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<h1>Zk | 018</h1>
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<article class="content">
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<h2 id="ioan-balan-codrin-balanpollux-sorina-balan">Ioan Bălan — Codrin Bălan#Pollux, Sorina Bălan</h2>
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<h2 id="ioan-balan-the-balan-clade">Ioan Bălan — The Bălan clade</h2>
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<blockquote>
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<p>systime 229 (2353)
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(transmission delays)</p>
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</blockquote>
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<p>Codrin#Pollux and Sorina,</p>
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<p>Hi you two. I hope you’ve been doing well of late.</p>
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<p>It’s been heartening watching you reconnect, if I’m honest. I know I say it just about every time I write either of you, but I’ve been worried. You’ve both mentioned in the past feeling like I’m someone grounding that you can talk to, and…well, I hope this isn’t weird of me to say, but I’ve been feeling protective of you both of late. It’s not quite the realm of parenthood or anything like that, but it does kind of feel like I’m watching over the clade, in a way. I don’t know if it’s a root instance thing, a shared past thing, or a me, now, as I am thing.</p>
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<p>Hi all.</p>
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<p>I hope you’ve been doing well of late.</p>
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<p>It’s been heartening watching everyone reconnect over the last year, if I’m honest. I know I say it just about every time I write, but I’ve been worried. You’ve all mentioned in the past feeling like I’m someone grounding that you can talk to, and…well, I hope this isn’t weird of me to say, but I’ve been feeling protective of you all of late. It’s not quite the realm of parenthood or anything like that, but it does kind of feel like I’m watching over the clade, in a way. I don’t know if it’s a root instance thing, a shared past thing, or a me, now, as I am thing.</p>
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<p>It’s probably the last.</p>
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<p>I think it’s high time to admit aloud that all of these memories of Rareș are starting to pile up for me. I’ve been struggling to keep my mind off him, honestly, and have been writing quite a bit. There have been a few abortive attempts at pulling the thoughts together into a book or screenplay or something, just as a way to process my feelings.</p>
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<p>I think it’s high time to admit aloud that all of these memories of Rareș are starting to pile up for me, and this protectiveness plays right into those memories of him after mom and dad’s death. I’ve been struggling to keep my mind off him, honestly, and have been writing quite a bit. There have been a few abortive attempts at pulling the thoughts together into a book or screenplay or something, just as a way to process my feelings.</p>
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<p>The thing is, if I want to be successful at something like that, I’ll have to actually sit down and research the past. That’s where I’ve been failing. I know it’s something I’d need to do if I’m to do any project like that justice, and probably something I need to do if I’m to find a way to come to terms with the past, but there’s some emotional block. Lately, every time I get close to engaging with the topic head on, I have a panic attack. Honest to goodness, full blown, hyperventilating and feeling like I’m dying panic attack.</p>
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<p>It’s something I’ve been working on a lot with Sarah. I certainly don’t like the feeling, but neither do May or, when she’s around, Sasha like seeing that happen.</p>
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<p>I know you know more about this than I do, Codrin, but please let me work on this myself.</p>
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<p>Anyway, that’s only part of why I’m writing. The way that this topic has affected me has led to a series of conversations between May and I around the interplay of immortality and relationships. I know I won’t do the topic justice, so she’s written up some of her thoughts, which I’m including here.</p>
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<blockquote>
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<p>One unintended consequence of immortality is not just that memories of relationships pile up, but the <em>way</em> in which they pile up. We do not simply remember lost loves with fondness, but also with caution.</p>
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<p>It seems counter-intuitive, does it not? We might expect that our everlasting lives might add in some more cavalier attitude toward the relationships that we form. This has not borne out over the centuries. We do not find ourselves trying ever new things in the ways in which we form relationships; perhaps some do, but neither of our clades do. We keep our lives as a whole interesting, but we constantly refine our relationships.</p>
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<p>The Ode speaks of honing and forging, and so many of those who have uploaded and sought out entanglement have found themselves honing rather than forging. It is a search for the more perfect love. We speak constantly of “learning from our mistakes” and “doing better by them/ourselves”.</p>
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<p>This is no bad thing! We do this out of a desire to be better people in the ways that we are closest to others, which happen to be the ways most likely to hurt others. We shy away from trying new things with our relationships because that puts our view of ourselves as good people at risk.</p>
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<p>And so we look back on the relationships that we have formed, kept, lost, let slip away into so many years, and we remember the good times cautiously. We hunt for the things that went wrong, we see all of the places where we fucked up and we tear them apart as one might a hole in a piece of clothing: thread by thread. We pull a thread, inspect it, and hunt for the weak point that led to the hole forming in the first place. We think back on arguments and hunt for where we could have kept it from blossoming into a fight. We think back on missed expectations and wonder what we might have said. We think back on crossed boundaries and hunt for a sign pointing to the boundary that we simply overlooked.</p>
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<p>It is a fool’s errand and we are dumber than a bag of rocks for doing so, and yet we keep on doing so. It is so incredibly difficult to stop, is it not?</p>
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<p>And yet, as the Ode goes on to say, “To forge is to end and, and to own beginnings. To hone is to trade ends for perpetual perfection.” That perfection, it says, is “Perfecting singular arts to a cruel point.”</p>
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<p>The Ode is just a poem, it is no holy text — what was it Emerson said? The poet nails a symbol to a sense that was true for a moment but soon becomes false, while the mystic mistakes the singular for the universal?[^emerson] — but every poem is open to interpretation and analysis. The author of the Ode was not wrong. We shy away from those ends that hurt and any beginnings that might follow in favor of our dreams of perpetual perfection.</p>
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<p>This applies just as readily to romantic relationships as it does to familial ones. Ioan and I do this in our relationship just as much as ey does this when ey remembers Rareș. </p>
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</blockquote>
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</article>
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<footer>
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<p>Page generated on 2022-10-29</p>
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