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PREMISE: A city. This city is what? A woman. Perhaps. That was, after all, said by a man who knows this city better than he knows his own soul of course that might be because the city is his soul or his soul is this city either way there is a man. And again there is repetition for there exists a second man who is perhaps the first man in how the order should have gone. He would not say that the city is a woman because he is too intelligent for that and he knows this city better than he knows his own mind of course that might because the city is his mind — repeat repeat repeat exchange soul for mind in the sentiments expressed.
Ordering this is difficult. It will be. Be. It will be. It will.
PARADOX: If a man replaces parts of himself is he still the same man? If you love a person at one in the morning and you love them still at three in the afternoon are you still loving the same person? If a ship of state, a city, replaces itself cobble by cobble is it the same city?
A man is in an office with a view of smog and clouds and a hint of forlorn sky. He is sipping tea.
FACT: The first men to lead an assault over city walls, across battlements, through slings and arrows and tar and oil and fire, with the king’s flag, is called Forlorn Hope. Man in office filled with forlorn sky ponders history. He wonders about trousers and croutons of time. Outside his office, in a hallway with a inaccurate-accurate clock (see paradox?? Or perhaps should we always rename the section irony or bloody mindedness or just sheer ness-ness) waits a policeman who possesses an honest soul.
Askesis.
FACT: If two objects are orbiting through space and time, space-time, fleeting chronotopes of existence emerge constructing their narratives that engage, separate, engage, overlap, separate, miss, pass through, collide, separate, above, below —
Man One: Tell me, what do you think of conversion?
[This is not a conversation they should not be having.]
Man Two: Haven’t thought much on it, sir.
Man One: But you yourself are a converted man.
Man Two: What does it signify, sir?
Man One: Nothing. Just that you have changed.
[Unasked Question: And you, sir?]
[Their existence is bracketed by things that should not have happened, things that cannot be unsaid, things that have never happened here but did elsewhere by people who are them but not them. Their existence fills with brackets, topples over, is subsumed and consumed and subverted and oh it is like their existence is a moldy throne and brackets brackets brackets come to tumble it down so not all the king’s horses and not all the king’s men — except BRACKET These are not kings BRACKET.]
Narratives open and close and never end so long as space and time coalesce into structured understanding.
FACT: A narrative requires a road requires a change requires an encounter requires pain requires giving up requires giving in requires resistance —
Askesis.
Man One is on a rooftop.
Man Two does not know this.
PARADOX/IRONY/BLOODY MINDEDNESS/NESS-NESS: They think about each other at the same time assuming that the other is not thinking on them and so they assume their thoughts are alone when in fact they run parallel lines on the graph of internal monologues. Of which they have many, usually about the other person.
[How does time work? It is hardly linear and Man Two, policeman at heart, chases himself over and over and over and over so it is a record on repeat. He runs after himself through the streets of the city which, back to PREMISE, is his soul. He doubles back, repeats, slides forward, comes crashing down around himself then back up. A spiraling, insane conch shell. Time is an insane conch shell. If you put it to your ear you can hear the ocean but it is only a lie.
He dreams of alternatives. In one, no dragon. He drinks himself into an early grave. No statue. Never a statue. Oh god(s), statues. In another, Snapcase is never not-patrician and he wonders what happened to his patrician in that one. There are heads on pikes on bridges. In yet another he chases a thief through the streets, never catches him but presents show up in odd places. Sometimes, even, returned items. In another they are both coppers, him and his patrician, and that one takes him to interesting thoughts upon waking. In another, he is eighteen and an assassin falls off a roof and lands on top of him. They are both in Mrs. Massey’s goose pin which is never a good thing. After being chased out of goose pin by iron pan wielding Mrs. Massey they stop, sort of laughing, sort of gasping. It smells like sulfur as they are near the river. The assassin kisses him then punches him in his face. He wakes in his dream to Nobby shaking him then he wakes-wakes and it is Captain Angua with the weekly report. He has an old ink stain on his cheek. A bruise between his eyes. Which alternative is this one? Oh yes, the one where he has a wife and son. What is the patrician’s name? Oh yes, Vetinari.]
