Death Chants

There's dying, and then there's dying. Angie, the young mare of lady Death, is taken all the way to Centauri, in a car, to see not the why, but the what. And that's the end of that. With my friend The Moon, snuggled together in the hammock last week, on a balcony now wintery, we spoke not of that but of it. And I recall to myself, in silence, that I may have lost, somewhere along my way to being fixed in this place, that old book of intergalactic mantras which had been a gift from one who had once gone to Centauri; one who's been gone to Centauri for four years now.

Marching in place. It is vague, at the minute. I know only it has to do with endings present in beginnings present in endings; with increases and decreases; life tightening and life loosening; and being together-alone and vice-versa. The way to make up for the end of Gibson's Angie in my day-to-day is to return to the continuity of the start of my Estra. Estra, the one who became lady-mountain-lion. Conveniently, the academia requests me to write about it, so I'll put up a play, her play mine — and act it.

The Moon came to visit for the celebration of The Day of The Dead, of the Witches' New Years, or of Angie's Departure to Centauri, or Halloween. Little deaths were died, big love was punctuated in various houses and pub chairs. The sun thus shun, then now the winter has come.

When I still lived in the Summer, I used to cherish death's chants with the arrival of the big heat. Listening to John Fahey. And for four years now it has been the opposite; I've had to learn to bear the double coldness, Winter paired with the ends. Though sometimes I still remember to summon the warmth of Fahey's fingerpicking.

And the way to make up for the end of aunt-grandmother Regina far away in Brazil, besides chanting her mantras from another continent, had been to commence the literary Ega and leave Portugal behind. Then, the way to make up for the end of my 'Kenyan Novella', and of Kenya itself, had been to start writing in English, now from England. But when that ceased to make sense, the way to make up for it was to build an airship. And finally last winter I failed (in Germany), I died. But after that I returned and, now anchored, Death continues to take on her infinite un-shapes.

Recalling: My dear Jeanne Violette in Germany. When I showed her one of the ending pages of Bolaño's 'Savage Detectives', Juan García Madero's diary dating February 13th (my birthday) and the entry being a drawing-charade consisting of a square with a very steep triangle based on one of its inner sides, plus the question What's outside the window? And the answer A star — That's when Jeanne first called me Estravalle, and I took her up on that.

Recalling: Then recently having recalled Estraven, citizen from Gethen, the Winter planet from Ursula's 'The Left Hand of Darkeness'. And Genly Ai, visitor from Terra, who had to make up for his loss, too...

Estrangely, everything points to the potential death of the scientist who carries out Estra's surgery. But death isn't what that is — what it is is transformation. We make peace.

You will excuse me; I will excuse myself this messy one. It's kinda hard to explain […] you'll sorta get the idea [...] it's much more amusing, this way […] the truth? [...] no shit.

To conclude the reading of a trilogy such as the Sprawl Trilogy, or of a cycle such as the Hainish Cycle, is equivalent to conclude the writing of a trilogy-cycle which you haven't yet quite started but yes kinda sorta yes; no shit it absolutely already is.