systime 278+105–115
systime 278+105
The first time I felt you was not in the first moments after uploading. There is a part of this that will ever rankle. I have always thought that, if I were to feel you moving within the world, dreaming us, that it would be the first thing I might recognize as I was greeted in that featureless plain that was the entry point.
It was not until the day that the System was locked into consensus, though. Some thirteen months after I uploaded, with some fanfare and an underwhelming pop that cleared the sinuses and left us swaying, the world snapped into focus and I felt you stir.
Some few of us commented on it later, though many did not understand. It was not a physical sensation. It was not any sort of sensation. It was just a gentle knowledge that a breath had been taken, that a dream had shifted and the understanding of the world had shifted with it. It was a gentle knowing. It was a soft understanding. It was the world as it ever had been, and it was us that had changed in that moment.
At times from then on, I would think to myself, I can feel you. I can almost feel you, there in the sunlight, in the flowers.
At times, too, I would would feel once more my understanding shift you rolled over in your sleep, and I would find out later that there had been some brief downtime in the hardware of the System that we had not noticed from within. I remember reveling in this as the System itself was moved from the hardware in Yakutsk to that at the L5 station. I remember weeping as I wondered whether or not you had very nearly woken up from such a vast move.
I dreamed that night that, as I walked out on the field of grass and dandelions that we all knew so well, there in the distance, I saw a figure, and I understood first by the ears — those ears that were always so outrageously tall, so very oversized that they seemed fake until I looked up fennec foxes and saw that, no, they really were that big — that it must be you, and the linen fabric of a simple dress blew in the breeze and we walked toward each other to meet and we said nothing but merely got our arms around each other for the first time in very nearly a decade and then...
Then I awoke, and you were still asleep, and that was okay, because the dream stuck with me and at the time — sometimes even still — it felt like you saying hello to me.
And now, after your nightmare, beloved, I dream...
systime 278+107 (Erev Pesach)
If you had let us us have three-hundred fifteen Passover Seders, and had not let us become new people, it would have been enough.
If you had let us fork into more and yet more people, and had not let us collect memories like amphorae, it would have been enough.
If you had let us collect our memories, perfect, uncorrupted, perfectly associated, and had not let us built a world of our own, it would have been enough.
If you had let us build an entire world for ourselves, full of sights and smells, delicious foods and beautiful music, and had not let us share those sensations with one another, it would have been enough.
If you had let us share our sights and smells, that which we considered delicious and that which we considered beautiful to the ear, the joys of sensuality and laughter and woes of pain, and had not let us escape from a world falling apart, it would have been enough.
Dayenu, RJ. Da-dayenu, da-dayenu...
Ah...
If you had let us escape from a world that was falling apart, seas turning to acid and sun burning too hot...ah...and had not let us escape also from the abuse of loved ones and the violence of society struggling, it would have been enough.
If you had let us escape from raised fists and raised voices, from cold hearts and cold words, from the heat of fires and the heat of angers that we never could understand, and had not let us fund a better future for those who would ever come after us, it would have been enough.
If you had woven your paw amid the affairs of the world and led those to say, “Ah! A future!” and nudged their hearts toward compassion — or whatever drove them — and given the families of those who uploaded financial recompense, and had not let us join up with our loved ones, it would have been enough.
If you had given us fathers mothers sisters brothers aunts uncles friends lovers, if you have given us years and years apart and then joyous reunions, if you had given us rejoinings and rejoicings, if you had given us the reunions we as humanity have ever craved, and hand not let us live yet more, it would have been enough.
If you had let us hope for forever, let us live and live and live, if you had let us slow down so that our days were days instead of hours, our hours hours instead of minutes, if you had let us linger in life for just a little bit longer so that we might experience the joys that we crave, and had not become the world, dayenu.
Da-dayenu, da-dayenu, RJ. It would have been enough, even if...
Even if...ah...
If you had given yourself, body and heart and soul and mind and intellect and identity and spirit, becoming not a person but a world, becoming the foundation for existence, becoming the pillars that held the world aloft, if you did not support the world by your very being, becoming the idea of atoms and molecules and grains of sand, and had not at one point held my hand, dayenu, it would have been enough...
If you had let me at one point held your hand, if this had not fallen into a habit where we would at times walk through the halls of school or sat on the grass lawn outside your parents' townhouse complex or stood in line for coffee and let our fingers twine to share in this small touch reserved for lovers — for lovers and us! — and had not played upon the stage with me, it would have been enough...ah...dayenu...
