(Re)cursive Writing.



Start 9908152017
Working Title: (Re)cursive Writing

Would that I lived in a time, knew only of a time when time itself was not
maleable, could not be manipulated by us. These jumps, these lives I live, I feel
false. The moment I feel like I truly belong, the Directive is enacted and I'm
pushed either into the past or the future, but always to a different existence.
The people I knew 'before' will live their lives as if I were never there, as if I
never loved them, as if I never felt their love. Would that I could stop for a
moment. Would that I could stop for a lifetime.

He put down the pen (a rather expensive antique cobalt blue Waterman
fountain bought in one the many bouts of depression-induced comfort
shopping) and looked, once again, at the words on the paper. Many would laugh
at his use of "quill on parchment" when he natively lived in an age where
technology was so pervasive that had he wanted, he could have recorded the
same in a moment with mere thoughts. There would be a few though who
would understand how it felt, how much more meaningful it could be. How
comforting it was to express these thoughts by gently guiding a gold nib over
delicate fibres. How, when writing this way, in this language, by hand, the
thoughts had to be slowed to a graceful pace to match the writer's hand,
giving each thought, each nuance, time to mature, to be mulled over, to be
relived, to gently unfold as if each thought were a flower, each nuance a petal
opening to a star's warmth.

It had been a long, intense, personal task recording the story, the events still
so fresh in the mind yet due to the Directive, destined to slip away as quickly,
as tragically as a beautiful dream in waking moments. He paused to think then
furtively scanned the text again, perhaps thankful for another quality of
writing this way. Unlike it's technological counterparts, when you wrote
something on paper, you could not edit, re-edit, second-guess, and re-hash, or
delete your words. The first cut would be the final unless you started again. It
was like the old days of photography where images were irrevocably recorded by
a series of complex chemical reactions catalysed by focussed light. There were
no means by which you could retouch or edit the images; they told an accurate
record whether you liked it or not.

These words also could not be erased and rewritten by the Directive.

He would remember, even if only in the third person. But he would remember.

He HAD to remember.

The text could well have been an image of himself, yet it was not. It was of
someone perhaps imagined, perhaps not, someone similar to him though, he
almost felt he understood the person's entire life in the few simple paragraphs
that he'd written, gained a glimpse into the person's world. Inside and yet
outside. There was a certain resonance.

Finally satisfied that he could add no more, the writer shifted his eyes from the
paper to gaze out the window at the starfield chasing the sunset - looking,
but not seeing; lost in his thoughts. They would send him back soon. To begin
again.

On the desk, the paper still lay, an indellible record. The words were written in
Terran, specifically in what was once known as English. The words, each
comprised of several individual letters rather than single word or phrase glyphs,
were sequenced in lines reading from left to right, row by row. Very similar
to early recordings of that world when IDF emissaries, and later the
protectors, first arrived, explored, and immersed themselves in (or as some
would venture to say 'fell in love with') the naiively parochial though beautifully
optimistic, and spirited culture that was The Terran Way.

It could then be read from this act of expression that the writer missed that
world. There was no shard of reprieve: the lyric "Get into the groove" haunted
his thoughts yet again. From it slammed into his mind without mercy thoughts
of this world, of how much he, and those he loved more than his own
existence, had given for this insignificant yet preciously unique world. This
world would neither notice nor remember the sacrifice made by the few for
the many. 'Even through the undulating lights I'm shocked how drawn the face
is that confronts me.'

The words on the paper were the beginning of the healing process or perhaps
the continuation of the searching, of the hurt. The words began: "Would that
I lived in a time, knew only of the time when time itself was not maleable,
could not be manipulated by us..."