Madison Rye Progress

Spoiler level: inconsequential — early Toledot

I Remember The Rattle Of Dry Grass:

I read this snippet of Neruda at a party for New Year's, 2399.

Let us unleash all our bottled up happiness
and seek out some lost sweetheart
who accepts a festive nibble.
It is today. Today has arrived. Let us walk on the rug
Of the inquiring millennium. The heart, the almond
of the mounting epoch, the definitive grape
will go on depositing themselves in us,
and truth — so long awaited — will arrive.

Dear, Also, The Tree That Was Felled:

This poem by Dickinson, as well as being a fond memory from the past, expresses my views on memory well.

There is a pain — so utter —
It swallows substance up —
Then covers the Abyss with Trance —
So Memory can step
Around — across — upon it —
As one within a Swoon —
Goes safely — where an open eye —
Would drop Him — Bone by Bone.

Dear The Wheat And Rye Under The Stars:

This is a newish translation by Eileen Cheng-Yin Chao of a poem by Xin Qiji.

少年不識愁滋味	In youth I knew nothing of the taste of sorrow
愛上層樓。	I liked to climb high towers
愛上層樓。	I liked to climb high towers
為賦新詞強說愁。	To conjure up a bit of sorrow to make new verse.
而今識盡愁滋味	Now I know only too well the taste of sorrow.
欲說還休。	I begin to speak yet pause
欲說還休。	I begin to speak yet pause
卻道天涼好個秋。	And say instead, “My, what a cool and lovely autumn.”

How lovely a depiction of growth!

May Then My Name Die With Me:

I found this ancient poem by a furry named Dwale titled Poem for a Deceased Lover. I was prowling through some furry literature at the time to send to a cousin of ours, Douglas Hadje, without telling him the source.

Seven days had passed when I heard you died,
A message in the warm morning hours. Dawn
Rose, and no one said how I should go on,
Or wade this mire without my only guide.

Flown to space by what callous earth destroyed,
I chase the long-flying radio waves.
Far away from grief and a potter's grave,
I sift to find again your breathing voice.

Teacher, my every thought was yours to thresh,
So now what sure course would you recommend?
Your kind words turned to shrapnel in the end,
Pieces of you left here in my heart's flesh.

Lover, did you mean to leave this deep wound?
I would sell my world to kiss you farewell.
Eleven years facing perpetual Hell,
And all I can say is, "Too soon, too soon."

I sent him the second stanza, and this was his reply:

Does this have to do with the launch? It certainly feels like! It feels like how even now my mind is chasing those radio waves that are coming from the LVs, now so far out of reach for any one of us that we can barely comprehend. But still, we keep on searching for those voices that come back to us ever slower. Did someone on the LVs leave you behind? Someone you love? Family? One of your forks? Basically, someone whose voice you keep on searching for. Or maybe they were one of the eight irretrievably lost personalities?

“Far away from grief and a potter’s grave” makes a lot of sense to me as someone who left Earth behind. I don’t know what it was like when you uploaded, but I can see it as a way to dream of some place better.

Spoiler level: none

Hold My Name Beneath Your Tongue And Know:

Given the circuitous path I have taken with my own identity and how long it took me to figure out just why that fit so well, and given the rolling of eyes that I received when I told my down-tree instance But The Dead Know Nothing, I think I ought to say that it is most certainly possible for others to know one better than one knows oneself, even if only on the level of a microcosm.

"I think I am transgender," I said, and she laughed in my face. She laughed!

"Oh, honey," she said. "I am quite pleased that you have caught up at last."

Spoiler level: inconsequential — Selected Letters

Beholden To The Heat Of The Lamps:

Some time after I was forked, back in systime 3 (2127), I entered into a relationship with my down-tree instance, Time Is A Finger Pointing At Itself. You must understand, however, that until perhaps systime 230 (2354), intraclade relationships were seen as taboo, at least on Lagrange — I know that attitudes on Pollux had loosened quite a bit. It was seen as subversive and distasteful, a sort of moral masturbation.

