I'd like to see you try and stop me

What It's Like

Mon, 27 Feb 2023 16:30:16 GMT

Start at the start, in this concept this is the first one, I don't know if it will come up often or rarely. The idea is one that I don't really think I had. I feel I'd been doing this & trying to do it for a long time & that this expression is what came to me, the form & the possibility afforded by...

Excel of all things, smug bastard, I bet it autocorrects to capitalize its own name. Smug bastard that runs the world. My first encounter was at Uof A's computer lab where I helped guys print. It's uncanny to me that that job was the foundation of my entire career out of college.

Which of course I could write a whole book about. I knew this would come up and here it has, I wonder if I'll iterate on it then.

Which is recursive to the project - which I think is to try to coherently idiomat-ize the atomic elements of character that I think can be expressed as a kind of nomenclature for social participation. I.e.: expressed identity is a plastic accumulation of performances absorbed through enculturation & that there is a self-reinforcing , or recursive loop that reproduces social identities & then consumes them which may be consequent of

Because the format grants the process the medium is the message, the medium itself invents, but some word for invents that's more insistent, discovers? The method of organizing thought, which strongly implies to me

That what Burroughs via Lori Anderson I'd been informed: Which is that language is a virus (which I hear with that blaring synth and think I should put on some music or is it too distracting or is there a person from Porlock? I had one of those of my own, this girl named Jen who I met through my band Fuckbeast - which was tumultuous. She had a nerdy beauty that I enjoyed and was sexually compatible with me. I had an interest in trying to have a relationship & was attempting to form one - but she crossed some boundaries & was disrespectful of my time & attention albeit obliviously so as she seemed to have become overwhelmed with ardor, I guess is most polite, but it was still transgressive & I felt no obligation to correct her, nor to continue acquainting with her. I'd think of that situation often as a real missed opportunity or is it? scenario, where I can't determine if I was manifesting authentic self respect or out of some arch posturing, a relic of my high-attaining late adolescence.

Which I always feel very little shame about. All things considered. I still cringe when I hear I hear irregardless spoken & even just regardless is a reminder of Megan Spagnolo's Scorn, which was an early & possibly defining kind of shame But consider johnny come lately's to the leftern side of the liberals, them who called down wars with GB2 & had transgressive racial contrivances borne of the suburb. Once I wouldn't have doubted my use of Borne or Bourn or Born or some fourth thing but I think I'm less a reader of books now & more a reader of the internet where grammar has evolved into a pictoglyphic system, such that the misuse & the specific transgression in the transposition of There, They're & Their each contextually suggests a different unique voice and character that I believe we can each distinguish - so respective to its us misuse in a sentence Their (I'm to going to list a lot of examples, if you get it you get it) by ascribing it to possession you can conjure an image of an impish little kid, maybe big for his age struggling with self-childhood who may pompously choose to use the apostrophe because it seems fancier so it suggests ownership and then that kid feeling a little shame at being corrected later but improving, a person so confident of their future they didn't even consider it a possibility, as anything at all to concern oneself with. (How should I footnote a good note about a thought i had about confidence & happiness & the future?) But you identify with that kid maybe as fact maybe as an imagined reality you can conjure = so then you can see that story in the expression of They're so that this is an image that the They're in this context evokes & in that sense is a pictogram that tells a story.

I'm indifferent to the preposterousness of this project & I imagine a fair few dead-ends returning to this, the fist section of work which effectively represents a manifesto on the project - in the sense of a manifest: here are the contents, familial trauma, the experience of age, financial hardship, workplace antagonism, difficulty growing up. Okay. But containing those things factually but also a manifesto as in: here's what's up, I think I can unwind thoughts to a sufficient ly narrow gauge that I can record them into the discrete cells of an excel table, and that by separating out individual paragraphs or trains of thought I could create a self-explanatory autobiography corresponding to my experience of living this life now & reflecting upon my experience of life as a consequence of my personal history which is something that I use as a tool to unravel my experience in... unravel? I just go with dissect, my experience in late capitalism as I speculate upon what archetypal qualities I've proved to have demonstrated and to divine how others interpret my social projections now as opposed to at other times when I feel it was more straightforward to interpret a person's 'whole deal' & to see if I can figure out where the points of divergence are between the people of my cohort as effectively, double-slit style logical distinctions based on each cultural experience - because with a small cohort the self-selection narrows it down to the point of being descriptive: E.g.: My Brother and Ihave the same attitude about Star Wars but I'm more immersed so he contextually experiences other star wars enthusiasts that he meets to be more or less like me or him when selected by that tag & that tag is one of the discriminators that helps my brother relate to others based on some ur-experiences that we reassert to one another, reaffirm as our bond & review the state of the matter the matter itself - that is, because the experience of the - ur memory is shared & reinforced at holidays :'Make Jere & Sam show off star wars trivia!" it's relationship to us is a gauge whish sets the status of the thing itself.

E.g.: when I told him at Christmas that I didn't like Star Wars anymore, after Attack of the Clones, and when I raved to him about Andor. Meanwhile if he talks to me about football or basketball its with a bit of surprise that i know their rules - so he is... Okay. This will have to be expressed by the work and the medium or this will simply be a failure. But this is the manifesto - the self performed as expression of atomized cultural traits arranged upon the exterior like a cuttlefish adorning itself, and these identities consume & reproduce within a biome.

Which is long and arbitrary & will probably be frustrating. I hope that this can last long enough to bear fruitful results. I hope I can accomplish something meritorious. It's my dream. This is the first tenth column, which arbitrarily is the cutoff point, you won't understand this this time, well, the first time, but then you'll have a different relationship to it when it comes up again. Am I just explaining video games? This column J, the tenth one & I have a little Gandalf feeling about J when I see it, and also 3:15 - I am those and those mean me. My things that mean me. So I think ten sections, verses? Is good.

Second Entry

My uncle died the other day and I'm much sadder about it than I thought I'd be. I knew I'd be bummed but I was tearfully calling my kid about it. I think that my aunt died last year, last January - and that that is still too hard for me to talk about, still too much I miss her so. And then next year her younger brother. They fall like dominos t feels like, that generation, the first one - in America & really with the surname. That’s the relic, I think about my surname & how my brother and sister and i have only daughters, a fine thing we were & doomed... But the distinctions between us made my generation too diffuse - geography & age kept us from being peers - so the coherent center of the family as an identity - they're falling & the dynamics between them are fracturing & breaking down. We as a kin-group are disintegrating. Mainly I think because of

Peculiarities within the unique spectrum of the immigrant experience which I argue a certain sort of first generation person becomes aware of the distinguishing characteristic of personal identity because they are so loosely joined & arbitrarily associated some of them may, like me have the experience of being hyperaware of cultural preferences such that you observe not just their presence but perceive the convolutions of that presence expressed through time & that this course is recursive, so that idioms that arise go from being purely descriptive to being a commodity with a prescriptive element that is explicitly status-affirming.

And part of that isolation is in all of our experience of Sam's passing. I'm surprised that I cried so much when I heard. Not because I wasn't sorrowful but because I'd experienced him in my life as a curious presence who I knew mostly from my parent's descriptions rather than personal interaction - so we weren't explaining ourselves to each other - kind of close but we were keeping up with each other & shaking hands & hugging at holidays. I felt a connection to him that was unique to me & he must have reciprocated.

The uniqueness of the experience is something I feel a need to reconstruct and articulate because I feel the emotion acutely & it illuminates the interior structure that bears these griefs. Under the disappointment component of grief , where death is felt like a personal loss, like a theft. That emotion as the sequence of my fallen elders occurring 'in order' ... I will cry... Because I see them passing out of things I am again illuminated by grief & see that the trail of a person's life as it weaves into your own orbit is instructive of your own identity's formation but that it precedes it by an average & intuitively understandable unit, the generation, and that the progress of these is understood to be reproductive & recursively defined by culture... Here I hope that I have expressed a mental state so exhaustively that it can be experienced by merely reading it. I feel many things about the meaning of it. I mourn my uncle and the passing of his generation. They taught me the basic methods of mythologizing my own experiences & coming to a contemplative state of introspection that if organized & expressed in discrete, memetic elements in a rearranged pattern, in a chaotic pattern, if you will, if those were continuously recreated in a conversational expression, if I could RNG my own defining conscious experience I could create a time-bounded expression that would alter through the course of its creation. So that it could recursively comment upon itself. I realize just now that I've invented Livejournal. I should post this there. Kick the dust off. It's crass that I'm mingling the mention of my uncle's precipitating demise with the vanity & ambition intrinsic to writing projects - but it's truthful to disclose & as of yet, I've not turned to the solemn bit of exposition & as well I have wept genuinely over the man's passing and only thinking of him made me want to write something. Something that could articulate the actual experience of the loss by explaining the particulars of it as loss by understanding memory & merging the experience of memory as a sequential epochal story. Your own story contains all the people you know within it as characters and as they depart the story... You see I tastelessly equate his existence and it's power over so many with a story. It is millions of stories & I am motivated to explain how the myriad human experiences are experienced as stories. I think that narrative derives from the experience of entropy, that the passage of time is irrevocable & that all that is must pass away but not before reproducing itself. I think that minor cultural identities are further distinguished - e.g.: I Had an Egyptian Uncle, he was my Father's sibling & the second oldest after my father. I'm not the only person who fulfills these parameters. I add names & the distinction narrows yet further, you see you can theorize, possibly because of Excel, that there are narrower and narrower distinctions that can be made until the entire account of all those memories can articulate the sum experience of having known, loved & lost an elder. I think that the value in this is in part, part of the project's prelude. A relevant place to start because the specific elements of the experience are distinct in my heart - because understanding those experiences was part of my growing to understand a method of, and desire to, attempt to fully express an experience.

My Uncle Sam was really Sa'ad. His influence upon my life began wherever in the past he and my father formed their relationship. I remember remembering, as in a reverie, sitting in living room on Daventree, sometime in the 80's, maybe looking through photo albums, but remembering distinctly, the experience of living at Seven Hills, the big window with the BB gun hole, the linoleum pattern kitchen, the deep, recessed cavern-like tv room - the train themed little boy's room & where the buffet was set against the couch dividing the rooms my father & his brother played chess until I had to be taken to bed. I was small, and. You see, I have this memory & it is credible, it is real. I reaffirm its truth when I speak with it's other participants. My mother would recollect this scene. She alone. We're ever fewer, those who reaffirm our stories. I think I'm compelled to put this down because I feel the loss of the older generation as something unique & precious that had a life of its own & which is fading now. My father preceded my aunt who preceded my uncle. The three of them had vivid recollections of 'The Village' the remote little enclave where our family started out. Their grandfather is who our family is named for, every one of my cousins has our grandfather's name for a middle name - girls too. There's such a narrow band of us - such a close section that the specificity of our experiences when focused in grief, the grief illuminates the underlying experiences it's like an x-ray and I see the bones in my family members, I see the serial numbers, what makes us unique to each other - the narrowest, most miniature component of 'othering' that there is, and then to define such an element with a distinctive name - even if that name is an entire paragraph. The name would fit in an excel cell. IN this way I can jumble the discrete thoughts that contribute to one another, creating the interior experience through a vivid enough narrative that the reader would feel the experience exactly as I do. As a way of honoring his passing, their passing and to be a little defiant, at least, toward death. These experiences, these kinds of live & the sensation of having it, its' context & reality - these can be transmitted through time & can defeat death. This is the most basic intention, the most valid one. To avenge ourselves against death, to attempt with all our hearts of overcome it through the accumulation of knowledge ability & imagination.

It's hard to know how much of my own immediate experience it's worth noting. My experience today was that I woke up very late & relaxed for a long time with Skyrim, and then went for a long walk. I made myself coffee in the morning in my French press as is my custom. I buy beans from the coop up the block, grind them in the morning, I've come to enjoy the ritual but over the winter I craved for coffee so frequently that I thought about getting a drip machine. But I make myself that coffee & then kind of idle. In more prosperous times I'd likely be more active. I tell myself this & have a plan to be more prosperous, but at the moment my horizons are a little narrower, and as well- I really do like my house & neighborhood so staying around them & being a puttering idler with creative outlets is effectively my win condition. But it was sunny. I saw looking out the window to watch for the cats I like. I got motivated & got to stepping. I realized that sometimes these walks, they're meditative - actually most often they are. I've been in this habit for a while now & it's been fantastically effective at absorbing experiences, experiencing emotions without having to perform them. It's personally quite helpful. Other times it's more exploratory, usually with the season's change. I'm often sending my people pictures then, I'm very interested in nature & ecology. Today was meditative. I thought about the nature of story and how I've said & am coming to seriously believe, that consciousness really is the self narrating its experiences, thus creating a miracle by translating emotion into word & so doing creating a story. The quality of these stories varies by the subject, the teller & the willingness to make the effort. The brain is big, demanding, the mouth has less bandwidth - somewhere between the front of the brain where concepts are clearly bounded & comprehended & the mouth where they're expressed, the mind truncates them, shortens them down to the necessary details. This in turn informs our understanding of the teller - their seriousness, their attachment, their stake, as it were. But I think, well, about this many things - It's the intent of the whole work to express them all, but here I mean only to say, the quality of the storytelling in creating this narration matters & that I believe one's facility with reformulating experiences in a well articulated way can lend them poignancy - leading to a variety of consequences that I'm not sure have been well described elsewhere.

Some time after he'd moved to Texas Sam got married to Donna. I always understood their relationship to have passion & tumult - a Taylor/Burton style thing. I believe they divorced and remarried. He lived in Texas & my sister had a good relationship with them. She was part of their wedding & was always welcome to their house. I sometimes don't remember that my next eldest cousin (who comes in after all my siblings) is Sam's daughter. She's an exceptional person, her husband & children, together they're remarkable & lovely they elevate every event I've attended with them. I'm having a hard time imagining them sad, just doing so, it's heartbreaking & I've not even really talked to them. I don't know how to talk about these things. I've learned to try to be a comforting presence & not to talk too much, to try to internalize the experience in preference for the grief of those more tightly bound to the departed. I feel that this aspect, or ability, to classify orders of proximity, to read that closeness is allied with the broader project of full thought transmission. The next time I went to Texas was for my Uncle Al's wedding and at the parties before and after I recall that all the married couples submitted a note with some advice for the newly wed. I think the objective was to guess who had written the advice. I was I think, 13 or so, and probably at my most sebaceous. I only remember his advice of all the advice that anyone had read. i feel it was succinct, and if you pressed me, I'd probably say it was the only one that didn't involve prayer, so it was maybe slightly transgressive. Anyhow his advice was that if you get angry you should go away for a while until you're ready to talk. I remember his voice very distinctly saying this, and in the way that he said things, his specific soft voice. So... I don't know if that was actually good advice. I do know that it didn't serve me well when I was briefly married. I remember that as being somewhat harrowing because she was very insistent about talking through problems & discussing them which really only served to make me more & mor upset. I couldn't see working through these things without at first formulating what I really thought about them. If I get upset I go off on my own & walk around until I've figured out how I feel about it, what I really think about it. When it's formulated completely, then it's story - an epoch of your life that's elemental & digestible. It's a stream of words that conveys a feeling but which is intended to grant knowledge by conveying the mind's invention of identity as it occurs. I think that even then when I was disappointing my wife I understood that I couldn't take a position or commit to a feeling without adequate scrutiny. In this respect, deliberation, I'm maybe distinctive. My uncle was an entrepreneur & businessman. He was thus also a gambler. I don’t' know that he was either good or bad at gambling & it's not a matter I can judge as I am the gambler's opposite. But I was familiar with affiliated ways of life & I understood him to be in the cohort of acceptable but nearly problematic gambler with some notable hot streaks. This seems pretty common among his generation, social class & so on. Plus, there's always that unifying issue between convicts & immigrants - nobody will hire you so you Must have your own business. He was in convenience stores with my dad for a while. They built that little building on Broadview together & had such trouble with the neighbor over it all, and the first tenant was their convenience store & it would stay that for a little while. I understand that my Uncle & Father didn't get along as partners in business & he moved to Texas. In Texas he got into the video store business which was fashionable in the 80's. Through some happenstance he shipped the whole inventory of a video store to my parent's house & then did not come to claim it or to... The details are ambiguous & I'm certain base in misunderstandings & money-fueled anxieties. Whatever caused it meant we had every movie in the world in our garage for a year - and I think this really affected me - in the way that Zoomers & so on are affected by having persistent access to unlimited entertainment from a young age. I think it's probably why I think about things as I do, or you know, at least contributing. I never quite understood the business side of the first transaction & didn't ask too many questions. Eventually my father just opened his own video store with the inventory & our family learned how to do that business. I was apprenticed into it, effectively, around age 10. I worked distributing movies through rental chain until wasn't a business anymore in 2010. It's strange that I have so much specific experience that's now obsolete but also some unique experience that may prove insightful. Hyperawareness of stories has to have some root in vast exposure to same, particularly when consumed in their premier form. I've formed lavishly complex ideas about cinema, identity, personhood, memory & emotion in some part under the tutelage of Hollywood. I don't regard this as improper but rather, bountiful, because again, as the (then) premier, most elite & richest of the mediums, it produced exceptional products. I say this all in the past tense, but I think of this often. It's all owing to some brotherly rivalry between my father & his brother at the confluence of immigration, entrepreneurship, the 80's. It's a lot & It's definitive of my experience & character. My uncle's story creates my story. Stories are the mind transmitting itself through time. Maybe a hyperonization of acceptable doctrines but - a sensation that I feel acutely can help me to express the totality of experience, to create an impression so complete that it's indistinguishable from having the experience yourself. Maybe it can be done. I don't think I'd have landed on this as a project without the influence of my Uncle over my life. This is done in tribute and in wonder at the circuitous journey life follows, and the continuity of that journey across lifetimes.

Eventually they'd all meet again. My uncles and aunts. The last time I remember them all together, I'm delighted to say, was during my first March Party, an event I invented to encompass both my and my kid's birthday in a way that was amorphous & impervious to the vicissitudes of shifting custodial schedules. We have a lot of March birthdays, to the point where it constituted a whole branch of the family. Us march people. Liza, My own Mother, Grace, Zach, Me & A & ... Oh, Mrs. Fawzy. So I thew a party at whirlyball & lazertag & they were all there. I remember my dad being somewhat still lucid. I can't remember if it was before his diagnosis or not. I remember them looking faded & severe, wounded you could say. Miles apart, states apart they had gotten through life & to see them scowling together. A very old-man presence, a sense of pitiable, difficult experience, resignation, and the defeat, I must suppose it is experienced as, of reaching the end to find yourself still among the people you started with. To see life as adventure and to have it's end be a steady narrowing of horizons in the company of those with whom you'd begun. I think that the bleak circle of life's bounding limits as experienced in retrospect cannot help but crush one's heart. To be driven by that want for more & then to be in the end reduced. A hyperbolic arch of a life, a leap to touch, to see how high one can reach & then to fall, inevitably back to the starting point. To think it is one thing, an intellectual fantasy, but to live & experience it is to be changed by its revelation & I could see, My Uncle and Father, huge men sitting rumpled under outmoded winter coats sitting in plastic lawn furniture around a table of whirlyball pizza. They have the same expression that suggests displeasure but is the neutral, Egyptian, gaze of masculine contempt, but no cast all around & with such disgust. I know it's a desecration to others, my siblings, I imagine, to see this, to have experienced that scene, that way. I don't know if they'd like the characterization but I think "Lion in Winter" just as my own icon is "Robin in the Snow". Fading heroism & youthful resurgence. Not narratively related, at least not programmatically, these may be on a spectrum of acceptable & relatable late-20th century American northeastern sentiments. A kind of feeling - the tension between the image defined by "the tension between the Robin in Snow as supplicating host toward the disapproving but enfeebled Lion in Winter". I think of the I-Ching, how the Duke of Zhou's tool uses the evocation of a relatable scene to narrate a kind of way of being. Narrating the experience so thoroughly that every experience and emotion, no matter how esoteric, is expressible in this metaphoric context - this is the total transmission, the context projected & then called forth. Memory works by by being a flower, plucked from the ground. Sometimes it is a blossom, just a quick image, a faint recollection. But sometimes under scrutiny more is seen, you've closed in your conscious mind on the thought & now you are seeing the stem, the thorn, the leaves, the roots, the bulb, the seasons & the cycles - you briefly examine the flower & end up with a massive totality of context that the scene can be made portable, experienced by others completely. I can say this image, and you can be drawn to the Northeast of Ohio in the cold early spring of '13, the dim light in dust motes cast down on the soggy polished concrete floor of the repurposed warehouse, the noise of pinball machines & family gatherings - off on the side a couple of old men, and an old woman attending to them. They are from a different world but they built the one they now occupy, they look at their creation & still find it wanting, meanwhile, their doting sister still admires them, believes in them and wants them to be comfortable. In them you see your own future & the continuity of the human experience is rendered sacred by the gnosis of the realization & the love that the feeling evokes, I'm the robin in the snow, I'm the occasionally evergreen, the sometimes, seasonally hopeful. I see the jump, watch, am witness to their peak, their apogee - appreciative, a fan - admiring so that it's heartbreaking, an ordeal, to watch their inevitable descent. I feel like I'm overwhelmed, often, by the dismal sensation of following down with heartbreaking recognition a glorious thing that could not long last.