Man Two: You punched me in the face, sir.
Man One: Did I? How extraordinary, Vimes. When was this and did I have a reason?
Man Two: Another trouser leg of time, sir.
Man One: Ah, yes, one of those.
Man One Vetinari smiles, then. Sort of. Man Two Vimes isn’t sure what has happened but something has shifted.
[Unasked Question: And you, sir? How do you know, sir? Do you dream of them too? Do you see what is ridiculous and great and terrible and impossible? In one, I killed you. In another, you killed me. In yet another we, that is, you and I — we — on the floor here. Together.
AND YOU AND YOU AND YOU AND YOU AND YOU]
FACT: Askesis is a struggle, pain, internal and external, a denial necessary to afford change.
Sybil to Vimes: I understand.
Vimes to Sybil: Understand what? I understand bat shit nothing.
Sybil to Vimes: Be and dear and keep your swearing to a minimum. You know young Sam is at an age where he’ll repeat anything.
[FACT:] Vimes to Sybil: I don’t understand!
Askesis occurs alongside chronotopes of metamorphosis and change. Usually associated with religious, spiritual or moral conversion.
Conversion to what? Vimes doesn’t know. He thinks, Sometimes it’s to being a good man. He thinks, Sometimes it’s to being a bad one. He does know that he is so very angry all of the time. No matter how much he does change that single fact, that single fiber of his heart, remains.
Vetinari tells him that to know a man you must see what he wears under his clothes and then, further still, what manner of skin, bones, and sinew he is made of.
If someone were to autopsy Vimes it’d be fearsome materials — iron, coal, lead, tin — heat forged, anger forged. Strung out materials, strong materials, necessary materials, but never good materials. Never beautiful materials.
If somewhere were to autopsy Vetinari it’d be found that he was merely human all this time. Which is, perhaps, more extraordinary and awesome than if he had not been.
FACT: To do great things whilst human is more amazing than doing great things whilst inhuman.
Somewhere along the way Vimes began feeling the steel of Vetinari’s mind in his soul. Support beams and arches and from the foundation something was being changed. Cobble by cobble. He cannot remember when this began. He cannot think that he want’s it to end.
Sybil tells him that they have become each other. There has been a translation at some point. If you translate a text is it the same text? Moth Wings, a Klatchian bit of prose, retains what of its original ness that made it worthy of translation to begin with? Translation is a pointed, intent-filled task of inherent violence – wrenching and forcing meaning from word to word, symbol to symbol.
[Oh lover, do not be less than a moth
When would a lover avoid the flame?]
Vimes asks how she can be so calm about it.
She says it’s different, from the outside. Like watching a person gasp at clean air, wrapping clean cool release around singed, burnt skin. You once said that the Patrician reminded you of cool mechanics and ice.
Vimes says, No do not remind me. I think I might have been wrong.
Askesis Vimes, she says, should be a passing through. Not a constant state of being.
FACT: There are a multitude of ways of existing.
CONCLUSION: What is a city? There was one, once, that existed and then it continued to exist and continued and continued but each iteration was same-different just as each person at each minute was same-person dead-born and so on. There was a moth, once. And it survived the flame.
PARADOX: If a man replaces parts of himself is he still the same man? If you love a person at one in the morning and you love them still at three in the afternoon are you still loving the same person? If a ship of state, a city, replaces itself cobble by cobble is it the same city? If you love a man in all iterations of time but he does not know is it still love?
PARADOX: Possibly solved. Possibly unsolved.
It doesn’t matter.
Vetinari: Do you sometimes think about time, Vimes.
Vimes: Occasionally, sir.
Vetinari: Do you sometimes wonder about the other possibiltiies?
[All the time, sir.]
Vimes: No. Not really.
Vetinari: I don’t believe that you are —
Vimes: There is one and it ends up all right, sir. But it’s going to be a little while, yet.
Vetinari: And what does it signify?
Vimes: Nothing. Just that it might take time.