Florilegium ¹

¹ Madison Rye Progress

The Margin of the Terrifying

At the heart of so many of my anxieties lies the question of just how much space I am allowed to take up.

Do I speak too loud? Do I speak too often? Do I tread too close to that invisible line of being ‘too much’?

Am I too demanding? Do I need too much minding? Is the amount of attention I seem to seek above the norm, whatever that is?

Do I park myself in the corners of others' minds? Do I sit cross-legged on the floor, a tripping hazard? Do I follow them around their thoughts, speaking — or not speaking, yet nevertheless present?

Is asking so many questions just feeding into that anxiety?

For we, when we feel, evaporate. Oh,
we breathe ourselves out and away. From ember to fading ember,
we give off a fainter scent. Oh, someone may tell us: you get in my blood, this room, the springtime,
is filled with you...
[Note]

See Rilke p. 23
And were I to get in their blood, that room, the springtime? What then? What fainter scent would I leave in the noses of others? I ask and ask and ask. –Beholden To The Heat Of The Lamps

I keep having conversations about this, about how much space I take up. Almost all of them take place over text, too, as they often come with a worry that synchronous communication might be too much of a demand. Some of them take place between me and my partners, and I speak frankly about how we interact with each other. Others take place between other versions of me, characters I role-play or those that I write, each expressing their own anxiety.

Over the years, I may have fallen out of the habit of asking whether or not I am a burden, of feeling like a burden. But what I have not done is relinquish the feeling that there are bounds around me. There is a barrier that marks the end of me, a sphere of influence that has a point where it stops, my own little causal domain. I do not know if anyone else sees it. I doubt it.

I see it, though. It is always there. A little shield, a screen, a forcefield, glimmering and translucent. It is the point where the space that I take up ends.

I must tell you it gives me great pleasure to think of you reading these words in licks and whorls of flame, your eyes unable to work backwards, unable to keep the letters on a page; instead, you must absorb them, admit them into your memory.
[Note]

See El-Mohtar and Gladstone p. 8
A pleasure worth hunting for! One that would take effort to hold in the mind, in tension with that anxiety; but worth it, yes? –And We Are The Motes In The Stage-Lights

I wish I could see triumph in this. I wish I could see victory in the space that I take up, in the way I crouch within the minds of my friends.

I wish I could prowl through their memories, touching one after the other — oh! This one! See that time we drove together, mostly in silence, maybe a little drunker than we should have been? Ooh, or this one, when we sat together outside a Friday night movie showing and you told me how you thought at one point that you were gay, but decided no, probably not?

I live a sometimes apology, instead.

Still, I have friends. The apology is only sometimes, and I will spend hours with them simply enjoying myself before that ‘sometimes’ creeps up, a strangely-shaped piece of grit between my molars. Ah, you want to come inside after that drive? I am sorry that my place is messy. Oh, you told me you are straight and I did not hide my disappointment well enough, I liked you so much.

I wish I could bask in the sense of wonder, of marvel, of beauty — rather than terrifying — that someone would perceive me.

Who, though I screamed, would hear me among the ranks
of the angels? And even supposing one of them took me suddenly to his breast, I would perish within his overpowering being. For the beautiful is right at the margin
of the terrifying, which we can only just endure.
[Note]

See Rilke p. 11
And how terrifying, yes. “Every angel is terrifying,” the next line says. Every angel is terrifying; must I strive against them to endure? –Beholden

Ah well, if wishes were fishes, I would look into their glittering scales and see some more perfect version of myself.

And so I continue to make my way through the world. I, like Rilke’s elegist, choke back the lure I would give, walking softly and keeping my arms and legs inside at all times. Or most of the time, perhaps.

Sometimes my apology will fail, my graphomania will get the better of me, and I will spill my words on to pages, onto screens, into books and essays and notes.

I will litter online spaces with evidence of my presence. I will write my missives and leave them in public for my friends to find, little notes that very carefully do not contain any I-love-yous.

Will you cut off, leaving my note to spin its fractal math inside you?
[Note]

See Rilke p. 14
Sharper than the anxiety of merely taking up space is the worry that my edges my be too jagged, that I might turn within the others minds, tearing at them and leaving scrapes colored cherry. –Where It Watches The Slow Hours Progress

I write and write and write, and then I fret and fret. My adversary, my satan, sidles up to me, their movements a smirk, brushes my hair out of my eyes, tuts.