You'd see them together, the originals, the first generation & at some point at weddings and funerals, at holidays when they'd all gather together, you'd see them as a cohort - you could sense them as distinct within our family, another core, and within that core there were the three from the village. Nagi, Sam & Liza, they remembered & remember the stories I'd heard. I always wanted to collect them. I felt the mythology in them, dreamed how it was legendary & dreamlike. A far off world of different adventure & my own dad had been in it, from a young age. When later I'd feel motivated by this, called to outdo, or at least meet his experiences, I was becoming aware that I wasn't meant for that, and that I'd better just appreciate the stories for themselves alone instead of looking at them as moral guides. Realizing that the differences between our experiences was too great a gulf for us to cross. I understand my father in the context of America, that's our commonality in the end, one of the big ones anyway, that we're both american. To him a point of pride and achievement, to me a kind of nightmare default state - a swirl of chaos that's a destroyer. I've known other americans like him & other americans like those he aspired to be. I respected his achievement in getting to where he wanted to be but I couldn't understand his actual goal. He couldn't get mine. I think I understood then, that day when I saw them together & maybe for the last time, that he, they, would never be able to extend my perspective the same deference I had for them was because of their perspective, it's all consuming demand for performance & accomplishment - it couldn't circumspectly marvel at it's nature & its meaning through time. No, in fact they're angry if you try to engage on those terms. What about the money? Who's going to be impressed by this? Nerds? Poor Nerds? Come on! Work harder, stop wasting time! You're afraid. The old man once tried to teach me how to use a sling. I was just a little kid, maybe 4-5? I got the rock to go once, but he could bullseye the stop sign across the street every time. He got bored when he realized I wasn't interested in outdoing him, in making a game of it. Eventually I understand him, I think he lately understands me but is unhappy with the outcome. This is the story, the interior narration rationalizes emotion, creating the continuity of experience that we regard as consciousness.

A memory flashes like a blur, a poorly resolved image that when focused upon becomes more detailed, your mind's convolutions extract crumbs of perceptual recollection filling in the details as you examine it all more closely. Memory & vision have 1:1 correspondences for me. Even in pure abstractions I imagine the words themselves as imagery. A personal memetic alphabet the material perception of which is memory. I'm led to understand this is how all vision works. That the traverse of the input from the eye to the brain has a significant lag & our vision is really a kind of patchwork edit of 1 second old memories presented intuitively to the mind. It handles these images - I imagine - like a spider. I see it feeling along the web for the vibration of some vague impression & trapping it, a color or a smell or sound & then scurrying over, uncannily, to gingerly maneuver the object, study it, then wrap it up & consume it, making more spider, more mind. I don't always have his vision, it's a kind of impression - I think that pondering death, the death of a loved one who had a titanic identity in my own personal mythos - it has a feeling of maudlin predation, a bit grotesque to consume it so, and hence - Spider-Mind sensations, a purely explained mood, a way of being. I think, if I pursue this project at great length, and today, I hope to do so, I think that I could encode all my combinatorial emotional states into an iconic representation. Spider-Mind-Creator is such an idiomatic icon. I name it and it describes my memory of a time - still in childhood with the sepia tone memory of remembering it for the first time as you look at the keepsake photograph, something you kept to remind you, a totem you use to build the memory around. It's crafted like vision, by a spider-in-the-mind turning the impression around, ascribing the photo's faded colors & the subject's dated apparel, it draws in the senses, engages them & conflates them with an array of other memories, my mother gossiping about that day & how exotic and handsome my Uncle Sam was to her young suburban cousins, how he had a smoldering appeal that was mystifying to see from outside, and how it worked on everyone around him. Her memory, recited, informs my own, I have impressions of him from many dimensions & the Spider-Mind catches an image of me embarrassingly adolescent in my Mother's kitchen, her telling me, us both busy with something, washing dishes, putting them away. That's in the mind's eye as is the photo, one I only remember seeing but can't describe clearly, I think it shows a dark man in cut off jeans & sunglasses at Cedar Point in the early 80's. There's a lot of photos of that day & it's of a kind where studying those photos creates a pure image, a sense of being there that the mind-spider recreates, just as it once created it, and creates it anew each time it's been accessed. And the mind-spider adds the memory of first remembering each and every time. It writes to a log but doesn't comment on its edits. My uncle. I loved him, of course, I loved him but my love for my father, much more clearly understood, scrutinized. My love for my aunt was of a higher kind, it's still painful to think about her. My uncle, he was geographically distant, our relation was based on reputation & occasional physical presence. I grew up created by his presence & he reflected my experience of being created by him - our dialogue was cursory & restrained but also momentous & powerful, a very specific kind of family relation that I can think of, in this circumspect way. He's the only one I could feel this way about & it's a unique emotional state that I feel comfortable expressing, capable of articulating & studying without hurting myself too badly. Distance & time & watching from a remove the leaping arc of a high-achiever's life, seen by one entering on the upward rise. I say I'll miss him & I mean, I will notice his absence when creating new memories, and I'll regret that absence because I'd still like to have that bond with him. I'm capable of imagining his responses to the things I see & that's what it is to miss someone. I think the more vividly you can imagine their responses over the stimuli around you, the more intensely you'll miss them, the more thorough the connection the deeper the commitment. I'll miss him when I'm at the next wedding & I can picture him there, and I can imagine how his own kids will experience that absence, and they'll understand what they must have observed me experiencing, these events without your father - the feeling of unraveling. The pleasure of having ridden that jump to the peak, and to see it almost as a complete event, a life lived out in a story.

comments

Well Art School Then

Thu, 18 Aug 2022 16:19:05 GMT

Kid's going to CIA and that's well and good and good and well. I can't remember if I bitched about buying her that mac but I did. And then that room & board. Expensive! And for art school. I'm used to room and board, no fuss I guess. At the dentist I spent a pile of money too. Expensive. And for art school. I hope horizons are broadened instead of narrowed. My position has been don't go to trade school! But I make suggestions and don't issue demands. Broader horizons. Your kid you know, you want a better way for them than you & while that's materially impossible - at least psychologically I think it'd be good if a better way of being were presented.

Basement dwelling discord chatting never sleeping is pretty overdone but I extend my belief that kiddo will become great, learn to have personal power.

We go for a long walk, I do mostly - to get her at her ma's and then go to Tommy's like old times, all times. I miss it from the neighborhood. The old neighborhood is going well - people out on the public areas playing some kind of therapeutic or exercise based drums, dudes busking to the beat. Dinner and big smiles all around, full. An end, moving out & on - I mean. Down the hill a mile, maybe 2? To the college I walk past, but still - away. "Do you think you'll still come over on the weekends? You can if you want, but I won't mind if you don't. You've got keys & it's your house too." No one knows what's next or will be. How it'll go. I'm okay. Comfortable about it. Ready - you know?

Personal life is fulfilling & active but pretty single-tracked lately. So much dice rolling. I'm a little exhausted from all these games I've been running. They're getting better. I was in love with the mod I made - I loved the plot:

You see long ago there was a dark age, the land turned to ruin, the rivers flooded. The kings of old had been deposed & none stood against disorder, crumbling ensued & that was followed by barbarism, despotism. The first reign was a bad reign of warlords & strongmen who were only trying to recapitulate the old world. They died off in time & took too many people with them. Their cruelty is forgotten by design. The second reign returned to the land. The woods & wetland kings, those who could call to the plants & train them to grow usefully & well. The second reign - a rebuilding time of mud & work, pervasive want & steady, slow increase. The best of those kings was Snake Flying - who (unbeknownst to most) bargained with the primordial forces to enrich the land & uplift those people who followed him. His big secret was that he made bargains with Creaking Knot a prince of trees as well as Illimitable Growth the governor of plagues. These princes bowed to Snake Flying and holding them by the leash he built the region of Lachrymose Stone into a bucolic, fecund land where people could live in peace & health. Of course he died one day some thousand years ago & got buried in an earthen cairn shaped like a serpent (Ohio). Patrolling the grounds of the tomb & growing into a herd there - came the catoblepas - the ugly guardians who kept the leashed princes from escaping long after Snake Flying's demise. The place became a resort, a tea-house & inn - famous for its lavender scented water & dangerous sort-of-tame beasts.

They even devised a method of touring the paddock & kept a gift shop & museum of the lineage & natural history of those catoblepases.

The peace of the place was wrecked when drunkards of the Sourlight warrior-sisterhood, blowing off some steam, killed the last catoblepas. One of the remaining sisters comes to Lachrymose stone in search of help, having crawled through the night through the marsh on her belly - because once the catoblepas had died - suddenly the trees came alive & people's bones begain to turn to jelly. Her leg bones had gone all bendy and soft & she warned that there were many more affected worse than her back at the inn. And won't you please go and help?

I think it's a fun premise - weird mystery - figure out about the old king buried there - in two halves- the front & the back! Gross. And battle or contend with the primordial ancient gods of nature to make the land safe once more. Anyhow. Playtest? the players couldn't figure out the puzzle & just fought & fought the monsters in maybe the most boring version of events that could have transpired. I still believe in it as a mod but I need to figure out how to fix it for audiences.

Over dinner we workshop it, I think that the maps are too big - roll20 you know? Too spread out, not enough filling in the gap. Possibly. I think I said the words Gift Shop more times in one day than in my life combined but they never did consider looking there for clues. Gotta try with another group I guess. See if I can wring something out of it.

Otherwise I've been interviewing with the county. I kind of want to work there, public service? At last a little. I'm so tired of business. The interviewers say dispiriting things about 'business units' and so on - as the MBA's have come to govern all process & thought - but still, it's better to help your town out, as best you're able than it is to enrich some dumbasses who believe what the MBA's tell them. We'll see.

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The Liberation of Low Expectations

Fri, 12 Aug 2022 13:55:28 GMT

The ease & disorganization at my job makes me uncomfortable - as in, I feel like I'm menaced by being redundant or that they'll want something else executed. But - counterpoint, it's very easy & undemanding. Part of the time I think I should have ever & always expected such a situation & that I've been intensely overworked for most of my life. I mean - that's probably true for a lot of people. Kinda wish I had more to show for it but there you are, working man's struggles.

I always drink too much on my Wednesday game night. I always do. My defense is that that's pretty much the only time I drink at all, let alone too much - but it's too much & I act foolishly? Probably not that foolishly but I was surprised to not remember walking home from the grog shop. And how could I have! What with all the mad texts I was apparently sending! Foolish but harmless & kind of sweet, that's fine. I think tension was released & that's what was needed. I think I was just spazzing out because I've been... Well I guess inconstant?

Time & effort aren't in any sort of structure so moments & sections of productivity burst & overwhelm - but then I must relax for to long - I've been relaxed more than usual. Maybe the correct amount for the first time? None of my self concept is free of the limiting attenuation that the broader culture imposes so - I don't really trust it as I am antagonistic to the culture at large. I mean who you are in the world is either all of who you really truly are - or - you have an inner dualistic self that's separate from the broader reality but either case participates with the social order.

I'm sure these art generating AI's are a nuisance or bad in some way that I'll have to be shamed for in the future but for now I've been really enjoying it. I'm making a picture book even.

I probably will need to get to selling more books. Kid's college is mostly paid for - but I'm gonna cover a bit of it that'll be taxing. I guess taxing? Not ruinous & not unmanageable. Less than rent more than child support - which I guess this is really a new form of those identical bills. Art school. Really not seeing the sense in it when the AI does what it does. I mean. Obsolescence comes for us all but when you're paying for it! Well. My hope is that college broaden's A's horizons anyway. I still advocated hard for the liberal arts education followed up by dental school because I see that as the way to get smart & then get paid but maybe just being useful to yourself as a creator is more valid. I don't demand, I suggest, I just hope I haven't ben unsupportive conversationally because kid's about to learn independence to a degree & shouldn't have that sense of doubt. Maybe art school is defense & proof against these sensibilities, maybe history & liberal arts education gave me my troubles?

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Under Despotism

Tue, 05 Jul 2022 15:48:38 GMT

Here's the baby skunk that my neighborhood came together to help.

I think he was saved. I hope so. Brave little kids picked him up and carried him off in their cat tote. I called the phone tree for wildlife rescue. So many dead numbers & non-answers or people who gave up doing it. Weird that the state relies on volunteers for this stuff. At least that's how I feel.

The state doesn't offer much in the way of amenities. Mostly they pay poor people's hospital bills & keep highways running. Also prisons. It's not a good state but you get what you get. Not lying down of course. Been helping out here and there with marching, blocking the streets. It's all downtown in Cleveland where there's mostly agreement with the protestors. The other day I meet kid & her pals down there - brought my umbrella as it rained furiously & also dressed up as a regular. These kids that march are sweet & good but among them they've got a distinctive, let's call it, anti-establishment look, the olds & youngs alike. I figure, big & tall, I'll go to represent suburban dad looks with slacks & buttondowns. Representation? Add a little unearned authority? I dunno, I try to help & that's the help I have, chanting & walking - actually walking too fast. The sweet anarchist kids that organized it were trying to get us to slow down through intersections. I can't help it! I just walk that way. But hopefully any help is some help.

Meantime I just think this whole business is to fuck with poor people, like all the laws, it's just to make poor people suffer needlessly. No one in DeWine's circle is going to want for abortions right? their kids and mistresses can get on a plane & get it done.

Tim Hutton came by - still the heart of Akron, he's got news. Apparently this man the police executed there was a legitimate target- so the video evidence is exculpatory of the police? That's the feeling I get off of the consensus - Tim Hutton wanted to come see me to get out of Akron for it. It's going to be a hot summer is all I can say. If shooting a guy & handcuffing his corpse is somehow a justifiable action taken by the state's agents - I'm pretty sure we have to oppose the state completely.

Still, I think the people in my neighborhood came together to save a baby skunk - so that was good.

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Preposterous Considerations

Fri, 03 Jun 2022 17:59:37 GMT

It was silly of me to have anxious feelings about all of this. It was a good & very sweet ceremony with the kids all singing & putting on their show- art school!

Kinda sets the mood though, I'd say, to the overall state of interpersonal interactions here and now. Or maybe it just says that I'm a dickhead. Long ago, in undergrad I remember when the university had I wanna say Bill Bennet? Name eludes me but he was some cultural thinker of the xtian right in the 90's and my history student compeers requested I attend & bought me a ticket and then goaded me into yelling at him from the audience. And I did. And I kind of always will. Blowhard is... It's not who I want to be. That's maybe my disphoria? I don't super want to be a big yelling asshole but when you're taller than everyone they want you to speak for them? King Saul all day right - It's just how some things play out. I didn't mean to be brash & aggressive but that's what's expected, slouch into it right? I forget how confident tall men put everyone at ease sometimes. They want you for their team irrespective of your competence and honestly? What is competence anyway? Very subjective but - people like being kind of lorded over more than I dislike lording it over. I don't know - this is dumb to discuss. I'm just saying these are aspects of my character that ended up being more-or-less demanded by physiology. They weren't choices so much as social obligations. But you work with what you have & cobble a self from out of it.

So part of myself is that if nobody else is shouting down the assholes, I feel obliged to do it, and if someone else is already shouting down the assholes, I try to stand near enough to them to give the authority that I just get because biology doesn't make logical thinking machines. So I'm too ready for confrontation and that's in turn making me a blowhard asshole. I've got to give some real thought to how to moderate this & be more agreeable to others. Working on it. Concentration or just avid silence?

Cant' remember when Ludicrous Notions was coined but it's very nearly the family motto. Maybe I'll figure out a nice arabic script of it for crest-style purposes, that & the Robin in the Snow. Ludicrous Notions. They have more to do with how your life is lived than you may know!

Otherwise it's been good feelings all around & generally. Back in the saddle - ran the game for grognards on Weds - big fights & a little scene-eating. I'm content with my alterations to 5e's higher-level character builds. I think I've come close to a nice balance in terms of introducing powerful spectacle without breaking the player dynamics. Think it's going well & have good ideas for a future there.

Back to the tuesday game next week & that I'm looking forward to most. Not just because it's easier online than it is in person. That game's going good places & the portrayals are strong, getting stronger. Good performances from all sides. I needed to rest up and ready myself to give it what it deserves.

Meantime I really must finish a book. I think I'm closer to putting up a real document for Wolf City but out of nowhwere I started thinking about Ghost Jungle of the Elephant God - another worthy project that wants a lot out of me. I can, I should. Get my creative work sorted out, get back on the trolley. Ludicrous Notions indeed.

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Tue, 31 May 2022 15:42:52 GMT

Took a few days off work & they were good days. My job... You know, a lot is exploding all the time & I take that very personally - which is maybe the soft-skill that makes me an adequate sysadmin. But I've been trying to stamp out the flames more-or-less nonstop for more than a year. Consciously did nothing for 6 days in a row & felt a type of way - a freer way. I called off all my games for a few weeks too. Just feeling empty, not, devoid - more scooped out, lacking content. Introspection here helps. A little. It's also a warmup.

A had prom -

I'm told it was great. I like her boyfriend no matter how short & blond he is. He gets into character & stays in character, a good player. Dumb that that's my bar but there it is. I still think that performance like that requires trust - so I like the trust & confidence and don't mind if he comes around my house - which is what you'd want out of your daughter's fella.

Went on a date myself - kinda went nowhere but I gotta practice. Get out among people again. I'm not exactly antisocial but I am solitary & that breeds antisocial tendencies - so get out & meet. She didn't want to walk, or maybe couldn't from 25th to public square but that's like, what I do - and it was a really beautiful day for it.
I wish they'd have another event under the bridge - that's still the best thing the city ever did. Maybe again, maybe keep it sparing.

The sky is really never this nice. Not ordinarily but we have great spring in NEO.

Otherwise the life domestic is going well. The neighborhood cat I like best is bullied by this tuxedo jerk, and tuxedo jerk came to eat up the skinny golden's food! Ah, I feed all the delinquents, birds, people, cats.
Funny to see in the morning though. Nice to see.

Tonight is A's commencement. I'm really not looking forward to it. I don't love hanging with A's other family I don't like hanging with my family & them simultaneously. I'm anxious about the kind of speeches I'll hear, the kinds of rituals I'll have to perform. Do they have pledges of allegiance? National Anthems? I don't need that in my life, I don't. I especially don't want to just go and watch something that isnt' specifically meant to entertain me. Sit & watch is not my way. It'll be a lot like school again and I still feel like something of a failure because I couldn't shield my kid from the ruinous wickedness of american school. Still, it's an accomplishment & it's wrong to try to take away the achievement from these kids, even if the achievement is just having survived with any dignity & self-regard.

Did I mention that she helped bully the principal into quitting? I love that & it will be fun if it's addressed in the commencement. He didn't take their concerns seriously & they came at him saying they'd strike & or protest the building - which made him cry so much that he quit? Or is quitting - his last year. Leadership isn't for cowards & it's a little refreshing to see that driven home hard.

