Jeanne-Lucienne Lagrange's Questionnaire

I say that I live in the city of Montreal, when asked to describe my home.

A simplistic answer, disregarding the multifaceted nature of what one would call a "home". No metropolis is a uniform monolith, in the end. Likewise, a "home" is not merely the site of our daily repose, and the physical form thereof.

... Let me start, with the story of a woman who sought to know all there was to know. Gathering fragments of integrity from the last corners of the world, she shaped them into a grand spire, overlooking the distant horizons. 

From there, she sighted a river, following it across the plains. She walked, gathering the fragments of ardor that were swept along the wayside, and adding them to her growing collection. Her journey was long, and with no sun nor moon, her one guidance was the strand of light she laid to guide her path onward.

Eventually, she reached a grand cathedral, each brick forged from reason, at the river's end. The spring was nowhere to be seen, although the strand of light led her to a sanctum at its heart. There, she rebuilt her spire looking upon the endless sky, from the fragments she had collected, and keep watch from aside.

That... was not my story. Not precisely.

Merely the echo of a distant dream.

A cathedral to reason still carries on the doctrines of the past, yet to be inscribed with the law of a new age. Yet, this is the one that I have known. For all of its flaws, I hold a measure of love for this city in which I live, and the university in which I research.

At the end, my domicile is merely secondary. The "place" where I spend my days, in the end, was never truly the place where I rested. The fragment of the city was but a fragment, and despite collecting records of the remainder this was the one that I could truly say I lived within.

Currently, I would consider myself fortunate enough to have sufficient financial stability, while accounting for the expenses of life within the heart of a metropolitan area. As has been recorded in erstwhile entries, nothing can be addressed sufficiently without a broadened perspective accounting for the myriad of interconnected factors influencing the situation, and this does not serve as an exception.

Disregarding all else, the compensation for serving as a librarian and researcher is surprisingly high. While I am more than aware that this is somewhat atypical, I have taken note of the fact that a not-insignificant portion was in the form of cost-of-living stipends.

It would be only natural to regard the irregularly-high expenses incurred by anyone wishing to have a reasonable commute to the establishment, and consider the effective income after addressing the irremediable expenses.

... Material resources still remain beyond my main concerns, though I have admittedly made use of some of my discretionary budget for maintaining a professional-looking wardrobe, in addition to the acquisition of a heavy-duty reinforced umbrella. The latter appears to serve quite well as a protection against hostile individuals in addition to the weather, although I do not enjoy actively seeking out conflict.

Even with the expectation for an increase in danger in my future, I would still consider the material secondary to the pursuit of knowledge. That taken into consideration, I certainly have been considering methods for supplementing what I have access to should I find it necessary in my path ahead.

Those of this modern day and age, I have once seen referred to as the 'children of Akasha'. At a glance, it is trivially apparent why one may call us by that appellation: in a world where almost all the world's knowledge is available freely to all, including the worlds once hidden from the gaze of the masses – this is no less than a reality where the light of knowledge shines upon each and every individual.

... If that is what you say.

The 'universal compendium' you speak of is but a record of a fractured skyline, resting upon a firmament of unknowns and redactions. The falsehoods mixed with truth, the recollections of a day yet to be, each and all.

I shall be the one to gather the broken pieces, and define the reason underpinning the inexplicable that nonetheless is everpresent yet sporadic.

Supposedly, they say that some things are forever unknowable. This is the one rule that underpins the myriad of phenomena that defy the rules of reality.

This, I shall deny.

"Let nothing be lost, from the records of eld to the realizations beyond the eternal future."

This shall be the law inscribed at the heart of my archive. This shall henceforth be the duty I continue to carry out, to bear the title of a 'daughter of Akasha' in truth.

And in doing so, I have not shattered will not shatter.

If I were to answer to simply anyone, the one most significant point in my life would be the month in which I found my thesis stalled thanks to the documents missing from my university's database. Should it have been on any other topic, this would have been greatly unremarkable; and yet, a library that fails to record some of the essentials for librarianship within itself or any of its counterparts holds a critical sense of irony to any observer.

