Words and Text

Dear Livejournal - I hate to do revision so much, I think a page of writing is written with so much fervor and intensity and persistent joy that it seems a cruel prank is played when spellings are spelled in error or sentences do what they like to do and run on and on signifying nothing. Saying everything, the fragments. It's a joy to write things, to have ideas and put them down, to work at it and make something. But it's the punitive cruelty of the imperfect world that lets you look at your works and shudder, despairing - did I do that? And so poorly as well? Editing and revising are the corkscrew in the guts that make the whole enterprise seem an enterprise and not a pure, transcendental good. Which is to say, I think I should edit and I think I should revise, but instead I write new chapters to tack onto written books to make those books better. More is better, that's what I've always heard. You could punch Liberace in the face and he'd quip about enough being a good way to cry to the bank. And then I'd write another chapter and not want to cross out another word or revisit any one sentence that I hastily scrawled while reaching for the one that's supposed to come after it.

Anyhow- instead of fixing what I've done I wrote more, it's foolish breaking the car halfway, you might as well drive it into the ocean.

Since under their robes they all dressed according to their rank. Alstacia, always in a dress her left arm are beyond the elbow, Billings in his sleeveless jacket, his vest, with brass & horn buttons and is high collar fastened with a jeweled brass link on his cuffs, both of his shirt and trousers. Evin, without much wealth behind him attempted the same mode, but substituted wood for brass, ribbon in place of jeweled links. Wallace remained conspicuous by his inattention to convention. No vest, no jacket, only in shirtsleeves, barely held in place by loose applications of a silver chain- a finer thing that the ribbon it proxied for but not so gaudy as the jeweled clasps then of the mode. Gilys a Zunman, the inmost of the outland peoples followed the Weish mode but with affectations surely drawn from the Pinepath. Tall boots in place shoes, braided cord for ribbon and a jewel for each finger of the left hand. Like the other men he wore no sleeves, but that fashion extended a well to his shirt – so he went bare-armed and said “It’s for my betters to wear their sleeves.” A nostalgic affect of a more marital age.

“It seems, gathered as we are, whether by artifice or circumstance…”

“Just that though. Let’s speak about that.”

“About how rude your interruptions are or how commonplace they’ve become Wallace?”

“About how it is we’ve come to be…” He grasped for a word.

“Friends old boy, we’re friends.”

“You see I’ve learned interruption from Billings! No blame can find me.”

“So you wonder why we are friends? Can that be the matter really?”

“But I do wonder about it Alstacia! Are we friends by design or circumstance?”

“Well, I’m sure you shouldn’t ask me. Why would you? And besides, what would you even mean by design? Have we been predestined or are you not speaking metaphysically?”

“Right – is it in the Weaver’s purview.”

“It would be Carver’s prevue and… Well, there is some contradiction.”

“Do tell.”

“Very well – yes the weaver orders matter. All of it. The Carver has created all of the people. This is the ordinal doctrine, not, neccisarrily my opinion you understand, but it is the orthodoxy. The Carver creates people. I take this to be metaphor, most do.”

“Right, he made women too!”

“Billings… Yes, he made women too, literally carved them f rom the various grades of metal, if you’re inclined to believe that, or we can look at the doctrine as it’s intended.”

“Some are gold, some are silver, brass…”

“Exactly, down to tin and iron. The Carver makes his mark on all the metals, establishing the orders of the Imperial hierarchy. As I said, it is taken as metaphor. None of us, I assume, believe that Kannyl Saris is made of gold.”

“Oh, well I think he might be at that!”

“You make my point for me, metaphor.”

“So what about the Weaver, if he’s made everything?”

“Does it occur to you two, born and raised at Wei that you should not have gotten your church schooling done so late in life, and that perhaps, you should not have to beg this information from a provincial lay-person? The Ernangiley gives his benediction every month in your own parlor, so to speak.”

“Ah, have you been up the Hill of Walls on that day? We at least, among the Dascii faithful, know what we don’t know.”

“True, that is refreshing. Very well, let Gleameyes light your path. The issue before us is, how are we friends? The Carver made us of similar stuff, so we’ve a close social standing, that allows friendship.”

“What about, what about – how can we even be friends?”

“You’re asking about the circumstances of our acquaintance.”

“Yes, consider the movements of the substances that have coincided to bring about this arrangement.”

“Right, we’d not know one another if there were not the school, or the Empire, or if I was born a boy, or you were born women and so forth.”

“You grasp it easily enough.”

“Well, certainly, the vagaries of fortune are a matter for much speculation. In the Church, the Weaver is both space and time – it is everything which is or was or ever will be – so what is to come – in some way – already exists. What is speculative is not material and exists outside of time – so it is not the dominion of the Weaver.”

“In this, I have an insight. The metaphysicians speak sometimes of Dragon – by which they mean River. It is meant that we be like Dragon – because we are best when we follow the path we are given. But we are capable to break the path and go our own way. They say that to do that is destructive.”

“A river breaches its banks, yes, but it doesn’t choose to Gilys.”