Maybe that means she learned the hidden curriculum & then learned the hidden curriculum beneath that one. Maybe. Maybe I've just radicalized her by my dumbass opinions.

Trying to be hopeful but it's not in my nature. Or maybe, I've just been too un-relaxed to do so. Maybe I should try to take a longer stretch off 6 days here, 10 days there? Lucky for me I hate to travel or idling away the days would seem like a waste of my pto. Ah. I must learn.

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Sat, 28 May 2022 18:06:08 GMT

I decided to take home security more seriously.

Maybe a mistake? If I'm having people by? I dunno, to me this says everything I think needs to be said about me/my household. We think about alchemy too much but never with precision or care. Yes, messy magician.

Probably it'll be painted over more - maybe embellished with more red & then possibly gold highlights. I should make a sator square in tile probably. There's a pottery arena, or studio nearby. I'm very interested & they have signs indicating adult classes - also, very interesting. But it's kinda closed for covid & it's signs all say - 'find us on facebook'. Always a reminder of how much better the internet was. Before it was stolen by those monsters. Must remember to work on my own sites... Eventually.

To properly live requires a staff, I think. It's possibly amazing how much a solitary person can accomplish & yet I'm always feeling dismayed by how little is done compared to what must be done. I'm sure there are a lot of loners who do way better than me in terms of production but.

You're supposed to make things & think - maybe someone not yet living will care about this one day. That's a thought that aided my disposition - doing the solitary work in obscurity. It's the lack of a future for civilization that robs someone like me of that aid to invention. Audiences stolen, production halted. That kind of thinking. It calls for something more certain - Georgia guidestones, that type of thing - something of use to someone after. In a frivolous time leading a frivolous life, you're not prepared to produce for a future that's less frivolous. It only works if the future is more so. Star Trek right? elaboration of the inessential until it becomes a focus of reality. Nothing quite so frivolous as space travel right? Or space navies. But there it is, the fantasy of the feckless.

I think I'm going to plant paper birches. I like them & I think they're a good tree also indigenous to the lake adjoining regions of ohio. (the only respectable parts of ohio). Hopefully life will remain long, and there will be more opportunities to build an edifice that amounts to something to someone besides myself.

Progeny? Seems like the popular path to navigate these impulses. Why is babby formed or so. Legacies reinforced by the inevitable force of biology, physical laws compel. Not a real solution. Goose-teens aside (though their buts, the tails, the perfect curve, the excellent shape, irreproducible - by me anyhow, that shape). But the human child is not the goose child, that is a goose or is eaten & that's what you get. We got people who are different than the goose. My kid finishes highschool... Now? Commencement in tuesday, a small affair for a few attendees at a huge arena? It's very confusing but she can't invite enough people - so it's just me and a couple of our family. Not enough egyptians to ululate joyously. Covid I guess. Smaller horizons - see? Anyhow there's just influence & suggestion when it comes to the next generation, you can add like spice a sense of what matters & what's real - but you can't make a person like a goose makes a goose. Or like you'd make an object. It's the interplay of identities that make a perosn into people & that's that whole story. I'm at the end of it, as a task with well defined bounds. I genuinely wonder what will come to be. Will we just have dinner every weekend from now on? Or, for the next few years? College?

Not to say I'm not or that I am ready - but it's time to build up social connections again. I'm... limited as a social being. Bombast & intensity and a soft touch, some charm & care - I do alright. Lacking self-assurance in solitude, I burst with it in public. The solution of that puzzle is that - people are distracted, slow-witted & in search of instruction, in the aggregate, on the average. I'm too deviant to be able to pitch my ways as sensible, so I have to sell them as personal eccentricities. "It's true I don't have a car or want one. It's true that I don't like to travel or go on vacation. It's true that I'm supportive of revolutionaries & anarchists." From my perspective - ordinary ways of being, but apparently, in the world - so odd that I must handwave it off as 'just a funny thing about me'. Unorthodox ideas cherished here, but slapdash & ultimately in aid only of myself.

Yeah.

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Fri, 27 May 2022 15:20:03 GMT

A lot of conversation in the moral or political sphere seems to spin out of metaphors of forests, animals, wolves & dogs, sheep. Charismatic terrestrial megafauna & biomes. But it looks more to me that the ocean is the better metaphor, mouths all the way - all against all but alienated to the point where malice isn't even a consideration, aggression isn't a liminal state, it's a reflexive behavior unlinked to emotion. Collective structures aren't benign corals & sheltered reefs prevail through liberal use of poison, retroactive hostility that serves to instruct deterrence rather than to execute vengence. Mouths all open & hungry or fenced in by sacrificial envenomings. I see it, more

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my favorite animals all have two legs

Tue, 03 May 2022 13:37:54 GMT

For once - well, intermittently this is the case - but lately I feel overworked - I got to take my evening constitutional. Ordinarily, well, historically - I used to walk the graveyard & back up through little italy. I was tired & depleted possibly as a consequence of having gotten covid? Anyway - the thing is, before I moved over here I would make that stride - but now getting to the cemetery is half the trip I'd formerly taken so walking it after - that's 8-9 miles. I can do it, but it's tough. So easing back I go to forest hills park where Rockefeller used to live (as opposed to the cemetery where he's buried). In time to see the goose-style duckies. Goslings but I think: "Duckie". They're great. So many too. If someone opposes the canada goose I think that person is depraved & sick in their mind it's a solid animal. Some of the last of the north american megafauna, or whatever passes for megafauna in the hard-mode continent.

Long walks to clear the mind. I gotta go back today to do some voting but I'm disinclined. I will I guess but participating in the state seems more and more like a pointless ritual - a waste of time & a blunting of force. IN the totalitarian state the only freedom is in crime I guess? Rough because of how overpolice we all are here but it seems like more people are feeling it, more people are gathering at the edge of the status quo. Great Malaise II?

I make it home in the twilight & have a good long think. Tonight I got some D&D - the Iollan Riparia - it's gonna be a pretty good book when I finish it I think. The concepts and the links are strong & the players have rally responded. Tonight they're going to Upper Woefield after a year of downtime while the toll road got built. Easy access to the highlands means they can finally get to this town that they've heard about & seek out a way into the cursed city of Ulta, mother of civilizations. Upper Woefield will have an event when they get there - the Man of Stone - which is the town's William Tell like local lore. Once the lord was brutal & ruthless - he came to town to punish the folk. The headman of the town refused & was to be punished- dragged by horses down the hill. But the man was invincible, from the hills, made of stone, the horses tired & he laughed at the lord's men & their spears turned away at his body. Now everyone celebrates this in the town. The people drink up potions to turn themselves into rock, a little, and they get drug around by horses in a kind of race. Anyhow I think the alchemist they go to meet will have a mononoke edge about it, where he treats the injured or amputees by grafting on limbs of rock - so that the place attracts the injured from around he country who come to live there & prosper.

I think that's a fun, scenic hook - something to draw the players in, imaginative. We'll see.

Meantime work, work softened - yesterday I fixed a lot & the overwhelming crises of last week have been mitigated. It's honestly hard to focus on work as a priority. It seems more and more that everything is smoldering, ready to burn, more & more like there's no future past the next quarter. We'll see, we'll see, we'll see I guess. All together.

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monday stream of conciousness

Mon, 02 May 2022 14:17:54 GMT

30 years ago I was working with my uncle to rehab this crummy house on 133th and Lorain that my old pop bought at auction. We drug out 5 dumpsters full of the trash & debris that a lone weirdo had accumulated in this big, torn up duplex. Samir, my uncle, was/is a handy character who knew from tools & fixing up places - a little anyway. We spent a whole year on that & it was my one & only job for most of that year. I remember a lot of scenes from that time. Sitting on the second floor admiring my car & realizing that I kind of liked it - long, long before I knew anything about cars & could come to understand that my teenaged camaro was in fact rather bitching. That time the attic floor gave out under me & I fell, fell fell & found myself just seconds later lying in the driveway - having gone down a couple of flights of stairs & rolled out the door. Or when we lost our minds trying & trying endlessly to paint the dirty basement floor with cheap battleship gray paint we bought at big lots. I decided it'd be cool to open up all the water pipes in the basement to flood it, just a little to help scour out the endless grit. Or going to the hardware store to buy way too much sheet rock & stack it on Samir's '83 escort which he insisted was okay to drive on the highway even though the bottom was scraping asphalt. Or how Samir would take us back to his house where my aunt would fry us up cheeseburgers. Two for me & five for him each day. Samir is my uncle by marriage & looks like most other Egyptians - in that he's short & round - so together we just looked like the number 10 all the time.

One day during this whole thing his son was born! And I guess now it's J-Faw's 30th birthday. His little sis set up a birthday party at this place - Top Golf. Not a golf fan myself, but I went with my ma & kiddo. Ma loves golf & chasing that ball. We used to sit with our buyer every month during the video store. Ben B. Big Beautiful Ben - one of the ugliest dudes I've ever met, one of the most charming & best dudes I've ever met. He'd laugh at my folks - "You go golfing all the time what a waste! I go bowling! The ball comes back every time!" Top golf is like bowling meets golf - I guess. It was fun! Maybe just the spring in the air. Anyhow, dear little cousin is 30 so we celebrated. At easter he said some positive things about science fiction/fantasy enthusiasm so I got him the book of the long sun.

Weird to see how little & youthful he is, that guy. I had a 2 year old when I turned 30. It's sort of crazy to imagine. Now A will go away to college so I'm kind of back ot being how I was - back then - when I was 28. There's just a lot fewer places to go dancing nowadays I guess?

I keep calling the birds that make messes & eat from the feeder hogs & pigs but their antics have now attracted the boss of the yard pigs- the squirrel - what a champ.

I've also gotten bluejays & cardinals so that's nice. Seeing those gentlemen loitering on the porch.

My extension cord showed up so I could make use of my jelectric lawnmower which was not satisfyingly quieter than agas powered one - I guess mine is nuclear powered technically? Whatever - I mowed my lawn. Agatha woke up long after I'd done just in time to laugh at me. "I never thought you'd be doing this type of thing. I never thought my dad would be doing yard work."

I try not to hear the implicit 'look what you've been reduced to" in her statement because she isn't implying that - I just infer it because htat's in part, how I feel. I'm... a citizen? An ordinary? I don't know - Taking this stuff personally is probably a sign that I'm not really either of those things.

Anyhow it was mowed for about a day before it rained furiously & then sprouted a billion dandelions. By no means do I mind dandelions but boy they come up quick! I should figure out some way to time-lapse photograph them bursting up out of the ground like a yellow fountain. The power, the energy...

We take the car share home & I talk and talk to the driver. I always talk & talk to the driver unless I get lucky & they're real foreign & don't talk at all. Something there is that loves to make conversation with a stranger, but which I wouldn't do unless... I've got to make a good impression - it's my default state, meeting people, understanding them, making acquaintances. I wish being good at this was an actually marketable skill - I mean, in the way where it doesn't devolve just to salesmanship. Sometimes I wonder if I shouldn't have tried counseling or the like as a career.

Mainly because I hate. Hate. Hate. the software that it's my job to run & operate all the time. Man. Syspro is a terrible program by contemporary standards & yet, I've become a syspro administrator. Stumbling through life & ending up with a weird career - I used to think: "This is where I ended up because I didn't plan ahead enough." But I'm done being hard on myself about this & now just accept that the trajectory of life through anxiety & privation is the state of us all in late capitalism. Nobody's quite happy & nobody's quite competent. We're all just flailing & trying to put on a confident face. The trick is that I stopped pointing it out to everyone. I thought it was a shocking revelation - but it's more an unspoken accord that we all concede without really admitting. I think it was being raised by a salesman that did it to me - effortlessly project confidence at all times - then people will just follow you because they're as trapped & scared as you. That old man should've lifted the curtain a little & explained that to me - but I think his insecurities & vanities prevented that. So I stumbled around helplessly until I finally understood it. I don't mind telling you that the temptation to abuse this - to be a conman or salesman is real. Boy do I hate asking people for things & especially money though That shit is the worst.

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It's cold but I'm not super mad about it.

Thu, 28 Apr 2022 15:42:11 GMT

Crossed town for game last night - it's been a while since I've gone over there, long enough that I just watched out the window on the train ride - catching what I've been missing. It sucks that the weather went sour so fast - after a really glorious weekend - 80's & sunshine, lots of walking & doing. We saw Everything Everywhere All At Once & liked it. Had a couple of adequate meals, planted some flowers.

Did not mow the grass. Now it's too long & it's too cold. This is a really peculiar feeling, I have to say - but I am now noticing other people's lawns - comparing. Is mine the longest & worst? Am I the asshole!? Of the neighborhood?! I honestly never anticipated the amount of conformity that I'd end up struggling with. Probably I just don't want to be an asshole - that's the catalytic element behind conformity right? I don't want to be a dick to a stranger by accident. So I want to get along & mow my grass. I think tomorrow it may be warm enough for me to bother with.

I went across town & my old vacation chum from Akron messaged me saying he was coming up to my neighborhood to see a band & could we meet? Maybe talk about getting in on my sunday evening D&D game. It's a good one. Going really well. The Iollan Riparia - Mummies vs. River Pirates. I think I'm going to throw in a riverboat gambler mid-tier adversary.

In the weds game they're dealing with the end of the world that they inadvertantly caused by following the orders of a crazy man who was their leader. He still shows up to try to talk them out of whatever they're doing. I like the concept & the campaign, and of course the players - but they all played big dummies for some reason & it's causing comical results. It'd be neat if they ever got to figure anything out without having to rely upon the words of probable liars.

After I catch the train back, climb the hill again & go see the grog shop & my old neighborhood. Same town & all, just different blocks. I dunno - it really is different & so far in all the good ways. I miss the proximity to Tommys though.

The band is a simpsons themed metal act where they all dress like ned flanders. They're called Okily Dokily

I mean - it was funny sure, I got it, I was chuckling along. They wanted the crowd to shout Boo-Urns for example. Funny. I was not expecting a punchline from a band & yet there it was - the dude strips down to this ski-suit & their last song is 'like wearing nothing at all'. I laughed pretty hard for a while.

Musically - not my sound, not my thing - but I've got a permanent love for novelty acts. Made the connection with my buddy -talked at some strangers & walked partway home. Caught a late bus for the middle-mile & felt lucky & good to have done so.

Home & sleep & home & sleep.

Birdfeeder is empty again - these fucking hogs! They're gluttons. Cardinals & jays & the secretly 2nd best bird - the Grackle all show up. I moved my plant pots under there to see if I can somehow make their sloppiness work in my favor. Maybe all the scattered seeds & poops will become a thing? Try it out - experiments! Mostly its little sparrows though. I like 'em. Not my favorite. My favorite is the robin but it seems more predatory - maybe it only wants worms. There's a good one in the front yard - I gotta make one be my homie. Figure it out.

Shoot. I dug up a bunch of soil in the back yard - getting the rocks all unburied. I gathered those up & built a little flower bed & took all the dirt & laid it out where I'm trying to kill the grass.

The garden store didn't have any baby trees to plant yet- it's still way tooo cold most of the time - but they did have a replica of the Lorain Avenue Bridge Guardians - poured concrete & weighing probably half a ton - I was interested but they only have the guardian that's carrying a stagecoach. I was all... "Do you think they'll make one with the train?" It's funny to have favorites among the local icons/sports mascots huh?

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Fri, 22 Apr 2022 14:26:01 GMT

You think about lifecycles, metamorphoses. How things become the next part of themselves. You could, and I do sometimes think of the whole biosphere as a solitary organism, evolution, us, Earth. And it's got setbacks sure but...

It's bad that things & people die. I hate that & it's a terrible shame. Still, everything dies & then the next things take their place. Over and over forever & ever. So I think about the doctors& the surgeons and the extension of the lives of people. Then the extension of cultures & tendencies. Nowadays the people live so long that they're able to impose regressive regimes upon the rest of the world I think on this & wonder if accelerationism is the right thing.

Do plagues clear the slate? Do disasters burn the land & make it fertile again? Is it required? More though, how is jumping the line going to change things for us, or does the change it's inflicted reinforce destruction by escalating stakes?

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Wed, 13 Apr 2022 13:16:18 GMT

Spend a lot of time in this room. Really need to figure things out for it. Maybe keeping it office-style generic is okay though. I mean, it is where I work. Gotta think on it a while. So my ma cashed the check I give her every month and A's mom cashed her last(!!) 3 checks all at once so I lost the comma out of my bank account for the first time in a year. Good to set that pace (not that it's much of a pace you understand - but at least I'm not anxious). So Iput out of my mind the types of things I could buy to put in this room & think instead about what it is, what it could be. Lotsa computers & tools though. Maybe I should bite the bullet & build myself a server for the house. Maybe. I got those lights that you can change colors & patterns with on your phone - but I made sure they can't connect to anything outside my firewall. I'm pretty opposed to smart-house style stuff, never gonna talk to a computer voice, nothing like that. But some of the features are cool. Color changing light bulbs? I'm down. Cameras of any kind? No. No mics either thanks.

Daffy-Dills came in. My flowes. I got a few rocks too. But at least I grew some flowers, I have those now & they're good. Gotta figure out the right way to press Daffodils. Maybe I'll gather the first one from each year to press & keep. Tht'd be a nice thing to have about your place right? Here's the book of the daffodils that grew here fro 2022 to 2040... Who you are is a mass of knots that vaguely desires things. Your preferences crystallize around what it is your're actually doing. I'm restless, I'm overworked, I'm bored, I' making coffee, I'm fucking around on my phone, I'm listening to people talk, I'm answering emails, Bumble through these things & they're all mazes of impulse & incohate want. You allow them to ossify & you end up with reflection. You can organize your wants & realize what it is that you really want. I want coffee. I work so I can getit, keep people working so they're not mad, fuck around on my phone to find out if something new happened that will change things at all, go back to emailing, drink coffee. That's all of this, just to get tot he one piece that actually matters, personally. So you do a lot of things in aid of the main thing that you do want. So someday I might want more out of this house than just this house, someday I might want being in this house & making it my own way - if that's what I want, then I gotta do these things, favors for my futre self, like skipping treats or sleeping right.

I put down that cardboard o kill the grass in that patch. I can't decide at this moment between a nice decorative tree that's little with pretty blossoms, or maybe something more indigenous & interesting. Is the paw paw tree attractive? I've never had the fruit & for all the reasons no-body has, but maybe it'd be chill to have some. That's 6-8 year project. Maybe. Anyhow, I'm killing the grass in that spot. I don't even know what to do about that stupid hay. I don't want that hay. But what to grow right there by the porch? Nothing too rooty or big. Maybe just one of those evergreen shrubs you cut into a square? Those are a pretty agreeable plant to have around. Think on it more.

Another coat of paint on the door. Another slate of frustrating meetings, another night of rolling the dice. Things are good. Pretty good.

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Tue, 12 Apr 2022 17:39:25 GMT

Seeds in the soil, water in the soil let's see what we can make.

Got back from PA and hopefully won't make that trip again for a good long while. Things are going well enough I think, there, on that front. Content with the flow of things, it's fine - work, job, stuff - it's persistent but never urgent - it's taking a long time to reconfigure my thoughts & expectations but it's a good job & I'm glad I have it.

Home is where I want to be & I don't know. There's that part of me, of anyone probably, who fantasizes about a better or superior version of yourself & that it'll be liberated to act at some point when your impediments are diminished. That's a thing that I think most people have in mind - how they'd excel if given the opportunity. I think having a house is basically my opportunity so I'm doing what I can to make the most of it, to turn it around & make it how I want it to be. Or how I think it'd be better. Pretty sure no amount of yard work will eliminate motor traffic & pets so, just with what I can actually fix.

