Tell my story? Using words?
How strange. Wouldn’t you rather I sang? Or gestured?
I do know how to write, but I’ve rarely bothered with more than a few words at a time. I don’t believe I’ve ever written a complete paragraph before.
I suppose I can access the memories of how to write in Patrick’s branch.
Being able to write is very different from having something to say.
Here’s what I have to say about it: it hurt. A lot.
Maybe I should do what Tara did in her first letter. Where is it? Thesaurus.
Ache, affliction, agony, burn, catch, colic, complaint, convulsion, cramp, crick, discomfort, distress, excruciation, fever, gripe, harm, hurt, illness, injury, irritation, laceration, malady, misery, pain, pang, paroxysm, pinch, prick, sickness, smarting, soreness, spasm, sting, stitch, strain, tenderness, throb, throe, tingle, torment, torture, travail, trouble, twinge, wound.
Did that help? No.
Evan says that I have to use metaphor.
Chase says fuck metaphor.
Metaphor is a game we play to hide the inadequacy of language. We say Tara is the second sun because language can’t describe her. But when we’re with Tara, we don’t need to describe her. We know. Gnosis.
Language just shows us how far away we are from God.
Fucking brilliant, Cillian says. You just completely deconstructed Derrida. You should be a literature professor at some high-powered university.
What’s Derrida?
An ancient philosopher who used the inadequacy of language to prove the absence of God, says Evan.
He must have had no common sense at all. Like any university who would hire a man who refuses to speak as a lecturer.
You don’t know universities, says Cillian. You’re a shoe-in.
Metaphor. I hurt like a…like a…I just hurt. Tara could see how much I hurt. It was all over my face. Maybe paroxysm is a good choice. It’s heavy. A word you could carry with you, like a cross.
I was hung from a cross once. This was worse. It wasn’t as bad as being uprooted, though. I don’t think anything could hurt that much.
That was like having your intestines pulled out through your nostrils, says Lorcan.
Shut up, you sick fuck, says Cillian.
It’s metaphor, says Lorcan. I liked it. Now this…this was only like having your leaves shredded and then drenched in a well-seasoned vinaigrette. There’s nothing like the mixture of salt and acid…maybe a little cayenne…
If somebody doesn’t shut him up, I’ll do it myself, says Cillian.
He’s only trying to provoke us, says Tarlach.
But salad, says Daniel. That’s fucking horrible.
Tasteless and uncalled for, says Evan. Jamey, maybe it would be best if you told the reader why you were suffering.
I’m the branch that grew when the mountain fell on us. When we were uprooted. When Tommy’s branch broke. I’m the branch that had to do the healing. So I and I made me so that I couldn’t scream.
What? says Evan. That’s appalling, that’s…
Are you kidding? says Lorcan. That’s totally hot. If Tara were here, I’d have an orgasm.
That does it, says Cillian, vaulting over the sofa.
While you’re at it, says Callum, could you punch me, too?
That raises a curious point, says Tarlach. I and I emanated Callum much later than Jamey. Why not have made Jamey a masochist as well? It would have been far easier for him to bear the suffering if he enjoyed it.
Callum would’ve reveled in the injury, I reply. Because of that, Callum is incapable of healing us.
I don’t entirely agree, says Ross. Callum does heal us. But in a different way and under different circumstances. Let’s just say that Jamey was exactly what was needed at the time.
Fair enough. If anyone understands Callum, it is Ross. The point I was making is that I and I knew that our aborted attempt to grow our roots through a wormhole would be excruciating – even if Cuinn didn’t. That’s why I was emanated to deal with it.
I kinda got carried away with the physics, says Cuinn. I didn’t think about the practical aspects. That soil was harsh.
Full of unimagined toxins, and no nutrients to speak of. We did not evolve to grow under those conditions. I failed. I’m sorry.
It wasn’t your fault, says Lugh. Tara made you stop. When we dropped all our leaves, she had Sir Kaman look at the taproot, and it was starting to show the same kind of damage the Arya Archon had from connecting to the grid. Energy was being drawn from the nul-universe in an erratic fashion. She took one look at that, and absolutely forbade you to continue.
I could have stood it a little longer. The Arya can’t afford to risk root damage. They’re conifers. They don’t have the stored resources that deciduous trees have. I’m certain we could have recovered.
Nah, says Cuinn. We had to go back to the drawing board. But that’s how science works. We did a trial and discovered the flaws in the original design. We learned what was needed to succeed: a way to shield the roots from soil toxins and radiation, and also a nutrient delivery system. It was a pretty elaborate problem because anything that could deliver nutrients would also allow a breech in the shielding. I played around with it for quite a while. I even came up with some prototypes of microtubing to run through the rootlets. I think that would’ve been pretty uncomfortable, though.
Did you ever see vids of old human medical technology? says Lorcan. IV tubes, breathing tubes, catheters…
Eeew, says Evan. That’s disgusting.
Lorcan doesn’t bother me. He’s all talk, no action. He’s at his most powerful prodding others to violence, but because words mean nothing to me, he has no power over me. I only know two things: joy and suffering. It’s enough. More than enough.
That’s why I love you best, says Lorcan, next to Tara, that is. Oh Jamey, I wish I could kill you. I wish I could be you. Come to think of it, that’s probably pretty much the same thing.
It’s touching.
I was not made such that I can turn my back on love, even his.
But that’s another story. For now, my eyes are fixed at the white space at the bottom of this page. I’m fond of white. I always wear white, or maybe a slight eggshell or cream, the lovely blank potential of white tinged with the firmness of earth. That white space says everything I could not, and so much better. I’ll leave it for you.