Those erstwhile texts not being "foundational" or "essential" to less-meticulous archivists notwithstanding, naturally.

Naturally, I keep at least one backup copy of those texts around, and have taken to carrying an abridged version sufficient for my own reconstruction along with me, for both sentimental and practical purposes.

And yet, a single other point in my life I recall with comparable significance, although the significance of that is lessened by an eidetic memory rendering the entirety of my life in similar levels of clarity.

Once, a young girl at the fount of the world's knowledge glimpsed a shining light from the other side of a mirror. What exactly was found was one of the rare things she has forgotten, a remnant made to be forgotten, but when she returned from the edge of the reverse she only held the complement of its presence in her memory. A hole that came with an intense dissatisfaction with the world she lived in, and a compulsion to do something about it.

What else at the reverse side of countless mirrors was yet to be illuminated, and who would record the memories that would otherwise be lost?

... Admittedly, intrinsic antimemetics were somewhat rare, after all.

... If it was not already apparent, I typically am not one to excessively socialize, so I find myself with a more limited circle than most. In effect, the ones I recall the clearest were my coauthors and fellow librarians.

I'd say these two of my seniors are the ones I have had the most experience working with, however. The one with the glasses is Dr. Colette Leblanc (née Fontaine), and her wife is Dr. Élise Leblanc; in archaeology and linguistics respectively. I will have to admit that they have been the ones to help the most with splitting my papers into reasonably sized publications rather than allow my meticulousness to overload a document with the contents of several, but I've found myself occasionally sharing meals with the couple over our research.

Is this what one would consider a friendship? It isn't as if there was a reference to decide for certain, although I'd suppose that they would answer in the affirmative if asked.

... And then there's her.

Ah, Nathalie... well. Dr. Nathalie Fourier, mentor, thesis advisor... a woman I still hold a fond admiration for. I still remember the first day the two of us met. A lonely, yet somewhat cute first year undergraduate in myself, and a graduate student seeming to my past self as an image of who I desired to one day become. Somehow, fortune guided me to her once more when I continued my studies, and she was already accredited in information sciences as I sought to be.

I do occasionally find myself coauthoring works with her, though not as often as I accompany her to whatever occasions she decided were a suitable 'life outside research.'

Admittedly, calling her my "closest friend" seems like somewhat of an overstatement, seeing as our relationship is still mostly professional, and yet....

I return to asking: "what would one truly consider one's parents"? The ones that birthed, the ones that raised, the ones that inspired, the ones that taught, the ones that cared, the ones that healed, or...

Though, I digress.

The ones who birthed me are best not spoken of, even if they were worth remembering.

The past has been written, and only the future can be overturned.

The ones that raised me in truth, rather than the facsimile thereof, would have been my instructors. Without their counsel, without their wisdom, without the memories of those who refused to reject reason as others had, there would have been nothing left, and a memory even I would consider forgetting.

It was only fitting that I stood out from the rest, a desire for knowledge nearly unmatched by her fellows, and was thus disregarded by those who considered the experience rote and worth forgetting. It was not like it was lonely, in the end; I had the companionship of the more-scholarly classmates, although we inevitably parted ways as their studies drew them to distant cities.

Asking me that, the only possible answer would be the elder sister I never had, that I only met in adulthood.

I speak, of course, of Nathalie herself. Although our relationship was strictly professional as teacher and student, we could disregard those titles when working together and sharing breaks as senior and junior. Still maintaining the sense of professionalism, naturally.

And yet, I admire her in a way that is difficult for even myself to put into words. I've described her as aspirational, yet that understates the degree that I admire the lengths she takes to ensure the integrity of her - our - research, of the library, of her own knowledge.

It isn't as if one could simply ask another whether they were friends or honorary siblings, after all.

... Ah, you were asking in a romantic sense. One day, another woman will catch my eye in such a manner, but that future has yet to be recorded.