Plants are a whole thing. I don't want to have grass, the number 1 crop in the US - I don't want to farm it. Looking at alternatives - there's a few in my neighborhood alone - ground cover & flower beds - I think I can? I'll work on it, steadily. I got rakes. Trash bins too. No mower. Not gonna either. Maybe a push mower? I tried my luck at finding a lawn provider online & ended up with hal fthe population of the Philippines calling me to explain that they can't do what I need but will do so much more for excessive money & a commitment to their service. Pretty infuriating phone queuing system - bad sales/crm design. I assume that the different services that opt in to the underlying app have poor results. They should. Anyway I've been driven to buy a mower & probably will push one around until I can figure out a plant instead of grass to grow.

Patio, that's on the horizon. Installed towel racks. Fixed hot water, have a shelf of tools. Working on it, that's all. Maybe forever. That's alright. I always wanted a house of my own, I'll make the best of it. That's just how it all goes right now. I figured to care about my house & make it a project. Always something to do.

Bird Feeders. Put those out today, subscribed to seed delivery - I figure that's a helpful way of reminding yourself to do things - the new birdseed appeared - better refill them. That's kind of the cadence I'm aiming for.

Long ago I lived in Parma, home of the extremely cheap & old person. You know, the original one. I had a store there & never sold one thing without there was a coupon attached - cheapskates & chiselers & all so, so old. When you live in a spot like that you learn patience because you're in a line wherever you end up - people are cutting out coupons, getting their golden buckeye cards, AARP, just complaining to the kid at the counter - whatever, they're taking their cheap-old time & you may as well get used to it. But you'd see in those encounters that there's an old man - unassuming, you wouldn't look too closely at him & what he's doing but he does have a cart full of birthday party themed paper plates napkins & hats - all of it & for a party of maybe a thousand people? I'm a little perplexed & just say - "You gonna have a lot of people over for your birthday man?" He says that it's all on sale and he's got a coupon for half off besides & so he's getting all the birthday part stuff they have so he'll have it. Never run out, always have some in a plastic bin with raised letter labels printed on them. Maybe that's a real way to live - maybe a skill you get over time - just having what you need, being ready - living the seasons like that, with all you require on demand.

Then again the dude is probably a maniac right? Hoarder? What's the right way to live? Never an answer right, but you look for the parts you like & ape them.

Trying for a gradient on the door. You never see a gradient. I'm thinking orange into red. Maybe green into blue or blue into purple for the back door.

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Alstacia's 9th Commentary on Raindrinker

Tue, 15 Feb 2022 14:49:08 GMT

40th White Day – the Bitterchill– YK 2047 Transcripts of a Conversation between Irrinzil the Xethan and Olmstead Goldendream agent of the Golden Tower[1].

Irrinzil - I wustz callt to dse Courdt of mine fryndt dse Gannyl (Transcriber's Note – "I was called to the court of my friend the Kannyl", I introduce the passage with my best depiction of the Instructor's patois' but only for the sake of verisimilitude, I will translate what follows into more legible Kliali.) But I did not go to see him. They said that I must go to be interviewed by an agent of the Gold Tower. I was excited by this because I had wondered at the purpose of the Gold Tower for many years after my long search to see it. I went to one of the little chapel rooms of the Kannyl's house, which house it seems has an endless number of rooms that I have not yet seen. This room was small and had a strong fire in the grate and only two big chairs set so two would face each other. When I came in I was surprised, I found a man sitting with his back to the door. The Man stood, he was a Kliali through and through, his hair was short and trimmed close and his little beard was also carefully trimmed and his eyes were gold and green and darting and clever. He smiled and saluted in a strange way – it was very effete and casual, it made me feel familiar with him, we were at rest right away. He said I should sit and his voice was warm and deep and calm. I sat and he began speaking.

Olmsted - I have read your books.

Irr. - But have no books szir, I cannot wirite nor read eizther.

Olms. - Nevertheless master Irrinzil, there are books of your stories and I have read them. I know from them that you are confused about many aspects of the Empire, but that you bear it and its head no malice.

Irr. - Indteed I loave thze Empire. I didt not know itd hazd a headt or else I would have trietd to visitd itd.

Olms. - The Head of the state is the Kannyltine, there would be a state without him, but it would be a corpse.

Irr. - Aha! Whatd is a headt thzen withzout a bpody?

Olms. - The head's purpose is to direct the body, without a body there is no need for a head. It amuses me to play this game with you but I think that you are attempting to divert me. You have no need to divert me, as I have said I have read your books – your stories and I judge no malice for the Kannyltine within them. Indeed if I did detect any hostility for the Kannyltine within your works or your behavior today it would matter to me not at all because you are not a greatblood, not even Klliali. My concern and the purpose of the Tower of Gold is to inspect the cousins of the Kannyltine – the other Greatblood Lords for signs of sedition. You understand - rebellion. You and I are not Greatbloods and are therefore of no concern to the Tower.

Irr.- I hafve no ill intentzionsz!

Olms. - Everyone has ill intentions, sometimes those intentions are turned toward the greatest authority. Again, I do not care and do not judge you condemn you or suspect you. I have requested this audience because I am curious about your patron's ambitions. Saris is a powerful lord. They say he’s the richest of all the Greatbloods. That may be so. I’m very curious - what does he say about the Kannyltine?

Irr. - Nothzing to me I'm szure. I occupy a narrow placze in hisz life.

Olms. - I think you may have more information than you realize. They say that the Storytellers of the Xeth remember everything that they see.

Irr. - And everythzing we are toldt.

Olms. - So what have you been told? What are Kannyl Saris’ ambitions?

Irr. - Akgain I muszt insziszt I know none of thzem.

Olms. - You are concealing something or else you would be asking questions rather than making statements. I have read your stories I know how you operate.

Irr. - Well! I ahm shzocked by whatd is happeningk. I dton'td know to szpeak againszt Lord Sarisz andt I dton'td know thzat I wouldt say if I knew anythzing.

Olms. - I see, you aren't used to being questioned. You ask questions.

Irr. - Yesz.

Olms. - Ask me a question.

Irr. - Whatd isz thze Tdower of Goldt? Whatd dtoes itd mean?

Olms. - The man coughs as if to hid laughter. A fair question, I know you sought us out in the past. It is of no consequence if you learn our history we are not secretive though we seek no notoriety. Some centuries past the Kannyls of Copperring took recourse to their house sages, the coven of the Url King. This they did in defiance of the Kannyltine it was their wish to overthrow him and replace the office with one of their own. This was learned and in retribution the Kannyltine took all the gold of the Lords of Copperring and built a tower in which he entombed them all. He replaced the seditious lords with his own loyalists and let the tower stand forever after. Some time later an agency was commissioned to seek out and suppress any such sedition. It was named for the tower of gold and the Golden Tower serves as a tomb for overly ambitious lords. Are you satisfied now?

Irr. - I musdt be I thzink; dto you have more tdo szay?

Olms. - I am not here to entomb Saris, I am not here to ask you to do so. I am here because Saris is very rich, his power could come to exceed his grasp. Times are dangerous. You know the Kannyltine has no heir?

Irr. - Dto you wish an answer? Itd isz well known bpy everyone.

Olms. - Known y everyone. What it means is the matter of speculation. Whatever you say, to officials such as myself – this is transcribed and given to your keepers. Kannyl Windheart will learn of this conversation correct?

Irr. - Nods assent

Olms. - What will happen is still in the hands of the Kannyltine, he will name an heir and it will not be Saris Windheart. Will your Kannyl accept this? Will Saris wish to grasp more than his power can contain? I am not here to ask you anything, I am here to put questions in your mind and to pass a message to your Patron. Do you understand?

Irr. - I thzink thzatd I dto.

Olms. - Don't worry, we won't speak again. If you wish, I’ll arrange a visit for you, to the Tower of Gold. Perhaps you’d like to see it.

Irr. - I amm nodt szo szure.

[1] This is a record of a conversation between my old mentor and an agent of the Tower of Gold. I was a student of the old Xeth-Athethan storyteller long before I recorded this conversation. It was determined that a scribe of official status be present for the conversation and I was chosen. At the time I was more taken by the old man’s accent and attempted (and failed) to illustrate it in my transcriptions. At the time of the recording the conversation’s meaning was clear to me, I experienced then, but not so sagacious that I truly grasped the direction the empire would take. My mentor Irrinzil’s own employer was Saris, the Kannyl Windheart, at that time among the most consequential Kannyls of the west.

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It's not ecologically sensible but I can't share walls with people anymore.

Mon, 17 Jan 2022 14:28:06 GMT

Really I should get to this more. That's how all the posts that are once-annually made here by lapsed livejournalists go. It's true, I don't super need the validation & attention of strangers anymore which is alright, but also limits your utility as a person. Without those needs how can you be grasped & handled by the rest!?

I had a pretty alright '21. I got this job & it's been good. I have to go to PA every so often & the arrangement is that I pay my mother & borrow her car. Then I go there & live in a hotel & it's a big waste of everyone's time & money - but they like for me to be there. And really - me being there is important too. I have the rare nice smile & pleasant voice in the IT department, I'm likeable & when you go to the office to be likeable every month or so - it just gets them all back on your side. Now. Aside from one brief & unfortunate bit of shame, when my ma & my kid's ma both decided to cash old checks at once leaving me pretty much stranded in Pittsburgh (my bank's not here! I want to cash a check! I'm overdrawn & can't!) I've kept the comma in the old bank account all year long. That's been good.

I moved to a fancy apartment, had disputes with the neighbors & the landlord & finally did something I probably aught to have done which is buy myself this little house.

I wasn't sure if I'd stay in CLE or go somewhere else or do... Anything - it could have been anything. But then A says she's going to CIA for college & will be here on the full ride for 4 years, I don't know. I decided to stay. I sold some crypto & got a loan & bought myself a house, it's going pretty well since November- the most expensive month of my life. Moved in December, so I'm still getting used to it. No curtains yet, for instance. Figuring it out as I go. I think things are good, for now, for a while. Or anyhow...

This month has been hard. My best relative got Covid & died. My Auntie who I lived with for all those years. All our cousins & my kid & my brother & sister's kids - all the people who were raised by her. Shit. I don't think I've ever been as sad as I was at Liza's funeral. We're walking to the grave & I'm telling Agatha - "I think if I could understand the whole service, if it wasn't all in Arabic - I think it wouldn't have been surreal enough & I would have just died from sorrow." I can't remember if she agreed. My poor auntie. She died in the same hospital where once she & I held her mother's hand while she died. All alone though, for her, no handholding because Covid is the worst. I guess she slept through it all though. There's that at least. Tata Habashiyea - I remember how her eyes rolled back & how she croaked at us - she hadn't been awake in moths & then she was screaming & rasping to the end.

I started to think - why did I stay in Cleveland. Then the electic company turned off my lights. That was Thursday & not till Saturday did they get back to it & that's lucky because of the terrific storm all night & relentless snow on the ground. I'd freeze to death in the dark because the meter reader got drunk? No explanations have been given yet - it's absurd, no one can tell me why this happened so I'm going with drunk meter reader.

Anyhow, without shit to do at home in the dark & cold I wandered the slightly new neighborhood & got acquainted with aspects. I'm in the same town for 10 years now but I changed from the Coventry neighborhood to the Cedar Lee neighborhood which are separated by like, a mile. And a lot of expectations. Coventry is in worse shape lately - corporate landlords & tougher times for businesses. Cedar Lee's got like 2 breweries now. I had an alright time walking around. I thin A will try to work at the movie theater - I suggested it. Movies are good job for youths.

This is always better when there are details peppered in, color & scent, things to make the journalism more evocative. There's just snow though, and comfort & lament.

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Alstacia's 7th & 8th Commentaries on Raindrinker

Mon, 27 Dec 2021 13:16:23 GMT

Motto of the Kannylte of Raindrinker[1]

"I will bring murder to the murderers, death to the dark places."

40th White Day – the Bitterchill– YK 2047 Transcripts of a Conversation between Irrinzil the Xethan and Olmstead Goldendream agent of the Golden Tower[2].

Olmsted - I have read your books.

Irr. - But have no books szir, I cannot write nor read eizther.

Irr. - Indteed I loave thze Empire. I didt not know itd hazd a headt or else I would have trietd to visitd itd.

Olms. - The Head of the state is the Kannyltine, there would be a state without him, but it would be a corpse.

Irr. - Aha! Whatd is a headt thzen withzout a bpody?

Irr.- I hafve no ill intentzionsz!

Irr. - Nothzing to me I'm szure. I occupy a narrow placze in hisz life.

Olms. - I think you may have more information than you realize. They say that the Storytellers of the Xeth remember everything that they see.

Irr. - And everythzing we are toldt.

Olms. - So what have you been told? What are Kannyl Saris’ ambitions?

Irr. - Akgain I muszt insziszt I know none of thzem.

Olms. - You are concealing something or else you would be asking questions rather than making statements. I have read your stories I know how you operate.

Irr. - Well! I ahm shzocked by whatd is happeningk. I dton'td know to szpeak againszt Lord Sarisz andt I dton'td know thzat I wouldt say if I knew anythzing.

Olms. - I see, you aren't used to being questioned. You ask questions.

Irr. - Yesz.

Olms. - Ask me a question.

Irr. - Whatd isz thze Tdower of Goldt? Whatd dtoes itd mean?

Irr. - I musdt be I thzink; dto you have more tdo szay?

Irr. - Dto you wish an answer? Itd isz well known bpy everyone.

Olms. - Known by everyone. What it means is the matter of speculation. Whatever you say, to officials such as myself – this is transcribed and given to your keepers. Kannyl Windheart will learn of this conversation correct?

Irr. - Nods assent

Irr. - I thzink thzatd I dto.

Olms. - Don't worry, we won't speak again. If you wish, I’ll arrange a visit for you, to the Tower of Gold. Perhaps you’d like to see it.

Irr. - I amm nodt szo szure.

[1] As given by Kannyl Arno upon his departure. His prior motto had been: “perseverance in duty” which is so banal that it perfectly suits the tone of unthinking compliance Arno had been known for through most of his career. It seems to me that the meaning of the motto on its face refers to guarding the two wild frontiers of the Empire. More closely examined one could, as I have, discern the implication – that of patient waiting overthrown by a man grown restless in the autumn of his life.

[2] This is a record of a conversation between my old mentor and an agent of the Tower of Gold. I was a student of the old Xeth-Athethan storyteller long before I recorded this conversation. It was determined that a scribe of official status be present for the conversation and I was chosen. At the time I was more taken by the old man’s accent and attempted (and failed) to illustrate it in my transcriptions. At the time of the recording the conversation’s meaning was clear to me, I experienced then, but not so sagacious that I truly grasped the direction the empire would take. My mentor Irrinzil’s own employer was Saris, the Kannyl Windheart, at that time among the most consequential Kannyls of the west.

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Alstacia's 7th Commentary on Raindrinker

Fri, 10 Dec 2021 13:42:11 GMT

Kaffiyon’s Reports – Grey Season YK 2037 – Raindrinker – Court of Burkannyl Tabatta[1]

The Trulk

Trulking, trulkish – there’s names for these things but when they speak their language it’s like the croak of a frog – “trulk”. That’s their noise so I’ll call them all that. Red fanged beasts, every one. Tabatta is nothing like any greatblood, different in demeanor, in her court in her presence, all of it – she’s something new in the garden and not something good. She’s supposedly only a few years old, she showed us her natal charts, provenances and good titles – none of them look like forgeries but none of them look like proper documents either. If she is who she says she’s some kind of nightmare. Supposedly she’s Arno’s daughter who he had on the way to the antipodal dark. A fling with one of these red-fanged people. We’ve not seen any among them that present as women, mothers daughters any of that. Tabatta’s the only one so far. She’s grown, fully grown and not a decade gone – if you believe what these things in the dark say, how can they even count years without seeing the sun. She’s a grown adult & dresses like the others. Lives with the others- it’s a collapse of any protocol we’ve ever been commanded to uphold.

The whole meeting is worth commenting upon. We’d been caged in one of Tabatta’s men’s houses. At first it seemed just a place to be stored for later need but it was a jail of a sort we soon deduced. It was, I think Margus who tried to get out – he wanted to tend to his samples and made to leave but was kept from doing so. There’s no door on their house – dirt holes that they are – but they laid a plank over the entry and had enough men or stones or something stacked upon it that even I couldn’t lift it, not with the help of all the rest of the iron tree’s men. We realized then, far too late, that our bearers- the Euye woodmen weren’t among us. We had thought they might be housed elsewhere in observance of some local taboo. Reasoning that we’d be poor explorers indeed if we were trapped by a dirt hole – we began digging at the walls and were making our way out of the cage of stone roots that piered the dirt. This was in opposition to a taboo as the trulkish of the village reacted with angry croaks, lashing at our hands with switches. We retreated from the attack but could see – were able to peer out of the dark hole into the village to see what transpired. Our bearers – the Euye we’d gone with down here to the Duskmarch – they were spread upon the ground – tied to stakes & each other ankles & wrists in a circle upon the open ground under the coalchain laurels. The host of our house the one with the fleshy rose blooming in his chest then grunted at the rest and they passed among them a wooden bowl grown with moss. “Drink the rain ulthansons! Drink the rain like the horsetamer! the stormcaller!” This they said in the Euye tongue but I’d learned enough by then to understand. They drank filthy water, pouring it over themselves – then the one with the flower-of-flesh upon his breast leaned low over each of the splayed men on the clay – crawled over them, growling & spitting. I felt the stone root of the tree crack under my hands but I could not break them or get free though I pulled at them with a will. The rite we witnessed- it was a horrid thing – the crawling man – from his flower of flesh a stream of blood, flowing like water, flowing with ease, poured over each of the captives who in turn screamed in terror and writhed in hideous pain. Under the coal light the red of the blood and the trulkings’ teeth and the foam at the mouths of the captives – all of it, red and soaking. The flower gouted blood and the man, our host, collapsed in the midst of the captives. The ground quickly soaked in his gore bubbled blood and that flowed over the ground toward the hole we were kept in. We struggled to shore up a barrier against it, replacing where we’d dug with mound of clay, desperate to keep the blood at bay. The unnatural flow of so much blood. So much, and I could see, through the stone bars of roots, through the handfuls of clay I mashed into the gaps, the man with the flower, the host, gasping at air, the flower pumping feeble jets in time with his breaths.

Tabatta’s Garden Again

They drug the plank from the entry and waited for us to climb out of our own accord. They didn’t pull or command or cajole at all. Senjamis the foolish old man made to leave first with a noise about his knees doing poorly in the damp. I had to hold him back. “Get your iron branch old man.” I realized without them we’d be in danger for our lives. Without the iron branch to prove our status we could be killed – probably would be killed without a thought. No one lightly slights the iron tree, to harm a member is unthinkable. They say even the specter of death itself is frightened when it comes to the iron tree and that disease and hunger in personified form are hesitant themselves to harm one of the Irontree so that’s why they rarely go hungry or die of sickness. So they say. “Get your iron branch old man!” He’d left it in the mud, which fact amazed me – but in the coalchain’s light I could barely see the old man’s face, the others in the troupe – they’d been frightened. Obviously they’d been frightened, we’d spent a month clawing through the dark forest fearful of what was hiding at the fire’s edge and now confronted by it, it was altogether more terrible than we’d ever guessed, than we could imagine. So it fell to me to act, as I could see the despair on them, by that bare red light, these men, industrious, decent – they’d never be ready for what we’d witnessed, they’d likely never recover. But I’d been trained for it, to abandon fear or sense – to withstand a greatblood’s wrath or a talan’s challenge. And now I was betraying myself to our captors – revealing too much by controlling myself. “Get your stick, they won’t hurt us if you carry your badges. They can’t.” Which these eight men believed. They trusted their badges because they’d been trained to, raised to and had through their experience been made assured of their inviolability. So they took direction.

