update from sparkleup

writing/post-self/idumea/005.html

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                 <h1>Zk | 005</h1>
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-                <h2 id="end-of-endings-2403rye-2409">End Of Endings — 2403<br>×<br>Rye — 2409</h2>
-<p>Some of my readers may be wondering why it is that I know so much about The Woman. </p>
+                <p>Some of my readers may be wondering why it is that I know so much about The Woman. </p>
 <p>&ldquo;How does she know all of this?&rdquo; some might be wondering. &ldquo;Does she really know all these things that The Woman did? Does she know who the kindly shop owner is? The one who pet on The Woman as she sobbed from too spicy a chili?&rdquo; Others might be wondering — and rightly so! — &ldquo;How much of this is actually real? Surely she does not know The Woman&rsquo;s innermost thoughts! All this talk of ideas in shapes being set before her is quite silly.&rdquo;</p>
 <p>My answer is that tired phrase: &ldquo;It is complicated.&rdquo; Of course I do not know her innermost thoughts. I think it is a me thing to take abstract ideas and pretend they look like pretty baubles or hot coals or little statuettes to be placed upon a dresser. I cannot read minds, and I do not have any memories from The Woman. I do not even know quite what she is anymore! I would not know if she quit, since I am not down-tree from her — her down-tree instance is dead now, these last six decades, remember — 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. No, I do not know anything so intimate.</p>
 <p>What I do have, though, is a story. I have the story I learned from The Woman&rsquo;s Friend and Therapist and Cocladist and Lover, the one I learned from The Blue Fairy. I have all of that story that I learned, and I have that story that I lived.</p>
@@ -102,7 +101,6 @@ that this must be the case.</p>
 <p>Readers, I am not ashamed to say that I cried again. How could I not, after all? I had met Beckoning and Muse, before, myself. They had invited me over some few years before the Century Attack to let me research their gardens. They had fed me a dinner of pasta with zucchini, and a desert of zucchini bread, for their harvest was too large by far. We had sat out on the deck and looked out over the grass and the little raised beds that Beckoning had tended for a century or more and, although my paws itched to return home to write, we spoke until long after the sunset on our joys and sorrows, our hopes and fears.</p>
 <p>I cried, and through it all, The Woman sat in kind silence.</p>
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 <p>When, now for the second time, I was able to sit up straight again, able breath slowly, able to look at The Woman instead of my paws as I covered my face, I bowed to her and said, &ldquo;Thank you for telling me these things. I did not realize just how much I needed to hear them.&rdquo;</p>
 <p>&ldquo;Why?&rdquo;</p>
 <p>The Woman&rsquo;s simple question left me all the room in the world to admit that I did not know. I think that until she asked it, I was not quite sure why, myself. I <em>had</em> needed to hear those things but, yes: why? I do not think I would have been able to tell her as part of my statement, but that syllable forced my thoughts into order in a way that they are not as I write this, six years later.</p>
@@ -186,9 +184,12 @@ that this must be the case.</p>
 <p>We sat in silence for a minute or so, simply enjoying our mochas — readers, by now you must know that we are nothing if not ourselves — while we each considered the direction of our conversation. It is not comfortable for me to be unable to address a thing that I feel I ought to be able to. When presented with a problem that even sounds like it <em>might</em> be within my bailiwick, if I cannot, it is in some key way dysphoric to me. The best I can manage, as I did then, was to recast the problem into a conversation. It does not remove the dysphoria, for I still have not solved anything, but it has set it aside, perhaps just in the other room. There is a selfishness in me.</p>
 <p>At last, I said, &ldquo;Would it be alright if I were to invite over Warmth? It is my beloved up-tree, of course, but ey also has thoughts on this that may help us find inroads to your fulfillment.&rdquo;</p>
 <!-- Warmth discusses art with EoE -->
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-                <p>Page generated on 2024-07-12</p>
+                <p>Page generated on 2024-07-13</p>
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