She is struck down to nothing in that moment.<\/p>\n
Her voice is taken from her \u2014 the Keepers\u2019 House is silent.<\/p>\n
The air is clear and still as glass.<\/p>\n
It is gone. It is lost. It is all gone. It occurs to her that this must be what being an object feels like \u2014 what being a machine feels like. She goes to speak and the words do not reach her lips. She goes to act, and she does not act.<\/p>\n
The hat has tuned her to a single thing, but she cannot find it \u2014 it is a thing that is nowhere present in her, nor even in the world.<\/p>\n
She reaches for it, but she cannot find it; it tunes her every action down into the void.<\/p>\n
She cannot breathe \u2014 no. She is breathing. Her lungs are moving on their own, like a good machine\u2019s. She cannot think \u2014 but she is thinking. Her thoughts are moving on their own, like an orrery\u2019s spheres.<\/p>\n
She watches herself in a world that hath none of her within.<\/p>\n
She can see its fault-lines, can see that Gotterdammerung is coming. She can see that the world is tearing itself apart around her. That it is roaring with a fitful noise.<\/p>\n
She is cracking. She is breaking. It is lonelier here, on the far side of the glass of things, then anything she has ever known.<\/p>\n
She tries to find something. She can find nothing. She is struck by a sudden pity, a sudden sympathy, for the lightning of the storm when she had held it still.<\/p>\n
What have you done to me? <\/i>she tries to ask Tom, but if he can read minds, he does not show it; the boy is babbling like a fool.<\/p>\n
It could have ended there. She could have died there, caught in that moment, drowned in a sudden gold; but she doesn\u2019t, instead.<\/p>\n
She sees something. She remembers something. It\u2019s just a flash from somewhere. It\u2019s a glint of light.<\/p>\n
And if she could tell you \u2014<\/p>\n
If she\u2019d had the tongue to let them out, all those feelings that flowed through her when she finally caught hold of the tail end of a purpose, she might have cried out:<\/p>\n
\u201cSuddenly my life is filled with beauty!\u201d<\/p>\n
She might have leapt on Tom. She might have shaken his shoulders. She might have terrified the boy, and not incidentally broken his position on the pointlessness of the division of the sexes in the world. She might have told him, with a fervent energy, \u201cIt is so hard to live outside the world, Tom Friedman. We long for being, but we are not there. We go to act, but we do not move. Scissors fall. We have desires. We are perfected but we don\u2019t know how to live in the presence of our perfection. But oh!\u201d<\/p>\n
She\u2019d have turned. She\u2019d have pointed. She wouldn\u2019t have been pointing at a thing. She\u2019d have been pointing at an idea. However, just possibly, as a member of the House of Dreams, he might have seen it anyway.<\/p>\n
\u201cLook at it, Tom,\u201d she\u2019d say. \u201cLook at what we can be; we are golden. <\/i>Oh, look, there is something, beneath the surfaces of things, there is something<\/i>; oh see it live!<\/i>\u201d<\/p>\n
She doesn\u2019t do that. She doesn\u2019t say that. Not any of it.<\/p>\n
The Keepers\u2019 House is silent.<\/p>\n
But \u2014<\/p>\n
At least \u2014<\/p>\n
As long as there are magical jaguars, catapulted skyward by Mayan sages, in a decaying orbit around the Earth, there is a beauty still remaining that will let the Keepers move.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
She is struck down to nothing in that moment. Her voice is taken from her \u2014 the Keepers\u2019 House is silent. The air is clear and still as glass. It is gone. It is lost. It is all gone. It occurs to her that this must be what being an object feels like \u2014 what […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5099,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"series":[47],"class_list":["post-5261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-storm-that-saw-itself-chapter-3","series-the-storm-that-saw-itself"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/Hat_2_noBG.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5261"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5261\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6145,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5261\/revisions\/6145"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5099"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5261"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fseries&post=5261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}