update from sparkleup

writing/post-self/idumea/001.html

@@ -36,7 +36,7 @@
 <p>She was whole because she maintained — even while overflowing, I think! — so many deeply held convictions that those around her need not suffer, even if she herself did. Especially, she would say, because she herself did.</p>
 <p>I think that she would say, however, that she was <em>too</em> whole. I think she would say that she was <em>too</em> full, too much, too alive. I think she would say that almost three hundred years of a life that was lived as hers was, with her mind turned in on itself, was too much life. I think she would laugh that hoarse, dry laugh that always sounded like tears were on the way, and say that thirty years was probably too much for her.</p>
 <hr />
-<p>&ldquo;I wish,&rdquo; The Woman said some decades after Michelle Hadje uploaded, after she became End Of Endings of the Ode clade, of the tenth stanza, &ldquo;I wish I could unbecome.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I wish,&rdquo; The Woman said some decades after Michelle Hadje/Sasha uploaded, after she became End Of Endings of the Ode clade, of the tenth stanza, &ldquo;I wish I could unbecome.&rdquo;</p>
 <p>Her Friend frowned and replied, &ldquo;Do you mean you wish you could die?&rdquo;</p>
 <p>&ldquo;No, I specifically do not mean that.&rdquo;</p>
 <p>&ldquo;What do you mean by &lsquo;unbecome&rsquo;, then?&rdquo;</p>
@@ -49,7 +49,7 @@
 <p>&ldquo;Is there a time when you will, then?&rdquo;</p>
 <p>&ldquo;I think so, just not quite yet.&rdquo;</p>
 <hr />
-<p>Every few years, there would be a gathering on her birthday — their birthday, for Her Friend was also of the Ode clade, also of Michelle Hadje — and they would sit somewhere, whether it was out on the porch of the home The Woman shared with the rest of the tenth stanza, or out on the dandelion-speckled lawn, or, once the door had been built into the house, on rickety chairs outside a cafe over identical coffees.</p>
+<p>Every few years, there would be a gathering on her birthday — their birthday, for Her Friend was also of the Ode clade, also of Michelle Hadje/Sasha — and they would sit somewhere, whether it was out on the porch of the home The Woman shared with the rest of the tenth stanza, or out on the dandelion-speckled lawn, or, once the door had been built into the house, on rickety chairs outside a cafe over identical coffees.</p>
 <p>Every time they would meet up thus, The Woman and Her Friend would take a few minutes to themselves to have the same conversation:</p>
 <p>Her Friend would ask, &ldquo;Have you figured out what unbecoming looks like yet, my dear?&rdquo;</p>
 <p>&ldquo;Not yet,&rdquo; The Woman would say. &ldquo;Not yet.&rdquo;</p>
@@ -63,7 +63,15 @@
 <p>Some of them shared rooms, you see, but mostly, they kept to themselves. They lived together in that big Gothic house plopped right down in the middle of a prairie of green grass and yellow dandelions, out where the stoop stepped down directly into the grass, but I say &lsquo;lived together&rsquo; in a very mechanical sense. They never shared meals intentionally, nor even spoke all that often to each other. It is just that, sometimes, they would all find themselves at table at the same time!</p>
 <p>So the only difference between parties and those days when they all found themselves eating together was mostly that this time, they actually <em>meant</em> to, and these were the days when, most often, more than one of them would invite over a friend or a guest.</p>
 <p>The Woman invites Her Friend over more than any of the other members of the tenth stanza invite others over, except perhaps back when Should We Forget was alive, and Warmth In Fire would come by to give her little gifts and toys, little trinkets and special snacks that she would divvy up and share with the rest of the stanza in little unlabeled envelopes.</p>
-<p>But Should We Forget was no longer alive, not since the world turned in on itself and eaten so many of those who lived within, and now that meant that The Woman, out of all of those who lived together, there on the field, brought over company most often.</p>
+<p>But Should We Forget was no longer alive, not since the world had turned in on itself and had eaten so many of those who lived within, and now that meant that The Woman, out of all of those who lived together, there on the field, brought over company most often.</p>
+<hr />
+<p>When Michelle/Sasha had quit, there on a field so similar to the one that she lived on, The Woman breathed out a sigh of relief, because she knew — though I do not think she know how — that Michelle/Sasha had found her own relief in those last moments. She had looked up to the sky, up to the Poet, up to the Dreamer who dreamed the world in which they lived, and in those moments she knew relief. She knew relief and she knew joy and she knew so, so much peace.</p>
+<p>Peace! That was one of the things that The Woman craved. She wanted nothing more than to know a little bit of peace.</p>
+<p>No rituals.</p>
+<p>No overflowing.</p>
+<p>None of this shifting of form that would strike unawares, for there she would be, sitting as pretty as could be, just this woman, just this short, round woman with a round, pale face and curly, black hair, and then with a cry or with a whimper or with a sigh of defeat, her very form would shift from beneath her. Her conception of herself would slip from her grasp and she would cease to be The Woman and instead be The Skunk or The Panther. It was always one of those three, for some days, she would be happily The Panther, and then a bee would land on her nose and tickle her whiskers and she would sneeze herself into a skunk.</p>
+<p>I think it was cute sometimes, and I think she would say the same. I think she would say, &ldquo;Oh! Oh! Look at that!&rdquo; and then she would set to work brushing her tail. After all, what else is one to do if they found themselves to be in possession of such caudal beauty as is a skunk?</p>
+<p>This is why The Woman had so much trouble with clothing, you see. She would try to look deep within herself at her moods to see what it is that she felt and how it was that the day might go and she might come up with a pretty skirt that felt good on her legs and a lovely shirt she liked the look of, but then, some time later, the shirt would be puffy with fur and the skirt would not sit right with her tail.</p>
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                 <p>Page generated on 2024-02-14</p>