inswept

quotes from event factory by renee gladman

"every time he changed my plate, he spoke softly, 'i am miho. i will be your server.' but i did not think i had come to ravicka to be served. i wanted to protest, but thought that would require knowing why i had come, which i had not yet discovered."

"leaving that house and retracing my steps back to the hotel proved difficult. these people appeared dismayed to see me go, perhaps even insulted, which surprised me, considering what had just taken place between us. nevertheless, i lost time recalling the 'turns' i needed to perform my apology. i was in a hurry - i did not want to travel in the dark, when the city was still so foreign to me. but rushing made me clumsy. we were all frustrated. i went through pareis several times, but always tripped up on the same move and had to start over again. you cannot skip ahead, or you'll be saying something entirely different. i wanted to say, 'when you are a visitor to a place, especially one such as ravicka, it is difficult to remain stationary. the landmarks call out.' but i could not get my body to say 'landmark' versus the 'shipyard' it kept performing."

"after a while, so much time of non-interaction had passed between us that she was a stranger again. i leaned away from her towards the aisle. felt awkward. i looked out the window across from me. i could not say that the city was going by. i believed that it had not yet become a city."

"i had never been to old ravicka: i was told its architecture gave one a medieval feeling. i did not have nostalgia for that particular moment in human history; it was the idea of being inswept in time (as held by place) that possessed me. i wanted to experience the muscularity of the present diminishing in me as it was replaced by a past i never could have known myself."

"crossing into the old city took the better part of the day when you were as hungry as we were, which was not a nutritional hunger but rather something deeply emotional. the iron of the bridge becoming stone, becoming ancient and rough as we moved along it, without having altered our course, but the world around us changing. 'eat before you leave,' was more like 'forget where you have been,' because it was impossible to hold this crossing in your mind. the contemporary city did not align with this old one, which, in its preserved state, made a mess of our eyes."

"'who are you?' she responded. 'do you need to come up?'
do i need, i thought.
'yes. i think that's right,' i said."

"despite (or due to) our attachment to the esaleyons, we were not allowed to remain with them. early one morning, they walked us out of the depths into old ravicka. we were expelled because of the intensity of my dreams. my body wore the signs. each forearm was deeply imprinted by the fingers of the opposite hand, though this was at so odd an angle i had to wonder if it really was i who had made these impressions. but my fingertips were hot when i pointed this out to them, which weakened my position. they said they woke me afraid that i was being too insistent with this text, these prints on my arms, and they needed to know what i wanted. was i a spy? did i have a message? i told them at best i was a linguist and that the dream was about architecture. but they stared at me, still waiting. i dug deep within myself for words that might satisfy them. 'do i have something?' i asked dar in her language. she said, 'well, tell them why you came here.' which was perhaps more what she wanted to know. i thought about the gaps and breaths and my failure to record them. i said, 'at some point i knew we'd have to leave here.' and they breathed and beat back, 'the violence of your premise.' leaving no room for response."

"on the morning of simon's return, zaoter was helping me behind the counter. an elderly couple, attracted by the columns out front, had wandered in to inquire about the hotel's vacancies. they spoke the thick accent one finds in the ravickian hillsides. zaoter could not understand a thing they said, but persisted in pretending that he did. i tried to intervene, understanding their needs, and kept saying to him, 'halabiti astanga lo,' which means, 'allow me.' i even accompanied this offer with a hand gesture, soft against his shoulder. he responded, in my native tongue, from the corner of his mouth, the approximate of 'let me live.' i saw it then: zaoter was in over his head. the picture took its final form: without simon, there was no center. there was no hotel. even though i stood there and performed simon brilliantly, without him, it was a different place. it was a dormitory, a train station, just as he had said. realizing this, i knew the rest instantly. i left zaoter and the exasperated couple to find their own way, and ran up to my room. after securing the lock, pulling the shade, and turning on the desk lamp, i removed a tablet and pen from my travel bag. i lay a sheet of paper across the desk and wrote the following words in blue ink, in a large script:

DEAREST SIMON,
WE NEED YOU. ALL SYSTEMS HAVE COLLAPSED. PEOPLE AND MONEY ARE ONE. THE CORRIDORS LEAD TO UNMARKED DOORS THAT WILL NOT OPEN. I HAVE ADMITTED THIRTEEN NEW GUESTS AND SAID GOODBYE TO SIX. BUT WITH NO CORE, WE ARE ACTING WITHOUT MUSIC. YOU ARE THE ONLY ONE WHO TRULY LIVES HERE. PLEASE RETURN."