pulse: progress and inheritance notes

wip/pulse.md

@@ -80,6 +80,8 @@ Or there is no space for another one otherwise
 // Stay optical
 // *New line 1*:
 // Curtain shut before the Fresnel bights
+// *potential new line 2*:
+// Plasmatic injection in your rover's eyes
 
 // ending verse(s) before the painfully long instrumental outro
 particular pressure over a landlocked island
@@ -88,3 +90,19 @@ lamenting functions weave a zigzag pattern
 stabilising fins break the rogue waves
 essential sentiments left unconditionally permanent
 ```
+
+## Resume note — 2026-05-12 (reworking the L77-78 couplet)
+
+Old L77-78 ("Gone is the spark...") being replaced — too plain. **Line 1 locked:** *"Curtain shut before the Fresnel bights"* (Fresnel = the lighthouse lens; "curtain shut" = the old eclipse mechanism, a screen drawn across a steady lamp; "bights" = the bay / the lens's curved ridges / homophone of "bites"). The image is the **off-state of a pulsed transmitter, said without the word "off"**.
+
+**Couplet anchor:** pulsed transmission up close — one signalet must terminate before the next can send; the dark/off is the mandatory inter-pulse gap, *not* a sad ending. Keep a "rover" somewhere in the couplet. "Spark" is binned (drags toward elegy; "catchlight" clattered phonetically).
+
+**Line 2 — still open.** Candidates:
+- *"Plasmatic injection in your rover's eyes"* (parked at L84): recovers the electro-optical "spark" register via plasma; reads as the *recharge* phase after the curtain shuts. Caveats — loose rhyme vs "bights"; must read sequential to L1, not "blazing now".
+- *"The rover counts the dark that falls between the lights"*: full plural rhyme; the dark = the part you read (a lighthouse is ID'd by timing its eclipses).
+- *"No next flash from the rover till this one's out of sight"*: states the sequencing rule plainly; slant rhyme vs the now-plural "bights".
+- *"No two flames on the same coastline ignite"*: aphoristic; drops the rover anchor.
+
+**Register target for L2:** not poetic, not plain — *flavoured* / tilted vernacular, the inch between. Don't shoehorn football punditry; the author works that lever himself when an opening shows.
+
+Also: L87 changed "partial coldfront" → "particular pressure over a landlocked island" (still P for the acrostic). Acrostic outro L87-91 otherwise considered OK; **L91 is a must-keep** — reverse acrostic, word-initials E-S-L-U-P = PULSE backwards, the thematic landing. Optional second PULSE 5-liner: not yet drafted.