{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/6535", "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": 6535, "subject": "short story 59: Melting", "messages": 5, "voices": 2, "first": "2014-04-24T20:41:24+00:00", "last": "2014-04-25T15:18:17+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "<1398372084.17133.YahooMailNeo@web121504.mail.ne1.yahoo.com>", "from": { "name": "Marc Aramini", "address": "marcaramini at yahoo.com" }, "date": "2014-04-24T20:41:24+00:00", "subject": "(urth) short story 59: Melting", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "“Melting” first appeared in 1974 in Orbit 15. Melting? is one of my favorite Gene Wolfe stories on the\nstrength of its marvelous last line: a dismissal of all but the irate ego,\npossibly threatening the reader with the dissipation the characters have just\nsuffered. \nSUMMARY:\nJohn Edwards attends “the best cocktail party in the world”\nin a penthouse apartment with a garden, ruins, and an airship moored to the building. There is wine and hashish. To his left is a\nBritish man he thinks looks like the military man Bagnold, and near him are an\never-auburn haired girl. There is another\ngirl on his right with constantly shifting hair. Across from him a Tibetan/Nepalese man seems\nto understand mystic powers such as kindling flames from nothing, which he\nprovides to a being from the Farther Stars, who in turn resembles a washing\nmachine. \nThey discuss the nature of the party; supposedly mankind’s\nmastery of time has allowed figures from the past and future to mingle here\nthrough temporal arresters, which can be used to return again after years have\npassed in real time. The girl with shifting\nhair tries to get John Edwards to sleep with her in the dark so that she can\nslip away for a decade or more into her time and return an old woman after\nlovers no longer want her.\nThe man from the Farther Stars says that many of them\nattending are tulpas, mental projections, and the Englishman identifies John\nEdwards as such. The Tibetan here describes the nature of tulpas, mind stuff\nthat never lived given flesh, and that the practice has been perverted by the\nwest. \nThe auburn hair girl is sick, and Edwards takes her to the\nlavatory. As she goes to vomit, a cock\ncrows unheard, and then the “people went out like candles in the wind.”\nShe says she loved him, or at least liked him, and she too\ndisappears. John Edwards ponders how\nmuch all these tulpas cost him, before waking in bed to the sounds of a washing\nmachine next door, old and gray. He\nswears that he will do it again, before he vanishes and a heretofore unseen\nnarrator’s/god’s voice proclaims, “I was tired of him, anyhow. (I’m getting\ntired of all of you.)?\nCOMMENTARY\nThere are at least three scenarios that are plausible to\nexplain these happenings, and we will look at them quickly before dealing with\nthe many cultural references and coming to a conclusion.” The last line can be read as a metafictional\none: all these characters are but marginal thought forms of the author for a\ntime given shape, and they now dissolve into nothing, but I prefer to think of\nthat final voice as a bit more supernatural and powerful one than, say, simply\nGene Wolfe playing a metafictional trick with representation and the written\nword.\nLet us look at the opening passage first: ??I am the sound a balloon makes falling into\nthe sky; the sweat of a lump of ice in a summer river.? Here we have something which momentarily has\na shape losing it as it is assimilated into the vastness of its element: that\nmelted ice joins the river as more water indistinguishable from the whole, that\nair trapped in the balloon is now a part of the air filling the atmosphere,\nassimilated completely. Spirit or thought\ngiven form can also return to its natural spiritual or mental source. A human only has temporary form before the\nanimating life force is gone in death.\nThe book that John Edwards can’t quite make out continues\nthe pattern from the opening poem: “I am the sound of an owl’s wings, the\nheartbeat of a banyan tree.” The owl is\nnotorious for having silent wings — what is nothingness? We will discuss the importance of the banyan\ntree to Buddhism and Hindu thought below.\nPOSSIBILITY 1: TEMPORAL ARREST THROUGH TECHNOLOGY\nThe Tibetan posits one explanation for the party : temporal\narresters through a machine “so subtle it is in a card contained.” One can attend the party, leave back to real\ntime, and come back after years of living to the moment of departure. While this is the SFnal explanation for what\nis going on, the ending of the story seems to tear this reading apart a bit,\nwhen the cock crows, the sun rises, and everyone disappears save John Edwards\nand the objects.\nThey each seem to have a time period, with the Englishman,\nthe Tibetan, and Joseph Bonaparte being from the past. The auburn haired girl says she was born\nunder Aquarius (Jan 20th-Feb 18th) and conceived over\nthe sign of the Pig and Whistle, an archetypal name for a tavern in England.