I left the hole first – no reason not to pretend at least that I was bravest of the troupe – no reason not to upset the impression, change a watcher’s perception. I held my branch of iron before me saying – “You know what this means – you don’t dare break the Kannyltine’s law do you? Do you think you’ll break the greatbloods’ laws?” I needn’t have been so forceful, I think – they looked at me and the others, scoffing, not laughing, they do not laugh – these men of the duskmark, these trulks – they do not laugh but sneer and hiss and bare their rust fangs and their crimson nails. They sneered at our discomfort and sneered at our iron branches. When Amiss went to examine our bearers – Amiss, a physician – he’d treated them their hurts on the trail, developed a sense of propriety, control – the physician’s way, I’d seen it elsewhere and wasn’t surprised by it now. He’d been noisily opposed to their wrapping themselves in the coalchain – he’d pleaded with them to be treated. They’d refused him, the mad Euyemen and now they’d surprised him. Amiss shouted at the bound men and the trulkish only sneered again. “They’re alive, they’re changing – look, their wounds! Look!” He cried, not just cried out but wept – in fear, you’ll see that sometimes, amongst the broken-willed, weeping terror. We’d all been made to feel it, when we’d been brought to the Tower of Gold – once and for the last time when they purged fear from us. Poor Amiss hadn’t the benefit of such discipline and fell upon the supine bodies and wept in terror. Their wounds- the welts they’d raised with the coalchain wrappings now boiled, bled a black seeping puss where the blood of the flower-of-flesh had poured into them. And the man – the flower man – he’d withered to nothing by then, he’d wrinkled into desiccated mummy – just flesh wrinkled tight over displaced bones and topped, horribly, by the blooming flower, flesh, meat, dripping blood and blooming. The captives, the tied men bleeding slime into the blood drenched clay they each -all of them the twelve of them, they began t howl, to sing to shriek harmoniously together, joined by the other trulkish, our captors. When they bared their teeth in their awful shrieks we could see they were stained red, their white eyes rolling as they twisted their limbs snapping them, breaking them stretching as they boke their bindings with popping noises, crackling like fat on a skillet. They broke themselves and writhed free to stand, broken, draped in their bindings to join with the others – newly born, newly made trulkish. They must have known – since Aismoth Falls, since we’d gone with them on the trail that this was their destination, this transformation, mutilation. Such thought was not my own alone – the others of the iron tree, captives – we held each other close, gripped wrists and shoulders- shock, terror. I grabbed at Amiss, pulled him up from where he knelt, weeping amidst the ritual transfiguring. “Keep hold of your stick physician. They’ll not dare harm you.” I told him, loud enough so the others would hear, loud enough that the trulkish would hear but I knew, then, that they would not care. They would harm us or not only at their whim. We would live or we would die here but nothing in us would make that determination for we’d fallen into an enemy’s power.

Without force our captors guided us where they wanted us to go. They simply lined up, created a path and we followed it as they braced us on either side, their long limbs entwined their redfanged sneers shining in the coallight. The path was a sinuous journey into the deeper part of the hidden valley. Under a particularly large stone tree the roots of which rose out of the ground creating a cage of stone roots under a mass of stone – trunk and branches looming overhead and never not seeming precarious. We were led to this realm where the coalchains were fewer the lights unkindly dim, we struggled on the red clay, slipping in it and clutching at one another. We were drawn into the court of Burkannyl Tabatta then. This court is unalike to any other of the greatblood courts. She reclines upon the bodies of her trulkish men, who weave themselves together into a mat of limbs and bodies that undulate with breath. Surrounding the supine Burkannyl were stands of the fleshy flowers – these massive, larger across than the spread of my arms and at their base are many dozens of the withered bodies from whence they must have sprouted. Each flower stinking of cloves and rancid oil, each dribbling from their petalled lips streams of oily nectar that drowned the crawling bugs around their base in pools of stinking perfume. She writhes with her men, breathes as they breathe and as the blooms of flesh gasp and breathe – there is heat in all this breathing that steams and rises like a dense cloud within the court, there is a hot wetness upon one’s face as they enter here, and which leaves oily sweating drips down their necks and arms. I bow without hesitation to guide the others, I pull down Amiss who’s not out of his shock. “Majesty. We are servants of he Iron Tree sent by the Golden Dreamer the Kannyltine to survey your territory.” Gregor says it, breathes it out and we all mutter our assent. We’re here to do a job, a cursed job but quite within what anyone could expect, certainly in the course of mortal affairs our task here is well within the bounds of the expected. We steam ourselves, breathing hard as we hold our palms against the clammy clay soil. It flows over my knuckles as if the earth itself would seek to hold my hands, to pull me close. “You are the newest of the Kannyltine’s cousins, he wishes to offer greetings to you, to offer as gift our services.” Still Gregor speaks – following a protocol, I’m certain, but one I know not. No Kannylte has been created in a score of a dozen years. No Kannylte has been made in all the generations of my family. But these are the words said when a fresh territory is carved from the terminal edge of the empire. We bow, offering service and giving up our works as an offering.

She responds – every bit a greatblood her voice leaves an echo within our heads, an unheard echo that vibrates the jaw, raises the hairs upon one’s neck and arms. My eyes seem to swim in my head and I feel borne forward carried along a golden path of wisdom and light. The gnosis one feels when addressed by the greatbloods directly puts me at ease. “Men of the Iron Tree, only men. If you’ve come to serve you are welcome here. Tell us about our kannylte given by our father the Kannyl Arno, ruler of the utter dark.”

To disagree with the greatblood voice, to hear these words and to say, “no” – such a thing is not attempted by the untrained. I think to myself the words I must say – “nothing is given but by the Kannyltine, the world is his and he grants you its use, shares with us all what is his.” This is what I ought to say and it would be right, we all should say it at once- each man of the irontree should know this and repeat it. Only Gregor is able though – he says the words while I try to whisper them.

“My cousin is generous with his lands and with his sages. Thank you, men of the Tree of Iron. I thank you for my father for your allegiance to our master. I am only newly seated and not yet so gifted in courtly manners as many among you. I thank you for educating me.” She is not thankful, she is menacing, she is furious to be contradicted. A glance at her terrible court tells anyone she has never faced contention, never been held in check. The fury in her voice rakes over nerves, the Greatblood skill not trained but bred, she is a lash of scorn that stings the mind. “You say that you’ve been given to me. What is it to have a person? I have my cousins, my kinsmen here but you’re outside the song from the dark, the dusk music like me. I have you? Gifts? What will I do with you?” This, what she said- it meant little then, but the tone of it – she rose & approached me – long & with the extra joints like the others of the court – she approached and I knew she would come for me. “What about you, a giant, a mountain. I have heard of the mountains. There are some in the darkness below – my father tells me about them when he sings to me in my sleep, when I sing to him I’ll tell him I have seen a mountain too, a man. What’s this? You’ve horns! Horned giant! My cousin the ruler of all men is kind to give me such.” Always it is thus for the hlorii out in the world and whether I’d hoped for less predictable treatment from her or not, I still was disappointed. She, more exotic than I by far, a unique specimen, and yet she feels confident to comment, well of course, it’s her court. I’m her subject. “I am an hlorii of the southern coast of the Empire my Burkannyl. My people do not commonly wander far from the sea but I felt obliged to do the work of the iron tree and its master the Kannyltine.”

“My father told me about your kind. He has friends from across the sea. Men who walked the ice with him. He says they walked the ice. Do you know what that means? I have not seen ice, only felt it. In the dark there’s only ice. But it can’t be seen. Do you know that? That in the utter dark there is not light at all? Only ice and cold. My father is there subduing the mothers of the trulk. He’ll do it and the world will be saved. That is his work. He tells me you don’t believe him.”

Marcus saved me her attentions – drew some his own way. “We had not known that these creatures were a danger to the country. They only drive from the utter dark every seventeenth year. That is what we know of them. And never in numbers They cannot overtake a wall or defeat armed soldiers. That is what we have recorded for the Iron Tree. Will you share with us, your experiences?” I do not believe that she’d ever been asked a question.

“My experience is that the singers in the ice and dark sing and when the song reaches our ears we must dance. But I have learned to sing better than them, I’m cousins with your Kannyltine, is why. I sing. So my other cousins dance for me. Live for me. Die for me if I want it.” She glared at us all. This is her look – she is too tall because her joints are twisted and too long. She has red fangs for teeth and red needles for claws. She has a beautiful commanding face and a voice that melts the will. She is draped in red hair that hangs like muddy ropes over her bare shoulders. Upon her arms are the impressions of flesh-roses, skin flowers but retracted somehow, so they are nearly smooth upon her bare gray skin – like a pattern of flowers carved into her over and over, covering her. She glares with pale eyes, gold eyes, she glares and locks her gaze with us each when she says it. She looks hard at me and says “Kill for me if I want it.”

The others, I can hear their teeth chatter – they’re truly afraid, the chill of her words eats through them. You see this sometimes, the real fear – that overwhelms nerve. They quiver when she speaks – their knees knocking. When the fear is real, not performative, but real – intense, true – physical – then your teeth might chatter and your knees might knock. She makes them shake, the Irontree surveyors. I am trained and do not betray fear. I am trained and do not meet her gaze, she is superior. I am servile. She is greatblood. I bow and don’t meet her gaze but I don’t shiver with fear. This is apparently defiance enough for her. “You are mine, my cousin, your Kannyltine gave you to me.” She pretends it is a question. I know what is coming. “I want you to prove yourself for me. I want you to fight for your life. You, big one.” The trulkish in the court murmur as one, like an undulating gasp that you’d imagine as the laughter of an ocean. My fellow surveyors let loose gasps, tearful sobs. It’s asking much from them, to bear up under a greatblood’s command in such a condition. They weep and I rise, not meeting her gaze.

“My Iron Branch makes me inviolate. I and my troupe are not to be harmed.”

She’s never faced defiance but she knows not to accept anything but assent. “If your Kannytline protects you, what harm could come to you? Do this for me, for my court.”

So I did.

The Trulkish

She picked out one of her men and sent him to meet me in the middle of her room. They’d gathered boughs of coalchain & hung them on stone branches, this is what they have in place of candles down there. Then they’d set fire to mounds of the mushroom buttons they had gathered apparently for this purpose specifically because they smoked and guttered for a few long moments before lighting and then burning steadily emanating a stinking ochre smoke. The smoke is the main thing of their fight I think, not the light because I think they can see by the darkness in the dim of the duskmarch they could see like you or I can see by day. That’s what I’m told by my reliable source. It’s not for light but the smoke that they burn the mushrooms because the smoke is stinking but it fills the lungs and drives out good air and good sense along with it. A potent effect, the noxious things have- they killed one among us with a touch but their burning smoke was sufficient to kill our reason and render my weak-kneed, cowering cohort a mess of sobbing laughter, hysterical – like Ambrose’d been when he died. I laughed along with them but held together, since I was about to be in a fight for my life. I kept my head up and didn’t fall to my knees but I couldn’t help but hold my head back and let free some bellows. I yelled rather than laugh, shouted at the sky and sang, not as well as any hlorii but better than any woods-born Euye or trulk could sing. I bellowed and waved my iron branch instead of laughing but the same convulsions that lead to Ambrose’s death were gripping my heart like an icy claw and I could see it hurting the others just as badly, driving them to the red-clay mud in desperate hysterics.

The trulkish don’t laugh, they don’t laugh and when they smile it’s a menacing mask, nothing like friendship can possibly exist among them, nothing like a colleague – one’s either of their kind or meat to be eaten. I found that out when they sent one of them after me. He rushed in through the smoke, coughing as he came, drooling yellow gore it poured down his chest – the smoke turned to spittle, as he drank it out of the heavy air. He came at me and accepted my iron branch which I held out like a shield, he accepted it as it crashed into his shoulder and came at me, twisting as he did, a frantic fall and a flailing as he saved himself a spill by clawing at my leg and middle. He caught himself and dangling by his claws hung up in my flesh he drove his face into me and bit for all he could at my thigh. I gave him the flat part of my stick with as much force as I could manage and I felt it break his skull but he didn’t let go – not one bit. I let it fall on him twice more & felt his brains pour down my leg, felt his blood burning on me and still the awful claws the awful bite wouldn’t relent. I had to pry his face off of me with the pointed end of my branch, pull his dead hands apart, breaking the fingers to get its paws to loose me. Not a brief enough fight and not a long fight by any means but a terrible one and bloody. I was angry and roared in the smoke – still not laughing though the other klialis did, I bellowed and stamped the dead trulkish’ body into the mud and I might have gone at Tabatta – my stick in hand – I might have but the meditation that drives out the greatblood induced fear it also reasserts one’s wits. I’d like to have stove her head in as well as I’d done her servant but I held back and then the calm wash of clarity came over me, the wise voice of the Kannytline in my mind. I let my limbs rest, almost dragging my iron branch in the mud.

“You’ve seen it for yourself.” Was all I could think to say. And “Let us go. Let them go, we’re here as a favor. To you.”

Gregor

I keep referring to him as Gregor here, for the sake of secrecy but you, if you’re reading this must know who I mean, you sent him as you sent me. He came to me in our cage – which after all is where we were returned. He came to me and said what I was thinking to myself, what I knew well enough. “She doesn’t dare let us go.” I nodded. Saying nothing. Amiss was upon me, pulling his threads, sewing up my wounds and saying “The trulk, it tore at one of your canals, without attention you’d bleed, be still, let the threads work.” He sewed me up with his chemist threads, kept me alive while Gregor came to talk to me. “If we are able to get word of anything we’ve seen – it means she’ll be the target of every lance and sword and arrow in the empire. An outlaw Kannylte? Has there ever been such a thing?”

“Two hundred years back,” says Kirll, who’d know. “There was, out upon Bronzecap, a pirate of the coast claimed himself Vorkannyl, he said he was a greatblood bastard.”

“And what happened to him?”

“I think the Kannyl of Silverheaven was created as a reward for the talans that hanged him.”

“She doesn’t dare let us go.” Gregor speaks, low and fast – he’s got a kind of hurried precision in his voice, he seems frantic when he’s calm, and always serious. I turn and glare at him, as one does when their near-mortal bite wounds are being treated while you’re being told bad news. I think it displeased him because beneath his styled beard he smiled a quick, sincere grin. “You know she won’t. But we must tell someone.”

“Must we?” Amiss is worried, not for himself – I think he considered himself dead when the smoke rose up in his lungs. I think he’s still affected by it, still near hysteria, he hasn’t stopped grinning. “We’re servants at court, like we always have been, it’s just a different sort of court. We’re supposed to survey – I don’t see why we oughtn’t carry out the survey. Stay on task, that’s our duty no?”

“You think we can offer ourselves up to her and she’ll fall into line? Act the part?” Senjamis, the old man circumspect. “It wouldn’t be the first time I’d seen a new-made lord behave so badly. Only then there’s a Kannyl on hand to knock sense into them. Where’s her Kannyl? Where’s Arno? That’s the question – Raindrinker’s got no masters at hand. I think we’s aught to get at her on this account – get her to take up her papa’s duty.”

“What about the others? His other subordinates? “The Irontree servants fell into a long digression about what the proper order of succession must be amongst the lesser lords of Raindrinker. But Gregor stayed by me, even helping Amiss tie off his threads.

“What about Arno. He’s got no dispensation to invade the Antipodes. Who even knows where he’s gone?” And I took his meaning, Gregor.

And I answered him in Hlorin, the language I write here, obscure anywhere but particularly unknown in the East: “The Moon is charming.”

And he answered, likewise in the language of my kin “It is as Golden as the Kannyltine's Vault." Consummating the rite, his Hlorin better than adequate. "I should have supposed that I would not be sent alone. I confess it is a relief to find another among our party." Quickly he revealed that he was suffering as I was – "Have you seen the Tower since we've achieved the Duskmarch? When last did you see it?"

Too long ago, before the Duskmarch and before it, at Aismoth Falls I saw a bloody mouth when I looked into the place in my mind where I would look to find the tower. No tower but the bloody mouth, and further up the Euyhmer, when we’d gone under the fortress at Draylbuhn – there: “I saw fire, a burning hearth,” he says.

"It is obvious isn't it. This adventure in the south the aggrandizement, the inauspicious nativity. I think that the Burkannyl certainly understands her role as her father’s agent but do you think she has any orders? She’s no conspirator, she’s a pawn – too new, too unready for whatever Arno’s plan is – she’s here to guard his back.” Gregor sighs. “It’s this I was sent to discover. “For the Tower of Gold – discern the purpose of this Dusk Mark. A modest task, and now – accomplished. I take it, sir, that your work is yet incomplete.”

I watch the little man pull at his moustaches, he’s truthfully nervous now, not playing a part – not pretending his Irontree duty. He’s anxious and fearful – having broken the masquerade. I realize as well that I’m more stirred by this than I was by the charging beast man I’d only on the hour killed. No, revealing this secret was more terrible, by far than fighting any trulkish. Even to another keeping the same secret. “It's the father's will I was sent to learn, his ambition in the utterdark – whether he’s discover anything. What she does here is curious, maybe terrible, but it is not my duty to discover."

His duty is done. We consider this place, this village, as they’ve called it. Not one begging child, no men drinking on their doorsteps. The only woman recognizable as such here is Tabatta. It’s no village, it’s a camp, a war base. Gregor’s seen it and knows that Tabatta calls herself a peer of the greatblood. His duty is done – this is what is being done – a hidden army is being made – a monstrous one at that. He’ll need to get out of here, he’ll need to contact the tower. “They need to know what’s happening here.” We agree on this. I finish my own report, this report & put it in his hands. He’ll get out of here, I’ll see to it. He wishes me luck, in the dark, as I finish this report.

[1]The second collection of Kaffiyon’s letters in my possession. The hand remains the same, full of unintentional majuscule (typical of a Hlorii’s use of the brush & stamp), which leads me to believe that the Kaffiyon with whom I am acquainted was the document’s author. The letters are a muddled mess of several documents, I’ve collated what I take to be the narrative thrust of his account and assembled it as a codex. Thrilling stuff, if I say so.

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Alstacia's 5th & 6th Commentaries

Fri, 03 Dec 2021 13:57:08 GMT

A bulletin issued from the Scriptorium of The Smith’s Finger CA YK 1859[1]

Kannylte ~~Silverheaven~~ is in rebellion. Open resistance to The Empire. Secret army. ~~Rinkannyl Tulakkun~~ is compromised. Send help. Expect danger. Final Communication.

Gregor’s Alarm, Grey Season – YK 2037, Raindrinker the Garden of Burkannyl Tabatha[2]

We met the physical article of sedition the Burkannyl Tabatta who is Kannyl Arno’s daughter by an utterdark trulking. She leads a legion of archers & skirmishers comprised entirely of tulkish – half Eyue-half Trulking warriors. Send help. Expect danger. Final communication.

[1] Intermittently the scribes of the Maker’s faith are given bulletins of this sort to transcribe in duplicate, triplicate and so forth – urgent messages that are sent by the dozen via fast runners, dedicated riders, trusty birds and the occasional leaky rowboat. In short, when one must be certain that the message is received it is transcribed a few dozen times and posted with all haste by the nuns. This message hung in the scriptorium as an example of the form – I can’t attest to its provenance, but I imagine something quite like it must have circulated in the years after YK 2037. I’ve not seen any official bulletin, but this template always intrigued me. The names here are redacted to protect reputations.

[2] This text was presented to me alongside a trunk full of damaged materials including several diagrams of a monstrous person I understand to be a trulk as well as some rotten samples of plant material wrapped in oilcloth. The trunk had no stated origin & I never met the one who dropped it at my door. The letter of alarm is signed by someone – but who’s name doesn’t match Kaffiyon’s text (which is to be expected). I cannot gauge the authenticity of the document, however, I do regard it as documentary evidence whether it was an authentic relic of the expedition we presently study or a forgery meant to corroborate same, later events promote its validity.

Compare its contents to the preceding bulletin. This is, by my reckoning, the first of such bulletins in a long chain that has brought us to the present state of war.