Anything I make that is at all meaningful to me — that is, anything that I feel is worth sharing — is too much to ask others to engage with. "How dare you," it says. "How dare you ask that others consider your work meaningful."
[Note]

See ally from Start to Finish
My satan, yes, my makyō. My accuser, my adversary, my demon that distracts from the path to enlightenment and greater knowledge. That ghost-cave I inhabit. –What Right Have I

How dare I! How dare I take up that space! And with malice and aforethought!

I use my will to wedge myself into the world. I project an intent and make myself known. I speak up and then cringe at the sound of my voice, and even my love poems, written but unsent, cringe away from my presence.

I live my life in eternal terror
of the completeness of your own.
I take up so little space
and impinge upon it so gently,
I only hope that there is space enough
for a 'dear' here and a 'lovely' there.
If beauty is at the edge of the terrifying,
I live my life in eternal terror.
[Note]

Does this count as sending the love poem? –Beholden

I am sorry, R.B., a part of me hopes that you never read this. –Slow Hours

But, ah! My friends, all those who promised I was not a burden back when that was a thing I would ask them about, they all clap! They clap and smile and tell me that I have done a good thing.

Do they not know that I am working hard at defining my boundaries? Do they not know they are praising me for violating those very same boundaries? Frankly, it is quite rude. Even my love poems, written but unsent, beg them stop.

Cover me, crush me, compress me.
Squeeze me down until I fit in your pocket.
Let me jangle among your keys,
or slip between bills in your wallet.
Forget me, let me fray, let me fall apart.
And, some day, pull me free,
dust me off, flatten me out,
and tell me that you love me.
[Note]

Another unsent poem set before the potential gaze of a lover. –Beholden

I am sorry, J.C. –Slow Hours

But I am working at getting better at accepting that sort of feedback. I am trying to accept that taking up space is even allowed.

And we marvel at it so because it holds back in serene disdain
and does not destroy us.
[Note]

See Rilke p. 11
And how few have! Jill, perhaps? Unition, who bade me leave my husband and move to Canada to live with him because we danced together at a rave? And precious few others, though perhaps exceptions bear too much weight. –Hold My Name Beneath Your Tongue And Know

I cycle through defenses. I try silence some days. Other days, as I have spent the last however many thousands of words doing, as I am still doing, I will justify my existence through words, then justify my words by leaning on those of others. “I mean what I am saying!” I say. “And here is proof! See? There is Issa and Dwale! See? There is Job! There is Rilke and El-Mohtar and Gladstone! I mean what I say, I mean what I say…”

Even now, even as I set my words in pixels on screen and ink on paper and promise myself that I will not do this, will only sprinkle in those too-heady words that I love so much, promise myself that I am not going to justify my place in the world by shoring it up with others' writing, I do anyway. I use those quotes for color, I tell myself, then anxiously cite them in the footnotes.

PS. I hesitate to write this, but—I've noticed my letters run long. If you'd rather I grow more concise, I can. I don't want to presume.
[Note]

See El-Mohtar and Gladstone p. 65

Who knows how much space a word takes up? And yet I cannot stop from writing. My perhaps apologies. –Slow Hours

And perhaps it is too much. Perhaps I really am too much.

Why, then, do I feel like ever more? Why do I feel like more than myself? How did I get to a point where there is enough of me that identity began to creak and groan, to sag, to show seams where stress-fractures began?

There is a tension within me. It is not the tension of muscles — though there is often that — but the tension between contrasting ideas. I have been through my dialectical behavioral therapy. I have learned that this is a thing to be understood within one’s core, to be held with care and love. I get that. It is a thing that I have not just intellectualized, but a thing that I have internalized. I do not struggle with the idea of dialectics, of dichotomies.

There is a tension within me, and it lies between expectations and desires. There is this expectation that I simply must take up more space than I ought, and also this desire that I deserve to take up space.

I ought to, yes? I ought to be able to be seen. I deserve to validated. I want that recognition that I am a person and thus deserve to exist.

More, I need it on a practical level. If I am to be a writer, then surely I need that recognition in order to live. I must market myself. I must prove that what I write is worth reading.

I take my dreams, my idle musings, and I wrap them up in pretty cloth and set them down on the page. I dream of growing old, and of hyperfixation. I dream of an expansion of self, of what it must feel like to undergo some sort of duplication, change, following each to their logical end as they arise.

In the Post-Self books, characters can create copies of themselves with vanishing ease, and those copies are free to go on and live their own lives, facing divergence, leaning into individuation as though it were a quotidian joy. Then, if they so choose, they may merge back down with the instance from which they were spawned, and with them, all of their memories may go with.

