update from sparkleup

writing/post-self/idumea/005.html

@@ -156,6 +156,15 @@ The silently bereaved already sit graveside.&rdquo;</p>
 <p>She laughed. &ldquo;Neither had I. We hiked there once and it seems to have left little enough impression, and Motes simply pulled it up from some deep recess, yes? Seeing that slowly take shape, though, as she worked with her paints, I felt like I was seeing some ancient behemoth who had never once woken laying asleep. It was a mountain that had never moved and never changed, even as a suburb sprawled at its base.&rdquo;</p>
 <p>&ldquo;Did she paint the shape while you were there?&rdquo; I said, gesturing to the black-beyond-black square.</p>
 <p>&ldquo;No, not while I was looking. I did still have my errand, yes? I did not want to lose track of that. I wish now that I had.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Having watched her paint this one, I can tell you that it is both more and less important than the rest of the painting. She paints it much as she paints the rest of the painting, yes? She brings one foot up onto her stool so that she can rest her chin on it and her tail drapes down behind her and she listens to her very strange music, and she paints the rectangle. Perhaps she sticks her tongue tip out as she does so, like she is concentrating very hard, yes?&rdquo; I stuck my tongue tip out just so, furrowing my brow and squinting as though at some minute detail.</p>
+<p>The woman laughed.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;So it is much like she paints the rest of the scene, yes? Except that it is not, because she is not adding to the picture, she is taking away from it. I have tried to look at this painting from every angle, yes? I have looked up close and far away. I have touched it and smelled it and — yes, I will admit — tasted it, and it is in all ways just paint on canvas. But it is not on <em>top</em> of <em>anything,</em> but it is <em>through everything,</em> I would say. I do not know how else to explain it. With all the calmness in the universe, she excised a part of the world from existence.&rdquo; I looked up to the painting again. &ldquo;I feel that, were I able to visit Dear&rsquo;s prairie again, that very chunk of it would be missing. I fear it would be some sort of black hole hungrily gobbling up all of Lagrange from the inside. In my dreams, that is what the Century Attack looks like. In my dreams, we are all pulled through a null rectangle like that, and when the world is pulled back out, those like Should We Forget and No Longer Myself and Beckoning and Muse are left within.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>We sat in silence — silences can be so comfortable sometimes! — while I looked up at the painting and The Woman looked out the sliding glass door that led out to my little patio. It must have been two or three minutes of just long, comfortable silence, of just a woman who was also a cat and a woman who was also a skunk, two women who were in some roundabout way the same, sitting together.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;How large do you suppose it would be?&rdquo; The Woman said, startling me out of my reverie.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Mm? The rectangle? The hole?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She nodded.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I go back and forth. Sometimes, I feel that it is right in front of me and the house is in the distance, and that it is painted to scale. Sometimes, I feel like it must be behind the house, or way out beyond the sky, and it is larger than the moon.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I see we understand it in the same way. I cannot tell, either. I can tell you, though, that watching Motes brought me the closest to the joy that I have been seeking that I have ever been.&rdquo; She frowned down to her glass, now empty. When she continued, her speech was halting, slow, thoughtful. &ldquo;Not&hellip;for me, not my own joy, and I think not even for her, though the little skunk certainly seems quite joyful. It is&hellip;adjacent to the joy. It brought me near to the joy, but did not necessarily bring the joy to me.&rdquo;</p>
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