The kickstarter for the next Post-Self book, Idumea Is now live! Come help bring the project to life:
Over 200% funded! I am really excited to see this coming to fruition. I am quite proud of what I managed with this, even if editing is going to be a bear for parts.
Art by @voksa
(CW: Talk of death and grief, including that of a beloved pet, below the cut. Short version: Potential new image to be included in the book)
“…There is performed grief and performative grief — performative in the philosophical sense. We of the tenth stanza were quite sad when Lagrange came back with us intact but not with Should We Forget. We received condolences from many, some flowers and many kind words. Ever Dream came over and spoke with me about grief as we sat out on the field, where she said, “It is quite sad, is it not? To lose someone you have known for so long is quite sad.” I agreed, and then drew a line around the topic.” She performed such a motion now, describing an arc before her with one of her well kept claws, before dismissing it with a wave. “This was grief performed.”
I nodded, and in my heart, I think I knew what was coming next, for I found my muscles bunching up as in in preparation for something — flight, perhaps? I do not know, my friends.
“And Warmth In Fire came over, too, so that it could sit at our table and weep rather than eat. Ey wept, and then asked to retreat, and we guided her up to Should We Forget’s room so that they could lay in her bed for a while in silence. When it came back downstairs, ey thanked us kindly and left, and when we went back upstairs to look, there was a flower wrought out of some subtly glowing metal left on Should We Forget’s pillow. It lays there still.”
“I remember that day,” I said. “I will admit that I only met Should We Forget a handful of times, and always mediated through Warmth, so I do not have the context for that grief, other than the fact that ey was left in pain for some time after the restoration.”
“That was performative grief,” The Woman said. “That was grief that, through its expression, was made real. Warmth In Fire’s grieving allowed us to grieve as well. Ever Dream and all of those who sent us flowers performed a grief that was only intellectual. I appreciate them for that, but I love Warmth In Fire for what ey gave us.”
I was surprised this afternoon by Yule, my partner and coauthor, coming to me as I sat on the beanbag in the living room and reading these words to me, words from Idumea that I had written some months ago. Ey came and read this segment on grief to me and, as the narrator says, I suspected that something was coming. After all, one year ago today, almost one year to the hour, my beloved Zephyr passed away. He rested his head on my lap, fell asleep, and then never woke again.
One week later, Yule and I drove to the vet to pick up his ashes and the paw-print cast in clay that they gave us.
I am sure that it is merely timing. I am sure that Voksa merely finished the image this day because this is the day that it was done. I am sure of many things, and although I am not sure of my views of fate, I am sure that I suspected something was coming, and then to be shown this — a sculpted flower — a bellflower with its intimations of never-to-be-seen-again — a skeletal, glowing thing — well, I am crying still.
We have now funded the hardcover version of the book and the book of fables, for which I am eternally grateful. Yule commissioned this not knowing the path that the book would take, simply as a thing that would bear meaning for us, for me as Rye and for em as Warmth In Fire, for us as partners, but I think it the only path forward that this image wind up in Idumea somewhere, too. Perhaps within the hardcover version? We will see, and I will keep you up to date.
Be kind to yourselves — as kind as you can be.