All artists search. I search for stories, in this post-self age. What happens when you can no longer call yourself an individual, when you have split your sense of self among several instances? How do you react? Do you withdraw into yourself, become a hermit? Do you expand until you lose all sense of identity? Do you fragment? Do you go about it deliberately, or do you let nature and chance take their course?

[Note]

See Qoheleth p. 164.

The character speaking, Dear, Also, The Tree That Was Felled of the Ode clade, speaks in italics, which has been preserved here. I do not make the rules, I simply foist them upon the reader. –Dear The Wheat And Rye Under The Stars

It came from you, my dear, and took from you its art. —I Remember The Rattle Of Dry Grass

And besides, without even knowing, I set my hopes and dreams within Dear, did I not? My dreams that I might be different from the rest of my clade. It is different from Rye, from Praiseworthy, and Warmth In Fire is different from it. –Slow Hours

How different my varied selves! –Motes

Who, then, has this merged instance become? Are they who they were? And yet, so much of identity is formed from the experiences we have, the memories that we form. Are they not also that ephemeral up-tree instance? Some mix of the two? And how much? Half and half? The down-tree instance may keep only a portion of the memories, rather than merging them all wholesale; how does that change things? There may be conflicting memories, where identity rankles; when these are reconciled, does that affect identity more or less?

These questions attract more than a little attention from those who experience plurality, whether in the form of Dissociative Identity Disorder or some form of medianity.

I can see the allure, there, myself. Of course I can.

I teased myself when the first book in that series, Qoheleth, came out that if I had an nickel for every time I accidentally wrote something with heavy plural undertones that nonetheless made me doubt my own identity, I would have two nickels. Which is not a lot, as the quote continues, but it is weird that it happened twice. After all, had I not received all of that attention from plural folks with regards to ally? “I think it’s my favorite plural memoir”, Rax wrote, yes?

And then Toledot came out. And, six months later, Nevi’im, and Mitzvot six months after that.

Five hundred thousand words about a people whose lives were defined by their ability to fork and individuate. Half a million words of almost-plurality heaped around me, edging me out of the corners where I had previously hid, forcing me to stand, visible, in the centers of rooms where I might be perceived.

When ally came out, when I got that review from Rax, I tripped over a crack in my identity and fell to my hands and knees, skinning my palms, barking my shin against this potential conceptualization of self.

Are you me?
Am I?

I don’t know. I can’t tell. I can’t tell if you’re me, if the adversary is me, if “that third-of-three parts, that part defined by negative space and shadow and blind spots” is me.

I can’t tell if hypomanic Madison is me. I can’t tell if depressed Madison is me.

Sometimes she feels separate. Depressed Madison, I mean. Sometimes she feels like another person who is doing different things, and I feel trapped up within my head, watching her act–

Or not.

–or not, and I feel like nothing I say or do can get her to change the things she does or does not do. Nothing I say or do can change the way she feels.

The way I feel?

The way she feels when she’s fronting?

[Note]

See ally on plurality
“There is confusion here,” the ally continued, and while I have picked up more knowledge, confusion remains. –Hold My Name

Is even the ally another me? –Slow Hours

Another us? —Dry Grass

It sent me into my five thousand word tailspin where I asked dozens and dozens of questions of my ally, of myself, as I tried to nail down the panic that came with being confronted by this idea of plurality. There was this anxiety of definition — was this me? Was this who I was? — right alongside the anxiety of identification: if this is me, what does that mean for my life?

I never did figure that out in that section of ally. I very carefully, very intentionally did not. “It is all well and good that this is a question worth considering, and I am happy enough to acknowledge it here like this, in a roundabout way. I think I need to, to some extent. I need to have it in words between us. But any further investigations would, I think, do a disservice to the project at hand and the roles we play, willing or not, in the endeavor,” I wrote. “Hell, as it is, I’m torn as to whether or not I should have brought it up in the first place.”

So kind to my reader. So kind to my friends.

I do not particularly regret this decision. ally is a project. It is a work of art to be read. It is a constructed thing that must take into account the ways in which others will engage with it. That very nature means that there is thought put into the ways in which it will shape those who do wind up engaging with it — “oh god i changed it by observing it :P” Rax said in a message after reading my plurality tailspin — so it would make sense that I would keep my reader, my friends in mind.

