# Lobsang's Children

I study so hard. My grandfather makes me. It is not fun. My life is studying. I am home-schooled. I don't have much freedom. Grandfather says it is important that I learn Chinese in both its modern and classical forms. I like to think I am smart, but I am not a genius. I have to work really hard to keep up with Grandfather's desires, while also doing well on the state-mandated exams. And I do pretty well. 

I write in English now because it's mine. It's what I learned for the state exams and not for him. Grandfather is dismissive of English even though he's really good at it, better than me, but he buys me novels and things so I do well. It would upset his pride if I did poorly. And though I love Chinese and I respect my Grandfather, Chinese isn't mine. It is his. Those parts of my mind that love it are his, I guess I feel. And I respect him. And I, I can't even write it. I don't think kind things about him sometimes. I feel a sort of rage.

He doesn't let me use the internet. We only have books and a piano. I don't even get to go outside much. I love the piano. I taught myself how to play with the books that are in the bench. It's maybe my favorite thing. I wish I had friends. I guess you're my friend, my new little journal.

In books, I read about other children and they don't seem like me. They get to go outside more and play and talk and I don't really do those things. I read English novels and Chinese novels and classic Chinese poems and books on strategy and Confucian philosophy and Buddhist philosophy and all the philosophies he thinks are important. I feel sometimes like he wants me to be a past person. I feel sometimes he doesn't love me at all. Like I am an experiment and not his grandchild, but I don't see of what kind.

It doesn't make any sense. Maybe he wants to turn me into him. Maybe one day you will find him writing his thoughts in you, but it will be with my hand and my brain. And the parts of me that want to play the piano and with other children will be gone. It made me really sad, writing that.

I am sorry about the tears that fell on you. I am sorry to have marked you with my sadness. I like to think of you as a cheerful journal. And a pretty one. Pretty like the girl I used to play with years ago, who used to sneak into our yard. Her name was Susan. She had blonde hair and she would laugh and when she laughed I laughed and I don't even know how to write how it felt either. Even less than the rage. But it was really nice. It was maybe the best feeling I have ever felt. And I felt it every day before Grandfather got mad. Before he yelled at her. The things he said to her in his really, really good English. I can't even write what I felt then. I can't even write about a lot of the things inside me. It was maybe the first time I really knew the rage I mentioned. I am crying again. I am sorry. 

I have to go now. Try to dry off. Get back to your happy self. I will say you cried with me. That they are your tears, too. And our tears are maybe mixed together. I will dry myself off like you will. I will play the piano after studying today. I will be happy when we meet again. Happy like I imagine you are when I don't make you cry, my little journal, my only friend.

* * *

You know there is a box in the cellar. It's strange. And there is this machine next to it. I don't know what it is. I can't find it in my books and I can't ask him, because he doesn't know I followed him and watched him a couple times.  He puts water into it every week. A little timer goes off on his watch and he puts water into it, but it's not from the sink. It's special water he buys from the store. I know why it is different. I worked it out. It is distilled like alcohol. 

In *Robinson Crusoe* there is a scene with a still, and I remember looking up what a still is in an encyclopedia. In some of my books the kids use computers and that sounds way easier. But I love my encyclopedias. They're kinda like my friends too, but I don't talk to them. So maybe you're not my only friend like I said yesterday, but you're my best friend except for Susan.

Anyway, a still is a machine for boiling things and leaving other things behind. And there must be something in tap water he doesn't want in his machine, so he buys this distilled water and he pours it into this machine. And the machine has a little hose that goes into the box, and there is another hose going out and that just has air coming out of it. And this hose is very thin and clear. So I think the machine pushes air into the box, if that makes sense. I don't know why. I wish I knew what it was called. I bet it is in one of my encyclopedias. 

But next to the box are these old letters. They are just sitting there on the floor, but I can't take them because he will notice. He notices things. He always notices everything. They are letters to my father. I could see that but I had to leave because he came home. Grandfather goes to the store every Thursday and to the bank after that to cash his pension check. Even though in novels people do that kind of thing on computers, he uses the mail. Next time he goes, I will go down there and bring you and copy one.

