this is the first i have written of what will be one of the threads binding IOTA [hopefully] together. aqaraza will have a splintered and diverse commentary running throughout IOTA's pages. this is, then, the first bit i have come up with. it's short; they all will be. -- free agent .rez

AQARAZA:

i had to reconsile my resonance with the 'ajikhazi with the fact that they had no use whatsoever for IOTA, in any version. they spent almost all of their time in complete darkness and flux; their impressions and approaches spread amongst each other via the carnologia, the living word. they had no need for the smell of the book or the presence which skitters through its rustling pages, weaving itself through a next-to-nothingness as each leafskin. the 'ajikhazi sought a presence of a far less tangible and, they felt, far more compelling sort.

all being so, from the start they were my family. i had experienced the labyrinth of solitude as fully as they, from the moment i arrived to the moment we emerged into the cataclysm on the surface. i gnew many of them, and felt my resonance with those i merely knew-of. i too felt the pull, the drive, to descend; i too noticed and grew to crave the lifting of weight which accompanied every movement further down. when the confrontation called from above, i followed; and after all was over, as the family of Khazars danced and sang and drummed and played, i noted a thought creeping like sap through the niches: the 'ajikhazi belonged down below, the 'ajikhazi needed the descent as we each need water; and the presence they hunted was the smell of satiation. it was and is, i imagine still, a hunger. i also fear it is an insatiable one, and this is why i devote myself to my hobby, dissemmination of IOTA in what forms i can adopt.

the choice was far from easy. some think i have cheated the choosing by straddling two paths, and some fear the day when my legs split apart from the strain, spilling my viscera to soil. it was stated -- insofar as the 'ajikhazi "state" anything -- plainly enough. they were 'ajikhazi, and this was simply gnowledge. if i were an 'ajikha, i would abandon the surface and throw the sum of my energies into the descent. i did not understand, i did not understand the split, the persistent calm which descended over their path as a night. i perhaps even now do not understand. they, in their turn, could not see why i would feel the need to remain above, why i would waste my time on the tractate in its crumbling multiplicity, why i would do this even as i nourished my links to the dispossessed 'ajikhazi like umbilici.

i call them disposessed, as many of you do. this being so, i learned something from them, hard and deep, like a river or a scarring wound: i am more disposessed than they will ever be. they have chosen the descent; or at any rate, a choice has somewhere been made. their home is with each other and their tunnells and their web of carnologia which binds them to themselves and to the presence below, below, always below. they know, vaguely, of our pursuits here above; of our attempts to navigate the borders of Ityl-Atys, of the biota and symbiota, of our gathering together into IOTA the tangible strata of our whole heritage.

and even still they descend, with a loving will which frightens my soul; and still they float, lighter and lighter the further down they go; and still those who report back to me -- who feed me tales to feed to IOTA -- that they do it for us. remember, always remember that this is far more than we can ever say in turn. we, you and i, have to a greater or lesser degree written them off for lost. not as disowned, never as abandoned, but literally as lost. we who have always been lost -- wandering, nomadic -- have even amongst us those sons and daughters who we feel tugging away into journey past the splitting point. i am peculiar because i have always been forced to bridge worlds; i am peculiar because so long as i continue to mediate, translate, descend and ascend, they can never fully break free of us, nor we from them. the most honest and closest among them whisper of whispers that i alone keep them from actually embracing the presence they seek.

and should they embrace? then we would never gnow them again. of this much i am sure. we must go with. no -- we must join them, and they us, at the gathering. we prepare for its arrival, and we lovingly form our vessel.