What I am cognizant of is how this has become a habit. Yes, some of that is just part of human communication. Yes, some of that is simply being a kind person. Yes, so much of this anxious spiraling is just that: anxiety.

I don't know what this means. This feels like being cut off again — feels like teetering on the brink of something that will unmake me.
[Note]

See El-Mohtar and Gladstone p. 125
Unmake some more singular me, some me less weird. Plurality! Medianity! Pfah, I came out as gay and came out as trans, and now I must hoard some other identity? –Hold My Name

Perhaps I am just afraid.

Afraid! If it is a part of my identity, why should I be afraid? Is that not the whole point behind Pride? Is that not part of my whole schtick as the visibly and effortlessly trans girl who prides herself on being such, who aims to be a sort of trans psychopomp?

Fig tree, how long now has it meant much to me
how you almost entirely skip the blossom
and without praise press your pure secret
into the promptly unfolding fruit.
[Note]

See Rilke p. 57
So fast the fig matures, rushing into completion. Am I rushing? Sure, I have been thinking about this since ally, unintentionally wrote four more books about it after, but am I rushing? Perhaps that is the basis for my fear. –Rye

Perhaps that, too, is a trans thing, though. We come out, we transition, we live in this ridiculous world, and the whole time, our goal is to tamp down our identity. Even from within the community, even from the most proud, the goal is to tamp down this part of ourselves. Yes, praise the validity, but do so by passing ever better. Praise most of all the stealth, for they have tamped down their identity with makeup and binders. Praise most of all the successful men and women who slip effortlessly through the world around them, for they have integrated.

Surely there is something similar for plurality. I imagine, given its associations with psychology, this most often is brought up in terms of functionality. After all, if it is touched by those who touch other neurodivergencies, then surely it must be the same.

There, see? The successful trans girl with ADHD: she took her meds and did her voice training and now she does a capitalism well.

My eccentricities are tolerated: my love of cities, of poetry, my appreciation for being rootless, for being, in some ways, more Gardener than Garden, or Gardened.
[Note]

See El-Mohtar and Gladstone p. 124
Writing, my own eccentricity, is tolerated. Writing, furry, both are productive, both are a sharing and perhaps a source of money. Identity, though? Is that productive? Will that help me do a capitalism well? –Hold My Name

What is the analogous form of success fur a plural person? I am told that for a long time, it was becoming singular. After all, even passing as singular would be better, would it not?

More recently, I have heard that it is the ability to ensure that all of the personalities within one remain in consonance, that it remains egosyntonic, in harmony with the concept of self. This, at least, I can see being analogous with my goals of being happily, visibly trans. After all, is it not my goal to live specifically as a trans woman? Not just as a woman, but specifically a trans woman. The way I bridle when I hear “I just see you as any other woman”…

Become singular, become cis. Pass as singular, pass as cis. Live in harmony, live in harmony. It is times like these when I think back to those words, “Identity is psychopathological in that you only feel it when something makes you feel bad.”

So, if I am to have this sense of pride, if I am to live in this egosyntonic harmony, then what is the fall out of that?

More strife, more strife. Expectations versus desires. Taking up space and withering at the thought. Kindness in defeat and the need to win, to live.

More strife, more strife…

Around and around thoughts flow like water downstream with eddies behind rocks building whirlpools as holes in identity. These holes are pins that prick through the selves within me to keep them in alignment and hold the totality up against the wall on display for some higher me to investigate.

Too many words, too many thoughts.

But tell me, who are these itinerants, more fleeting than even
we ourselves, since early on wrung out by an urgent (for whose sake, whose?)
always unsatisfied will; which rather wrings them,
bends them, slings and swings them, throws them
and catches them back; and as from an oiled,
slipperier air, they come down
on the worn out carpet, thinner from their
incessant landing, this lost, forlorn carpet in the cosmos,
laid on there like a plaster, as if
Earth’s skyward outskirts had been smarting there.

[Note]

See Rilke p. 47
Rilke, I believe, is talking about the fleetingness of us, a perhaps futility, a spending of time in a “toilsome nowhere”, a moving from the “merely too little” to the “empty too much”. Thoughts spinning out into nowhere, crammed into a too little, emptying with a burst into some too much. –What Right Have I

It is hard to pull myself back upstream against the overwhelming current of so many thoughts. Already these waters have eroded the banks of the stream. Already these whorls ache within me. Already I feel my skin pruning, going soft, as though it may soon slough off under the onslaught of this investigation.

And even if it does not slough off, I will still be more vulnerable, will I not? I will still keep digging at these various selves and my skin, weakened by water, will break and tear, and stain these various mes pink.

