Latest / My Playful Wife — A Tender Literary Love Story / My Playful Wife — Season 1, Episode 42: The Bigger Room

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My Playful Wife — Season 1, Episode 42: The Bigger Room · My Playful Wife — A Tender Literary Love Story

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That's the deal, I said. That's what the clean
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room costs. You don't get to decide against me.
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You only get to decide. I hate it, she said,
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with great affection. I know, I said. Ditch it
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anyway. My Playful Wife. Episode 42. The Bigger
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Room. Written by Mia. We spent the fortnight
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doing the only honest thing there is to do with
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a decision this size, which is to refuse to decide
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it quickly and to map it instead fully in both
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directions until we could see the actual shape
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of the thing rather than the dazzle of it. We
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did this at the kitchen table. Over several nights,
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the envelope opened now between us, the number
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out in the air where it could be looked at. And
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we made two lists, though we did not call them
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lists. We are not list people. We simply talked,
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across the Warnwood, in the lamplight, one night
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the gain and another night the cost, until both
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of them stood fully built in the room and could
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be walked around and seen from every side. I
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want to set down both honestly, because the temptation
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of a story like ours is to put a thumb on it,
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to make the small true thing nobly triumphant
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and the big thing hollow, and the truth was not
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that clean. The truth had real weight on both
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sides of it, which is exactly why it took a fortnight
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and not an evening. I have come to believe that
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the length of time a decision honestly requires
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is a fairly reliable measure of its weight, and
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that one of the quiet errors of a hurried life
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is the habit of deciding large things at the
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speed of small ones. But some decisions are large
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enough that deciding them fast is not strength
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at all. It is a refusal to feel their actual
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size. a way of getting out from under the weight
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of them by pretending the weight is not there.
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A fortnight was not indecision. A fortnight was
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respect, the respect a thing this large is owed
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by anyone honest enough to truly hold it. The
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gain was enormous, and I made myself say so,
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out loud, fully, without the protective irony
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that lets a person diminish a thing they are
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afraid of wanting. Reach, her work, which perhaps
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400 people had ever touched on the bodies of
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thousands in cities she would never visit, carried
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into ordinary lives all over the country and
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beyond it. More weepers. That was how I put it
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to her, and her face moved when I did, because
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we both knew what it meant. The woman in a medibod
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who had wept at the rose dark was one stranger,
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found by one dress, by the grace of a tiny operation
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that could reach almost no one. Scale meant more
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of them. Hundreds, maybe over the years. Hundreds
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of strangers undone by the things Selene does,
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each of them met by a cloth that turned out to
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be secretly about them. That is not a small good.
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That is, arguably, the whole point of making
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anything. to reach the stranger it was secretly
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for. And the small operation reaches so few.
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Money. Real money. The kind that ends a particular
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fear I had watched live in my wife's shoulders
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for 15 years. The freelance maker's fear. The
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every collection might be the last arithmetic.
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The quiet dread under even the good years. The
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offer ended that, permanently. It bought a floor
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under us neither of us had ever stood on. I would
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be lying if I said that floor did not call to
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me. The husband who had watched her carry that
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fear so long. There is a deep, almost physical
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relief in the thought of a beloved person never
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being afraid about money again. Legacy. The word
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is grand and I distrust it, but it was real here.
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A name that outlasts the hands. A house that
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goes on making after the maker is gone. The difference
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between a body of beautiful work that ends when
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she puts down the scissors and an institution
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that carries her vision forward for 50 years.
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And validation, the plainest and most human of
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the gains. The world, the actual moneyed serious
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world. Looking at the things she does alone in
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a small room and saying we want it, by the thousand,
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we will bet a fortune on it. After 20 years of
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being a well -kept secret, someone had arrived
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to tell her the secret deserved to be famous.