“There is more, it addresses what you say, but it does not interest me much – I don’t know it all.”

“There is a story, older than the Church, they tell it in Gleameyes. It is said you can be a Valley or a Rider… It may just be some kind of metaphor for something relevant once. Perhaps it refers to the Talanrin…”

“Well no one else is from Gleameyes dear Alstacia, so it falls to you to tell this story.”

“Very well. Attempt to be attentive and I will do my best to be faithful to the story. The Valley – they would say the Vallies. They are content to follow the valley’s contours. For some reason this is seen as feminine. One would not say it to a man to insult him, you understand, it’s a sense of a personal nature that is not reproachable, but not in one’s control. Just as the female construction? Well the masculine side, and there are many connotations of virility involved – they are Riders – who go uphill- against the natural forces. They say the Riders -well they always said my Father was a Valley, becaue of his cheer and demeanor, his a Valley – which… which is something I don’t think I can match to a Weish idiom.”

“He would be Pernicious Boy?”

“Oh, certainly not as lewd as that one, but perhaps. Anyway they called my uncle a Rider because to him everything is a challenge to overcome, some battle to wage – the Riders love conflict, the Vallies do not.”

“Not much of a story.”

“Well there is a story behind it… I can think of it but not now. I’d have to look into it again.”

“I know the story.”

“Evinder! Do you really?”

“Shall I tell you?”

“I would not presume to tell you otherwise dear Evin.”

The Rider and The Valley

Here is a tale, ancient of days, of how the rustling veldt of the Grassocean came into the dominion of the Empire of Klial though none now living must ask how that arrangement has become the greatest article of beneficence to be visited upon all parties.
In those days the river called Music was no larger than it is today, a wideish stream that tumbles pleasingly through the southern plains. Here and there it changes its course just enough that it springs up from its bed and falls down into a lower clime and then only enough to provide no special danger, for its cataracts are few and gentle – though they do produce the pleasing rhythmic affectation that grants the merry little river its name. But in those days the river Music was one of the Empire’s principal frontiers. Men said of their fellows “He has crossed the Music.” Indicating that such a fellow had run astray of the law, or had abandoned his assigned vocation.

Across the River lay the lush and rolling prairies of the little people called the Empili. They were few in number but wandered far. They built for themselves no cities or towns and they followed only one road through the Grass Ocean, a secret road that they alone could see. This road they would follow throughout their days. They would guide their kine along its paths, and everywhere observe their secret rites at the stations of this road, for the little Empili are vast in spirit and piety is their most singular pursuit. Their road is a long one and it followed many turns and twists until; at last they had come upon the River Music, at a long interval in their journey.

Because of their circuitous path through the Grass Ocean none then living in the Empire had known of the Empili or their journey, and they took the neighborly visit of these little horsemen to the frontier to be a dangerous affront. “Why?” They asked one another in the little villages across the river, “Should all these riders come upon us all at once? And only look at them to see that they have clothes of woven grass, they ride without saddles, why they are a whole country of starvelings upon our doorstep!” Well this alarmed those who had built the little villages upon the Music, for they felt their faces to danger and no steadying hand of the Empire at their back, for they lived so far from the reach of Klial that they thought of themselves as being halfway strangers themselves. This was, a long time ago, after all.
Now the villagers all along the Music had from time to time spotted the pleasing grasses on the other side of the river and had wanted to find forage for their own kine. Thus they made their efforts and performed that most sacred of the duties of the Klialis and they built bridges. In ancient days no symbol of Klial carried so much meaning as the Bridge, for it is by the bridge that all lands are joined, all languages become one and all people are made brothers. The greatest of the bridges that were built was called the Perfume Bridge because from across this bridge were brought the pleasing incenses from the Grass Ocean which in turn caused the little town by the bridge to be called Perfume as well. A pretty little town of clever people, industrious and good in the best traditions of the Empire, Perfume was a lonely little city too – far from the Rinkannyl of Amberroad to whom their protection was charged.
Nevertheless the people of Perfume town on the banks of the River Music were Klialis, people of the Empire and had some recourse, even without the material assistance of the Empire’s heartland they had the heart of the Empire within them, so to speak, which is to say that they dreamed enough the Golden Dream that they had it in their minds to mount men on horseback and to train them with the sabre and the spear. So the eldest families of Perfume town became its Rinkannyls and their people became their Talanrin. For a generation these forged lords and soldiers stood at the ready upon the bridge, standing a strident guard that nevertheless was porous enough a sentry that the inevitable conjunction of peoples began to occur. There were those among the Empili who developed Imperial appearances, and whose parents would go on to build their own shacks upon the river’s further bank, as well as those in Perfume town who took on the wilder, wizened look of the bowlegged Empili – but this mingling far from ensuring peace, only led to a startling rivalry – so that the town became composed of the one side, lordly and putting on the airs of those who merely pretend to the Highblood’s dominion. Meantime the poorer Empili upon the farther bank grew resentful and restive. They’d been bought and sold as often as hired and whipped as chattel as often as compensated, and so they very soon came to regard the Empire as wicked. And the Empire looked back at them and saw nothing worth having.
In the midst of this rising tension there were matches and glass shards and burrs to be scattered in plenty. The main source of all the troubles were the unencompassed ranks of the further Empili riders, those who lagged behind their cousins by a generation or two. These latecomers found upon the banks of the Music a betrayal of all their sacred mores and they reacted with swift aggression – burning down the poorer half of Perfume town and charging their horses over the bridge, which they regarded as profane, to put to torch much of the old town as well. The town half destroyed they retreated to the plains and with them they took captives.
Now on the bridge were two soldiers, one was called Rider, in the rude form, his father was a debased Empili – of their untouchable caste, he had nevertheless secured a Kliali bride by force of arms or cunning – no happy marriage, it was still fruitful, and Rider’s clan was burgeoning, he himself, the poorly begotten scion of that line. The other soldier, for only two survived the attack, was born to the Kliali side, and his father was of the family of the first founders, a martial man and one of means, his forebears had taken the land on the Music when Gleameyes first gasped air and was created a province of the Empire. This man, the father, he’d had a fondness for the Empili, it is said, stoked by his fostering nurse, and so he took an Empili wife, who wore her gowns and wrote her sham genealogies and took the place name Perfumebridge. Their son they named Vallie – for no reason that anyone could say.
Rider and Vallie survived the attack and being alone the lone guards of Perfume town, they took to the Grassocean to collect their captives back. Their journeys, well.

