Meta-Conversations: Useless (Patreon)

“No effort is useless,” the Calligrapher says.

The transition between Farren, the person, and the Calligrapher, the role, is a lot less noticeable than it is with Shame… but sometimes you can hear the distinction easily, and this is definitely one of those times. I squint at him, but he’s not paying attention to my face. He’s pointing to one of my letters. “Here, this word. This is exquisitely done.”

“Exquisite is an overstatement,” I say. “It should be reserved for works of art, not good penmanship.”

I expect that to offend him, but he seems pleased at my reaction, maybe because I am acting like an artist and not like a mopey adolescent. “If it is an overstatement, it is not much of one. That is beautifully done. You advance from mere confidence to artistry, and you will tell me that penmanship cannot be artistic while knowing it an indefensible position. Some people write like they are throwing the letters away, like trash, or ephemera. You are paying attention. It shows.”

“Maybe,” I say. “But it doesn’t change that your initial assertion was false. Sometimes effort is useless.”

He sits back on the stool next to mine. I hadn’t even noticed him looking over my shoulder until I relaxed and turned to blot my pen. I think of that time during his stay in Qenain, when Ajan managed to drag a stool over without him noticing: artists, as a class, tend to lose their surroundings when really engaged. “True. But this effort is not useless, or you would not do it.”

“I doubt that. What good is a physically-written lexicon of a language only about a hundred people care about, and of those hundred only a handful more than casually?” I look at page seven of my project, which I undertook… why, I don’t know. Why did I decide to copy out the existing Ai-Naidari dictionary by hand? I told myself it was so that there would be a spare copy if the spreadsheet in the cloud vanished, but printing out that spreadsheet so I could consult it for the project has already made that back-up. This is something else. What, though, I don’t know.

“It calms you,” Farren says. “And it is good practice.”

“Practice for what?” I say. “I don’t need to learn your language.”

“Practice,” he says firmly, “using the pen. Judging distances. Writing evenly, and making letters the same height. Art, datyani, requires the ability to control a tool, and to gauge where each line should go in relation to another. How can you better that ability if you do not practice?”

I suppose it is practice, of sorts. Calligraphy is a lot less forgiving of minor errors than art. People get distracted when they look at visual art—by the subject matter, or by colors, or by what their mind is trying to convince them they see. But years and years of perfectly typeset text have sensitized even the most casual reader to glitches in typography, to the point where older texts, created with manual typewriters, look outrageously uneven.

“It calms your spirit,” Farren says. “Not all art needs a reason, datyani. Even if practicing wasn’t enough, we do what we are moved to do, and that is part of our mystery. Perhaps in another decade or two you will look back at these pages and realize they served a purpose. But we rarely know the purpose when we are gripped by the need to manifest a work. It comes later.”

That can’t be argued, because it’s so obviously true that any attempt would reveal more about my emotional state than about the facts of the argument. Such as any discussion about art can have facts. “So does your shinje have good penmanship?”

Farren huffs softly. “Kor writes as if wielding a weapon.”

That makes me smile—what else? “Haraa?”

“Has a very deft hand, though far more direct than mine. She writes because she loves what she is saying.”

And Farren writes because he loves the act of writing. “Ajan?”

“When mindful, writes with the hand of a trained scholar, as one would expect of someone initially trained above the Wall of Birth,” Farren says. “But mostly he scrawls as if he’s in a hurry, and it’s ridiculous. Half the time we can’t puzzle out what he means.”

I don’t need to ask about Thirukedi’s penmanship; Farren described the words on the yuvrini floor, when he and Kor returned from the Gate-world and were summoned to tell Him of their errand. I think the only way I can characterize it in my head is that it looks like the handwriting of someone who is never concerned with time. Why should He, when He never dies? What would your handwriting look like if you were never rushed, and had centuries to spend? “Have you ever seen the Exception’s hand?”

Farren looks startled. “No. But I can only imagine…”

“What it must be like?” I ask. “What do you think?”

“Rather like Haraa’s, but more careless, maybe,” Farren says, little knowing how close to the mark he’s shooting. I wear my most urbane expression. It’s evident that Farren went to his grave without hearing that secret, and I think… I think that was both kind and wise. It would have hurt him to know, on so many levels. Strange to think of Haraa as a woman who grew up to be wise and kind, when she was neither. But then, we all begin unwise and unkind, don’t we? And society, in the form of other people, shapes us all.

“I like this project,” Farren says. “I am glad you have embarked on it. Do you think you’ll finish?”

“I don’t know,” I say. And then: “But why not? You’re right. It is relaxing.”

He hands over my pen, which he’s cleaned for me. I take up the vial of oxblood ink, and resume.