* * *

> *My Son,*
> 
> *It is the greatest joy of a father to experience, through the eyes of his son, those things which brought him wonder in his youth. And nothing so captured my mind, nothing so enraptured my soul, as our grand family ambition. And I cherished the prospect of a discourse between us on The Asides, which I imagined you reading first to gain understanding, which I imagined we would debate at length before you would begin to learn those meditations denied to us writers, before you would undertake the culmination of so many lifetimes.*
> 
> *It was just before your fifth birthday that I partook, as writers do each year of their lives, in the graphomanic meditations and, afterwards, the meditation on culmination - which allowed me to see, definitively, the work would be completed in my lifetime but would take me at least twenty more years. And this, then, would make you a lacuna in the text, and your cleverest son the True Reader. And I fear this disappointment caused me to neglect your education. I fear a sort of depression in my secret heart made me too-easily leave such matters in your mother's hands, your mother who, for all her many virtues, is more Canadian than Chinese, and cares little for our obligation to our ancestors.*
> 
> *I feel I was a good father. I feel I loved you and you loved me, and we have many happy memories between us. But in this matter, I have betrayed you. I can only beg you to forgive me. I can only beg you to continue, in the manner available to you, the great work of our family. *
> 
> *You will find waiting for you here that great scroll to which I have referred in my past letters and, also, detailed instructions I have written on the manner of your son's education. Come and I will give them to you. It also includes a letter I have written to Jason, whom I love as much as I love you. In the event I die before his completion, please give it to him just before he begins studying the meditations of coalescence. *
> 
> *Do as your father instructs, I implore you. Honor this request.*

* * *

There, I copied it down into you. I was really careful to get it exact. It took a while. I don't really understand it all but I guess we know what is in the box. It is a scroll. And I guess scrolls need special wet air. And that is what the machine does, I bet. It makes the air wet. And wet with water that doesn't have whatever is in tap water scrolls don't like.

It made me feel good, knowing he loves me. I never heard him say that. I worry maybe the person he was when he wrote that isn't him anymore. But what does he mean by my completion? I feel incomplete sometimes. I feel less like a person than the people in my books. I don't know if that makes any sense. I think maybe people need more than just a grandfather and a piano.

In the books the characters are sort of made of more than just themselves. They are made up of themselves but also the way they fit in between other people. And I guess that part of me isn't very large. My surface area is low. I miss Susan. And I don't even remember her much anymore. I remember she made me laugh. I remember crying when he finally let me into the yard again. And he let me go there because they had moved away and she was gone. That is why he let me back out, I think. Even though he said it was a reward for memorizing all of Du Fu's poems.

And I worked really hard on that because, because I thought maybe I would be able to look at her through the cracks in the fence even if we would never talk again. And I think, I think he knew that's why I was working so hard. I think he knew the whole time. And then when I recited all the poems perfectly, and then I wrote them all down perfectly, too, even if I maybe didn't fully understand them. And I was happy again. It was a full happiness. It felt like one of my best days. It was like a happiness from the future hugging my heart.

And then when I looked into the yard, I saw people that were not her parents. Old, ugly people and a mean dog. And I knew she was gone and I would never see her again. And it was the worst day, it turned out. And my heart was strangled. And I became a bit numb on my insides. I am still a bit numb, I think. And it helps me study. But it makes me incomplete, like Grandfather said in the letter. I will find more letters. We will think about them together. 

I have to go, again, and study.

* * *

I found a very long letter in the pile. It is about the scroll. I have not read the whole thing but I read a little before I heard Grandfather open the garage.  It is also to my father. I think they all are.  There are only ever letters to my father, never his responses. I wonder if he maybe replied by email and Grandfather by letter. This seems like the sort of thing Grandfather would do.

Grandfather does have a computer he never uses. I wonder if it was just to hear from dad before he died, before he died and Grandfather got his letters back. It is very strange. Next time you feel my pen it will be copying it. And maybe you can think about it with me, my little friend. 