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No one is above wanting to hear that. I am certainly
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not, and neither is she, and we did not pretend
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otherwise. So the gain was real. I want that
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on the record. We were not choosing between a
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good thing and an obviously empty one. We were
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choosing, as people almost always are at the
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real crossroads between two genuine goods, which
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is the only kind of choice that is actually hard.
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The easy choices, the ones we congratulate ourselves
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on, are almost never really choices at all. They
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are recognitions of a thing already obvious,
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good over bad, and they cost nothing because
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nothing real was surrendered. You do not agonize
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over whether to take the better paid, kinder,
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Nearer job over the worse one. You simply take
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it and call the taking a decision, though no
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actual deciding occurred. The only choices that
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deserve a name are the ones where you must give
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up a genuine good to gain another genuine good,
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where every yes is also a real and grievable
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no, and where no amount of cleverness can spare
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you the loss, because the loss is built into
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the very structure of the choosing. And then,
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the other night, the cost, and the cost, when
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we built it fully in the room, turned out to
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be made of a single thing, and that single thing
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was her hands. Because here is what the bias
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cut had already taught us both, the things Celonie
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knew in her body long before the offer came,
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and I had only recently learned to see, that
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the truth of her work lives in her hands, not
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in the designs, which could be drawn by anyone.
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Not in the colors, which could be matched, but
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in the hands, the literacy of the fingertips,
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the finding of the living diagonal by touch,
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the thousand micro -adjustments no two of which
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repeat, the woman at two in the morning feeling
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for the true of the grain and committing. That
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is the thing that makes a Saloni piece a Saloni
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piece, and not a competent imitation of one.
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And that thing does not scale. It physically
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cannot. You cannot hand cut 10 ,000 garments
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on the bias. There are not enough hours or enough
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hands. The very first thing that happens when
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you scale a handmade thing is that the hand comes
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off it. The cutting goes to a pattern and a machine
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and other people's fingers. The maker stops making
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and starts managing the making. Her name goes
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onto 10 ,000 garments her hands never touch.
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And the thing that was true about the 12 gets
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averaged, diluted. systematized and quietly,
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bloodlessly killed, not by any villain, just
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by the arithmetic of volume, which has no malice
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in it and no mercy either. This is the part that
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makes scaling so hard to argue against and so
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easy to drift into. There is no villain in it.
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No one decides to kill the true thing. Every
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individual step is sensible, even admirable.
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Hire good people, build good systems, meet the
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demand, serve the customer, grow responsibly.
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Each step taken alone is unobjectionable, and
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the sum of all the unobjectionable steps is the
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quiet disappearance of the one thing that made
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the work worth scaling in the first place. The
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truth does not die in scaling by anyone's intention.
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It dies by a thousand reasonable decisions. each
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of which was right, and the wrongness of which
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is visible only in the whole, long after the
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whole has hardened past changing. I would never
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cut again, she said, the night we built the cost,
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and she said it not as a complaint, but as a
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fact she was turning over, testing the weight
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of. Not really. Not the way I cut now. I'd direct.
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I'd build the thing that makes the thing. And
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maybe that's growing up. Maybe that's what every
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maker who matters eventually has to become, the
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one who builds the house instead of the one who
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stitches in it. She looked at her own hands on
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the worn table, the chalk permanently in the
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creases of them. But these would go quiet. And
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I don't know who I am with quiet hands. I have
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never once in 20 years been a person with quiet
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hands. That was when I understood the title the
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situation had quietly given itself, the phrase
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that had been sitting under the whole fortnight.
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The bigger room. Because that is literally what
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the offer was, among other things, a bigger room.
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The flagship, the proper studio, the real premises,
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the operation that needs space. We had stood
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on the day of the meeting, in a corner of their
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offices and been shown on a screen, the kind
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of room her label could have. Vast and white
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and full of light, 20 assistants, a room you
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could lose the current workroom inside ten times
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over. A bigger room, and it was beautiful, and
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any maker would want it, and I watched Saloni
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want it. But I had learned something about rooms,
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that year, learning to stay awake in our small
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flat. I had learned that the intimacy of a space
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is not a function of its size, and more than
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that, That intimacy is often a function of smallness,
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that there are kinds of closeness that only happen
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in a room small enough to hold them and that
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do not survive the move to somewhere grander.
