Kihō no Monogatari

A morning talk, as given by Marelle.

Civilization, fundamentally, separates the true from the false.

That's not to say that everyone in a frame agrees on everything. Of course people argue all the time, and much profit is made on conflicts of perspective.

But underneath those peaks of disagreement is an iceberg of shared assumptions that no one notices because that's just "how the world works".

Assumptions about what's true, and what's false. How much things should cost. What has value. What someone deserves. What is normal, what is just.

You might think that, out here in the wastes, we're not defined by civilization. But it's not something you can escape by just walking. We can't but live in relation to civilization.

Some of this is good. Without civilization we wouldn't have medicines, we wouldn't have screws, clean water would be harder to come by.

Some of it is unhelpful. We bring our old angers, our unhealthy desires, our biases. And we live amidst others' trash.

And we bring these assumptions of true and false with us, too. They're tied in with the way we think.

They're baked into our stories.

We come from different places, from different frames. That helps, some.

Yet how can we escape the duality of true and false if we're still entangled in the places we came from?

But thinking of it as an escape is wrong. Fleeing something is just chasing a contrast.

And pursuing nonduality in these terms is like asking a stone to fly.

 You approach Meda one evening, after the circle's done but with the fire still glowing. Marelle had pointed her out to you, one of those early days, but you haven't spoken and she's never told her story, at least when you've been around.

"Don't say it," Meda says without looking, before you've even opened your mouth. "People only ever say two things, and I'm sick of both of them. And your face tells me it's not some architectural emergency."

"Sorry," you say. "I'll leave you alone."

She doesn't respond, just keeps staring out into the darkness.

***

It's a few nights later before Meda comes and sits next to you as you're finishing your soup. She's not apologetic, but she's at least less harsh. "It wasn't about you at all, really. I don't get on well with people."

You gesture broadly at the crowd around the fire. "Why live here, with the camp, then?"

She shrugs a little, looks off to the side. "I lived off by myself for years. But even then people saw me as a monster to fight or a weapon to use."

"And it's better here?"

"At least sometimes, they leave me alone when I ask." She pauses. "It's not that they don't know I'm useful, but at least I'd still be welcome here if I weren't."

You nod. "You help with maintenance, right?"

She laughs. It's not unkind, but you feel like you're missing the joke. "Occasionally, yes."

You're not sure how to respond, so you change tack. "I notice you listen to the stories a lot. Do you at least enjoy that?"

Meda considers, her gaze flitting between the others in the circle. "It's something to do, at least. It reminds me that I'm not the only one who got a raw deal. But it feels pretty pointless after a while."

The nightly circles, the openness people show here, still feels pretty alien to you. That's hard to say out loud, though. "Marelle thinks it's important."

Meda shakes her head. "Marelle thinks it's still possible to fix the world. But I think the world was always broken. I just wasn't always someone who got cut by its edge. And how do you fix something that's never been whole?"

You nod slowly. "Yeah, it seems hard enough just to build something stable for ourselves out here."

"Well, if there's one thing I'm good at, it's stability. But stability isn't happiness."

"You're not happy here?"

"Trying not to be what I am certainly wasn't helping. I've gotten it through my head to stop doing that. Doesn't mean I don't still feel like a monster or a tool. And I'm not sure I even know what happiness would be."

You remember times you felt happy, so long ago they feel like dreams. And more recently, a quieter form of happiness. But not really one you know how to share. "Well, what do you want?"

She doesn't respond for long enough that you're surprised when she does. "I guess for what I am to mean something that's not just my reflection in others."

There's nothing really you can say to that.

Prompted by Skeletons by Alexander Wolfe.

There are 206 bones in the human body.

You were born with over 270 bones, though many of those later fused.

I was not.

I gathered my bones one by one.

( Read more... )

Prompted by One True Thing by Tylan (and brainstorming for Dreampunk with Sarah).

We don’t have much in the way of certainty, least ‘round these parts.

A knife feels good and solid. But ‘less you’re real careful, it’ll be as like to cut you as the one you’re tangling with. And that’s if they don’t wrest it from you.