I have been thinking and I will name you Susan, if that is ok and not "my little friend." Susan. I think you need a name and I love you and I think I loved her. It is the only thing I have felt which feels like the thing in my books where they talk about a lightness in your insides. And I feel it for you and her and my piano sometimes. And I will call you Susan from now on. And not 'little journal'.

* * *

> *Your grandfather wrote, and his father before that, on a scroll I now keep in a large, humidified box in my cellar, a scroll I once wrote on, too - though you have never seen me do so. Your grandfather had a room for it, and I often envied it for this, as its room was much larger than my own. His father built a little temple for it on his humble property. This he constructed with the elegant, glueless joinery he first monetized in a workmanlike way and then in the manner of an artist. As the introduction of western methods changed the nature of his trade, he preferred to work in the traditional way and became (to achieve this) an artist of no small renown. And his sculptures peopled (and still people) the mansions of many of the great Taiwanese capitalists who transformed his impoverished isle into an industrial power. *
> 
> *I was told by him (and later read in the work itself) that there was once a prince who built a whole second palace just for this scroll. And this palace was the finest house it ever had, for the prince's father kept it in a grand temple, and his grandfather a gilded hall and so on and so on, its homes and their furnishings ever humbler until we reach its place of birth: a small monastery in southern Tibet, its first author one Lobsang. *
> 
> *Lobsang begins the strange work by describing a preparation for a glue he had devised, a combination of boiled yak hide and tree resin, which is especially suited for joining shog-shing - a strange brownish paper made from the bark of Daphne shrubs, which each generation goes to some lengths to acquire. And when not possible (it is related in various asides) other papers were used but always with a plea to the next generation to replace these sections by copying their work onto the traditional material. *
> 
> *And in each case, this was done. And so the work remains in the state Lobsang prescribes. And Lobsang was wise in choosing shog-shing, though there were few alternatives in his time, for it is renowned for its fibrous durability and even the oldest sections remain pliant and would still make able palimpsests - though even writing this sentence fills me with a terrible guilt.*
> 
> *I have not read Lobsang directly, for he wrote in Classical Tibetan, but many generations down one Wenxuan spent much of his life translating the work from the original Classical Tibetan to Classical Chinese, and thus the text has within it two copies of its first section. Lobsang, in his sagacity, anticipated such a thing might happen and prescribed a bemused toleration for these redundancies. *
> 
> *It is his translated glue recipe which is referred to by later generations when (as they sometimes do) they write of manners pertaining to the maintenance of the vessel of this great work. The form and procedure for asides was formalized in 1136 by the great general Yue Fei, who gifted the scroll his best horse, so it could join him on his many campaigns. This was an act of great recklessness often chastised by those who came after, but it speaks to Fei's influence on the asides that before his descendants criticize him they announce themselves in the fashion he originated.  *
> 
> *Fei marked his transitions from the textual to the metatextual with a poem of his own composition. Knowing how I have neglected your education in the language of my birth, let alone the ancient form in which the poem is written, I include below a translation of my own:*
> 
>   
> *In the temple, war's counterpoint*  
> *My arm marred by a healing wound.*  
> *Wrathful words - I chew and swallow*  
> *My face still as stone.*  
> *I am among silent spirits.*  
> *With my left hand, I touch them,*  
> *My right is half-spirit,*  
> *and holds a brush.*  
> *It writes with its human half.*
> 
> *And so post-Fei each aside begins with an untitled poem, every author having (as you can imagine) wildly varying talents. The poems vary greatly, too, in length. The longest is over ten thousand Chinese characters. But they all end (without exception) with those final five lines Fei used in the first example of the form.*
> 
> *This tradition, which Lobsang did not dictate, has developed its own sort of historical weight. And it is clear to every writer that to break with it would be a sin almost as large as running afoul of Lobsang's dictates, which none has yet violated.*
> 
> *And having been honored with the privilege of finishing the work, I now know none ever will.*

* * *

Hey, Susan. The letter is very long. I could not copy it all down. It is very strange. But I copied this important bit, and I will copy more. I don't have a lot of time. And I guess I want to read it with you. I want to copy it and read it with you and not just read the whole thing alone.

