update from sparkleup

writing/post-self/idumea/full.html

@@ -183,7 +183,7 @@
 <p>&ldquo;That is delightful to hear,&rdquo; Her Therapist said. &ldquo;Can you tell me of this joy? I love to hear what it is that makes you happy.&rdquo;</p>
 <p>The Woman thought long on this. I would like to imagine she was turning her thoughts on jealousy and protectiveness over and over within her head, investigating them like some bauble, searching for cracks or imperfections, or simply admiring how the mirror-like surfaces never picked up her fingerprints. I think perhaps she was trying to derive the formulae that describe their shapes so that she could better understand them. I think, also, that she had to do her best to suppress a wince.</p>
 <p>&ldquo;Was it a complex sort of joy, End Of Endings?&rdquo;</p>
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 <p>She sipped her soy milk in an attempt to maintain control over herself, as sometimes all you need is a thing that you can do deliberately. &ldquo;It is, yes. It is a joy to see one&rsquo;s friends, is it not? To give energy and to receive in turn? We sat down at our favorite coffee shop and chatted about this and that. We talked of empty chairs at the table. We talked of moods and therapy. I believe– yes?&rdquo;</p>
 <p>Her therapist lowered her hand from where she had raised it. &ldquo;I do not know No Hesitation as well as I might, for which I feel some regret, but In Dreams confided with In Memory, and my down-tree confided in me that she had some fears that she had offended em. Given the structure of our stanza, I think it perhaps unwise that I know too much of that particular conversation until No Hesitation speaks to me emself.&rdquo;</p>
@@ -192,13 +192,11 @@
 <p>And so they did. It was not an unproductive therapy session, and perhaps Her Therapist was even right. The seventh stanza was as they were, yes? They were the types to go out for coffee together, to eat together, to live as neighbors. The Woman did not know whether Her Therapist lived among them, but at this point, she supposed that she must, should such a prohibition be warranted.</p>
 <p>And so they did! They talked of other things, and The Woman did wind up sharing more about her joy, but only in the small ways. She discussed the feeling of making treats for those around her, of storing a little bit of her joy in each — though I believe she left out her feelings on that meting of joy being a depleting — and the ways in which a service such as that which she provided for her own household is a goodness in its own right, is an active participation in joy.</p>
 <p>But all throughout, laying at her feet was an ember smoldering, a little cube with edges that could cut as quickly as they could burn, and though she was able to remain present for the remainder of her appointment, was able to remain human, was able to smile and bow to Her Therapist, The Woman was never wholly there, as all throughout, her gaze kept dropping to where at her feet lay an ember smoldering.</p>
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 <p>After therapy, after Her Therapist had left and the chairs had been set beneath the table once more, after a long moment spent standing in the grass with her head hung low, The Woman waved away her empty glass and trudged back to the house.</p>
 <p>There was a sense of falling-short within her, a sense of not meeting expectations. Perhaps it was a sense of shame that she had been so keen to hide this idea that she had happened upon, to keep the idea of the end of joy to herself. Perhaps it was because she had so easily let herself be talked out of sharing earnestly that which she would most liked to have discussed. Perhaps it was because — and here I am using words she herself would use — it was because she was a coward. Perhaps, when confronted with something that she believed to be worth talking about, to have such stopped before she could do so took the wind out of her sails, and she was too cowardly to do anything but let that happen. So many perhapses.</p>
 <p>It was with these thoughts and these feelings filling her mind to overfull that The Woman walked back to the house, back up the stairs to the porch, back through the door with a brush of the fingers, back up the staircase, back to her room where she stripped and climbed back into bed.</p>
 <p>There she slept, and perhaps there she dreamed.</p>
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 <p>The Woman is a professional in napping in a way that I am not. Perhaps it is the felinity in her, or perhaps it is that she is not so easily claimed by such compulsions as I have — graphomania! Hah! — which lead to such fervent activity. Were I a smarter skunk, I might say to myself: &ldquo;Rye, my dear, perhaps you can write your novels when you are caught in such throes, and spend the months between practicing the fine art of napping!&rdquo; But I am not a smart skunk. I am a simple beast who is single minded. I am an animal who does one thing and perhaps does it well. I do not know! I am perhaps too simple to disambiguate between doing a thing well and doing a lot of a thing.</p>
 <p>Ah, but perhaps this is why I interpret The Woman at being a professional napper.</p>