\nUnder this reading, the Tibetan might have actually been pulled\nfrom his time because of his interesting or important status (is he the Dalai\nLama? Why the scars on his chest?) others for their beauty, or others by paying\na high cost (though the Tibetan does not indicate it is necessarily a monetary\ncost). “The man from the Farther Stars\ninsists that some of those in attendance are simply thoughtforms/tulpas, and\nthe Englishman identifies John Edwards as one of these, and the temporal arrest\nreading (pulling interesting characters from history now that ?Mankind’s\nmastery of the laws of Time makes it possible to ask the people of the past to\nparties”) does not explain the dualistic pseudo real nature of the physical\nobjects winking out after the rising of the sun.\nPOSSIBILITY 2: TULPAS FOR PROFIT\nThe man from the farther stars, who so resembles a washing\nmachine, remarks that “many are tulpas — at least ten percent” in a voice that “was\nwater dashing against stone”.?? A tulpa\nin Buddhism is a body made from mental will: a physical form conjured from\nthought. In Tibetan Buddhism it is\nconsidered a manifestation or thoughtform. \nAt first the Englishman stresses that John Edwards is merely\na tulpa because of his regular features. When everyone melts, John Edwards finds himself wondering how much all\nthose tulpas must have cost him. However,\nthe statements of the two girls indicate that perhaps John Edwards was\ngenerated for them: “But don’t you understand” I knew him when I was young. —\nthis from the girl with the ever changing hair, which is at first made up of caged\nbirds living but too small to be alive, then of braided coils, and then of a\nblond style which seems a bit too young for her. The auburn haired girl also indicates that she\n“loved” or ?liked? past tense — John Edwards, but is now too sick to ask for a\neven kiss.\nThe Tibetan says that “Certain lamas learn siddhis to flesh\nimages from mind stuff ? [the] same as ghosts, but never lived,” and that this\npractice has been stolen by the West. Siddhis are more or less magical powers cultivated through\nmeditation. They run the gamut from\npower to know the past, present, and future; infinite heaviness or lightness;\nunrestricted access to places; being free from bodily hunger; and even dying\nwhen one desires. \nThe perversions of the West could very well be for profit,\nand it seems that someone could very easily have funded this escape and\npopulated it with thoughtforms to make an excellent party.\nPOSSIBILITY 3: AN ILL, DYING MAN READING UP ON BUDDHISM\nHowever, in light of the conclusion and the constant\ndescription of the man from the Farther Stars as like a washing machine, the\nmost likely explanation for this party is the meditation of John Edwards in his\nold age, imagining being wanted by women he has known, populating his party\nwith interesting people (who the auburn haired girl describes as “terrible”). \nThe man from the Farther Stars, who is like a statue and a\nwashing machine, whose head moves rhythmically from side to side and whose\nvoice is water crashing against stone, also indicates that sunspots destroy\ntulpas, and that there are “always sunspots on the sun, sun-where”.?? Sunspots are related to solar flare activity\nand possibly variations in radiation emitted.\nAt the end, “the garden vanished, and the walls of the\napartment rushed in, growing dirty as they came”. In the apartment next door the washing\nmachine goes to its rinse cycle, repeating “sun-where, sun-where, sun-where —\nsunspots destroy tulpas”. This doesn’t\nseem to be the environs of a rich man, and the hair on the back of his arms has\nbecome gray with age. Earlier in the\nstory the younger version of John Edwards responds to the statement “You’ve all\nthe time in the world.” If you’ve got the\ncard, with “I don’t.” This negation\ncould just as well be towards having all the time in the world as to having the\ncard, and it seems unlikely that this poor man living in apartments small\nenough to hear the washing machine next door would have the funds to generate\nall the thought constructs for his garden party.\nThe auburn haired girl wants to kiss him, but she is too\nsick and ready to vomit — perhaps this is brought to John Edward’s conscious\nattention because he is extremely sick as well, and he can’t even remember “how\nold he really was.”\nIn addition, there is a point during which the Tibetan\nspeaks “half to the auburn-haired girl, half to the birdcage girl, totally to\nJohn Edward”, which would seem to indicate that they, with their attraction to\nthe idealized version of him, are simply mental projections/fantasies of\nJohn. The penthouse is identified as “someone’s\n(never mind whose)? and all in all it seems that the old John Edward’s readings\nhave conjured a fantasy of one last party before he melts into non-existence\nthrough death.