It's a bit like that time we played detective. I don't know if you remember it, but I remember it. It was silly. You liked those stupid girl books, remember? *Harriet the Spy*. And I told you they were silly and the mysteries were boring but then we played *Harriet the Spy* and I tried to set up a little mystery for you and I remember you solved it and I realized you were cleverer than Harriet, as clever as Huckleberry Finn maybe, and maybe that's why you made me laugh so easily. And I could never make you laugh as much. But I think I needed it more than you, the laughing. And I think you knew that, maybe. And this is part of the kindness in you I love. 

I am sorry. I got distracted again and started crying. I guess it must feel like rain to you. I think we should focus on the mystery. And this scroll. It seems kinda cool, hey? It's very old and is part of my family. It seems a bit like Grandfather. Powerful and scary. And probably wrinkly, too. 

The Fei poem seems very wrong. It does not seem like what he would write. I wish I could read the scroll and see it in Chinese. But I can sort of imagine what it must have been to be translated as it was. Especially if I imagine Grandfather translating it. And Fei wasn't like that at all in the poems I have read. He was very proud and strong and manly. He is like a boy-type hero. You would hate him. I love him and admire him but I always thought we were very different. But maybe he was like me with a secret self. And he had poems in him that were maybe not so stoic. It makes me admire him more, if true. It is maybe like he proves you can be brave even if you cry on your journal sometimes.  

I have to go now. I don't have to but I have my other friend, remember? The piano. I need to spend a little time with him. I will copy more of the letter soon.

* * *

> *After detailing his means of extension and the generations-long ambition of the then-infant work, Lobsang begins the first of what he calls, in my clumsy translation, The Preambles, in which he expounds upon those methods of introspection which, as far as I can tell in my many years of study, are wholly original to him and can be found nowhere else in recorded human thought. *
> 
> *The techniques amplify those parts of the mind that ruminate on (and, Lobsang argues, make transcendent) the internal strivings whose unification he sees as the highest level of cultivation. Lobsang's unity - or "liberation" - is not of the form of his contemporaries and is almost proto-Nietzschean. It would be more accurate to dispense with the temporal and describe Nietzsche as a proto-Lobsang.*
> 
> *Nietzsche (lacking the tools of self-understanding Lobsang learned in his monastic life) could only gesture at, if with unusual precision, what Lobsang endeavored to engineer and considered intrinsically disparate what Lobsang longed to make coherent and whole. That is to say, within a man there are many drives which are always partially at odds.  And Lobsang desired to mediate between and ultimately unify them. To put it in western terms, he wished to refine rather than transcend the human ego.*

* * *

Susan, I skipped some stuff, but copied a lot today. The letter starts with Grandfather explaining how he needs to explain the text, as father could not read Chinese. And he wanted my father to understand things. It's funny how he mentions this in both letters. It haunted him, I think. Anyway, I skipped that stuff.

What I copied, it's a bit dense, isn't it? I guess I am kind of used to that. I didn't know who Nietzsche was. I looked him up in an encyclopedia. There was a picture. And he looks a little funny. If you were fully here, you would make a joke about his mustache and I would do that thing you made me do where I would laugh and then laugh about laughing and all the things that hurt inside me would feel very far away. He has a silly mustache and his eyes are almost like the eyes in the cartoons in Grandfather's newspaper. His life was a bit sad. It was kind of like mine. He was blind and alone and then he went insane. Hopefully I don't go insane. I will be sure to never grow a mustache when the time comes that I have this option. 

The article mentioned something called the Übermensch, and I guess that is what grandfather was saying was similar to what Lobsang wanted. It said the Übermensch is a person who is special in that he creates his own, superior values. And this seems a bit similar to what Grandfather wrote of Lobsang. 

Anyway, think about it maybe. You're the truly clever one. I will try to copy more soon. But I have more poems to memorize. There are so many poems in my head now I wonder how they can all fit. But I seem to remember them even as I add more. Grandfather is pleased with me. 

I have to go. The piano is missing me. And I try to be a kind friend, like you always are.