 <p>Either way, when she returned home and lay down, she immediately fell into a deep, deep slumber. It was a sleep of no dreams, nor perhaps even rest, but served well as a way to disconnect from contexts innumerable, to step away from the world unpleasant. She slept and slept and slept — and yet, she slept for only twenty minutes. Twenty minutes later, she opened her eyes and looked up to the ceiling, and spent another ten minutes picking out familiar patterns in the drywall texture beneath the paint. They were her familiar constellations. There! The fennec. There! The open hand. There! There! There! The swan and the cat and the light-footed opossum dancing around the maypole.</p>
@@ -886,11 +884,11 @@ that this must be the case.</p>
 <p><em>&ldquo;It is done.&rdquo;</em></p>
 <p>The Blue Fairy met The Woman at the foot of the steps of the house, that Gothic house on the field of grass and dandelions and perhaps clover. She stood, this wonderful and sad and amazing fairy at the base of the steps of the house and looked up to the door as The Woman stepped forth. With each step, The Woman changed. Every time her foot or paw hit the ground, she became a new thing. She was now The Woman who was The Human and she was now The Woman who was The Panther and she was now The Woman who was The Skunk, and always — <em>always</em> always always in all ways always — she was smiling and her smile was a blessing upon the whole of the world. Upon the house, upon the field of grass and dandelions and perhaps clover, upon The Blue Fairy upon, when she turned around, the remainder of her stanza who all stepped out onto the porch to watch her go.</p>
 <p>There, The Blue Fairy bowed. She bowed and held out her hand and let The Woman rest her hand her paw her paw her hand her paw her paw her hand within it to let herself be guided down to the field like some princess greeted by some royal courtier or perhaps a prince from a far away kingdom. There, The Blue Fairy basked in this blessing of a smile from The Woman, her cocladist from far, far across the clade, and led her gently from the field and to the city.</p>
-<p>My friends, my dear, <em>dear</em> friends, there was no door for her to brush her fingers against, no imagined <em>mezuzah</em> that she might touch for some final blessing, and — at last at last for cone at last — neither was there a sense of ritual nipping at her heels, following along like some eager puppy, for she knew now that she created her own blessings she created her own peace she created her own future.</p>
+<p>My friends, my dear, <em>dear</em> friends, there was no door for her to brush her fingers against, no imagined <em>mezuzah</em> that she might touch for some final blessing, and — at last at last for once at last — neither was there a sense of ritual nipping at her heels, following along like some eager puppy. There was no ritual, for she knew now that she created her <em>own</em> blessings she created her <em>own</em> peace she created her <em>own</em> future.</p>
 <p>There was no door.</p>
 <p>There was no door.</p>
 <p>There was no door.</p>
-<p>There was no door as they stepped through to the city and landed in the alleyway in which The Woman usually arrived. They, then, were briefly alone. They were alone in the cool shade of the buildings and the crispness of the air and the staticky sound of the fallen leaves skittering around their feet and feet and paws and paws and feet and paws and feet and paws and paws and–</p>
+<p>There was no door, no imagined <em>mezuzah,</em> as they stepped through to the city and landed in the alleyway in which The Woman usually arrived. They, then, were briefly alone. They were alone in the cool shade of the buildings and the crispness of the air and the staticky sound of the fallen leaves skittering around their feet and feet and paws and paws and feet and paws and feet and paws and paws and–</p>
 <p>They walked lightly and in silence as they stepped along the sidewalk and boarded the trolley to ride three stops, three stops, three stops to the coffee shop that The Woman and Her Friend always loved, and there was no one there — not a request but a felicity a chance a happenstance that befell them, that they stand there at the entrance to the coffee shop that The Woman and Her Friend always loved alone and surrounded by the quiet sounds of the breeze that wafted between the buildings and past doors and against skin against fur against fur against skin against skin against skin against fur against skin against–</p>
 <p>The Woman and The Blue Fairy stood before the coffeeshop on the sidewalk where there was a new thing, where there was a square cut into the paving stones on the sidewalk two meters on a side and a grate of steel or iron set into it with a sunburst pattern and, in the center, a circle of good, clean soil.</p>
 <p>There, The Woman turned a slow circle and smiled one final blessing on the world and faced at last The Blue Fairy, who would be the last person to be so blessed, and The Blue Fairy guided The Woman The Skunk The Panther The Woman The Woman The Woman The Woman down to her knees and knelt with her and reached up and brushed her hair her mane her forehead her hair her mane her forehead, and leaned in to place a gentle kiss atop her head, and then The Woman nodded, and then The Blue Fairy stood and, crying, signaled to the System The Dreamer our superlative friend our personal <em>HaShem</em> that all was as it should be and that all should proceed as it ought and then, there, at last, finally, without further action, she watched.</p>