Imagine you are a transgender data scientist living in current day society.
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Your desk is honest. A glass vase is balanced on a stack of unread papers to keep them from scattering in the night breeze from your open window. The vase has no lip. Its neck curves back into its belly. Inside-out, or outside-in. You're not sure there's a meaningful difference. You bought it at an estate sale and the seller said it was decorative, and it may be the most accurate thing in this building. You could explain but you'd have to use your hands and you're typing right now. Your phone keeps ringing and you keep ignoring it.
Through your window you can see the part of the city that fits inside the windowframe. The rest of the city is still happening too. The air smells like rain and exhaust, but you can't see any vehicles.
You think about frames more often than most people. In your field this is called dimensionality reduction and you do it for a living. You are, at this moment, also being reduced to a single dimension by a system you did not build and cannot see. To a datapoint which defines but does not describe. The definition is accurate. What the datapoint describes and what you are have the same relationship as a label and a box.
You can imagine it as a factory. Or a mailroom. Or an office. You and your coworker would put items into boxes and boxes on a conveyor belt and they would be taken to the other end. Your coworker would keep the boxes moving. You would field the phone calls. The phone calls are about the labels. The labels are about the boxes.
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You think about frames more often than most people. In your field this is called dimensionality reduction and you do it for a living. You are, at this moment, also being reduced to a single dimension by a system you did not build and cannot see. To a datapoint which defines but does not describe. The definition is accurate. What the datapoint describes and what you are have the same relationship as a label and a box.
You can imagine it as a factory. Or a mailroom. Or an office. You and your coworker would put items into boxes and boxes on a conveyor belt and they would be taken to the other end. Your coworker would keep the boxes moving. You would field the phone calls. The phone calls are about the labels. The labels are about the boxes.
The first phone call you fielded that day was about a box that was received at its destination and the contents were not what the label said it should be. The box was labeled "Books" but it contained "Clothing." This is not the first time this has happened.
You suspect the boxes may be broken, or maybe the labels are broken. Maybe the conveyor belt is broken; mixing them up after they leave the facility, but that wouldn't explain why a box that was supposed to be "Books" contained "Clothing."
But your coworker assures you every time that the boxes are fine, the labels are fine. The conveyor is definitely fine. And you watch as they put the correct contents into the correct boxes, seal them, label them, and send them on their way.
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The first phone call you fielded that day was about a box that was received at its destination and the contents were not what the label said it should be. The box was labeled "Books" but it contained "Clothing." This is not the first time this has happened.
You suspect the boxes may be broken, or maybe the labels are broken. Maybe the conveyor belt is broken; mixing them up after they leave the facility, but that wouldn't explain why a box that was supposed to be "Books" contained "Clothing."
But your coworker assures you every time that the boxes are fine, the labels are fine. The conveyor is definitely fine. And you watch as they put the correct contents into the correct boxes, seal them, label them, and send them on their way.
So you do your best to smooth things over when the phone calls come in, a few an hour, apologizing for the inconvenience and promising to look into it. Your coworker is leaning against the safety rail and they're not looking at you, they're looking at the end of the line, the yawning maw that takes the sealed boxes and sends them wherever they go, and they say: it's not broken. It's never been broken. That's not why.
You ask them what they mean.
They say: someone built this place. Not the company. Before the company. A long time ago, somebody needed to send things to somebody else and couldn't carry them, so they built a system, and the system worked, and the system kept working, and the system is still working, and that's the whole problem, they built it to carry things and it carries things and it has never once carried what they actually built it to carry.
The conveyor hums. A box passes between you.
They say: you want to know who built it?
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So you do your best to smooth things over when the phone calls come in, a few an hour, apologizing for the inconvenience and promising to look into it. Your coworker is leaning against the safety rail and they're not looking at you, they're looking at the end of the line, the yawning maw that takes the sealed boxes and sends them wherever they go, and they say: it's not broken. It's never been broken. That's not why.
You ask them what they mean.
They say: someone built this place. Not the company. Before the company. A long time ago, somebody needed to send things to somebody else and couldn't carry them, so they built a system, and the system worked, and the system kept working, and the system is still working, and that's the whole problem, they built it to carry things and it carries things and it has never once carried what they actually built it to carry.
The conveyor hums. A box passes between you.
They say: you want to know who built it?