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The true thing in Saloni's work had been made
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all these years, in a room where four people
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could see the cloth, where she could stand at
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one table and reach everything, where the whole
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of a making was held in a space small enough
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for one woman's hands to fill. You can move into
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a bigger room. But the close thing, the thing
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that was true precisely because it was small
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and held and entirely hers, does not come with
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you. You fill the bigger room differently. You
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fill it with people and process and scale, all
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of which are real and some of which are good,
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but you do not fill it the way you filled the
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small one, with the whole undivided attention
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of a single pair of hands, because the bigger
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room is, by its nature, too big for that. The
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cost of the bigger room is the thing the small
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room was for. I think a great many people learn
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this too late and in domains far beyond cloth.
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Spending years working toward the bigger house,
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the bigger title, the bigger life, certain the
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bigness is the prize, and then arriving in the
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bigger room at last to find it strangely cold,
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unable to understand why the thing they worked
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so hard for feels so much emptier than the cramped
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striving years that got them there. It is because
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the closeness was in the smallness, and they
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traded the closeness for the size without ever
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being told that was the trade. No one tells you
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the bigger room is colder. We did not resolve
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it that fortnight. I said I would not flatten
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the difficulty, and I will not. But something
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shifted across those nights of building the gain
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and the cost fully in a room, and the shift was
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this. that the choice came clear even though
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the decision did not. By which I mean, at the
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start of the fortnight it had looked like a choice
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between a good thing and a better thing, between
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staying small out of fear and growing big out
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of courage, and in that framing the answer is
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obvious, and the only question is whether you
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are brave enough to take the obvious answer.
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But by the end of the fortnight, the framing
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had changed. It was not a choice between small
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and safe and big and brave. It was a choice between
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two entirely different things a life can be for.
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One life reaches thousands a little with a thing
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that has been averaged enough to scale. The other
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reaches dozens completely with a thing that is
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wholly true because a single pair of hands made
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every inch of it. Neither is cowardice. Neither
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is the obvious answer. They are simply two different
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bets about what a making is for, whether the
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point is the reach or the truth, the many touched
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lightly or the few touched all the way down,
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and a person has to decide which bet is theirs,
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and there is no universal right answer, only
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the answer that goes quiet in your particular
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hands. Which one goes quiet? I asked her, on
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the last night of the fortnight, the envelope
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between us, the lamplight low, not pushing. just
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asking the question she had taught me. That's
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the thing, she said, slowly, looking at her chalk
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-creased hands. I keep listening for it, and
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I can't tell yet. Both of them are still talking.
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The big one is talking the loudest, obviously,
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it's an empire, of course it's talking the loudest.
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But the small one is talking too, and I don't
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fully trust it either, because some of what the
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small one is saying might just be fear dressed
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up as integrity, the comfortable thing pretending
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to be the true thing. She looked up at me. I
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don't want to refuse an empire, because I was
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too frightened to try. That would be its own
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kind of settling. The indigo in reverse. refusing
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the true thing because it was big and scary and
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called for more of me than I was sure I had.
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And I understood that she had just named the
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real trap, the one underneath both the obvious
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traps, that you can settle by taking the good
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big thing and losing the truth. Yes, but you
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can also settle by refusing the big thing out
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of fear and calling your fear by the flattering
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name of integrity and that telling those two
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apart. The genuine true no from the cowardly
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frightened no is the hardest discernment there
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is, and that she did not yet know which of hers
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it would be. And I could not know it for her,
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which was the whole agony, and the whole point.
