[ open ] kaveh's permanent catch-all

[fussiest]

WHO: kaveh (fussiest) & y'all!
WHAT: this is a perpetual catch-all for kaveh because i'm too lazy to make a new one every month. this is for closed starters, tag-ins, visits to kaveh's workshop and the like! be wild! be bold! be free!
WHERE: all around the city, and especially at kaveh's workshop, the pairidaeza architectural design studio in district 1
WHEN: everywhere! everywhen! all at once!
WARNINGS: bickering, probably - everything else will be warned for on a thread-by-thread basis

Comments

[badfeyth]

I just don't think you would, is the thing. I don't doubt the fury, I mean. And I don't doubt that you would try to prove that person wrong. But I don't think the example you'd choose would be me. I don't think I'd be your first choice, or your second, or anything above a last resort, really. Maybe not even then.

[It's good stew. Green is the right word for it, for all that it's imprecise to use a color to describe a sensation of flavor. Sometimes you can get away with that, when it's particularly fitting. Poetic license and all, and sometimes the emphasis is all the more powerful for it, from doing a thing that's different and unexpected.

There's probably a lesson baked into that. She decides to focus on eating her stew and not think too hard about it. When she continues, it's not so much adversarial as philosophical, like she's teasing apart a concept the way she'd forked loose the lamb.]

I don't think I dispute that I have a story that can be told, or that it's worth telling. I posited that mine is different from others, and the two aren't mutually exclusive. Some people reflect on the road not taken; I think for me it's more "the road never available". Wanting things doesn't always mean those things were ever attainable to begin with. It does mean you settle for what is available to you, sometimes.

[She pauses. Takes another bite.]

This is very good, if I forgot to say so before. And I yield the floor for your rebuttal.

[fussiest]

[ i just don't think you would, ghost says, with the confidence and finality of a shut book. it's a book, kaveh thinks, that he can imagine in his mind. it's a book with a plain dust jacket, one with gray upon white upon whorls of black, patterns of which that draw in the mind and asks a question wrapped in an enigma. beneath the dust jacket, a red cover as deep and velvet as aged wine, embossed gently in a language that has yet to be invented. carefully manicured pages, plain cardstock made of something resilient and hardy, that, when torn, only ever allowed itself to be hurt much in the way of a lizard cutting off its tail. and then, by the end of things, a single, ribbon stained with blood, a single loop of it to bind the book shut.

the haravatat would adore this book, this book that refused to be written, this book that refused to be read. there would be entire seminars dedicated to its study and unraveling, its composition and its preservation. but kaveh is kshahrewar. ]

I'm glad you think it's good. It was my father's recipe. I'd have it written down for you, but I don't think you do much in the way of cooking - so I suppose I'll have to bring you some more again myself. [ says kaveh, as he spoons another mouthful of stew. and then, in that exact, selfsame tone: ] And I think I can see your perspective. The importance is the perspective, the perspective that you see it not as a possibility or a probability, but an impossibility that I would do what I say. I think I'm at a disadvantage in that I don't know where that perspective stems from. That's the root of it, I think. I can assert day and night that I am a man of my word, and that your story is something I would use to convince another of their bull-headed ways, but without understanding the root, the argument won't resonate.

[ kaveh considers this. ] What if I show you that you've happened to me, Ghost?

[badfeyth]

No one ever taught me. ...To cook.

[She doesn't say it like an excuse. She doesn't say it like, poor Ghost, inept because no one helped. She says it because the timing and placement and nature of the remark makes it a foil to Kaveh's: that he had a father who taught him to cook, either directly or by the recipes he left behind, and she had someone who taught her what he thought was important, too.

She's quiet a minute, though, because in a way he's just said the magic words: I think I can see your perspective. It means that for a minute, they're not zealously advocating for their respective positions anymore, but shifting toward compromising in its place. Building a bridge with two foundation posts laid. She'd be the one remiss if she didn't try to bridge the gap from her end, too.]

You used Netzach because he's a bridge. Significant to both of us, so as an example he carries weight. And when you want to win an argument, you offer the best evidence you have, the most compelling weight.