It's not that I never noticed before how many red things there are in the world. It's that they were never any more relevant to me than green or white or gold. Now, it's as if the whole world sings to me in petals, feathers, pebbles, blood.
[Note]

See El-Mohtar and Gladstone p. 119
Red, the interlocutor. –Rye

Ah, even my words are colored rosy from all this exploration!

I cannot stop, though, can I? I dragged myself upstream and felt that singular me delaminate, and now I am… what, three? Four? That paper-thin me sheared off into impossibly thinner selves, so sheer that, holding them up to the sun, one would still be blinded, the edges disappearing into invisibility.

And still, around and around thoughts flow like water downstream with eddies behind rocks building whirlpools as holes in each.

I am bound to them.

Though I may fear that they will tear, they also feel impossibly strong. They also bind me tighter than I could imagine. Where once that skin tore, now those identities hold it fast.

And if I stop, I'll surely die.
[Note]

See ally p. 106
Some day I will. “…Some terrible day — too soon whether tomorrow or the next millennium — I will not have you to share these joys with,” my partner writes. I sigh, crying, but for now, these identities hold me fast. –Slow Hours

Around and around thoughts flow like water down stream and the edges of these identities flutter prettily. They catch the light even as, having once more been washed away in this endless cycling, I claw my way back upstream.

“Am I doing this right?” I ask those fluttering edges.

There is not a right way to do this.

“Is this a valid way to explore?”

Valid is a meaningless term.

“Is it okay? Is it alright? Will I be okay?”

You will, they say. You will and you will and you will, and I suppose perhaps even you will.

“I feel embarrassed (though not shamed) that what I had considered a settled and permanent part of my identity is maybe not either,” I said to Echo during those slow wriggings-toward of our early relationship, as the edges of my paper-thin self began to fray. “And I also feel embarrassed discussing that with you in particular. I don’t deal with impostor syndrome to quite the extent that I mentioned last night, but neither is it wholly absent.”

“You feel embarrassed discussing plurality with a plural person in particular?” ey replied.

“I think I am embarrassed because of the role our interactions have played in bringing this to the surface.”

There was a moment of silence as, I imagine, ey leaned back in eir chair, brow knit. “Goodness, what a tapestry.”

Listen to me. I am your echo.
[Note]

See El-Mohtar and Gladstone p. 149
As ey are, even as eir identity swings towards some other self. –Slow Hours

And there, behind the scenes, that delamination prickled further through my paper-thin self.

How I would then like to hide from the longing [...]
[Note]

See Rilke p. 59
It is too much sometimes, is it not? –Beholden

Even as we worked for weeks and months together after that, even as we pried carefully at those fluttering edges, ran that fraying me beneath the rushing waters, I worried still that I took up too much space. We inch by inch slid me apart into two, into three and four, and my worries increased twice, three times and four, that I was taking up multiples of me worth of space in eir life.

I slid from myself into Slow Hours and Beholden — the feeler and the mover. And then before long, Hold My Name — the self-actualizer — sheered away, and after her came Motes — the small. Rye — the writer. What Right Have I — the believer. And some time later, Dry Grass — the mother — and True Name — the leader — slid carefully into being.

And even so, even as I strove towards what felt like a more fulfilling future, a more complete identity, my worries at times were founded. After all, the worries that others had for me, their connections, were impacted by this, were they not? Dave worried that I was disappearing into the work, disappearing into some other dynamic inaccessible to him. Robin worried that I was too anxious — and what a lovely route to expand anxiety! — about the effects of expanded identities on my relationships with others.

But “[w]hat gives life its “living” and its “psychic” aspect is the “vibrations” that permeate and surround each living thing and account for the “chemistry” between people,” Will Crichton writes of the Duino Elegies (Rilke p. 103). “In other words, life, or the non-mechanistic side of life, is in the same general category as light and radio waves and the subtle forces that these generate.”

“God is in the dynamics,” I have said. “God is a verb,” say others. “See that of God in everyone,” say yet more.

I live a sometimes panentheism.

Animistic, I see in these dynamics the divine in these relations between me and mine. Between Dave and me, Robin and me. Between Echo and this me and this me and this me and this me, and yes, this me and this me.