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Alstacia's Fourth Commentary on Raindrinker

Tue, 09 Nov 2021 14:43:32 GMT

Kaffiyon’s Reports, Grey Season – YK 2037, Raindrinker the Garden of Burkannyl Tabatha[1]

The Forest

Seasons in the Duskmarch are indistinct. Though we are, by the reckoning of my cohort well within the Grey the seasonal variety that we expect in the more benign latitudes is not to be found. The march through the woods, which is what we’ve called our last four weeks of travel, have been at the very least difficult. The Aismoth Falls, of which had very little to recommend it is a paradise in comparison to the privation we’ve endured. ~~Our company~~. The company that I’ve infiltrated in service to the Empire has suffered rather badly at the indifferent whims of the capricious wood. Though we are at all times in the midst of howling creatures – the ravening, gnashing sound of which I hear even now – pacing the edge of the firelight. The darkness here is incredible. The fires we’ve built each night have been larger & larger. We’ve taken to snatching every scrap of combustible wood we find in our path each day to build yet bigger campfires & for all their mass, each larger than the previous night’s, they are each like a sputtering candle flame at the bottom of a well. We are stalked by indistinct creatures always at the edge of perception. The days are brief, startlingly so in fact. When sometimes we have found a clearing in the dense forest it has been possible to see the speedy progress of the sun through the northern sky. It is an intensely dispiriting thing to observe – so much so that we, to a one, commented that we preferred the gloom of the overarching canopy to seeing the brief sun sliding upon the firmament

But we have had casualties. I considered not naming them for the sake of their anonymity – to protect their people from investigation or surprise – but the circumstances of their deaths have been so tragically ignominious that I feel I must comment upon them. So I have designed to call them by pseudonyms. Pertinash from the Tree of Iron, a surveyor drowned in mud after an embankment was undercut by a sudden flow of water, as if a dam had burst. The hillside washed away beneath him & he as well as two of his local guides, both Euyemen foresters tumbled into the torrent & were subsequently buried under the flow of mud that followed their own fall. I heard him scream & could not reach him – I had to leap to safety & was able to rescue two other of the bearers. I know not the names of any of the Euye foresters. I do not trust their silvery eyes or their wolfish muzzles. I & the others, rely on Gregor to interpret their speech, which they use quite sparingly, and to manage their contributions to the trek. Gregor indicates that these porters, guides & camp aides, who number at nineteen now, have greater fear of the Utterdark & the Duskmarch than we, which thought gives me the greatest trepidation. That those who are closest to the threat understand it & fear it far more greatly than do our own official company of now nine brave men.

We lost Ambrose as well – but to sickness possibly to poisoning. The old man was fearless in his exploration came upon a species of toadstool heretofore unknown to the Iron Tree & in his analysis of the mushrooms, which he indicated grew in bulbous buttons like a rash upon the roots of the aigathos trees, he became somehow compromised, maddened at first & then hysterical. After an interminable night of the old man’s mad peals of hilarity we watched all the color fall from his face, even his eyes were bleached and I saw for myself the color drain from his hair – from silver to white like watching wine drain from a glass. His force was spent & when we buried him we noted that he weighed nearly nothing and that carrying him was like carrying a dried & hollow log. We never knew if had eaten the mushrooms or had merely touched them. His notes on the matter are coded in Irontree shorthand cypher but the texts are retained with the increasingly vain-seeming idea that we will encounter someone capable of transmitting these messages back to the capitol.

We have been treading down a circuitous track that barely suffices as a game trail but which accounts as the main street of Duskmarch. Somewhere within this trackless forest the Kannyl of Raindrinker has made his headquarters. That such a thing has come to pass is beyond confounding. I am sent by the secret chiefs of Gold Tower to find answers. I travel in the company of an enclave of Irontree surveyors as my cover. At present I suspect that I am not the only agent of the Tower in the company. I believe that Gregor, who’s name I have altered here, is a fellow of the conspiring service.

I had considered to make records of the sights & personalities of Duskmarch but I have observed the rigor of the, true, Irontree surveyors & am made to feel some shame regarding my lack of acuity of eye or cleverness with words. They have compiled a great quantity of text already – using the immense fires & the long nights to write, and often enough with a fury which, I have no doubt, is sustained as a means of avoiding consideration of the beasts just at the edge of perception. Just now, my concentration has been shaken by the cackling roar of some creature at the edge of the fire, a monkey or a cat – I think, based upon the scattered words of Euye I’ve absorbed. The guides are not frantic, as I’ve seen them become occasionally, instead they’re scanning the perimeter.

It seems that the piercing shriek was the cry of some monkeys attacked by a lion of some description, the cry of which is too similar to the wailing of an infant to be borne. Evidently the cry precedes its strike & the Euye woodmen are unconcerned because local legend claims that you cannot hear the cry of the lion that comes for you. So we experience sudden death as spectators rather than victims.

Thus far I’ve passed off my writing, and there’s little to do by the firelight in this company besides write, as a record of the winds. Such study being esoteric enough to be deemed impenetrable to outside curiosity while related in some way to my being an Hlorii, and as well my use of the hlorin script is both useful for secrecy and outside of question. It is not the first time that I’ve used this cover but I’ve not attempted this identity or any other save my original for so long. I ought, I think, have studied more about the winds though there are too few in the wood to comment upon, I have held that the lack of a wind is equivalent to an abundance of winds to the initiated. I think Gregor saw through this deception & this is why I think that he is, if not an agent of the Tower then an agent of some opposite force – which, until this moment I had not considered a possibility. The Empire rules the world entire – all civilizations are within its bounds and all that lies outside the bounds is ungoverned wilderness, so I had always assumed.

So I still believe, I suppose it’s meet to say. The bounds of the world are known. The edge of the empire, where I find myself now, the border between the inhabited forest and the utter dark, where the sun is unknown. Why would Arno make his camp here, why would he claim the woods, why would he refuse his recall to court. The Tower has more questions than these & Arno has offered the same answer to each – silence. So I am dispatched to see for myself and make an answer to the Tower of Gold. Could Arno have agents of his own? Opposed to the tower? I have seen the Tower, just as I have seen the tower – I know the vastness of the resources committed to the clandestine service & cannot imagine a way in which the poorest Kannyl in the remotest Kannylte in the empire could mount anything approximating that power, let alone capable of challenging it. Nevertheless, I see Gregor at another edge of the fire, writing in his own codex & cannot help but think he is making note of me as I have made note of him. Perhaps he is who he claims, a student of the divisions between human appearance, an Anthropiphist of the Iron Tree, studying the greyhided Euye but also the big Hlorii beside them, perhaps he’s never seen my like, though I imagine that unlikely, or perhaps he merely hopes for a view of my horns, though they are barely there.

A monkey has been driven to the camp, probably by the death of its fellow & the guides are busy trying to corner it – and now they’ve driven it into the fire. There’s aught to do besides write about what’s happening around us or to drive a monkey into a fire for the scant & grim amusement such cruelty gives.

The Trail, another night. The trail is arduous. The world is endless, the forest. We’re on the twenty fourth night. The nights are so long and the days so brief that I’m certain we’ve made truly terrible time on this journey, we’re probably only a few hundred leagues out of Aismoth Falls. Though the wood lacks mountains or hills of any description it’s not a flatland either. There are innumerable deep gullies that embank trickling streams through the wood. The whole forest drains in tiny rivulets north to the River Euyhmer. Not one cold be navigated by anything but a minnow.

Senjamis says that the forest to the south & the east of the Euyhmer is the borderland of the empire & ever will be. To the south is the Utter Dark where no sunlight is ever seen and to the east & north is the interminable plain – which none have crossed & which is thought to continue into the theorized Ever Day. Senjamis is a surveyor, not merely in title, like the rest of the survey – he marks the road with the chains & for every gully we’ve had to cross, first by uncertain descent down a steep muddy bank & then by a hazardous ascent up a steep muddy bank he has sketched a plan of a bridge of rope & planks accompanied by a coordinate, a measurement & a calculation. Each of the crossings -and he says there have been eight so far, have occupied the whole of one of the Duskmarch’s brief days. I’ve learned this because Senjamis is talkative but not a friendly sort, a pedagogical sort, a lecturer. He’d previously been joined to Pertinash by the chain & stave, for these surveyors work in a team. When they worked together they were efficient & capable, our troupe didn’t need to pause for their work as they kept our pace & sometimes set it. Now we’re hindered because I have been made Senjamis partner. Pressed into that service by him as he observed to me – “Map the winds like it was a sea? No, you’re not fooling me big son, you’re an idler but no more, I’ve need of a partner in the staving & chainging. We’ll mark the measure of the road me, and you, idle windmapper. You’ll see, the path is easier to mark than the flow of the breeze through these trees.” This he said amidst gulps of air as he carried the gear that a pair would carry by himself. Even in the cold he sweated & I felt at the least of the human urge to aid one on the same path. I took his staves and helped him with the chains. I’m told our efforts from now will be a poor first draft of the route but will still serve when the road builders come. He is certain that they must.

“No Kannyl ever was that didn’t have the one road from Klial to his door and no Kannyl ever will be that doesn’t have the Kannyltine’s highway rolled out to meet him, like a carpet at a fete.” Senjamis iterates some variant of this exposition over and over. Sometimes one chants or sings on the trail – as a meditation. One foot falls then the other, a determined steady pace – forward, forward, forward. The trail is meditative, when you let it be but sometimes the chant is what’s needed to let it be. This is Senjamis’ chant. “No Kannyl ever was that didn’t have the one road.” “From Klial to his door.” “No Kannyl ever’ll be that doesn’t have the Kannytline’s highway rolled out.” “Like a carpet at a fete.” “No Kannyl ever was.”

I think that perhaps this is why Arno has taken to Duskmarch. Or has gone to the Utterdark. It’s muttered here and there in our troupe that this is where we’ll go. That we’re following him into the dark.

And it is darker, growing darker every day as every day’s bounds are truncated further. The nights have grown longer when already we were persuaded that they could not be longer. Soon we’ll be in the umbral realm of the world, near the Utterdark & though we’ve all along known that this would be our destination the reality of it, the truth of the experience of interminable night can be anticipated but only as one regards a poorly remembered dream – there is something that you know -but you cannot bring to mind what the experience will be. Today we camp near a treefall, one of the titanic aigathos, dragged down by the vines that drape upon their limbs, pulled to earth by the weight of all the life it supported, through the gap in the canopy that such a fall allows we were able to see the sun swim through the sky & its disk never broke from the horizon, it skimmed along the northern edge of view & never broke contact with the edge of the world We watched it set with terrific speed, much more than we’d previously believed possible. The sight of it, barely hung in the sky, barely visible under the canopy, barely with us – the sense of being forsaken penetrates to the bones, it hollows our eyes makes us feel as though we’re stranded upon an island in a rushing stream.

The dark of the wood is counteracted now by the presence of hanging chains of burning coal. The heat of them is insufficient to light the wood but they are there- vines of coal, burning black, a red flame dancing furled upon the branches of the wood like bunting. The little chasing flames flow in waves & I’m reminded that I should at least pretend an interest in the wind. Fire doesn’t blow with the wind but reacts, dances against the breeze. I’m sure a physician from the old school would know something about this, wind and fire – opposites? It’s my past self that knew these things, not well I suppose, since I can’t recollect a fact beyond the existence of a flame and wind without a concept of their relation. But I’ve seen the fire in the night, snapping in the wind, hissing its little sound like a sheet flapping on a mast but so faint. Each flame is like a woven strand, like a braid of charcoal that burns but so cold that even the dry needles won’t ignite. A fire of light alone. Ambrose, who’s dead, had talked about wanting to see the coalchain so all of us feel we must give it our attention so as to honor him or his wish, though I recollect how he wailed hysterically for a night before dying and find I can’t muster any feeling more than relief. The others are content to just look at the chains and to glumly nod at the wonder of them. The old man’s cackle was too horrible and being forced to remember it as a surprise has taken the pleasure from the discovery. The Euye woodsmen are indifferent to the coalchain, it goes unremarked upon by them but now I see them gathering some, out beyond the campfire’s glow. Yes, you can see them pulling down the vines, the deformation of the liquid flame in the dark, the shadows of men, yelping from the pain.

They returned, the Euyemen I’ve not named here, they came back with laurels of the coalchain dragged behind them leaving motes of ember in the dirt. They made a show of removing their shirts & exposing their grey skins to the camp. Then one among them draped the burning coalchain upon the shoulders of each of them one after the other until each had a length wrapping about a quarter of their upper body. By the time the final one among them was being wrapped the first to be so decorated could contain himself no longer and began to scream after his stoic tooth gnashing & foot stamping availed him not. He howled into the night, eyes rolling in panic, he howled, spoke no word in the cries but screamed all the same. He peeled the braided cords of the burning plant from himself and upon his body were left scars, welts, blisters and blood. Then the others peeled their own coalchains off as they, out of turn, chaotically, succumbed to the anguish and were forced to relent. In an hour they each had been draped and then cast their chains into the fire, which once stoked gave an ugly smoke and spit furiously, it still sputters and pops though this was an hour past at least. I can see the chains in the fire not consumed but burning like charcoal. The foresters, the Euyemen are more grim now, more than even their customary dull-witted, casual cruelty can bear. They take turns inspecting their welts, the patterns of the burns around their necks & shoulders, the one who’d laid the laurels upon them he holds forth his hands, blackened and bloody for them each to see and smears one finger’s gore on each of their faces. I know nothing of this act they’ve performed but I imagine that they will regret it sooner than later as there’s little water left just now and we’ve seen no sign of a stream for a day at least.

Tabatta’s Garden

They must have known we were about to approach this place – the Euyemen. I think of their conduct elsewhere upon the trail, consider each action of each of the men, think of the surreptitious glances, the trips into the bush to gather game, the silent brooding at the fire. They knew and led us here without a thought of telling us. I’m not yet sure if it’s a betrayal by intention or omission. They do seem too dull-witted to betray us in accordance with some interior drive, some machination – but they are servile enough that they may have betrayed us out of a competing loyalty. Tabatta is the newest of the greatblood aristocrats of Klial, it seems. There’s been no annunciation, no adding her name to the genealogies, no word at all from the Duskmarch which is the inciting cause of my journey here but is, in its effect quite like the minimal daylight here, much worse than you’ve expected though you expected what you had considered to be the worst already. A new floor lies beneath what I’ve taken to be the trouble here. It’s not disobedience to the order of recall it’s outright sedition such as the Empire’s not seen in generations.

Quickly, Arno has left even the gloomy duskmark behind and advanced into the Utterdark of his own accord, plainly in defiance of the several refusals that have been issued from the throne. He is meant to hold the borders and to make no war on the extreme south and the Trulkings there. That was the word from the Kannyltine’s chair and was issued in proclamation at least four times. I’ve seen the proclamation, I have a sealed copy upon my person even now, meant to be clandestinely snuck into Kannyl Arno’s possession at such time as I am able to enter his chambers in secret. A typical threat offered by the Tower, a message of warning. There’s no chance of any such maneuver now though, the Kannyl has slipped the bounds of the Empire to, one presumes, carve his own sovereignty from the southern wilds.

I should collect myself, record my impressions as I experienced them, as I got wound into this tale.

First the trail wound through a dense stand of trees and switched back, descending one of those hidden slopes, a gully, like where we lost Pertinash – but here & note this, when you come for you must come here, send others, more. There’s a need of the Tower’s intervention, at the very least. You must come to this valley – which is broad & deep & spreads out under the glimmering edge of night where the duskmarch descends into the endless night of the antipode. There’s a line in the sky, a line of light that writhes like a serpent, edges across the firmament inching – not a serpent, but a worm. It edges across the sky, a rigid, clear line in the sky marking the utterdark & the lands where the sun sometimes still shines – for an hour or two in a day. This line is a light like starlight, it cascades down in a ribbon of every color, a rainbow that arcs over the whole world. When you’ve walked the trails and found the edge of the deep valley covered over by the trees that fan out over the earth, concealing everything – when you’ve found this deep valley where you cannot see the floor beneath and you see overhead this rainbow that marks night & day in permanent dull hues, sometimes colors and sometimes grey bands of differentiated streaks – hen you’ve come to there make your way, carefully now, into the valley. Here is what you will find there.

Tabatta’s garden is at the center of the valley which bounds are marked by falling streams of water, bare stone seeping as if from walls bleeding rain in a flood, the walls of the valley are steep stone bluffs that seep ceaselessly, slow torrents of water that pool at the base of the high walls. For a roof this house has the great tall pines but these are – they are unlike any other trees - they are like the bones of trees – as if a cavern were excavated out of bare rock & the supports were columns left intact within all of the subtracted stone but carved as well, decoratively to resemble trees, to look for all the world like any tree at all but made of brittle stone, not wood These trees stand under the grey rainbow, their branches spread out over the valley but these are not clothed in the leaves or needles of any other trees, no.

No, I reached the lower branches, for I am hlorii, taller than THEM, and feeling upon the branches I could see, by the light. The light! I must mention that as well, I mut tell you. But first, in place of leaves, in place of cones or seeds this tree, all the others here, they have a mass of buttons, fleshy toadstools, mushrooms – those same that killed Ambrose, that drove him mad. I am smiling, hard right now, my jaw is gripped by it, tension that spreads my smile wide. It can’t be that I’ll die howling laughter, like Ambrose did. I.

I think it’s fading, from me. I am young & great, broad of shoulder, firm of heart, not an old withered man, and I have felt some of what it was that killed the old man, but I endure it. Now, after lying for a time under these skeletal trees in this garden of burning coals.

A Creature’s House

The coals. Here the people have wrapped the coalchain so it grows in abundance upon the stone trees, and on the rocks strewn by old falls. The wrappers of glowing, cold flames cast light over the secret valley & by this light their lives are lived, their staples are grown, their days are measured. There is just one day, the long dim day in Tabatta’s garden. This place is wonders and terrors meshed and compounded. We are in the house of one of the leading people of the village. They say they are a man & we’ve all grace to take it at that, to say, “sir, yes.” When we go into their home it is only a pit in the earth under the stony arch of the roots of the unbending trees & descending the bare earthen ramp into the place, a single room, entering it we are warmed and realize that we’ve been freezing. The house is a room, only a room. Mud for walls, for floors, bare excavated earth and by the light of the coalchain draped from the ceiling we can see. I must duck, crawl, to enter and then stumble, scuffing my palms, there are living worms & beetles crawling upon the floor. The earth is clay and slippery loam, my knees plunge into the surface, inches into the cold wet of the home. The host, our host is Trulkish, a hybrid of the Euye and the Trulkings of the utterdark. Trulkings, I do not know – though we’ve heard from Gregor a warning, saying that not one Trulking has survived in the sunlight, that they’ve gone mad & eaten off their own limbs rather than bear the sunlight and that they’re well suited to this autocannibalism given their reddish teeth, infused with iron, their rubbery necks, their flexible limbs. That’s what the texts describe. We’re hosted not by any Trulking but our host is what’s called trulk-ish. He’s long like me but not quite so, long and narrower than an Euyeman. Thinner than a Zunman but not altogether. His limbs are too long, they hang & collapse over themselves, as if with extra joints. His fingers are long & the nails shimmer a dull red, his teeth as well, which he flashes with a will, not a smile but a snarl. Not one of these Trulkish have smiled, they’re more dour still than the humorless Euye. They’re a terror. His teeth are too long, his hands, his arms. From his bare chest there sags a single fleshy rose, a bloom of plump petals that hnags like a solitary bosom. It slaps upon his chest & though we’ve seen much of these trulkish – only he has this tumorous flower. We suppose it is a mark of rank idly, when we gather in his pit-house me and the other Irontree guests are finished with our own congress. I’m writing now because the others have collapsed from exhaustion mingled with anxiety while I, the biggest, strongest and most capable among us have been pressed into service as a guard. So I sit guard in this pit and keep my eyes on the entry, lest our host return without warning. We’ve seen them move, these folk of Duskmarch, these wrigglers these tree-climbers, these serpents – they’re, if human, abominable, if not – then a horror. Creatures. Just creatures.

