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rathercommon

crystal | letter | cease and desist notices slipped under her door | action

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From:

rathercommon

You never were, though. You were never a thing, Gwen.

From:

elegiaque

( bleakly wry, the way the best and worst of her humor always is, )

I think that was sometimes the problem.

From:

rathercommon

How would that be a problem?

[ Ferocious: ]

They'd like it very much if we were things. They twist us and break us until we've no more ability to resist than objects do, because then we're easy and we're pleasing to them. Useful little baubles. But I'm a person, and always will be, no matter how they batter at me. The same is true for you.

From:

elegiaque

( the sound of a drawer opening, of paper, and: )

I think that I must be beautiful now - like this - a portrait of the artist in repose. Such use of colour - they would say - bloomed upon my cheekbone, your signet's seal in impression. I am waxen and pressed to paper, a secret folded in itself, and am I not lovely, so kept? Is there not promise in the unfolding?

Unlovely in mundane fact, I must be ever as I am now - a cut glance - a murmur - the touch of fingertips. Dans le masque I am what pleases you;

how ruinous, to have a heart after all.

( oh, so she does know how to express her feelings without swearing. )

From:

rathercommon

Erm -

[ Kitty hesitates. Poetry isn't her thing. ]

Were you reading something, there?

From:

elegiaque

de Fonce didn't believe my nom de guerre is mine, so I was obliged to write something hastily to satisfy him that I wasn't lying. It seemed—I don't know. Relevant.

I'm not making myself small for anyone any more.

From:

rathercommon

Erm - right.

[ Kitty's a clever girl, but at the end of the day, there are some realms in which she's dreadfully ignorant. Many realms, actually. She, after all, only had about six years of education, and those years of education taught her to repair mechanical belts and grease gears and (when she proved herself uncommonly intelligent) how to read ledgers and touch-type. Poetry, the analysis thereof, and the meaning of nom de guerre are all completely opaque to her. ]

Well - for what it's worth, I don't know if you can say that with such certainty. That you're not making yourself small. Not that I think you are, just - the world is always trying to make you make yourself small. To resist that force - that's something you've always got to work at. It's a skill I've not come remotely close to mastering, myself.

From:

elegiaque

( if anyone were to ask gwenaëlle what she is, instead of just listening to her endlessly list the things she isn't and/or refuses to be—

it's a poet. still, always. )

You can't say anything with certainty, but you still should.

( words matter. the story matters. no accident that the poet is so preoccupied with narrative as force. )

Deciding it's something worth making true. Everything in life is just stories we tell ourselves—if someone tells you that you're small for long enough, you believe it. That's one way the world makes you that way. You get given a story. It's a form of resistance to tell your own.

Look at Flint. He understands that.

From:

rathercommon

[ Kitty frowns at that last part. ]

What do you mean?

From:

elegiaque

He's very deliberate. He's aware of his audience; I don't mean that he's false, in what he shows himself to be, but it's a choice made with forethought. He understands telling a story with every part. What that can mean.

From:

rathercommon

I mean - I think he's careful about his image, sure. How's that resistance, though?

From:

elegiaque

It's not big, or impressive, but it's—

We tell stories to teach people how to think. That's one reason why you can't just say something and have it be, that's why it's a conversation and not the end of one when you make a statement that you want to make true.

You think what he is is what he was told to be? I don't.

From:

rathercommon

Well, I don't know if that's resistance, though. I'd say that's just survival, isn't it?

From:

elegiaque

It depends on what you're thinking. Doesn't it? And what you do with that. And what it means.

We don't survive alone. And ideas survive, too. Sometimes longer than people. That's true of good ideas as much as bad ones, or we wouldn't survive at all.

From:

rathercommon

Mm. I don't know, though. I don't know if you can make many good changes while being - you know - false.

From:

elegiaque

Just because a change is a choice doesn't make it false. People aren't—

( a sigh, a grimace; ) People aren't that simple. You aren't that simple. Have you always been exactly what you are, right this very minute? You never had to decide you wanted better than what you had? You never had to change anything about your thinking, ever, in your entire life?

From:

rathercommon

[ A huff of air provides an answer to that question. ]

But where I'm from, they make everyone false, and corrupt everyone's natures. I wasn't any exception to that.

From:

elegiaque

You can't have it both ways.

From:

rathercommon

What do you mean?

From:

elegiaque

Why do you get to decide that someone else making a choice isn't true, but yours was? That someone else improving their life is wrong, but it's all right when you did it?

From:

rathercommon

No - I was false back then. This is who I am. Back then, keeping my head down and saying "please sir" and "sorry ma'am" and licking boots, that was false.

From:

elegiaque

And that means you get to decide whether someone else making a change is true or false because...?

I mean, if I can't change or do anything good, I don't know why you're still speaking to me.