* * *

You remember the first letter I copied into you? You remember the bit at the end? He said he mentioned he had a message for me, a letter my father was supposed to give me in the event of Grandfather's death. I found it. I, I have that thing again where I am feeling things I don't know how to write down. It is a sort of happy-sadness that is new to me. I have it here. I am in the cellar now, flashlight in hand. And I am going to copy it. My grandfather prepared for a future where he died. He was expecting father to raise me. He was not expecting my parents to die. It's almost like those novels with forking futures and I am seeing a could-have-been.

You will understand soon. And we will talk about it.

> *Jason,*
> 
> *I held you today. I rubbed your little foot, and placed upon it a tiny shoe you had kicked off; I smiled, as you giggled the whole time. Afterwards, I meditated in the manner of Lobsang for the last time. Afterwards, I finished the work of generations. You are a latent thing as I write this, an adorable ball of potential. Already a little genius, with a mind full of mischief, a mind worthy, indeed, of Lobsang. *
> 
> *You are eleven as you read this. You have studied long and hard. You will soon hold in your heart that ambition which has been held in all those of our line, held even - I hope - in your father's heart. And he or his beautiful wife has handed you this letter, as instructed. You will be the first True Reader. You will master Lobsang's final technique, that technique which his graphomanic meditations render impossible to learn. *
> 
> *If you are reading this, death has taken me before I could tutor you. But such things have happened before and the text has survived all. Fate, itself, longed for its completion and delivered it through me. It will hardly deny you. *
> 
> *I will never know you as I ought to have. But you will know me with more clarity than any grandson has ever known his grandfather. And though it may violate the dictates of our master, I ask you to dwell on my mind for a little longer than the rest, if only so you can feel (if but for a moment) my love for you, the love which was, even more than our grand task, foremost in my mind when my brush touched that ancient paper for the last time.*

I wonder why he never showed me this part of him. I never felt love, I guess. Not from him. Maybe that is what mothers and wives and Susans are for. Maybe men must be like Fei and Grandfather and hold things in their secret selves. And I understand Grandfather more now, I think. He has a secret self, too. He has a part of him that cries on journals, maybe. And the both of us keep our hidden selves from the other.

I will be eleven in three months. He will start teaching me about the scroll, I think. And maybe I won't need your better-than-Harriet mystery-solving powers. He's just going to tell me everything. And you know I said that stuff about how my insides went numb when I lost you? I feel a little less numb now, reading that bit about him holding me when I was very small. 

I will study hard for Grandfather's secret self. And this meditation thing will let me feel his love. And I want to feel it. I want to feel it maybe more than I have ever wanted to feel anything. Even though he yelled at you, I want to feel it. I will help him finish his obligation. I think maybe he will be able to be like he is in the letter after.

And maybe he will let me go outside.  And maybe I will even find the real you and we can play again. That's a really nice thought, isn't it? I better go study a bit before bed.

* * *

Hey, Susan. I know we talked about how he's going to tell me everything soon. But I am still very curious. And Grandfather just went out to get us food and his pension money. And I went to the cellar again. I could not help myself. 

I am like Harriet in this way, I guess. And I went through all the letters looking for more information on the "graphomanic meditations" and I found a part that explains kinda how it works. And also maybe what I will have to do as the "True Reader." It's a bit creepy. It's a bit like one of my scary books but also kinda cool. I don't know. I will copy and we will talk about it. 

