Madison Rye Progress

AwDaeHD

Patronfriends! Please enjoy a new chunk of Marsh:

I think this is one of the themes of the Cycle. [Spoilers] writes in [also spoilers], used as interludes in Mitzvot:

The grandest contribution offered by newborn immortality is the ever-living memories of the dead. Our lives become a ceaseless eulogy.

The danger in ceaseless memorialization is how close it lies to idolatry. To elevate the dead to such a status as false god (for what being that is limited to the imperfection of memory is not false?) is to ceaselessly perfect the imperfectable. And so the dead may live on in restless eternity, never knowing peace or the oblivion they so richly deserve.

There is no peace in eternal memory, no release in unending remembering. By our very act of knowing, of remembering, of denying our own deaths, the dead are left in limbo, for every idea’s opposite is the absence of that idea, and we can no longer grant them even that absence.

Reminded of one of my favorite short stories, A Minnow, or Perhaps a Colossal Squid. It was a huge influence for me, stylistically. A lot of the writing influenced the lost-speak that Odists are left with, and the dreaminess was something I learned from when writing various scenes in Nevi'im, particularly the epilogue.