A friend you’ve known for years, stuck with through hunger and thirst? Like as not, come a bad dust season too many, they’ll act like you’re any other bugger.

Used to be the sky was always there, above us, careless to our petty murders. But that’s burned up too, now.

If you think the only one you can count on’s yerself, then you’re in for a rude awakening sooner than soon. I’ve let myself down more’n can be counted.

What then? Well, death o’course. Taxes, depends on how you fight.

Broader-wise, decay. Entropy, y’dsay. Stuff runs down. Nothing stays.

And that each day, each hour, each breath we fight against these certainties exalts us, refines us, makes us diamonds rippling out against the ashes of the sky.

Prompted by Pearls by Antje Duvekot, though I didn’t stick very close.

We all sell ourselves, in the end. Don’t have any illusions about it. I just cut a little closer to the violence, is all. Or I did, at least. Who knows what I’ll do now.

It’s not that it doesn’t matter what you do. I could be a saint the rest of my days and still not get these hands clean. But that’s true of more ov’em than anyone likes to admit. Taking someone’s roof, their medicine, they hide all that behind a wall of math and sip fancy kalch. At least a dagger’s honest.

And everyone’s gotta eat, in the end. If I lasted longer'n most, earned a nicer level of keep, I was still doin'a same as anyone.

So why am I here, with you, under this scrap heap? Well, it’s a funny thing. Just when you think you’ve seen everything, something still manages to surprise you. I’m used to marks begging, offering bribes, invoking fell curses. I don’t pay such things any mind.

But this mark. A small-time warlord of a minor settlement. He was up in one of those blasted-out ancient towers. Just sitting there, by himself. Like he was waiting for me.

He shouldn’t have been able to see me, but he spoke. “Thank you.” I thought nothing would throw me, any more, but that took me aback somehow.

But I was a professional. I only paused a moment, then pulled out my gun and fired.

He lay there bleeding as I gathered my proof, but he scarcely seemed to be in pain. Must’ve been hopped up on something. Just said “I’d gotten tired. Now I can have something new.”

I don’t really know why it broke me, but it did. The world wasn’t the same after that. I didn’t want to kill, the money, to follow orders, any more. I didn’t want to be someone’s tool.

And, since my life wasn’t something you get to retire from, I had to leave, go into hiding. And now I’m here, I guess. Who knows how long I get before it catches up to me. But somehow huddling here, hungry, I don’t seem to mind.

Title from Embassytown by China Miéville.

You think you know what it's like. You remember being a child and seeing things from that perspective. That person's a stranger to you know? Hardly. You can see the path from there to here, the gradual progression, maybe with a few jagged jumps of the loss of innocence. It seems natural to you, because it is.

You see villains in old movies. They maniacally commit atrocities until a moment of redemption, then suddenly they're plagued by a crushing guilt like a switch was flipped. You'd like it if that's how souls worked, wouldn't you? So you could neatly categorize everyone into good and evil, person or monster?

Well, it's not like growing up. It's not like a moment of revelation.

It's like waking up, and you're in another world, where you've got this twin. Maybe they've killed someone. Maybe they created a masterpiece of glass and cinder. Maybe they've a lover all angles and edges.

And you want to say, "That's not me! I didn't do those things! I couldn't have!"

And yet, you know you could. You still can. You remember how. You remember why. What makes you different from the one who did?

Nothing. And yet, that's not who you are.

You could play it like a game, as a charade, if they'd let you. But that would be suicide. And you couldn't pull it off.

You could hunt the ones who did this to you, hunt the source. But that wouldn't solve anything. It's too late, it's done.

You could try to leave it all behind. Give yourself a new name. Start fresh. Many try. But it's hard to pull it off. You don't get access to some secret society, just because you've changed. Do you really want to be alone? And the facade of your past will still be there, looming over you, even if you try to flee it.

The change isn't a magic. It's not an evolution.

It's just an idea.

But that's enough.

You make promises to the next generation, that they'll have a better life, that they'll have what you never did. And sometimes, that's so.