[She shrugs a little.]

I can't think of a single person who knows both of us, for whom you wouldn't already have a better argument weighted in another mutual acquaintance who isn't me. You wouldn't use me because it implies that the third party you're arguing with cares about me, too.

[...Oh.





Oh.]

[fussiest]

[ kaveh thinks, the thread loops back. once again, the struck sound of it is a familiar, reverberating note, high-fluted and soft and pure. there is an entire discipline dedicated to the mathematics of music. to this day, both the vahumana and the haravatat claim it, though it's the spantamad and the kshahrewar that make the most of use of it. but kaveh has always thought that the discipline was distinctly amurta. when a sound resonates with the purity of a struck bell at daybreak, it can only be described as a cry.

ghost had said this: what i want is to not be alone, so much. it comes back as a refrain. a leitmotif of a thing guiding this conversation back to its roots. ghost looks to her left, and looks to her right, and sees the dearth of people there to be anathema. kaveh suddenly wonders what alhaitham would make of her. you could be alone in different ways. you could be happy, being alone. kaveh is not that sort of person.

but something nags at kaveh. that doesn't make sense. distracted, he tips his head backl. ]

From another perspective, [ he says, speaking his thoughts aloud, ] isn't it that the fact I am making you into the argument implies that the person I am making the argument to someone who cares about you? You said so yourself - I wouldn't use you because it implies that the third party I'm arguing with cares about you. Then, the act of me using you as an example would assert that the third party I'm arguing with does.

[ kaveh's spoon scrapes up the rest of his stew. there is just enough rice to soak in the grains. ] You've happened to me, and you have happened to Netzach. I rather like the shape of this bridge. And I should rather like it if someone used you as an example against me. It would humble me to listen.

[badfeyth]

That's a logical fallacy. I know which one it is, I just don't feel like coming up with it right now.

[Thus comes the painfully sweet whalesong of someone determined to die on a figurative hill for literally no reason other than that they want everybody to know they have no intention of leaving it except under duress. Or something. That could be a fascinating metaphor after a few edits and revisions. Maybe some tightening up in the end bits.

It's just uncomfortable, is the thing. Misery is more bearable when you can at least have the consolation of being right. Kaveh wants to take away the part about being right and ask her to roll the dice on escaping the misery. She wants to cling to it like a safety blanket. This stopped being a reasoned and methodical and logical argument a long time ago, and she hates that, too. Hates the way emotions make her feel like she's floundering. Hates the way it feels like he's pried off the guardrails to repurpose them for his bridge, and wants her to drive across without them regardless.]

I don't know — this, what I'm doing right now. What I'm living. This isn't my story. My story died ten years ago.

[She closes her eyes. Shakes her head a little.]

I'm not part of yours, or Netzach's, or anybody's. They didn't name me Ghost because of that but that's what I ended up being. Halfway in-between. Haunting a narrative where I don't actually belong.

[fussiest]

But Ghost.

[ kaveh looks. it doesn't make any sense, kaveh thinks. not this, not in the way ghost needs it. he is missing something, some fundamental piece of the puzzle. ten years ago, ghost says. kaveh nearly asks - but what happened to you ten years ago? what happened to do? who did this to you, ghost, who made it so that you see so little in yourself? what happened to you that made you fear?

no, not just fear. kaveh remembers. ghost didn't want to be alone. ghost fears, and ghost yearns. and kaveh knows - that contradiction, he knows it well. that is the contradiction of the loneliest whale. ]

It isn't up to you, to choose if you are in the narrative or not. [ kaveh says, ] In fact, I'd argue that it's the narrative's choice. Barring that, it's also the right of those whose narrative it is to have you in their narratives. You have already become a part of my narrative. You didn't have a choice in this, and I didn't have much of a choice either. That doesn't mean I dislike it.

[ how will he put this so that it can be understood? no, kaveh thinks. how can he put this so that he can what he needs to say, and have faith that someday it will make sense? ]

Did you know, Ghost? I'm going to walk away from today's conversation changed.