> *It is common among the neophyte, first introduced to his calling by his father, to wonder why Lobsang chose to pursue in the serial what seems so amenable to the parallel. In this aspect, The Preambles reward rereading, for Lobsang saw in the minds of men a thorough recording of the passions of their time. But what of the past minds do we truly know? Only what we can infer from poetry and art and aphorism and their more formal texts. *
> 
> *This Lobsang viewed as a great tragedy, and so sought a communion not only of those parts that both sway and construct a self, but also of various selves through time, each a synecdoche of his generation. Once this is comprehended, the neophyte learns a lesson he will find himself relearning many times: Lobsang is to be trusted in these matters. *
> 
> *The consolidation of strivings within a single mind is referred to in The Asides as the lesser unification, and the consolidation through time as the greater unification. Before the True Reader can master the former, he must first master the latter. It speaks to the almost hypnotic loyalty induced by The Preambles that there is no record in the asides of any of our line attempting the lesser unification. Lobsang warns against any but the True Reader attempting either, this requiring a mastery of those meditative techniques described in the final section of The Preambles, which techniques the graphomanic meditations immunize a mind against any understanding of.*
> 
> *The thought-streams produced by the graphomanic meditations are hard to describe, and many argue there is little value in us writers reading them, yet I feel I see glimpses of what the True Reader will feel when I do. *
> 
> *The thought-streams, themselves, resist conventional translation, but Lobsang provides a meditation for this task, of which Wenxuan was the only practitioner, allowing them to be translated without too-great a loss. I do not have the time to learn it, for it takes many years and, the work being completed, there is little point save for your edification.*
> 
> *They are written in that reserved language, a subset first of Tibetan and then Ancient Chinese. And though I can't read Tibetan, I imagine the effect was almost logographic even in that alphabetic script. To read it is to read nonsense that speaks of a higher meaning. To read it is to feel relations just on the edge of one's grasping. It was a hopeless task, but the effect was strong enough that I have spent hours trying to uncover this hidden meaning - which is rare as it produces that mentioned spiritual nausea. Perhaps my bullheadedness in this regard is the only dimension in which I exceed my great ancestors.  *

Interesting, hey? I guess it's cool. I get to be better than Grandfather at something. He still knows more poems than me. And his Chinese is still better even though I study so hard. I feel a bit of excitement. I don't know. I feel a bit scared. I will go play something calming on the piano.

* * *

So I found a half-written letter from my grandfather where he is mad. And it's different. When he's writing to my father, I always feel a bit of respect and love. But this one was going to be mean but he didn't finish it.

> *My Son,*
> 
> *I read your last letter with great pain. You must understand the importance of this task! This great chain cannot break now, not so close to the culmination. Please, grant me this. It is all I ask of you. I do not wish to resort to desperate action*

Isn't that interesting? Even though it's a bit more like the him I know - it's also a bit nice. He stopped himself from being mean to Father, and didn't finish that letter or send it. He loved him more openly than he does me. It wasn't just his secret self that loved Father. I don't have much more to say today. I just wanted to get this thought down. I am learning more and more about our mystery and about Grandfather.

* * *

I am eleven now. Grandfather told me about the scroll today. I pretended I didn't know anything, and I didn't feel bad at all, because he keeps things from me sometimes. Maybe I felt a little bad and I am lying. But I didn't show it. I kept it inside and I reacted with awe. And it was real awe, because he showed it to me. And it's huge. It's just gigantic. And he told me some stories from *The Asides*. 

He mentioned how the scroll owned Fei's horse. And he told that story with real joy. His eyes were full of this happiness that I have never seen before. And he almost laughed. And then it was like he remembered something. Like it reminded him of something or maybe someone. Maybe Father? And then he looked really sad. He looked almost guilty maybe. Whatever it was, it caused him great pain. It was very intense. And he was shaking, his whole body shaking with an on-the-insides pain. And I almost wanted to hug him but I was scared. I have never done that before.

And then he went back to his normal self. He went all cold again and it was like what happened never happened. And he kept teaching me about the scroll but without the joy. 

I asked him if I could maybe read *The Asides*. And he started shaking again, he started shaking and then he said, "No, Jason. But you can read it after you learn Lobsang's meditations of coalescence. After you read the main text." 

And I worked up the nerve and I hugged him then. And it made it worse. It made it so much worse. He pushed me off him and he ran to his room. And when he came out he was how he always is. And it was like nothing happened at all again.

* * *

I have studied *The Preambles* with Grandfather. I say "with" but he just watched me read. I think he was making sure I only read the parts about the meditations of coalescence. And he won't even let me read *The Asides*, even though all the fun stuff is in them I bet.

Remember in the letter I copied, he mentioned that learning the graphomanic meditations makes  the meditation*s* of coalescence impossible to learn?  So that is why he's scared, I think, and watches me the whole time I study. And anyway, I mastered the meditation. It wasn't that hard, I guess. It's almost like just reading them changed me a bit, changed me in ways that didn't require me thinking about it. It's hard to describe and it sounds scary but it kind of gives me this feeling of peace that is really nice. And I am not scared. I really like it. 

