{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/5755",
    "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": 5755,
    "subject": "Urth Digest, Vol 73, Issue 51",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2010-09-26T19:42:57+00:00",
    "last": "2010-09-26T19:42:57+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<AANLkTikrRi4fq=xxKZw900ZKCt19Ph6D2F0CxyQoeSsR@mail.gmail.com>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Andrew Mason",
        "address": "andrew.mason53 at googlemail.com"
      },
      "date": "2010-09-26T19:42:57+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Urth Digest, Vol 73, Issue 51",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "David Stockhoff wrote:\nAnother fantastical theory to explain this could be based on ?Dorcas having a basket (\"not small\nyet not large either\") with her as she mourns the boatman. Perhaps Severian impregnated her with\nhimself, and some time travel trick ensued."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "I think Dorcas's basket is meant to make you _think_ of babies, but if\nyou do the maths, it turns out it can't contain one. (Unless she has\nalready done a time travel act, jumping back just a few months from\nher child's birth -  but what would be the point of that?) If I\nremember rightly, the length of Severian's journey is still very vague\nat the time he sees Dorcas with the basket, and it's only later\nspecified that it has taken only a few months.\n\nIt does look, when we link this with the Mandragora's words and with\nthe fact that Frog and Fish were carried in a basket, that there is\nmeant to be some link between babies and baskets, but like you I don't\nknow what to make of it."
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "Also regarding the screaming baby memory, Severian says he remembers being \"encircled by brown walls\".\nI think the Matachin Tower cells have walls of gray. Typhon's room is circular but has shiny metal\nwalls."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Not only does the Matachin tower have grey walls, but Severian\nspecifically mentions this in his other infant memory, of\nbreastfeeding. Those brown walls mean something. (There is a boring\nsolution - that the memory is Thecla's, or, perhaps more plausibly,\nthe Old Autarch's - but I guess it's more complicated than that.)\n\nI agree that the Mandragora did not in fact ask specifically about\nSeverian being in a basket - it just made a comparison - but this\nsomehow stirred up Severian's memory."
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}