiar surface, relishing the squeak of stressed metal from eir sudden burden.
 
-AwDae swung eir legs back and forth, hearing the table creak and groan in time with the slow movements. The sound was quiet, but in the dread silence, more than enough to fill the hall.
+AwDae swung eir legs back and forth, hearing the table creak and groan in time with the slow movements. The sound was quiet, but in that dread silence, more than enough to fill the hall.
 
 Ey stopped.
 
-The auditorium was pleasantly wet: not damp or anything, but in terms of echo, it had just the right amount. Or, at least, as much as a high school auditorium was able to muster. Had it been dry, the sound would've died away completely. The drier a room, the closer it got to approaching an anechoic chamber. Zero echo. The painful lack thereof.
+The auditorium was pleasantly wet: not damp or moist, but in terms of echo, it had just the right amount; or, at least, as much as a high school auditorium was able to muster. Had it been dry, the sound would've died away completely. The drier a room, the closer it got to an anechoic chamber. Zero echo. The painful lack thereof.
 
-AwDae knew this hall, even years later, even in dreams. Ey knew the pockets of good and bad sound scattered throughout the seating. Ey knew the dead spots on stage where one's voice would fall flat if it weren't amplified. Ey knew how the stage was built rather like a horn, performers at the small end, so that their performances were projected out toward the audience. Ey knew how the stage was built like a drum, the pit a chamber of its own.
+AwDae knew this hall, even years later, even in dreams. Ey knew the pockets of good and bad sound scattered throughout the seating. Ey knew the dead spots on stage where one's voice would fall flat. Ey knew how the stage was built rather like a horn, performers at the small end, so that their performances were projected out toward the audience. Ey knew how the stage was built like a drum, the orchestra pit a chamber of its own.
 
 And yet, there was that slight echo of the squeaking of the table.
 
@@ -31,11 +31,11 @@ An idea. A crazy one, sure, but by this point, with despair nipping at eir heels
 
 *And*, a bitter portion of em reasoned. *If getting lost is permanent like they say, I've got nothing to lose.*
 
-Ey hopped back off the table and began to pace.
+Ey hopped off the table and began to pace.
 
-The squeal of feedback in an audio system is an emergent behavior, and even those who have not heard it before know immediately that something is wrong as soon as that hum starts. That quiet hum in the background, building exponentially.
+The squeal of feedback in an audio system is an emergent behavior, and even those who have not heard it before know immediately that something is wrong as soon as the hum starts. That quiet hum in the background, building exponentially.
 
-It doesn't take long before it can be understood as something originating in the system, rather than coming from the speaker or performer. From there, it builds on itself, feeding back into the mic and growing louder until it quickly overwhelms all other sound. Rises, crescendos. Hearing and speaker damage equally likely if left unchecked.
+It doesn't take long before it can be understood as something originating in the system, rather than coming from speaker or performer. From there, it builds on itself, feeding back into the mic and growing louder until it quickly overwhelms all other sound. Rises, crescendos. Hearing and speaker damage equally likely if left unchecked.
 
 Similar, in an upside-down sort of way, to the echo that AwDae had caused making the table squeak beneath eir weight. Sound was picked up by the microphone, transmitted through the sound board, then out into the room. Amplified, though, through the speakers.
 
@@ -43,31 +43,33 @@ If the microphone started to pick up sound from the speakers --- and sound was s
 
 A feedback loop.
 
-It would continue to build through further and further iterations, until the auditorium was filled with a roar of the one pitch the microphone had first locked onto.
+It would continue to build through further and further iterations, until the auditorium was filled with a roar of that one dread pitch the microphone had first locked onto.
 
 Dread and dire. Cursed. An eternal struggle.
 
-Obviously, microphones were still in use. They hadn't been abandoned because of the loop. They just got smarter about finding ways around feedback.
+Obviously microphones were still in use. They hadn't been abandoned because of the loop; they just got smarter about finding ways around feedback.
 
 One could angle speakers toward the audience, rather than the stage. Bodies were notoriously bad reflectors of sound. Part of what made the stage so acoustically dead, that.
 
-One could turn down the monitor speakers facing the stage, but that was cruel to one's performers.
+One could turn down the monitor speakers facing the stage, but that would be cruel to one's performers.
 
 One could turn down amplification, but that defeated the purpose.
 
-The usual solution, then, was gain.
+The solution, then, was gain.
 
 The adjustment was provided by a knob at the very top of the sound board governing the sensitivity of the mic. At the top, befitting its importance in the setup. The very beginning of the signal path.
 
-Turn the gain all the way down, and the mic was a dumb lump of metal and plastic. Turn it all the way up, and the mic picked up everything from the movement of the air to the slight hiss of the live sound system. Almost instant feedback.
+Turn the gain all the way down, and the mic was a dumb lump of metal and plastic. Turn it all the way up, and the mic picked up everything from the movement of the air to the slight hiss of the live sound system, almost guaranteeing instant feedback.
 
 AwDae cranked the gain almost to the point of feedback. If ey could make noise in various points throughout the auditorium, maybe it'd get picked up. The more feedback ey generated, the more sound the mic was picking up. The more sound it was picking up, the closer ey was to it.
 
-Eir possible locations for the mic hadn't been reduced. It was still half the school, but eir chances of finding it sooner rather than later would go up. If the mic was not in the auditorium, ey could turn the main system up and start venturing further afield. Leave a door open, let the mic hear. Let em hear the theater ring like a bell in turn.
+Eir possible locations for the mic hadn't been reduced, it was still half the school, but eir chances of finding it sooner rather than later would go up. If the mic was not in the auditorium, ey could turn the main system up and start venturing further afield. Leave a door open, let the mic hear. Let em hear the theater ring like a bell in turn.
 
 Riddles. Triply weird.
 
-AwDae felt stupid. Insulted. Trapped for life and still solving riddles. Hopelessness dimmed eir vision.
+AwDae felt stupid. Insulted. Trapped for life and still solving riddles.
+
+Hopelessness dimmed eir vision.
 
 Ey shook eir head, ears laid flat.