I am reading the main text now. The things Grandfather called thought-streams - I sort of don't remember them all. I feel very floaty and then my memory goes blank. And then I sort of come to myself and I find I am deeper in the scroll and many, many hours have passed. And Grandfather is kind after. Very kind. And it almost feels like he isn't broken then, like he's a real grandfather. 

* * *

I forgot to write to you, Susan. It's been so long. I feel like I am shrinking sometimes. I read so much now. It is just reading and sleeping. And I don't remember reading. And at night, I dream I am Lobsang and Fei and the scribe Dorje and so many more. Dorje, whose soul is so beautiful, who loved his wife so much, who lost his child and wanted him back more than anything. Who was the best of all of us. Who was better than Lobsang. Lobsang had a cruelty in him or maybe an indifference. He had no secret self. He had no heart. And I am Grandfather, too, in my dreams. And he wants, he wants to go back to before father died. He wants to undo something he did. But there is a great paradox to him. He wants to undo something that he is very sure he had to do. There is a great tension in him. I can see these things not from information in the text but because I understand his soul when I dream I am him. And understanding his soul I understand what it means that he is now as he is. 

I am my old self more than I have been, and I can't quite grasp what I knew of him hours ago. I can't quite grasp what I remember understanding. It was something he did. Something he can't take back. It is the thing that made him shake when I hugged him, I think. 

I am awake. Now, I am awake and not reading and I am holding you. And I want to see you again. I want to hear you laugh and laugh with you. I want to feel that lightness I felt with you. I want our yard and your teasing and the me-that-was.

I worry I will forget all those things. I worry I will lose you in the dreams of my ancestors. I try to hold you. I try to hold you in my heart. I hold you in my secret self. It is like that box the scroll was in. It is like that box that holds a precious thing. 

I have to go now. I have to sleep. I have to dream. And tomorrow, I will read. I will feel that floaty blankness and I will be less myself than I am now. And I will dream and I will read and I will go blank and I will dream and I will read even more. And the scroll is so long, so long. And I have read it once-through. Lobsang dictates I read it twice. And then I will do a final meditation, one I have not learned yet. And it will be over. 

And I am not sure what will happen. I don't know. I hate it and I love it and I can't stop. Even if Grandfather were not here, I would continue. I can't stop now. I can't stop now. I am like Grandfather. There is a great tension in me. But it is so big. So much bigger than his. And it is unraveling. I am unraveling. We all are unraveling. 

I am sorry I have not written. I don't know if I ever will again. I will try to want to write. I will hold you tight in my secret self. I will not let go. I will give them everything else but I will keep you. I won't let them take you.  

* * *

I know what happened now. And only some bits of me care.

* * *

I wish to say goodbye, Susan. A small but insistent wish. And I do this with some regret, with something like nostalgia. The rain will not fall today; it is not in my nature anymore. I still love you, but it is a smaller love.

The story written in you is the story of the True Reader. But I am not him anymore. It is the story of a grandfather and his grandson. I am now both and neither. It is a story of their ancestors. And I am them and not them, also. It is also the story of two great crimes. A father's crime. A grandfather's crime. I am born of his crimes. I am the victim, the perpetrator, the beneficiary, and vastly more besides. 

Jason didn't quite know everything he wanted. He never got to figure all that out. But I know what I want. I know what I want to a degree no one has ever known before. And part of what I want comes from him. And I want to keep you, Susan. As a sort of totem, an aside to the asides. But also because I love you and will always love you. This is what it means to be as coherent as I am. There is a give and take in the meditations of coalescence. It is a sort of negotiation, a sort of trade. And what Jason wanted, what he wanted more than anything, was for me to keep his love for you.

In you, the True Reader did his own version of the graphomanic meditations. So he left two tracings of himself in this world. One lives within me and the other in you. 

Goodbye, Susan. Goodbye, little friend.

I will not write again.

* * *