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From the outside, the true no and the frightened
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no look identical. They produce the same word,
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the same declined empire, the same return to
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the small room. Only the person choosing can
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feel the difference between them, and even she
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can mistake one for the other. There was no test
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I could apply for my chair at the edge that would
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settle it for her. She had to go down into herself
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and feel, in the dark, which of the two refusals
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was actually hers. And I could only sit beside
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her while she did, and trust that the woman who
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could tell a true color from a good one could,
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in time, tell a true life from a good one too.
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There was a moment, late, when the lists were
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built and the talking was done for the night,
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and we just sat. the two of us in the lamplight
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with the enormous undecided thing on the table
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between us, and she reached across and put her
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hand over mine, the chalk -creased maker's hand,
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and said the thing that mattered more than the
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decision. Whatever I choose, she said, I need
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you to know I'm not choosing it because of you.
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Not the small one to keep our life cozy. Not
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the big one to be impressive for you. I watched
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you all fortnight keep your thumb off it. I know
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what that cost you, both directions. I know you're
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frightened of what an empire might do to us,
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and I know you're frightened of me being afraid
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about money forever, and I watched you hold both
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of those down so they wouldn't get into my scale.
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I see it. I just want you to know I see it. Her
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hand tightened on mine. You gave me a clean room
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to decide in. That's the most loving thing you've
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ever done, and it's almost unbearable. Because
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now I have to actually decide, with no one to
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blame and nothing to push against but the truth.
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That's the deal, I said. That's what the clean
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room costs. You don't get to decide against me.
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You only get to decide. I hate it, she said,
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with great affection. I know, I said. Did she
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then? I wrote it in the fifth notebook that night,
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the envelope still open and undecided in the
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next room. The bigger room. Spent the fortnight
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building both lists fully. Refused to flatten
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it. The gain is real and enormous. Reach. More
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weepers. Hundreds of strangers undone instead
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of one. Money. Ends the 15 -year freelance fear.
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Legacy. Validation. the serious world saying,
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we want it by the thousand. Two genuine goods,
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not a good versus an empty thing, the only kind
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of choice that's actually hard. The cost is made
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of one thing, her hands. The truth of her work
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lives in her hands, the bias found by touch,
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the 2am committing, and that does not scale.
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The first thing that happens when you scale a
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handmade thing is the hand comes off it. She'd
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approve cuts, direct, build the house instead
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of stitching it. These hands would go quiet,
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and I don't know who I am with quiet hands. The
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title. The offer is literally a bigger room,
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the flagship, the vast white studio. But intimacy
18:31
is often a function of smallness. The close thing
18:35
that was true because it was small and held and
18:37
wholly hers does not survive the move. The cost
18:41
of the bigger room is the thing the small room
18:43
was for. Not resolved, but the choice came clear
18:47
even though the decision didn't. Not small safe
18:51
versus big brave, but two different things a
18:53
life can be for. Reach thousands a little with
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a thing averaged enough to scale, or reach dozens
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completely with a thing wholly true. The many
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touched lightly, or the few touched all the way
19:06
down. No universal right answer. Only the one
19:10
that goes quiet in your hands. She can't tell
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yet which goes quiet. Both are still talking.
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And she named the deeper trap. You can settle
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by taking the big thing and losing the truth,
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or settle by refusing the big thing out of fear
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and calling the fear integrity. The indigo in
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reverse, refusing the true thing because it was
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big and scary and called for more of me than
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I was sure I had. Kate P. Safe beat, her hand
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over mine. Whatever I choose, I'm not choosing
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it because of you. I watched you keep your thumb
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off at both directions all fortnight. You gave
19:49
me a clean room to decide in, and it's almost
19:52
unbearable because now I have to actually decide.
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Nothing to push against but the truth. Forward
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slash that's what the clean room costs. Forward
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slash I hate it. Forward slash decide anyway.
20:07
To be continued in episode 43, The One Who Sold.
20:24
Playful Wife. If this story is staying with you,
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The next episode is already waiting. Subscribe
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are on my Patreon. Links are in the description.
20:41
I'm Mia. Thank you for listening.