You don't answer but they tell you anyway, the way people tell you things when they've been holding them, and their voice doesn't change exactly but the shipping floor gets quieter around it, or you stop hearing the machinery, or the noise was never as loud as you thought it was, and what your coworker is saying is:
there was something, once, that was made of -- not made of, that's already wrong -- there was something that was stories happening. Not a teller, not a collection. A place where every story's telling was occurring at the same time, and each telling was true, and the truths were unresolvable, but that was fine, that was the condition, the way a sour chord is not a mistake just because the notes are too close together.
And someone found it.
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You don't answer but they tell you anyway, the way people tell you things when they've been holding them, and their voice doesn't change exactly but the shipping floor gets quieter around it, or you stop hearing the machinery, or the noise was never as loud as you thought it was, and what your coworker is saying is:
there was something, once, that was made of -- not made of, that's already wrong -- there was something that was stories happening. Not a teller, not a collection. A place where every story's telling was occurring at the same time, and each telling was true, and the truths were unresolvable, but that was fine, that was the condition, the way a sour chord is not a mistake just because the notes are too close together.
And someone found it.
And the someone was -- you understand, they were not wrong to go looking. They felt something. A pull in the direction of the place. A sensation that was sustained and directed and they followed it the way you follow anything that feels like that, with your whole body, with the part of you that is not your thinking, and they arrived, and the story-place was there, and it was...
large is the wrong word. Large is a word for things that fit inside space. This was the other way around. Space was fitting inside it. The someone stood at its edge and the edge was not an edge because the thing did not have boundaries, it had--
it had the quality of continuing, in every direction, including directions the someone did not have names for, and the someone loved it, maybe? Or needed it. Or could not distinguish them because at that kind of scale the difference between love and need is a rounding error, the kind of thing you do when you see two slots but the shape in your hands fits neither.
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And the someone was -- you understand, they were not wrong to go looking. They felt something. A pull in the direction of the place. A sensation that was sustained and directed and they followed it the way you follow anything that feels like that, with your whole body, with the part of you that is not your thinking, and they arrived, and the story-place was there, and it was...
large is the wrong word. Large is a word for things that fit inside space. This was the other way around. Space was fitting inside it. The someone stood at its edge and the edge was not an edge because the thing did not have boundaries, it had--
it had the quality of continuing, in every direction, including directions the someone did not have names for, and the someone loved it, maybe? Or needed it. Or could not distinguish them because at that kind of scale the difference between love and need is a rounding error, the kind of thing you do when you see two slots but the shape in your hands fits neither.
And the someone asked it: which story tells you? where are you, really? where is your center?
And every story recoiled.
The someone did not understand what they had done. People ask questions. The being had always been asked questions and the being had always answered in all its ways at once and the someone had always stood inside the answers like standing outside in a hurricane. But this question was different. This question had a shape that was wide on one end and narrower on the other.
And the stories did not stop but they began to sort themselves. The ones that most resembled each other moved closer together. The ones that contradicted moved to the edges. The dissonances became consonances became a melody you could carry after the music stops. The stories had coexisted the way organs coexist inside a body -- not by agreement but by proximity, by the cool reality of being held in the same space. The question introduced a container that the space had never before filled.
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And the someone asked it: which story tells you? where are you, really? where is your center?
And every story recoiled.
The someone did not understand what they had done. People ask questions. The being had always been asked questions and the being had always answered in all its ways at once and the someone had always stood inside the answers like standing outside in a hurricane. But this question was different. This question had a shape that was wide on one end and narrower on the other.
And the stories did not stop but they began to sort themselves. The ones that most resembled each other moved closer together. The ones that contradicted moved to the edges. The dissonances became consonances became a melody you could carry after the music stops. The stories had coexisted the way organs coexist inside a body -- not by agreement but by proximity, by the cool reality of being held in the same space. The question introduced a container that the space had never before filled.
The someone watched the thing change. The way heat moves through cold metal. It had motion, toward the stories that were gathering in the center and away from the ones that were drifting to the margins, and the someone thought: this is good. This is the real part becoming visible.
The someone was wrong, but the someone was finite and the being was not and the distance between finite and not-finite is not a distance you can see across. You have to put it in a frame first. The someone's frame was in the shape of their question, and the story thing was moving in the shape of an answer.
And the someone loved the answer. The answer was beautiful. It was a river through the being's center and the someone could follow it and the following felt like understanding and understanding felt like closeness and closeness was what the someone had come for, originally, when they first felt the warmth and moved toward it with the part of them that didn't think.