But you also take from them. Things that you took for granted will be rare for them. The open spaces, the freedom to wander. The treasures in the ground. The creatures in the woods.

Good tradeoffs, you may say. Necessary tradeoffs. But there will come a time when there won't be new breakthroughs, new advances, to make the promises come through. No new hoards. No new lands to build on.

Then, this pyramid that you've built, will it crumble? Will their future, that you've mortgaged, collapse?

What will you think, as you watch? What will you say, when you meet, beyond the moon?

And where does that leave you now?

Inspired, like Reflection, by back when I saw Princess Kaguya. Recent conversation sparked by Zero's blog post prompted me to actually write it.

There is a place, far above the clouds, where there is no pain, no want, no hunger.

Legends paint it as a reward, but it is not a place of judgement. It is separated, out of necessity. But many find it, nevertheless.

Still, it is better to suffer.

It is a wondrous place, full of gleaming palaces and marble temples, statues and paintings of ageless perfection. There is food there, and plenty of it, with delicate, balanced, sublime flavors. It is never cold, nor hot.

Still, it is better to suffer.

There is love there, in their fashion. It is not born of want, of need, of refuge and protection. It is a warmth of acceptance, universal and without distinction.

Still, it is better to suffer.

There is no decay, no entropy. The fruits appear ripe and never rot. No stair ever crumbles, no railing ever rusts. There is never need to mourn a beloved pet.

Still, it is better to suffer.

Why else would anyone leave that place, come to this world full of so many things? There is beauty there, and love, but it is not the beauty and love born of struggle, of life.

You may find solace there, for a time. If you are broken, betrayed, abused, certainly. But even if not, just the same. Who does not sometimes seek to flee the world?

But like as not, when you have grown full and warm with the light, you will realize as I have.

That it is better to suffer.

And perhaps you will descend the secret paths and rejoin those, still lost, below.

Inspired by a writing prompt from Sarah's Patreon

You hear the ice crack. You hear day and night pass in their endless dance. And you awake.

Things are different than you remember. Fewer trees to the north. The soil by your pond is drier, gritty. It is too warm by half, throwing all the rhythms off. And the pond is fuller. With mud, and other things.

Still, it's good to be awake, to be alive. The rabbits, as is their habit, have woken before you. They're already deep in their preparations for the season. The ducks and sparrows are eager to tell you the winter's news. Some geese have stopped to visit; you invite them in, ask of their travels, wish them pleasant winds.

The trees, the ones who remain, are slower to notice. For a moment you fear that too many have been lost, that they've been cut off. But no, not this year, at least.

You'd survive even then, you know, as long as the brook still flows. But their lot's plenty painful as it is, without isolation to compound it.

But no, even in the drowsy whispers you can hear the resonance, despite the losses and the cuts and the bitter air.

And you know, so long as you are able, that you will continue in your duties, do what you can to keep the wheel going a little longer.

But now, while those around you wake, you have a moment, at least, to just sit and enjoy the spring.

You think you would've done any better? Sure, we were naïve, but we're young, brainwashed by movies and video games. You know how romantic comedies get people stuck in broken relationships? It was the same for us, just we thought we were heroes.

Someone shows you a secret world, gives you mystic powers, tells you to fight the darkness, what would you think? You might doubt it at first, question being the chosen ones. But you wouldn't let yourself be convinced?

We didn't think of it as selfish. We were fighting monsters, doing what we were told was necessary. Sure, it felt good to get stronger, build your power. We thought that's just how practice, how victory worked. It never crossed our minds that it was a reward system being doled out, that we were being manipulated. That what we thought was conformation we were doing the right thing was coming from them, too. That they had designed the images we saw of the monsters we fought.

In the end, it was like a drug. Could we have stopped? It's easy to say that we should've. But we weren't questioning, taking a step back, thinking logically. We were just spending our days waiting for the next hit of our power fantasy.

But it's not just our school, any more. Our enthusiasm for killing the monsters they showed us reached to the highest levels of government. And there's no power of love that's going to fix things now. No mystical concoction that will restore things to sanity.

Just us, watching them and the world we created.