We’d been resting in the garden though we didn’t know it as the garden then, just the bony trees & their fungal coverings overarching the coalchained arbors beneath. We laid & rested – no need for a camp, at last, no need for a fire in the darkness – the light under the trees is plenty, it’s dull and burnished light, a ruddy shadowy light but greater light than we’d seen in this latitude. We lay to rest, I laid to rest, the others paced but I was drugged, the button rash of mushrooms I’d touched affected me, enough, not enough to kill like they’d killed Ambrose, but badly enough that I had to lay, to feel my body spin sickeningly, to feel myself flipping over and over until I was sick in the bare chalky earth twice. It was better after that, I felt the earth solid as ever at my back but wriggling, living – the worms here are immense, finger-wide, as wide as my own thumb that’s like a wrist of these others. These senseless worms writhe up to nestle at your back to gather the warmth from your body, to drink it from you. It was enough to startle me up, to launch me halfway to standing to feel the cold ribbon on my flesh, of the heat-thirsty worm. And rising up, sudden as a whipcrack, I startled these creatures that came upon us, sneaking. Said they to me, sneering, “Big big giant man. Man, man of the city. Man of the empire.” This last, he meant himself. He gestured to me – “Man of the city” then to himself “Man of the empire.” I didn’t believe it, not a man. A horror, the extra joint in their knees, the extra join in their wrists – I saw their limbs furling & unfurling as they came. “Back, away from us.” Said I at them. They kept away and I said “What is this place? Who are you men? And Where is Kannyl Arno?”

“We are empire’s men, we are Klia-lee. Our mistress is Tabatta, she is Burka-nill” One said, one spoke up, and the others followed. “We” said one and seven finished together “Burka-nill”, Burkannyl, bow-muster lord.

This was enough to rouse the others, my troupe. They sprang up and engaged these men, these new sorts of people. Trulkish. They led us under the trees, through their gardens – whorls of plants grown in spirals around each stony tree’s trunk. A wave of millet, of maize, of beans, of tubers – spiral arms all lit by hanging boughs of coruscating coalchain for want of the sun’s light. A plot like the petals of a flower spread from each trunk of the stone trees, and under each tree was a house like this one, a hole. We watched the ugly withered folk rise up from their houses, small & sickly – the children? Bent with red nails, red teeth and the pale whit eyes. These, the smallest of them, they had, I could see the pale eyes of the Euye, and the muzzles – the long mouths, but bursting from them were their red teeth. I’m formulating, now, an idea about these folk. I wonder if they’re born or made – I think they’re made, forged somehow out of the Euye greyhides. Or mingled – cross-bred? They’re each fantastic, bizarre. They drew us into their village, hissing, spitting flaring like fires they screech anger. The others with me hold out their iron branches. I follow suit, remembering my cover. The iron branch, inviolability goes with it. No one dares to harm the Kannytline’s servants. I hold my branch & the others do. I think, I’m thinking now of the stone trees here, how like the iron tree they must be What must these trulkish make of them. Have they ever seen a branch of the iron tree? Did they take it as a cousin to their own stone trees? They understood our brandishing as if we’d held up weapons. They withdrew, covered themselves, hissed, spit again. One among them – a Talan? A leader of some kind, they said they knew what the branches meant & who we were. He said, come to my house, wait at my house for the Burkannyl Tabatta, she’ll sort you out. “We are here to present ourselves to the Kannyl Arno.” Gregor spoke up for the mission, the rest of us were stunned or dismayed enough to forget ourselves. “Come to my house.” The Talan-thing said. The flower-of-flesh bursting from his chest, dangling flesh in perfect petals – just like a rose, it breathes with the rise of his chest, it breathes as he breathes. Come to my house, when the Burkannyl comes she will tell you, all about her father. “Who is her father?” “Her father is the Kannyl Arno, ruler of the forest of the world itself.” And I am here to warn this man that he is under suspicion of sedition to his ruler, I wonder what he’ll make of a warning. Of what he might expect.

[1] Kaffiyon the Hlori Agent – once a student of mine & not a broken man. Though his loyalty was firm & linked inextricably to the Tower of Gold & the Golden Dream his heart was once given to Wei – such correspondences are not uncommon to one in my line but the correspondence of consequence that I receive are rare. Among my most valued are the mud-stained letters that Kaffiyon chose to share with me. These are, I’m led to believe, faithful duplicates of his official reports. I have no way of knowing if he made yet further copies for other correspondents – it’s entirely possible that Kaffiyon’s heart belonged to many, big as it was it was no shame to share it.

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Alstacia's Third Commentary on Raindrinker Kannylte

Mon, 01 Nov 2021 12:02:52 GMT

The Tree of Iron’s Initial Survey of the Flora of the Upper Euhymer in the districts controlled by the Kannylte Raindrinker YK 1232 Archival Text 18^th iteration[1]

Canon Invocation

From the river Euhymer the Twenty & Second region receives its name of Raindrinker for legend of the venerated saint of the ancient race of the Euye the Horse Tamer Ulthan who was said to never drink from the river or its tributaries while in exile. The river, by its bounteous channel, conveys the gifts of all the forests. The towns are few though through the south the river is navigable. Among the towns is Thimblewick that was not founded by the race of the Euye but by the Kliali pioneers. Far to the south the River Euyhmer has for its source the utter dark glaciers as well as the descending pools that the novel race of Trulks call Mother Ice. Such realms are the four divisions of the Kannylte which are – the Stormmarch which is the frontier of Stormhorse & Nightcandle Kannyltes; Underneedle which is the realm of dense forest where dwell the unreformed Euye foresters; Icemother which is all the descent of the waters from the glaciers of the utter dark; Finally the Duskmarch which is the extreme southern frontier of all the Empire.

Referents of the four realms is the basis of a survey of the flora of the 22nd Kannylte. Listed are the number of varieties catalogued / useful varieties

Stemmed Plants

B Flowering Stemmed Plants of Stormmarch 12/9

B Flowering Stemmed Plants of Underneedle 19/10

B Flowering Stemmed Plants of Icemother 13/12

B Flowering Stemmed Plants of Duskmarch 9/2

Grasses

B Tuberous grasses of Stormmarch 3/2

B Tuberous grasses of Underneedle 3/2

B Tuberous grasses of Icemother3/2

B Tuberous grasses of Duskmarch 3/2

Trees

B Needle Leafed trees of Stormmarch 12/ 7

B Needle Leafed trees of Underneedle 36 / 25

B Needle Leafed trees of Icemother 18 / 8

B Needle Leafed trees of Duskmarch 6 / 5

B Splay Leafed trees of Stormmarch 12 / 9

B Splay Leafed trees of Underneedle 6 / 2

B Splay Leafed trees of Icemother 4 / 1

B Splay Leafed trees of Duskmarch 2 / 1

Vines

B Fruiting vines of Stormmarch 2 / 2

B Fruiting vines of Underneedle 1 / 0

B Fruiting vines of Icemother 2 / 2

B Fruiting vine of Duskmarch 0 / 0

B Parasitic vines of Stormmarch 3 /0

B Parasitic vines of Underneedle 4 / 1

B Parasitic vines of Icemother2 /0

B Parasitic vines of Duskmarch 9 /0

Water Plants

B Reeds of Stormmarch 6 / 2

B Reeds of Underneedle 1 / 1

B Reeds of Icemother 6 / 3

B Reeds of Duskmarch 0 /0

B Aquatic Grasses of Stormmarch 0 / 0

B Aquatic Grasses of Underneedle 0 /0

B Aquatic Grasses of Icemother 2 / 1

B Aquatic Grasses of Duskmarch

Unclassifiable Varieties

B Cauldron Flowers of Duskmarch – Such were the result of an evil soil or noxious minerals found beneath the soil. They are betwixt one and three cubits in width, flower upon the ground for no stem can hold the flowerhead aloft, it weighing so much as hog. Its character is vile but it is thought to siphon from the earth all corruption for wherever such flower blooms for one year and is then taken away that soil is made fecund. The largest flower seen in the Empire it is unlovely with black & red stained petals that appear to be made of flesh instead of fruit. Its fragrance is potent and likened to the scent of cloves doused in rancid boiling fat which odor is attractive to the meanest of forest creatures that it in turn affects by its venom. Trulkish guides describe a multitude of varieties common in the utterdark.

B Glass Vine of Underneedle – Which vine is nemesis to all the woodwise folk of the ancient race of Euymer. Called by this name for the quality of its needles which are invisible in the impenetrable twilight of the deep woodlands. Such thorns as it is able to launch with vigor into creatures that merely stroke against its surface. Thorns inflicted upon the bare skin will not be freed but must be worked out by the blood of the unlucky victim which is the means by which the vine perpetuates itself – it has in place of common seeds or flowers the scabs & mortal anguish of those it afflicts. In legends it is said that the Culture Heroes of the Euyhmer woodland tribes, called Smahra would wield lengths of the vine as terrible armaments and were themselves immune to the scathing touch which is said to be painful to madness for all others. Know it by its pale green flesh which is faintly luminous in starlight.

B Amberfruit Tree of Underneedle - Prized and for time out of mind a secret of the deep forest tribes before they were taught to read the famous forest amber of the Euyewood was used in place of silver coins. Methods of manufacture of the amber slivers used by the barbarous antecedents of present Euye revealed the secret knowledge of the galvanic energy which force the woodsfolk wielded as a scourge to frighten away their adversaries. The tree is a squat variety of needle leaf – short but quite wide. Its amber bulbs sprout upon its branches and are like unto the fruits of other useful trees. The ripening of this fruit into useable form requires many years of cultivation & the hardiness of the tree & its tolerance of darkness is why and how of its longtime concealment.

B Coalchain vine of Duskmarch – Notorious by its virtue in defense and agriculture the famous coalchain appears draped over the streams that feed to the River Euyhmer. Said to only grow in darkness the vines fruit in a novel fashion where its budding flowers gutter a permanent flame so that whilst the vine is in bloom its leaves are sunned and heated by its own persistent flame. The truth of its existence was doubted for time out of memory but once domesticated the coalchain was bred for greater luminosity so that now whole plantations of the Duskmark are lit, not by the sun but by wreaths of living coalchain.

The principal uses and exports of flora indigenous to the realms of Raindrinker Kannylte and prospects of colonial farming within same…

[1] Having myself been a Scribe of the Maker Church I am assured of the thoroughgoing accuracy of the archivist’s recreations of aged texts. This document, however, is the primary survey of the Upper Euyhmer & it predates the creation of the Scribal college of the church by a pair of centuries – thus it may demonstrate the affects common to what we colloquially call early canon.

Naturally, as a volume of the Tree of Iron’s catalogue the entirety of the document runs into many thousands of pages of amendments, corrections and a few illustrations. I have selected this particular passage (and spared the reader some longwinded discussion of dusk-latitude-resilient cereal crops) because it is the earliest attested instance of the Coalchain plant, which I yet regard with deep suspicion. How would it prevent itself from burning itself? How is it able to provide heat to itself – what is the origin of its energy? Why is it that it survives only in the Dusk Mark of Raindrinker or in the Utter Dark? The legendary vine is a point of deep consternation to not only myself but many of the Weiish scholarly set who have long heard legends of the thing but are incapable of ever seeing it ourselves. Nevertheless – no lesser authority than the Tree of Iron attests its existence and so I have included its earliest description (which is hardly changed in a dozen centuries) because its appearance in some of the texts to follow may seem jarring or even spurious. Consider this the authentic source.

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Alstacia's Commentary on Raindrinker 2

Mon, 25 Oct 2021 13:41:07 GMT

21^st Golden Day – Easing – YK 2012 The Tree of Iron - from Glimpses of Unfamiliar Klial by Irrinzil the Xethan[1]

In The city you call Great Klial there only two, maybe three kinds of people. I could not understand it at all when first I arrived. In the further cities like Awese or even Athet there are so many, so many kinds of people. You cast your glance here, there, wherever you look, a different kind. Klial is different though. It is different in so many ways, every way. That is why I made my journey, to Klial and to here, to the whole Empire –So I could see myself how it is different and also why it is. Great Klial it is the biggest city of all, vast a metropolis. Certainly much larger than any other city anywhere, more people are in Klial city than in all of the Xeth Atheth country. I could go on and speak upon this fact for hours, but to the people that make their home there? It is of no importance. Not one says a word of how great or how many stones make the roads, how tall the statues. No, they are oblivious to those facts and think nothing of the status. They think the city is a country itself that is unrelated to the Empire that is named for it. They say of their own neighborhoods that they are their own Kyu, their own Kannylte even. Great Klialis speak of the city as Klial. They dismiss the Empire as everything outside – all of the lands over which the city rules and which call themselves Klial, people of the city do not consider. This, the great klialis call the Empire and they speak of it as a distant place. So I asked them, when I met anyone, is this Klial or is this other place Klial, to see if they could truly understand. Every one, they all understand the Empire of Klial, but think it removed from their own neighborhoods and life. They say the palisade hills of Whitesail are as distant as the nighted woods of Raindrinker. They conceive these far places as being as far away as the territory just outside the city which supply the metropolis with food and stone and everything. So in this respect the people of Great Klial are all of alike because they think of themselves as living outside of the Empire and so they are the only ones who do. But there is a reason for this homogeneity. The people of the city, all of the people, are born there. In other cities I have seen the people, the populace, is drawn from outside and it must be always so because disease and death are everywhere in cities, citiies of any size, except, not in Great Klial. In Great Klial, where the streets are smooth and always clean and where every tenth person carries a branch, like a tree branch but made of iron. I thought this branch is why there is no filth upon the road, no dying people in the streets or dead animals. In every other city this is the way it is. In Klial, no. But in no other city do you see people with these branches. Tree branches but made from Iron. I thought, you know I am not smart, it is why I am curious, is this branch how they make this place the way that it is? I could not understand so I began to ask people what the branch means. Many would not speak to me, You see yourself my speech is poor, my Kliali is poor, and I look like a foreigner, dress in my people’s costume, then I did always. I was dismayed that no one would talk to me. I thought I am shamed. That the great kliali do not want me and I was foolish to come there at all. Because the similarity of all the people, that is what caused me to think they might have contempt for outsiders. I was hopeless then, I was forlorn but then I was approached by one of the men with the branches and he carried it in his hand which was unusual because all the time I would meet people carrying them in their belt, not like weapons but as decoration. This man approached and held his iron stick at me so I thought he meant to do harm to me, but then he saluted me! He salutes in the Kliali fashion and made a very fine bow and this was the first time anyone had given me this courtesy. I had seen it all around on the streets and so I thought, this is ordinary but I wanted it for myself, to feel this regard that the Great Klialis give each other. At their best these bows are artistic expressions like dance, beautiful. Draymund Raspe Alley was expert in that art, beautiful practitioner of the Kliali bow. He bowed with so much elegance that immediately I was relieved because remember he came to me with his stick, I thought he would rob me! But he only came to meet me. "I am Draymund Raspe Alley Goldendream, please accept my welcome to the City dear fellow." He spoke to me immediately in Xeth the sea language, I had not heard in so long, I thought I had attained paradise, so much grace for just me, after I was at the depth of sorrows. He spoke the Xeth so well I was alarmed by its quality, no accent at all. I have not lost my accent in all these years, people still make jokes of it, but he had never been outside of the city and no accent. "I am the attaché of the embassy of the Xeth Atheth and I am grateful for the opportunity to make your acquaintance."

Very quickly I confessed to Draymund that I was only a visitor and a storyteller, an artist, a performer. He did not dismiss me as some had elsewhere in the Empire but understood immediately what importance the storyteller carries for the Xeth-Atheth. "It was wise of others to have sent me to seek you out then. I will inform you of whatever I can." He was very gentle. The way he spoke, or looked at me or led me through the city. His whole manner, gentle. He was an old man bald and very thin, so normally he could not intimidate anyone anyway. But he startled me because his eyes were big and friendly and he was so dignified. I could not reproach him even in a dream and if I did I would wake up instantly and be angry at myself. I explained to Draymund Rasp Alley Goldendream why I had come and my question about the iron sticks and complained that no one would speak to me and I spoke also of my experience of all the people of the city being so alike. I must have raved to him, it must have seemed completely foolish the way I carried on but I was excited because for once someone would answer me. Instead of being angry or disgusted which would be fair, a mad foreign man yells his discontent, no one enjoys this, but Draymund Raspe Alley Goldendream, my antics amused him and he graciously offered me an explanation.

"I shall take you to the Tree of Iron and describe as we walk what it is that has confounded you dear guest. First the provincial isolation of the capitol. You must understand that travel of any sort is uncommon in the Empire, people are bound to the land in which they are born. Many hundreds of people are born in the city every week and so it grows. But as with any of the dominions of the Kannyltine the capitol is a place to which people are bound. The great number of people within the city begs a question to the Kannyltine's benevolent wisdom and that is dear guest; what to do with all of us. The Kannyltine being wise and benevolent above our has devised a network of bureaucracies that have allowed the Empire to flourish beyond any measure. To grow and to people these bureaucracies he has the people of the City. From a young age we are all educated, far more than our provincial counterparts. Every one of us born in the city is taught to read and to write. This rigorous education is another aspect of what you regard as homogeneity. From the City's academies two out of every dozen people is brought into the Imperial Bureaucracy while the others take on a different role within the city. Many carry out the commerce that feeds us. Many engage in a trade or a craft. We Great Klialis are linked to our academies in the same way that our more provincial citizens are linked to their place of birth, hence I carry the name of the school which trained me – Raspe Alley." So I asked him if the Iron Stick is a badge of his school. Or his job or something else.

"Just so dear guest, though I daresay it is more than you suspect. Here, is the Tree of Iron." I had been curious to see a tree made of iron but I was confounded instead to find an enormous building. In Great Klial all of the buildings are enormous and clad in polished stone and all of them have imposing brass fixtures and doors. "You see," he pointed to a place on the building facade, but I could not understand why. He must have remembered that few of my people can read and so he announced it for me. "The Tree of Iron. This is the headquarters of the my bureaucracy. Come in dear guest."

Within that building it was very strange. I have seen some of the libraries and storehouses of the Kannyltine elsewhere in the city. These are all of a kind. There is a grand entry, there are curving stairs and there are wonderful carpets with long halls lined with wood and glass doors. The Tree of Iron is altogether different, it is like none of these, like nothing I have seen before. A wonder but it is commonplace to them there, they do not think of it. In the center of a big room is a solarium, an inner garden and the only thing growing there is an enormous tree. There are still the door lined hallways but they radiate from the tree, and that tree, it is not very tall as you might suppose the biggest tree of all to be. Its highest branch is only twice, three times as high as my reach. Not very tall as a tree. But it is so wide though. Like many trees all grown together and fused over time, or, maybe a unique kind of tree alone in the world. Draymund did not know the kind of tree or if it ever bore seeds and only called it the Tree of Iron, :the dear old Tree of Iron,” he said. It is not made of Iron, no matter what you heard, it is a soft wood. The trunk of the tree grows outward in billows and curves like a curtain, pleated, like a robe. To follow it around the length of the trunk you must be carried away into mazes, convolutions within convolutions. "The width of the tree is said to be the width of the city itself though I believe that saying was coined long ago when the city was less geographically large. The tree is quite substantial as you have seen plainly, but consider that it has many hundreds of branches." He pointed them out to me and I considered them as he said. "Each of the branches has a twin, an iron branch that is carried by a member of the bureaucracy. Here is mine." There was a branch, which grew from out of a thicket of branches which may have matched his at one time. "Dear guest you see I have carried mine a long time, this was only a fresh shoot when I joined the bureaucracy. As the tree adds branches so the Empire adds people and so there is a greater need of capable civil servants our system is timed to perfection, tuned like no other clock." He mentioned a clock, that was an interesting convention there in Great Klial too, only in the city, or perhaps maybe in Wei do they use clocks, for only in such places does time have the particular meaning that needs a clock. "See the bit of wire?" He pointed out to me a thing that I had noticed already I was about to ask him but he anticipated my question. This is the way with Draymond Raspe Alley Goldendream, always. He points me to a copper filament of wire, very fine, that was tied around the branch. The branch, though, had grown over the copper twine, engulfed it. Similar filaments hung more loose on their branches since they were still narrow. The filament was attached on the other end to a little tag, a piece of gold. "Go on, you may touch it dear guest" Still so gracious, always he encouraged me to take the gold tag in my hand but I hesitated, it was so much to see all at once, a great building a strange tree, a kindly stranger, a lot of things happening all at once. So, he took it in his hand before I could. "It says that I am here, in the City and that I am attaché to the Embassy of Xeth Atheth. The embassy has its own hierarchical conventions, but all of our names may be found here on the Tree of Iron. Many more of the names are of people that have been cast to the further corners of the Empire and serve their functions in the provinces, none of us serves anonymously and the boughs of the tree are cast like a blanket over the Empire’s people."