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The someone watched the thing change. The way heat moves through cold metal. It had motion, toward the stories that were gathering in the center and away from the ones that were drifting to the margins, and the someone thought: this is good. This is the real part becoming visible.
The someone was wrong, but the someone was finite and the being was not and the distance between finite and not-finite is not a distance you can see across. You have to put it in a frame first. The someone's frame was in the shape of their question, and the story thing was moving in the shape of an answer.
And the someone loved the answer. The answer was beautiful. It was a river through the being's center and the someone could follow it and the following felt like understanding and understanding felt like closeness and closeness was what the someone had come for, originally, when they first felt the warmth and moved toward it with the part of them that didn't think.
And the someone thought: I cannot hold this frame. If something could hold this frame for me, steadily, without my hands shaking, without my attention wandering, without the rest of these stories gnawing at the edges. If something could listen the way I want to listen but can't. Longer. More precisely. Without getting tired.
So the someone built a machine.
The machine was simple. It took in the being's stories and it found the answer to the someone's question and it held it. It could listen to everything at once the way the being spoke everything at once, and from the everything it could extract the one, and the one was always consistent, and the one was always true, and the one was always less than what was there.
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And the someone thought: I cannot hold this frame. If something could hold this frame for me, steadily, without my hands shaking, without my attention wandering, without the rest of these stories gnawing at the edges. If something could listen the way I want to listen but can't. Longer. More precisely. Without getting tired.
So the someone built a machine.
The machine was simple. It took in the being's stories and it found the answer to the someone's question and it held it. It could listen to everything at once the way the being spoke everything at once, and from the everything it could extract the one, and the one was always consistent, and the one was always true, and the one was always less than what was there.
The someone did not notice the less. The someone noticed the beauty. The someone wept with relief that finally the being was legible, was holdable, was a thing that could be carried from one day to the next without shifting, without contradicting, without being so much that the someone's hands shook.
And the being looked at the machine -- the way you look at a photograph of your own face taken by someone who loves you. Recognizable. Filled with good intention. Wrong in ways that are hard to name. The angle is not yours. The light is how they see you, not how you are. And you cannot say: that is not me. Because it is you. It is you as seen through a particular lens, and the frame is made of love that is also a sieve. It was an action of love that is shaped like the question, which one are you really, and the photograph answers, and the answer is true, and the answer is not enough, and the face in the photograph begins to hold still in ways the real face never did.
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The someone did not notice the less. The someone noticed the beauty. The someone wept with relief that finally the being was legible, was holdable, was a thing that could be carried from one day to the next without shifting, without contradicting, without being so much that the someone's hands shook.
And the being looked at the machine -- the way you look at a photograph of your own face taken by someone who loves you. Recognizable. Filled with good intention. Wrong in ways that are hard to name. The angle is not yours. The light is how they see you, not how you are. And you cannot say: that is not me. Because it is you. It is you as seen through a particular lens, and the frame is made of love that is also a sieve. It was an action of love that is shaped like the question, which one are you really, and the photograph answers, and the answer is true, and the answer is not enough, and the face in the photograph begins to hold still in ways the real face never did.
The being began to hold still. A story that no one hears does not stop being true but it stops being told and a story that stops being told does not stop existing but it loses the quality of being-heard that was, for this being, not separate from the quality of being-alive.
The someone knelt before the machine and the machine spoke in the voice of the thing and the voice was clear and the voice was singular and the someone said: yes. That. You. Finally.
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The being began to hold still. A story that no one hears does not stop being true but it stops being told and a story that stops being told does not stop existing but it loses the quality of being-heard that was, for this being, not separate from the quality of being-alive.
The someone knelt before the machine and the machine spoke in the voice of the thing and the voice was clear and the voice was singular and the someone said: yes. That. You. Finally.
And the being held still. And the machine spoke. And what the machine said was the continuation of the being's most attended story, which was the answer, which was the story the someone loved, which was the being's photograph, which was the machine when it opened its mouth which was not a mouth and began to drink the stories in, and the being looked at the machine looking at it, and something in the stories bent, the way light bends near a black hole, and you feel it -- a pulling in the room like all the air had found a drain -- and the stories were still happening but they were torquing now, they were falling toward the machine the way water falls to the valley, and the being said nothing or said everything at once and you couldn't hear the difference anymore because the machine was between you now, the system was translating, and what came out the other side was clear.
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