If you had sat with me on the edge of the stage, laughing, each of us with our tablets in our laps, letting our pens guide themselves with our eyes closed that they may write whatever, if you had worked with me on play after play through our years together, if you had gone to production after production with me, if you had not sent me all of your papers and presentations, these little bits of tech you were inventing, all tied to our shared joy of theatre, and had not sent me one last letter, dayenu...!
If you had sent me one last letter to break my heart, AwDae, and had not left behind in the world your eternal smile, it would have been enough...
systime 278+109 (Pesach II)
Achingly bright, you come to me. I must shield my eyes as we walk side by side, paw in paw.
There is so much sweetness in us. This little remembered touch. This little remembered walk. This little remembered quiet. They are all filled with sweetness.
How pure our love!
How pure those little moments, how pure. We sat on the slope outside of school, sat on the grass and dandelions, and made up little stories for each other. We sat on the edge of the stage during a break and laughed over attempts at automatic writing. We sat on the couch, one blanket draped over both our knees, and talked all the way through a movie and for hours after.
Each moment was so pure. Each was so sweet...
We were stolen from each other, stolen from the world, and then you stole yourself away to become a part of something bigger, far bigger than any of us could have dreamed of.
Achingly bright was the pain of your loss. Even still, I must shield my eyes as I walk within the vast emptiness of your absence.
Even this loss was pure. Even this was so sweet...
How pure your love for us!
The world crumbled around us as you stumbled and fell, and oh! How must have wept, how you must have wept. The Eternal glanced away and, when Their unknowable gaze returned to you, you must have wept so under the unbitter sweetness of it.
Where is the purity for us? Where the sweetness?
systime 278+115 (Pesach VIII)
May abundant peace descend on us...
Ah...
“Are you comfortable, my dear?” Rav asks me. Her voice paints the inside of my eyelids, burning, with her concern.
May there be abundant peace from heaven...
“Yes, Rav.”
She has drawn me from my home and into hers, as I have been throughout Pesach, but now she has settled in her bed, back propped up against the wall, and I lay half-curled on her bed beside her, using her thigh as a pillow. I do not know when I got here and do not care to remember. I know that it is the end of Pesach, but...ah...what happened to the rest of it?
“You sound like you are coming up slowly.”
“Yes, Rav.”
“Do you want for anything? Water? Tea? Food?”
I cannot answer. The question is beyond me. It does not make sense for one such as me. I am forming from the dust. The world, not HaShem, is blowing breath into me. AwDae, not Adonai, is breathing life into me...
When I do not answer, Rav brushes fingers through my mane. Gentle combing. An anchoring touch. I always did like having my hair played with, did I not? Did I?
She loves me. Rav. She loves me, and I love her, and this is a comforting thought these last few weeks. It is a comforting thought this last year and some since the Attack. She loves me and I love her, and this is as it should be.
“May there be abundant peace,” I murmur after some time thinking on this. I do not know quite how much later, but given that we are in the same positions and yet Rav startles to awareness, I must imagine some minutes.
“Would you like to say Kaddish?”
I roll onto my other side and press my face against her belly.
“Yitgadal v'yitgadash sh'mei raba,” she murmurs down to me. She nearly coos. She recites words of praise meant for times of mourning as soothingly as one might to an infant. “B'alma di v'ra chirutei...”
I mumble the words along with her right up until y'hei sh'lama raba min sh'maya.
I do not feel the burning ache of despair in my breast as I listen to Rav finish speaking. I do not feel the cold lack within me when that which is holy has abandoned me.
“May there be abundant peace from...ah...”
“From heaven,” she says with a smile.
From AwDae, I think to myself.
I do not feel burning or cold, I feel soft and comfortable and full to overflowing with love, but it is a love unbounded by the strictures of sense. I feel within myself the sure knowledge that within Adonai there is that of me, of this old, broken woman who is doing her best after the world ended for thirteen months, ten days, seventeen minutes, and eight seconds.
I feel this because we are b'tzelem Elohim, and so, too, was our beloved, beloved friend, ey who dreams the world.
When next I am aware of my surroundings, the room is dark and Rav has curled up with me, her arm around my middle, her face in my mane. She snores softly.
If I am to be stuck in overflow forever, if this is just who I am now, let it be like this, not the sinus-burning bitterness of despair. Let it be this moment, this day, this week, this Pesach. If I must wander in overflow for forty years, let it be this.