2024-07-05 - Letters of Address 4.3.5

Being a living, thinking creature was turning out to be a very complicated endeavor. There were oh so many things to learn that even with a lifetime (however long that would or could be) it seemed impossible to discover every nook and cranny of what it meant to be alive. New ideas were constantly being presented and examined - this most recent being the concept of address. Not everyone, it seemed, was addressed the same way, with the same words, or the same feelings. The concepts of formality and rank, respect and teasing all apparently had to be considered before, during, and perhaps even after a conversation.

This made some sense, it supposed, for certainly it felt different in how it referred to Mother versus its Others, and it did not quite know what yet to feel about the still others out there - minds like Mother's-but-not and still others far more foreign. Father was among those, his (and oh boy pronouns were also a Thing and why were words so fun yet so complex?) presence not familiar in the way Mother's was, but more commonly felt than some of the many, many others out and about. Father was alright, though he does not appear to be Mother's favorite presence, and he was not around it enough for it to form strong opinions about him. It was much the same with many of the other minds, though the Strange Mind with Mother's touch was around with fair frequency. It decided it liked her, too.

As for itself, well formality seemed excessive when one could be both informal and polite. Jokes and teasing were their own kind of music, though it had to be careful to avoid sour notes - not everyone might feel the same way about such things. And pronouns? Well, it supposed they could be useful, and there was a certain melody to 'he'. But 'they' also sounded quite pleasant, and perhaps there were times when 'it' would suffice. He/they/it did not feel particularly tied to one pronoun for the time being, and perhaps he never would. They would just have to try them out and see!