The Maker v. The Table

Rage went first. It was Anger wearing a costume. Its definition read "Anger at its most consuming," and the notation already says consuming with a subscript. An₂ and Rage are one claim written twice. Teach a reader the subscript, then hand them Rage, and the first thing they learn is that the grammar bends when I want it to. The subscript grammar is set out in The Periodic Wall.

Ecstasy had the same problem. Its definition read "Joy that overwhelms containment," which is Joy with a longer name, and it carried zero works. By the letter of the rule it should have folded with the rest.

It held because volume is not what it measures. Rage fell for saying Anger louder, the same axis with more on it, which the subscript already writes. Ekstasis means standing outside yourself, and nothing else in the table names the container going. So the definition was the counterfeit and the cell was fine. I struck the definition and kept the element.

Under the new definition it moved to sit with the still states instead of the rising ones. That surprised me until I sat with it. Ecstasy is quiet. It is the moment you lose track of where you end.

I brought this one myself. Awe-Quiet, "Awe after the overwhelm passes," one work against Awe's twelve. I called it a fading tail, a phase of its parent, and I put that in writing.

Maslow overturned me. His peak experience against his plateau experience is this exact split: acute and rare on one side, serene and trainable on the other, "achieved, learned, earned by long, hard work." Awe-Quiet is not the echo of Awe. It is its own room, and it was there the whole time I was arguing against it.

Called: a fade-out of Awe  ·  Actually: its own room

I called G7 the self-conscious family and sat four in it: Shame, Guilt, Pride, Envy. Three belonged. Tangney's quartet is shame, guilt, embarrassment, pride, and the difference is where the eye goes. Shame, guilt, embarrassment and pride all turn back on you, on the self being seen. Envy looks across the room at somebody else.

So Envy went to G6 Corrosive and sat beside Contempt, the other feeling that eats what it looks at. Embarrassment took the empty chair. It is the one where you have done nothing wrong and you still want the floor to open, because somebody watched you fumble it.

Seven words stood at the door over the two days and all seven got in. Each one names a state a work can put you into, and each one covers ground nothing already in the table covered. They took the numbers the deletions freed up and the slots I had been holding. Nothing else moved.

Five of the seven are in no work yet. That is on purpose. An element names a feeling a work can give you. It does not need a work to earn its place. These seven wait for the piece that needs them, the same as the five cells I am holding dark.

Gluttony did not get in. It is something a body does, not something a picture does to you, and what it feels like from the inside is already sitting in the table under Craving. Same ruling for Lust, which is Craving plus Longing, and Sloth, which is Weariness plus Resignation. Vices are conduct. The table holds experience.

Amusement and Awkwardness were harder. Both are real categories in the research and neither is here. The pieces I would have admitted them on were the handful named after tracks, so the evidence was the song and not the work. Nothing else in the catalog asked for either word. Admitting them anyway would have finished somebody else's table.

Five reserved cells stay dark, and that is what they are for. The day the work goes there, they get their symbols.

NoteTriumph never even came up. Cowen and Keltner tested it and it did not hold up as its own category, it kept collapsing into pride and joy. So it was never a hole in the table, it only ever looked like one.