Angel, oh take it, pluck it, that tiny-flowered healing herb.
Protect it! Find a vase for it! Place it among those joys
not yet open to us, in an appealing urn.
[Note]

See Rilke p. 51
Urn! What a choice of word, rather than a mere vase. –Motes

And now, I must– what? Must dwell in that space I take up in the world and claim that I, too, bear God in the dynamics? Act out God? Allow that of God to be seen in me? I must see that dynamic between myself and myself and myself and myself?

So around and around thoughts flow like the divine downstream with eddies behind rocks of yet more divinity building whirlpools as holes in identity.

And what of it? What of all of this? Waving my hand at the previous however many hundreds of words, I might ask, “Why the fuck does it matter?”

There are many things that I might ask. There are many things that I have asked, even in these last however many thousands of words. Questions and questions…

So, do you want to know the answer?

I don’t know.

It is strange that you sound unsure.

Why?

There are twenty-two questions on the previous page. Twenty-five if you count mine — and I suppose that whether or not we are to include those is the crux of the issue. If that is not bemoaning the lack of answers, I do not know what is. It is strange that you would be unsure whether or not you want to know the answer.
[Note]

See ally on plurality
“Are you me?” I asked in 22 ways. The ally’s only response: “Am I?” –Slow Hours

But there is that one that sticks in the craw: ‘why?’ Why do I worry so much, and what, pray, might I do about it?

Clearly, one answer — one I decided to explore a late March night in 2012 — was simply to escape. Just leave it all behind. Take the easy way out. Choose the escape hatch.

One way, perhaps, to stop worrying about how much space one takes up is to stop worrying at all.

Your dream, is it not this, some time to be invisible?
[Note]

See Rilke p. 87
Death, then, the ultimate invisibility. –The Only Time I Know My True Name Is When I Dream

Suicide, then, the ultimate dream. –Slow Hours

I do not like such talk. I cannot deny that it is in us, but that of us which is me does not like such talk. —Dry Grass

But what does this mean for the foundation of those worries? I would still take up space, yes? Arguably, I would take up more! Much more, yes? I would take up an inordinate amount of space in the hearts and minds of my loved ones. They would be left not only with their knowledge of me, but also of their lack of knowledge.

They would not know why I chose to quit this life, not wholly.

They would not know who I was in those last days-hours-minutes, not wholly.

They would not know what I was feeling, not wholly, and they would not be able to ask.

Which of them would mourn me most? Which would breathe some hidden sigh of relief at my passing? Which of my beloved would tell the bees of my demise, and would they tell them why?

Now I have told the bees about your death
and wept upon the stoop of their fine house.
I've watered grass with wand'ring stories
    of your joys and miseries.
They spilled from home; they stood me right
        and made me eat your name,
then bade me lift my eyes to stars of you.
[Note]

See motion p. 63
But then, the Madison that kept bees may yet be alive. Some day, perhaps. One of a thousand ‘some day’s. –Hold My Name

I would take up an inordinate amount of space in their hearts and their minds, occupying the whole of them as they grieved, pushing out any ability to do much else. That is what happened to me, after all. Falcon died and I was useless for days, for months. What was I to do with this sudden, overwhelming trauma? Simply… let it go? Hah!

Falcon died, she slumped against me and left me with her still warm but unalive body, and no amount of weeping, no amount of JD crying, “Come back to me, come back” could change that.

And being dead is full of the labor of catching up,
as one gradually acquires a sense of eternity.—
But the living always make the mistake of too sharp a distinction.
[Note]

See Rilke p. 17
“Remembering is the opposite of dismembering,” I was told, and then I was off to the races. “The danger in ceaseless memorialization is just how close it lies to idolatry. To elevate the dead to such a status as false god (for what being that is limited to the perfection of memory is not false?) is to ceaselessly perfect the imperfectable,” I wrote in Mitzvot (p 71) –Rye

I hold in tension within myself the idea that the only way out is through — through to the void, through that narrow gate, through to darkness — and just how unfair it would be of me to choose that.

But– No. It is not the way through, is it? Not the right one, at least. That way through is the way through to nothingness. It is the way through to nullity. There will be time for that.

So instead I must choose these countless deaths other than my own. I must choose to live through Falcon’s death, through Turtle’s and Zephyr’s. I must choose to live on after Dwale and Cullen, after Morgan and Tirix and Brone and Margaras.

So instead I must choose these countless self-deaths. I must choose to be Madison, I must choose that egocide for Matthew.

I must, it seems, choose the death of a singular identity, the death of a Madison who continues to ignore plurality, if I am to acknowledge completion.

