by Glenn » Tue Mar 16, 2021 6:32 am
Gloria,
I think you missed the bit about pedagogy. There's a balance to this. You reach out to me with something practical. I mention something offhandedly. You stubbornly deny it. I overly explain. We go back and forth, neither ultimately satisfied, but maybe we learn a thing or two in the process. I did. That was all to be preamble to the more assured work of educating the youth. I don't see any of that in your last letter, though. It seems to have all gotten shouldered out by the affairs of the day.
I will take that as a sign of the seriousness of the matter, then, for I see it as serious as well.
You will not believe me in this, and even if you do, you're welcome to take offense for, quite frankly, a number of perfectly legitimate reasons, but my primary difficulty in conversing for you is that I take things for granted. I assume natural common ground where none exists. I assume an easy understanding where it is all so very difficult. Conversations I have had with others, including Genevieve and Sylvius, I simply never had with you. I tend to assume I have had those conversations because I cannot easily fathom how they might not have happened.
It creates a rather impassable divide, or at least one with a high cost to overcome.
I am tempted to write another ten paragraphs about it when one or two upon my general ethos would get us past this whole matter. It's just, well, rather awkward, really. I suppose that's rarely stopped me before.
Do you believe in fate? Do you believe in gods? Certainly you believe in magic. I've reason to believe in all of these things, and yes, I do attempt to categorize them, to use observational categorization to classify and seek out patterns. The alternative is a certain faith-based acceptance, which might be better seen as pure surrender. We have so little chance as humans flailing about against these forces we have no ability to influence, forces ranging from the weather and death itself to more sentient beings, either wild and only acting to their nature or conniving and with true ill-intent. The only tool we have to allow ourselves any agency, any chance at survival, let alone growth and progression, is in recording all we can and seeking out the patterns between all things. When I arrived, there was a second cycle (leaving Catch's aside), where a disaster would happen, nothing would be learned, rebuilding would take pace, and it would strike again. Again and again.
Yes, it's more than possible we get it wrong, that we misunderstand, but it's better than not making the attempt at all. You needn't tell me how wrong we might get it. I spent years upon years with mangled working theories about Catch's mother only to realize (I was told, but then, of course, realized based on that telling) that the reason that it made no sense because there were two of them. I know you speak in a more detached, almost spiritual way, one that stresses the sheer magnitude of what we encounter in this world we (being human) only made along the most base lines, but the effort is worthwhile. There are rules to all of this, consistencies, parallels and patterns. When they break the pattern, it happens for a reason and there is something to be learned by that as well.
I don't fit him into books. I write and rewrite the books to fit him.
What point the Inquisitory if not for this?
Yes, I think him a threat, the threat, but I do not think him a threat to be extinguished or put out. I've studied what has happened in the past, again and again, with him, the Gilded Cycle, the ruin. He's documented some of what I could not find. Scholars and scoundrels, kind souls and deviants, they've all tried to bind and bleed and grow fat and provide peace, and each and every effort ends in ruin. His eyes are open now as they were not before and the sand ticks down. I would find us a different path, one that is full of respect.
She is a stimulus, a catalyst. But then, Gloria, so are you. I was but am less so, except for that I must be careful in my gathering and yes, my meddling, but I am. I haven't returned back there. I haven't done a single thing. While it will likely be the slow growth and rot of hundreds of years, with you and I meaningful but fleeting blips, it could all end tomorrow as the chemicals mix. I would avoid both eventualities in the healthiest way possible. At the least, if we are to fail again, like all those before us, let us fail in some new, worthwhile, meaningful, "Good", way, but let us hopefully succeed in that way instead.
Did you really ask "what point children?" I know you meant something more specific, but it's more or less what you said.
For humans, children are our only way to outpace those powers I mentioned before. They're our only advantage over her people, our only hope against Catch and the Baie, all the rogues and the monsters and the gods, the ones that would foster us and the ones that would destroy us and the ones that would just be left in peace but that feed upon us nonetheless. We breed quickly and thoughtlessly. Of course passing this information down to the next generation is important to me, yes, because I wish better life for then, but also because they and their children and their children's children, the the necessary speed of our thought and our wits and our lives, are our only advantage.
See, I brought it back to the beginning, with your help, though I imagine I'll only have made you more frustrated in the process.
Glenn