{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1440",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
  },
  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 1440,
    "subject": "Bungle in the Jungle",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1999-03-18T16:59:00+00:00",
    "last": "1999-03-18T16:59:00+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0024-0074@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "m.driussi",
        "address": "m.driussi at genie.com"
      },
      "date": "1999-03-18T16:59:00+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Bungle in the Jungle",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Just for kicks:\n\nRather than an \"either/or\" situation (\"either they are chant caught\nOR there is time travel involved\"), experiment with the idea of an\n\"and\" situation (\"some, but not all, are chant caught AND there is\ntime travel involved\").  (Since we know that time traveling buildings\nexist on Urth--that \"fantasy\" becomes more concrete as TBOTNS\nunfolds.)\n\nOf the three it seems that the most likely (yet somewhat\ncounter-intuitive) candidate for \"chant caught\" is actually Isangoma,\nsince R & M are a pair with a history that includes \"Paris\" (\"we'll\nalways have Paris,\" heh).  So maybe Isangoma is the \"chant caught\"\ntourist from Urth--and maybe this would explain how he is able to see\nSev and Agia.\n\nBut Robert is able to see them too, a bit.  Marie is incapable.  So\nthe \"pairness\" of R & M is somewhat illusory: maybe Robert is able to\nsee because of some unusual action he took in the mundane world\n(i.e., as an art student maybe he ate a hashish brownie that opened\nthe doors of perception), or just because he is a \"sensitive artist\"\ntype.  Or maybe Robert is another tourist from Urth, making the men\nthe \"pair.\"\n\nYet blindness of this sort would seem to be more an indication of\n\"chant caught\" behavior (even though we really don't know what \"chant\ncaught\" behavior is, exactly).  If this is the case, then those who\ncan see Sev and Agia are native to the time/space, and those who are\nblind are tourists \"gone native.\"  So Marie would be the tourist and\nthe other two the locals.\n\nHowever, this plays hell with all the shared memories of pre-Jungle\nlife between Robert and Marie.  (Unless someone is a pod-person who\nhas replaced an \"original,\" ala THE FIFTH HEAD OF CERBERUS, but that\nadds an additional complication which the jungle text doesn't really\nsupport . . . unless we consider the Domnina story [ch. 20] as one\nabout pod-people . . . ?)\n\nAnother angle: the theme of reincarnation is pretty strong in TBOTNS.\nAgia says that some people are strongly influenced by a biosphere,\nand when Severian lingers so long in the desert garden we get that\nsense of linkage between Sev and biblical lands--by way of\nreincarnation (he might not be Jesus but there is a sense that he was\nat least a contemporary of Jesus).  So, if we put these two notions\n(chant caught and reincarnation) together, we might guess that those\nwho become chant caught are reincarnates that have found the\nlandscape of a previous existence and feel at home there; which is\nchicken-and-egg stuff again (since it errodes the line between\ntourist and native).\n\n=mantis="
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}