Their journeys are the longest part of the story, they are confusing and have many elements of fantasy.

“Well then you must tell us about them!” Alstacia demanded, hiding her unseemly grin behind the back of her hand, curled so her fingers stroked her wrist.

“I prefer not to. It’s late, and I don’t like talking this much.”

“Late!” Wallace, jumped to his feet, really jumped and with a certain clumsy dash. “From this one! Who stayed up till he collapsed! We found you sleeping on the stairs old boy!”

“Once, not again! But, listen, I really do prefer not to speak so long, my throat is burning just from this.”

“Tell us a little more…”

“Please!” The whole convocation at once, mock pleading but eager to be humored, for it happened that though he spoke little, Evinder did speak well and with a fine gravity that gave mood to the story that fit it somehow.”

“Well…” Evin began, closing his eyes tightly, and then opening them as he resumed. “There is a story that Rider, after sleeping on a horse grave found a spearhead of ancient artifice, forged by no man’s hand which could call forth the waters and pierce the world deeply enough to fashion a river. It is said that Vallie was taken by the Empili and that they cut him to be a woman, that’s the phrase that’s used, they castrated him, ritualistically, so that he could be a woman and carry out the magical rites of the Empili women on their behalf. There’s more, but I knew you’d laugh so it’s best left there.”
“Well what’ the point of the story then?”

“Oh, that Rider and Vallie somehow saved the world. There was a comet in the sky, what the ancients called a shield in the heavens that threatened for a season, and that during that time the secret highways of the world were illuminated. It is said that they followed one of these highways to the center of the Gleaming Plain where there is a deep cave and in the cave there’s a dismembered King, the King under the Earth. He’s supposedly been cut to pieces and he somehow tied himself back together with a golden rope. The meaning of the story is not certain at all, but the idea is that this golden rope, it was stolen and Mundus, the world, was imperiled – that the world would have broken apart at its seams – where the secret highways were, and they saved the world by some interaction of their temperaments. Vallie was made a woman, so he had a care for the wounds of the earth, and Rider was made, somehow, more of a man, by the spearhead – that’s an obvious image, and I knew you’d laugh – but that is the story – the idea is that the woman and man, that they have essential qualities – I understand this is very close to the indigenous faith of the Empili – a totemic man and a totemic woman, that they somehow, by their interaction keep the world in order. To me what is really interesting about this story is that it is not at all clear, in any of our formative sources from the time, that Man and Woman were considered in the same way that we think of them now – as opposites. It’s quite difficult to parse, since thinking about this now, while our usage is so narrowly defined by masculine and feminine, prevents us from coherently understanding the nature of the ancient systems. The reason – I should say Alstacia – that I know about this, is because of the Man and Woman sigil.”
“What about them Evinder? I am sure you didn’t learn this story in the School for Memory, I’ve been in every lecture there – this story isn’t told on any of the hills of Wei”
“Except this one!”
“Well. It seemed to me that the signs, the sigils for Man and Woman would be as elemental as the… well the Elements – and so I tried to find a record so I could create them. It happens that there seem to be no such signs. There are an abundance of sigils that mean the roles a person can take on, but no distinction is made between male and female. That’s interesting isn’t it?”
The group found it very interesting, or rather Alstacia and Evinder and Gilys found it interesting and spoke about it well past dawn while Wallace and Billings did their very best not to laugh or fall asleep. And that was all that was said thereafter between us of any of the legendry of the Gleamingplain or Grassocean.