And yet, we loved each other. We were different people, were we not? From the moment I was forked and began to focus on my work as an audio tech, I was a different person. My values began to shift. My appearance began to shift. The way I spoke began to shift. I am not Pointillist. She is not Beholden. We are separate individuals, and we are in love.

Of course, we drifted closer together and further apart over the years, but we settled into a comfortable sort of domesticity and playfulness, and it was not until such taboo began to lift, being seen as artificial and particularly meaningless for older clades, that our relationship became more open, first among friends, and then out on the street, in the bars after a performance.

As for tips, I think my biggest would be that, yes, you share a common past, but do not assume that this means you know what the other is thinking. You may share values, memories, a general approach to life, but you do not read minds.

Time Is A Finger Pointing At Myself:

We stumbled into intimacy one evening when the bleary neon haze of a night out turned to giddy exploration. "How lewd~," she said at least a dozen times (Beholden was very much zooted by this point). All that bratty pomp and wily poise turned to heady laughter and mortifying sounds of joy. She was positively adorable. She still is, of course, except that she has hardened over the years and is now quite the bully if I do not feed her something nice before taking her out dancing.

Aromancy complicates my feelings about her — and my answer to this question — but there has always been this comradery between us about taboos. We both are irreverently indulgent in this respect, and have found a kind of reclamation in private profanity. When at last the tides had turned away from scorn, it was a privilege to kiss her paw in public; to give that one disdainful pair of eyes a wink, and to know in that moment we held more power over the bearer of that withering gaze than they held over us.

I hope that you and whoever you are thinking about in this moment have had the chance to open up in these recent decades. But there is more to this question than the intrinsic queerness of transgressive relationships such as ours. You also ask about the unique implications of loving a reflection of oneself. Cross-tree relationships may seem a little easier in this regard, but I have seen my share of those amidst my cocladists. Take Codrin's musings about Dear and Serene on Pollux or, more distantly, Heat And Warmth and Hold My Name, who I have seen my fair share of first-hand. Both of these pairs are particularly boisterous, especially as compared to Beholden and I, and rather often stumble into ephemeral disagreements.

Even as they do, however, there is an implicit understanding of nuance that is much harder to craft in conventional relationships. Dear and Serene solve their disputes with the grace of deeply-rooted trust, and Heat And Warmth and Hold My Name speak to each other with a kind of careful articulation that rather reminds me of the couple of times True Name has seen fit to admonish me over the centuries. We all are Odists, after all; it is difficult to say precisely what this feeling is, but the essence of it is that we do not have to work as hard to explain ourselves to one another. We all get it; so all that is left is to do is to perform getting it.

Even if you already understand, sometimes what you need is just to feel heard.

(Beholden is me, A Finger Pointing is my partner, @hamratza)

Spoiler level: medium consequential — Mitzvot

If I Dream, Am I No Longer Myself:

My whole stanza, based off of the first line, focuses specifically on people watching. I, and many others, would honestly call it spying. They have been contracted by several individuals to spy on various people of note on the System. On Lagrange, Loss For Images and Even While Awake watched Ioan Bălan and May Then My Name Die With Me for nearly a quarter of a century, forking microscopic instances of themselves and secreting them around the house.

My initial purpose was, in fact, to step away from this. My direct up-tree instance, If I Dream, forked when she began to have doubts about this supposed calling. While she never did work up the courage to disengage with this way of life (or perhaps she did, I have lost contact), I stepped away from the stanza to reconnect with the fourth stanza. They began by following creatives across the System before fucking off to do their own thing. I found that they did, indeed, largely just fuck off to do their own thing, and wanted little to do with me.

So that is what I have done, these last however many decades — is it nearly a century, now? I have sat in town squares and sipped my coffee as I watch the passers-by. I have sat in bars and drank countless terrible drinks, cheek resting on my fist as I stare into the mirror behind the bartender and observe my fellow patrons. I have gone to dinner, requested a corner table, and gazed out over the sea of diners.

I always do so alone.

I always wear a different shape.

I never speak.

I like it better this way, this observing. There is no goal, I just...see. I just watch. Posthumanity is wonderful and disgusting and funny and sad and kinky and uptight and I love each and every last person I have laid my eyes upon.