I had so many questions but the first one I asked was because of Draymund Raspe Alley, so old, I wondered, "What happens when someone passes on?" I wondered what would happen to the little golden medal. I do not think that he thought I was being morbid, I think he thought I was being greedy, he knew outside Klial how foreigners think of gold.

"The golden tag is sent to the Kannyltine and the branch is re-purposed." Draymund Raspe Alley Goldendream summoned over a younger person, another bureaucrat, he asked her to show her iron branch to me. This branch had several names carved on it, all in different styles, but each name was scratched so that the name could probably still be read, I assume. I cannot read even now, I am too much a donkey to try it. But I can see the way letters are made, how they are different from time to time or with different hands. Someone who could read, would see a name, a fresh name for a new person that was marked a the end. Draymund says to this young woman “Thank you dear colleague, Sindra Raspe Alley Goldendream.” I ask if they know each other, with the same name and they do not. No one in the world is like they are in Great Klial.

[1] Irrinzil The Xethan spent the last decades of his storied life in the City of Wei in the Kannylte of Windheart. It was there that I became his pupil & his editor & scribe. I have him to thank for much but his experience as an outsider in the Empire provides, I think, the most useful context for any future readers who must live outside the civilization that the Kannyltines created.

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Alstacia's Commentary on Raindrinker

Thu, 21 Oct 2021 13:47:56 GMT

Excerpt from Volume 9 of the Conquest of the East – by Aximan Salmongate Starcrown White Season of YK 1444 through YK 1445[1]

The foresight of Ulthan had raised obstacles worthy of such an antagonist. Ninety cubits below the castle, at the widest part of the river, he linked the two banks by joining boats with heavy rope in the form of a bridge, on which he erected two lofty platforms, from where the bravest of his Euye could command the crossing by the overwhelming force of their bows. Within the boats there were held vast stores of ammunition for the Euye shoulderbows, which weapons could pierce the skull of imperial elephants. The approach of the bridge and guarded, on the opposite sides of the Euyhmer, by a numerous and select detachment of riders. But the enterprise of forcing these barriers, and conquering Draylbuhn, displays a shining example of the boldness and genius of Ettissoer. Her cavalry advanced from the hills along the long road from Klial for she requested the assets of the Kannyltine himself. This train cowed the natives of all the kannylte through which they crossed, and were awesome enough to ward off even the Yoyue raiders of the hills, which caravan served to diminish and distract the attention of the Euye enemy. Her infantry and provisions were distributed in two thousand wagons pulled by two thousand and each wagon was shielded by a high rampart of thick planks, pierced with many small holes for the discharge of bolts. In the van, two large wagons were linked together to sustain a rolling castle, which commanded the towers of the other engines of the war, and contained a magazine of firesalt, rockshot and burning sulfur. The whole convoy, which the Kannyl led in person, was laboriously moved against the sorties of the forest peoples. The bridge succumbed to their onslaught, and the enemies who guarded the banks were either slain or captured. As soon as they touched the principal barrier, the boats serving as the crossing were scattered upon the river instantly dispersing the bridge; one of the towers, with two hundred Euye archers, was consumed by the waters; the assailants shouted victory; and Klial was expanded, as the wisdom of Ettissoer had been advanced by the obedience of her warcourt. Her own foresight in the matter of war granted her preparation sufficient that she had brought with her the sacred timbers of the first bridges overpassing the Weft. These were transported by the wagons in her train and comprised the previously mentioned ramparts. She had previously sent orders to her Rinkannyl Fradosius to second her operations by a timely construction of a kliali bridge; and she had fixed her Tunkannyl, Ostor, by a peremptory command, to the fore of this bridge. But ambition rendered Fradosius’ efforts futile for the Euyhmer proved too wide to bridge by any means save Ulthan’s technique; while the youthful ardor of Ostor delivered him into the grip of a superior enemy. The exaggerated rumor of his defeat was hastily carried to the ears of Ettissoer: she halted her assault; betrayed in that single moment of her life by her emotions of surprise and grief; and reluctantly sounded a retreat to save the remnants of the Weftish bridge, her own treasures, and the only town of Klial’s upon the western Euyhmer. The vexation of her mind produced an ardent and almost mortal fever; and Klial was left without protection for a time to the indignation of Ulthan’s authority. The continuance of hostilities had imbittered the Kliali’s hatred: the Bridge Faith’s clergy was ignominiously driven from Klial; Jisshir, the demagogue, fled without success from an embassy to the Euye camp.

Famine had relaxed the strength and discipline of the garrison of Draylbuhn. They could derive no effectual service from a dying people; and the inhuman ambition of the horsetamer at length absorbed the vigilance of the tribes. Four Yoyue sentinels, while their companions slept, and their officers were absent, descended by a rope from the wall, and secretly proposed to Kannyl Ettissoer to introduce her troops into the bastion. The offer was entertained with disinterest and mistrust; they returned in safety; they twice again repeated their visit; the plan was twice examined; the conspiracy was taken up and closely regarded; and no sooner had Ettissoer consented to the conspiracy, than they unbarred the Stargazer gate, and gave admittance to the Klialis. Till the dusk of night, they halted in order of battle, apprehensive of treachery or ambush; but the troops of Ulthan, with their leader, had already escaped; and when the kannyl was pressed to disturb their retreat, she prudently replied, that no sight could be more grateful than that of a fleeing enemy. The talans, who were still possessed of horses, Korron, Sillit, &c. accompanied the Rinkannyl; their master, among whom none are named by the annals, took refuge in the house of the Horse: but the assertion, that only five hundred persons remained in Draylbuhn, inspires some doubt of the fidelity either of the narrative. As soon as daylight had displayed the entire victory of the Klialis, their kannyl devoutly visited the tomb of the Dry Bones; but while she prayed at the altar, twenty-five captives, and sixty Euye, were put to the sword in the vestibule of the tomb.

The loss of Draylbuhn proved consequential to all Ulthan’s latter actions. After his departure, the Klialis created it the capitol of Nightcandle, their easternmost possession. Its prior inhabitants were further imbittered by the Kliali’s claim when the conquerors elected to rename their acquisition Eastern River Castle. The Euye were thrice repulsed from the walls in the following year. Each time Ulthan drove his foresters to the walls while putting to torch the surrounding lands. Through the grey season of that year the forest surrounding Draylbuhn burned intensely. Fortifying the castle became the principal occupation of Ettissoer who’s domestic situations speedily collapsed; Nightcandle was near to falling owing to the ambitions of Fradosius who sought to supplant his mother Etissoer as the Kannyl of the territory. This treachery cut deep the heart of the Kannyl’s occupation, all the more because in her haste to conquer she forever lost the relics of the first bridge. The White season led to famine and the Kannyl’s hasty retreat to address the controversies in the heart of her possessions. Such retreat was only possible given the Euyhmer had frozen over and though her desperate departure was the first of the season it was not the final, for Ettis and his foresters retook the castle of Draylbuhn not by force by through canny application of siege techniques. For the entirety of the Kliali’s campaign the horsetamer’s canny presumptions had saved his legacy; as the Klialis marched to his river he had withdrawn all the provisions held in Draylbuhn to caverns hidden beneath the woods long known to the Euye and utilized in times of struggle. Now in the last season of the year the Euye partisans held provisions to sustain themselves all the while destroying the produce of the castle’s conquerors. The frozen river then became a highway upon which all the Nightcandle conquerors fled in humiliating retreat. Thereafter Kannyl Ettissoer sued for truce between herself and the stormer Ulthan, which party acceded to the peace granted only that his own possession be recognized by the Empire and that the Yoyue conspirators who had betrayed him be returned to his hands. These concessions were granted in haste by the Kannyl who had been driven to recklessness by betrayal within her own dominions. Thereafter as a show of compassion Ulthan returned the timbers of the first bridge which had been recovered from the river as war trophies by his own. The Yoyue conspirators were executed in public performance while Ulthan paid respects in the tomb of dry bones himself. Thus the Euye considered the desecration of Draylbuhn answered and dissipated themselves as a united force. From that reconquest of their castle the Euye have ever been a divided people, along the lines of their totemic allies; the Horse, the Lion, the Trout or the Frog and others less well known split the immense forest into their own kyu that fell to their former contention over esoteric matters of dominance or ownership. These conflicts burgeoned through the following year during which the barbarous woodsmen not observing the ordinary construction of the military season soon drove to conquer Draylbuhn themselves…

…During the White season that followed Ulthan was compelled by his own misadventure in contention with the Lion that he sought and was granted refuge among the Klialis, Kannyl Ettisoer had prevailed in that intervening span against her infidelitous sons, and having recalled the compassion Ettis had displayed by returning to her the beams of the first bridge, granted him solace. During this exile the Horsetamer contended that he would not drink from any river that flowed to his old dominion and would drink only rain while enduring exile.

[1] Aximan’s exhaustive (and exhausting) history of the eastern annexations always contend some moral quality to one or another of the sides in any conflict. Of those he condemns and lauds only one oscillates between these two impressions. The despot Ulthan who tamed the horses, refused to drink anything but rain and slew every lion in the forest. So many attributes are linked back to Ulthan that most accounts of his deeds are not credible. Aximan is at least realistic in terms of the deeds of Ulthan though he gives slight credit to a few of the unbelievable claims made by Ulthan’s contemporaries. Of all the claims the two most persistent, that he tamed the horse and that he drank only rain are sufficiently acclaimed that two of the Kannylte of the Empire are named for his exploits. No other individual has such a distinction, and while we of the West are curious and often delighted by the Raindrinker’s exploits, they are by all evidence a cult rite of the East, in which Ulthan is considered a spiritual, and thus superior ruler of the world. Aximan’s account, here, of the Raindrinker’s duel with the Kannyl Nightcandle is replicated in many of his histories as he is rather preoccupied with the concept of rivals.

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Got it.

Sat, 09 Oct 2021 19:52:37 GMT

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What typeface to use?

Sat, 09 Oct 2021 18:52:54 GMT

In my study I pored over invoice and troubled myself with worries of expense & income. The two were at best on equal footing but that state was rarely achieved, far ore often the former outpaced the latter and on this occasion the disproportion was greatly in the favor of my creditors. So distraught had I become over the nagging matte of money that I found my mind wandering unbidden, perhaps the trap within which I had hedged it had become too onerous to bear & in search of bare relief it abandoned my senses to go wandering in realms unseen.

So insensible to the conditions of that night, or possibly day, and unmoored from the cruel anchor of the real I found my senses delighting instead to the wonderful realm accessible only through the unfettered imagination. There, I found a wide grim stair, severe, with edged stairs dangerous seeming, cruel in a fall, treacherous in a climb. These stairs are wide and coated in silt, as if a faint wind had blown over them for long days, driving drifts of fine gray sand over the sharp clad stone. I arrive mid-climb, making my way, already up these dolorous stairs & ahead there is the painted steel door within the door. A wide & tall portal of two carved bronze doors stood at the top of the stair, but time had worn their carving & the patina of them was only dimly colored. Unused, this fabulous gate had within it, a small door cut, as an afterthought – ugly and plain – the door in the doors. Where the faded glory of the fantastic had been badly used & disfigured by the merely practical. From this ugly door came a sudden rush of soldiers. Rail straight & grim faced, they glided down the treacherous stairs without effort & quickly braced me. Surrounded I recognized the dour countenances of each of these militants. Penury, Health, Remorse, Pain, Worry & Hunger – the principal adversaries of civilized men. Their gray thin faces were wrinkled deeply with their permanent scowls & finding myself in their custody I felt a terrible anxiety overcome me. Breath eluded me & I huffed in anguish as they guided me, too swiftly up the stair & through the ugly steel door in the gates of faded bronze.

Beyond I found a world more fair than any I might have expected. A garden of symmetrical trees – their trunks all wrapped in patterned silks all being spun by particolored spiders each as large as a dog & far more agreeable than any canine I’ve seen, by the size &charm of their eyes & the gentle exuberance of their weaving. Banners fluttered overhead – streaming from trees – but these I could see, quite clearly, were moths, butterflies, wide-winged creatures of fantastic iridescence – they hovered in air, as a bird might in a strong wind, fluttering their wings to keep a formation like a scroll unfurling – and on this scroll I could read – by the light of the many-faceted sun glowing gently behind them – these word: “Your cares bring you here. Seek refuge in the queen of the Efrafathwë” Those words I could read but not decipher, and little time I had to do so, for my jailers propelled me forward into the twilight garden, over a moving cobblestone path – the stones of which were each a snail-shell of different hue & size, each firm & steady but moving forward, accelerating our already speedy pace. I trembled to think what they might be guiding me toward & puzzled at the thought of a queen of Efrafathwë. But presently we found ourselves in her presence.

The queen is of what size & form she needs to be. Her eyes are reflecting mirrors that shine the sun & the auroras in which you must stare, and in which you must see yourself stood upon your head, unfamiliar, overturned. Har arm, huge, her hand monstrous, reaches out & overhead so that the delicate curve of her supple wrist is visible arcing overhead like the sky. She snatches away Remorse, my jailer, and draws him to her small, insignificant like a toy, she regards him briefly with a glance & then consumes him in but a bite. Her hands reach out & snatch away each of the imprisoning vexations each one diminishing as she does so, so that when she’s finished & has consumed Pain, it is as if she has merely taken a breath, so miniscule he had become, and so approachable had she. In size diminished so that instead of looming overhead like a mountain, she merely towered like a giant. In her presence there is wonder but never fear. All harm consumed she is a presence of healing & calm. My hand in hers she leads me deeper into her garden walking now at my own pace on the snail-shell path. She leads me while I set the pace & soon we see a great, curved & lensed mirror which hangs suspended by no means discernable. This bright mirror gives its own light & from it I can see my own distorted reflection shifting & becoming something else altogether but she – the queen o Efrafathwë remains visible, her gown of dragonflies & honeycombs sitting graciously upon her splendid frame. She gestures & controls the image in the mirror, like a conductor driving the orchestra to crescendo.

She explains as she performs. “Here there is effect without cause & causes without consequence. There is whatever has been. Watch here – where I see your history. Here is the history of the world, and here is the history of your species.” These flash like visions like cards shuffled quickly giving only impressions. “We began long before. When the elements were in contention & made their war until but four remained with some of the others captured – like wood & metal being bound under earth & others destroyed utterly – like Ishe which is no more & to us, never was. The elements in their equilibrium called forth the quintessence, the mind & thus we Efrafathwë came to be. That is the nascence of my people. We forever live now, above the restraint of time, which binds your people. Look, I will show you how your world was made, so you can guess at what it really is & means.”

Her gestures cease, she simply pints straight ahead – her long straight finger ringed with jewels, tipped with the eagle’s talon. In the mirror the image shifts & coalesces & the curve of the shimmering image surrounds me, so that it is as if I ere within the vision as I witnessed it. Upon the mirror shown an unthinkable wasteland – a vast expanse of bare black stone and this view was all I could see for what seemed an aching eternity until in a sudden burst the landscape was split by a lance from the sky – This caused mountains to vault into the air, caused seas to erupt in the gaps & over all there flowed clouds of pyroclastic vigor that rained fire & turned the burning black stone into a steaming valley cut between the new, jagged mountains. Now on this wide magmatic expanse, gouged throughout by blazing rifts of spurting lava there was a wide & circular plain. Smooth & regular in its size. Now at its center this circle of unbroken land is marred – for out of it rises a spine of fiery rock which arcs upward like jagged lighting, and form it other rocks sprout, piercing the sky by smaller & smaller cuts until the whole explosion of blazing rock had formed into a regular dendritic pattern which could be nothing other than a tree – vast & circling, like a shell over the round plate of land upon which it stood. This bare tree then began to bloom, from it narrowest shoots sprang fiery petals, expanding into gleaming stone – like shards of agate molten & then still, rigid & shining like glass.

“Now see, the genesis of your worlds old masters, see them bloom,” said the queen of Efrafathwë. “Here in daydream, my queendom, I allow these visions of true and ancient things, to give to you no wisdom nor hope but something greater than these – a thing of wonder.” She ceased her gesticulation, and looked down upon me with a caring face, kind.

In the mirror the tree bloomed into a fantasia of swirling, brilliant color. And its basaltic trunk & branches split, like bark, to let a flowing sap of liquid mama flow. The drops of which formed into spheres & dropped away, blazing in the steam still rising from the valley floor. Each drop burst, like a bubble of soap & from the blazing stone & the mingling of water & air coalesced into a winged shape, each of these fluttered among the branches of the fantastical tree like the tiniest of flycatchers, swift & slight as swallows but blazing fire & radiating smoke & steam. The tiny birds grew larger in the vision, of the vision came to focus in upon them, closing in like the image was being brought closer to my eyes. I saw the tiny birds for what they were. Each a dragon – a thing of fire & stone & wind & storm. Their backs a riddle of scales forming like the crust of shale upon the riverbank. Their wings of flowing fire eschewing steam. Their bodies serpentine & their motion in the sky like flowing water. Each of these darted up from the tree, just as its opalescent leaves bean to wilt & to fall. The jeweled leaves quickly buried themselves in the earth & where there were mountains there were now continents, for the valley was filling with water, and the seas were being formed. The dragons each nestled upon the continents, sinuous & thrashing & where they lay upon the earth or burrowed down to retrieve the jewel-leaves there formed a river, or they became a river and each spit out the sea & and filled it. Upon a dragon called Cerese I saw forming a village – here there were the communes of the primordial folk, the peaceable lands of scant plenty. For clothed in leaves & furs alone these people did not want for either, and where their only possessions were stones & sticks – there was never any scarcity of either. Their wants few, the world provided. But among them are dreamers & to those dreamers come the different queens of Efrafathwë. First is nightmare, who reminds each of the dreamers of the wolves at the edge of the firelight, the bears at the edge of autumn, the flood at the edge of spring. Always at the threshold there is danger, she tells them. Her face, her gestures- her hands, I will not describe for I cannot bring myself to recollect her horror, the crystalized primeval terror that she embodies & is. Next is dream, who inspires each of the sleepers with true visions of impossible things. They awake & being to fashion homes, and to write words and to speak languages. They awaken, awoken & vigorous, they build & make the world. And as they do so among their works are those who are wistful, who find themselves lost in the maze of roads & rules & obligations. Among them drifts the third queen, Daydream, my own guide in her realm. I see her pluck myself from out of my parlor on the banks of the Cerese & I see her snatch away my cares like I’d seen the ancient people pick fleas from one another. Each of these drawn away I could see myself, growing grand & magnificent, gold & jewels flowing from out of my pockets, my every word command, my every requirement met without question. I see myself, a king – consort to the queen of Daydream, queen of Efrafathwë the folk of mind out of time.

And there my story ends, for the maid is on hand to click her tongue at me, to comment on the cold coffee sitting upon the writing desk & the spilled ink soiling my rug. “You’ll forget where you are if I didn’t come to see to you. And mind, young master, you’re late with my wages once again!”

My pockets no longer overflowing, I find in a cupboard a small sum of coins that satisfies her but say, with feigned despair, “You’re right, indeed Miss Eskker. Without you I’d forget where I am. Alas I am bereft of opportunities & must request that you refrain your visits for the moment, until I’ve means to compensate you more comfortably.” Miss Eskker clicks her tongue at me again and withdraws after seeing to the dishes. I again must pore over my expenses & my income & must again find myself in an anxious state. I seek those jailers again, but find them unwilling to carry me back to the queen of Efrafathwë, I owe them, I’m told, for the services already rendered.

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