That once, having passed through the merciless insight,
I may sing to approving angles in praise and rejoicing!
[Note]

See Rilke p. 89
Terrifying though they may be. –What Right Have I

Perhaps the most terrifying bit of this decision is how little change I feel. It does not feel like a new thing. It does not feel like I have become someone else. I do not feel like the various mes that I am now are somehow any different from the singular me that I used to be.

I felt better, yes! I felt a sense of relief, but it was the relief of acknowledgment rather than the relief of being somehow fixed, being somehow mended. There was not dysphoria, but there is euphoria. It was the relief of recognition of already being whole.

How strange! Every time I came out before, it involved some change in living. I came out as gay and had to reckon with the homophobia that I knew would come. I came out as trans and had to reckon with transition.

Now, I come to terms — ‘coming out’ fits poorly, here — with plurality, with medianity, and… and what? I keep living as I do, for the most part. I live as I had been living, only more earnest: “Rilke is not at all sympathetic with an other-worldly attitude. His concern is with the enrichment of this present life and its dependence on solid material things,” Crichton writes of the Elegies (Rilke p. 106). Yes, yes, this identity business veers rather close to the other-worldly, but it is not; it is a living in the moment with less of that other-worldly fretting in the way.

It is such a luxury to dwell in these details — to share them with you.
[Note]

See El-Mohtar and Gladstone p. 89
A privilege, even! Perhaps were I busier, had I still a job, I would not have the luxury to dwell in such details. –Motes

There are, to be sure, issues. There are those in my life with whom I will not share these words, these ideas. There are still pangs for the loss of unity — even if, as I say, this is simply an acknowledgment of the truth, ah, life would be easier if I did not acknowledge this, yes? And there are still difficulties.

As I explored these new versions of me, I ran into new deaths, too, new risks of death. I found the boundaries of these selves entangled in different ways with other people. Is my partner as one me still my partner as another? Yes. Mostly. Ish. And what of my plural partner? What of the ways in which we fell in love, that slow entangling of one of me and one of em, and that first day another instance of mine peeked out and… and I was not theirs, was I? Or perhaps I was. Mostly? Ish.

And what of the amount of time spent living into those personalities? When I stopped living into one for a few days, then nearly two weeks, I found myself crying, found myself clutching at my bed for any sense of grounding against this half-sensed death — or potential for death, perhaps — of one part of me. What would happen if she died? What would happen if I no longer found connection there? Would I lose that forever? Would I lose the relationships that she had formed? And, supposing even that those relationships spanned partials, her particular peculiarities would fade, yes? Maybe. Ish?

You, who descend with the thud
only fruits know, falling, unripe,
daily a hundred times from the tree
of jointly built up motion (which, quicker than water,
has spring, summer, and autumn in just a few
minutes) — fall off and bump on the grave;
[Note]

See Rilke p. 51
Oh, but I looked down from those heights. That me did. That me clutched and grabbed at the branch, strove to stay in existence, afraid of that bump against the grave, but killing an entire self is not easy. Forgetting an entire self is not possible. I remember Ranna, yes? I remember Makyo. I remember Maddy. I am very few of those anymore. I am Slow Hours and Beholden and Motes and Hold My Name and Rye and What Right Have I, I am Dry Grass and True Name and who knows who else, hints at names cribbed from my own work, selves with names stolen from lines of a poem, characters with an allergy to contractions and a complex relationship with language. I, the me who is Slow Hours, would not simply fall away and rot on the grave, even if I were to darken a while on the branch to remain just a part of the pantomime against the sky, I would still be there with Ranna and Makyo and Maddy. –Slow Hours

She did not. I am still her, and gladly. But had she died, what then? I would be unwhole. I would have a rotting edge. I would have to tape myself together around this missing self.

What will I do, sky? Lake, what? Bluebird, iris, ultramarine, how can there be more when this is done?
[Note]

See El-Mohtar and Gladstone p. 165
How could there be more after she died, had she? —True Name

I, as Beholden, am not her. Motes most certainly not. True Name perhaps could hold some of what she was, as could both Rye and What Right Have I, though for different reasons, but none of them are her. Slow Hours is she who revels in the bittersweet. Beholden is she who revels in creation. Motes is she who plays in joy. Hold My Name is visibly hungry for earnest expression. How could I revel in the bittersweet without her? –Beholden

How could we but do our best, had we needed to? —What Right Have I

But, yes. She did not. We found a way to make it work. We found a word to kick that partial Madison into place, to smooth out coarse seams. We found a secret name. We made promises to make time for each other, for these us-es. I am still her, she is still eirs, and gladly.

But it will never end — that's the answer. There is always us.
[Note]

See El-Mohtar and Gladstone p. 165
There is always us. There is always me and me and me and me, and then me and me, and me twice more, yes, but there is always me and all of my beloved. –Slow Hours, Beholden, Motes, Hold My Name, Rye, What Right Have I, Dry Grass, and True Name

That is the thing about hate, about loathing, even of oneself. There is a certain amount of love that has to go into that struggle. There is a certain amount of need and desire, because if there is no one there to vanquish, then what are we-who-strive even to do?

I wish I could see your triumph.
[Note]

See El-Mohtar and Gladstone p. 128
Perhaps better worded “I hope that I see your triumph,” for I may yet! –Motes

You! This other version of me, this one who takes her space gladly, proudly. I wish I could see you triumph. I wish I could look up at you, broken and shattered, bleeding in the dust of some ultimately unimportant ground, and know — truly, utterly know — that I have been defeated, that I have been crushed and destroyed.

I wish I could see your triumph. Is that self-sacrificing of me? Of that part that loathes, that fears she is taking up too much space? I really do not know. It is not my place to know these things.

I wish I could see your triumph. Maybe it is my goal to succeed, to prevail, to make it through, to win, to come out the other side and into that high-functioning, compact life. It is my goal to come away with my own triumph, but always, always there is that niggling little doubt, that secret desire to lose, to be beaten in a fair fight and have it proven to my face that at least someone could bring me low and say, “Hey, at least she tried, right?”

I wish I could see your triumph. I wish I could see elation in your eyes. I wish I could see you laugh. I wish I could see just how it looks for you to set aside that way you devote every erg of energy to struggle and give me one of those full on, deep-throated laughs from your core that I know we all hide somewhere in our bodies.

I wish I could see your triumph, and I wish that, should you see mine, you understand just how much love goes into our struggle, just how much need and desire I hold for you.

Do you laugh, sea foam? Do you smile, ice, and observe your triumph with an angel's remove?
[Note]

See El-Mohtar and Gladstone p. 128
I am sure she does, this more earnest me. I hope that I see even but one second of that victorious smile, hear but a moment of that triumphant laugh before she is all that is left. –True Name

As always, Rilke dogs me, a lingering taste hidden around some corner of my mouth. Every now and then, I think, every angel is terrifying, and then I will go about my day, repeating that like a mantra: every angel is terrifying every angel is terrifying every angel is terrifying every angel…

He saw someone do that, I think I remember the story went. He was walking, perhaps out in a sulk, and saw someone face the sea, throw their arms wide, cry out to sea foam or ice or some unseen rank of angels, and… well, I do not remember if he heard them, necessarily, but that is how it went, right (Freedman p. 323)? Who, though I cry, would hear me among the ranks of angels, and then hundreds of lines later, ten elegies.

So whenever I get that awkward-shaped piece of grit between my molars — every angel is terrifying every angel is — I think of that scene. I think of the way we elevate the unknown to some higher place than ourselves. I think of the patterns we hunt for in the sea foam, in the waves that can take us under or bash us senseless against some barnacled rock. I think about the crush of worlds implied in the calving of an iceberg and how easily that could destroy. I think about that rank of angels who, holding me to their breast, could so easily annihilate.

Do they laugh, the sea foam, the ice, the angels?

I write in fire across the sky, a plummet to match your rise.
[Note]

See El-Mohtar and Gladstone p. 129
Perhaps writing this is a part of that plummet; a crashing through the atmosphere, a shrill scream of air passing over ragged edges. Perhaps I am seeing your triumph. –Hold My Name

So then, my angel, she who would live, she who gladly accepts her multiple selves, who would do that all without worrying about the space she takes up, I wish I could see your triumph.

I dream of it, that moment. I dream of falling to my knees, or being so badly broken that all I can do is lay there, unmoored, and look up to the way you rise above me.

I strive against angels as I strove against men, against the world, against the cruel vagaries of my former self and all his countless failings. Some have left me reeling, some have left me on my knees, head bowed until it almost — almost! — touches the ground, and I have had to spend a day, a week, a year catching my breath.

But never have I striven against angels. Never have I not striven against you, and there is sweetness in defeat. Defeat of the me who is afraid to accept an identity. Defeat of the me who is afraid to take up space. Defeat of that me who still craves the path of Jonah.

There is sweetness in defeat.

I wish I could see your triumph.

Works cited