\nThe book propped on his dresser seems a very philosophical\nor Buddhist text, and may have prompted the thought of the Tibetan holy\nman.” “I am the sound of an owl’s wing,\nthe heartbeat of a banyan tree” are both practically nonexistent. The banyan tree, because of its beginning as\na parasitic tree which envelops the host eventually, does have some religious\nsignificance. In Buddhism it symbolizes\nhow a temptation or sin can overcome human nature — in Hindu theology the\nmaterial world is a banyan tree with its roots upwards and its branches below,\nand Krishna identifies himself as the banyan tree in the Bhagavad Gita.\nI think it most likely that “Melting” represents the\nthoughts of an elderly sick man influenced by his philosophical reading and his\ncircumstances to populate his dreams with figures form his past, for the true\nform of temporal arrest is in memory. Soon his consciousness will be no more, and the party that he swears to “do”\nagain just a passing whimsy as he dissipates into that narrator’s voice, which\nimmediately turns to us.\nFURTHER ALLUSIONS:\nThere is a slight vibe of Moorcock’s Dancers at the End of Time, but those stories of decadent and\neternal partying at the end of everything are fairly contemporary to this work,\nstarting in 1972, to be considered as a definite influence.\nJOHN EDWARDS AND LORD HARRY (THE DEVIL)\nWhile the name “John Edwards” could be a multitude of\nliterary, political, or scholarly figures, I tend to think that ending invokes\nthe famous Johnathan Edwards, with his sermon “Sinners in the hands of an Angry\nGod” — the point is that God can at any time, at a whim, make the foot of the\nmighty slide, and that all men are ultimately loathesome to him like a spider,\nand that they can be cast into the pit save for arbitrary mercy. It appears as though John Edwards arbitrary\nmercy has run out at the end. John\nEdward’s final oath seems to me to reinforce this allusion:\n“By the Lord Harry — in a day or so — when I’m feeling\nbetter — I’m going to do that again.” He vanishes immediately after. Lord Harry is the devil — this final oath,\ninvoking the devil by another name, also indicates that our main character is\nvery sick, perhaps to the point of death. It is clear he isn’t feeling well, and the parasitic nature of the\nbanyan tree as well as the idea that the sun eradicates all these tulpas\ninvokes to my mind perhaps an illness brought on by exposure such as cancer.\nIt seems to me that time has run out, and the light of the sun\nhas snuffed out the old man’s life. Could he be dying of melanoma, sun spots on\nhis skin destroying him and symbolically melting him away?\nBAGNOLD AND THE LONG RANGE DESERT GROUP\nThe Englishman reminds Edwards of the innovative desert\ncommander-engineer Ralph Bagnold (1896-1990) who has several claims to fame: crossing\nthe Libyan desert, innovative WWII dessert raiding strategies, and even a\nscientific study on wind and dunes. The\nEnglishman’s actual experiences at the hotel Shepheard with a Belgian girl in\nCairo and under Edmund Allenby’s (1861-1936) Egyption Expeditionary Force\nprobably close to 1917 indicate that he isn’t actually Bagnold (but might be\nsomeone who eventually served on his staff or advised him, such as Archibald\nWavell). The German invasion the Belgian\ngirl’s memory evokes occurred in 1914-1916. The Englishman uses the French pejorative to describe Germans — Boche. \nNo doubt the engineering fame of Bagnold prompted Wolfe to\ninclude him in the story, and Bagnold’s studies of desert wind do resonate with\nthe people “going out like candles in the wind.”\nCONCLUSIONS:\nThe theological implication that human identity will one day\nvanish and melt into something else, like that ice cube which has temporary\nform and assimilates back into the river, equating life with the thought projection\nof the deity, seems the most likely explanation for what is going on here, but\nthat irritated “I’m getting tired of all of you” remains disturbing.\nRELATIONSHIPS TO OTHER WORKS:\nThe dying man’s fantasies hold a special place in Wolfe’s\nwork — his novel Peaceis constructed\naround just such a conceit, but this one, with the phantasmagorical approach to\nreality, really does remind me of “Cues” and “The Green Wall Said” or even “To\nThe Dark Tower Came” and “Three Fingers” in the somewhat illusory/hallucinatory\nnature of the solid and real." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Jeff Wilson", "address": "jwilson at clueland.com" }, "date": "2014-04-25T00:22:42+00:00", "subject": "(urth) short story 59: Melting", "in_reply_to": "<1398372084.17133.YahooMailNeo@web121504.mail.ne1.yahoo.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Thu, April 24, 2014 15:41, Marc Aramini wrote:\nCONCLUSIONS:\nThe theological implication that human identity will one day\nvanish and melt into something else, like that ice cube which has\ntemporary\nform and assimilates back into the river, equating life with the thought\nprojection\nof the deity, seems the most likely explanation for what is going on here,\nbut\nthat irritated “I’m getting tired of all of you” remains disturbing." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "The projection of the dying man's sensations onto the party's attendees\nmakes me think it is some kind of nested reincarnation, and the \"tired of\nhim\" voice is his atman remarking on a lengthy enfleshment, and \"tired of\nall of you\" suggests to me that the dying man is the atman's tulpa, as\nperhaps other people may be; I seem to recall it is \"allowed\" for one\nperson to be reincarnated as multiple people." }, { "kind": "sig", "depth": 0, "text": "Jeff Wilson - < jwilson at clueland.com >\nA&M Texarkana Computational Intelligence Lab\n< http://www.tamut.edu/cil >" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Marc Aramini", "address": "marcaramini at yahoo.com" }, "date": "2014-04-25T00:30:49+00:00", "subject": "(urth) short story 59: Melting", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "His final oath by \"lord Harry\" (the devil) and the name John Edwards and the sinners in the hands of an angry god connection, though, makes me think those final words are more like an irate deity whose thoughts are reality as in Dante's model of creation, stricken with an arbitrary weariness of holding the man as \"real\" in his thoughts any longer.\n\nCertainly though the sound of a balloon falling into air and ice melting into the sea would fit with a logos/world spirit/atman kind of return.\n\n\nSent from my iPhone" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Apr 24, 2014, at 5:22 PM, \"Jeff Wilson\" wrote:\n\nOn Thu, April 24, 2014 15:41, Marc Aramini wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "CONCLUSIONS:\nThe theological implication that human identity will one day\nvanish and melt into something else, like that ice cube which has\ntemporary\nform and assimilates back into the river, equating life with the thought\nprojection\nof the deity, seems the most likely explanation for what is going on here,\nbut\nthat irritated “I’m getting tired of all of you” remains disturbing." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "The projection of the dying man's sensations onto the party's attendees\nmakes me think it is some kind of nested reincarnation, and the \"tired of\nhim\" voice is his atman remarking on a lengthy enfleshment, and \"tired of\nall of you\" suggests to me that the dying man is the atman's tulpa, as\nperhaps other people may be; I seem to recall it is \"allowed\" for one\nperson to be reincarnated as multiple people.\n\n\n-- \nJeff Wilson - < jwilson at clueland.com >\nA&M Texarkana Computational Intelligence Lab\n< http://www.tamut.edu/cil >\n\n_______________________________________________" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Jeff Wilson", "address": "jwilson at clueland.com" }, "date": "2014-04-25T15:18:16+00:00", "subject": "(urth) short story 59: Melting", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Thu, April 24, 2014 19:30, Marc Aramini wrote:\nHis final oath by \"lord Harry\" (the devil) and the name John Edwards and\nthe sinners in the hands of an angry god connection, though, makes me\nthink those final words are more like an irate deity whose thoughts are\nreality as in Dante's model of creation, stricken with an arbitrary\nweariness of holding the man as \"real\" in his thoughts any longer." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Yes, there is that approach ( I need to repost something of that nature here)\nwhere \"God's creature\" as Edwards calls Creation has no independent\nexistence any more than the image of my words can be independent of the\nmonitor you read them on. In this case, the Trinity can be considered the\natmans underlying created entities (and the Godhead the layer below them,\nperhaps).\n\nPerhaps \"Lord Harry\" is the hairy-armed man himself, and gives up the\nghost after his time bedeviling the human race is complete represented by\nthe union of all time and space. The trials of humanity thru the ages are\ncomplete and the tiresome Satan guise is dropped; the end of trials also\nmean the end of interesting opportunities for moral growth, and the static\nnature is also boring to the Creator.\n\nThis final dissolution of mortal identities would dovetail nicely with the\nfavored outcome of Buddhism as I understand it; individuals become\nenlightened dispelling the illusory \"self\" as their fundamentally\nconnected nature emerges, leaving only \"the\" atman behind.\n\nIt would then be an early example of GW's principle that false religions\nultimstely lead to true." }, { "kind": "sig", "depth": 0, "text": "Jeff Wilson - < jwilson at clueland.com >\nA&M Texarkana Computational Intelligence Lab\n< http://www.tamut.edu/cil >" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Jeff Wilson", "address": "jwilson at clueland.com" }, "date": "2014-04-25T15:18:17+00:00", "subject": "(urth) short story 59: Melting", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Thu, April 24, 2014 19:30, Marc Aramini wrote:\nHis final oath by \"lord Harry\" (the devil) and the name John Edwards and\nthe sinners in the hands of an angry god connection, though, makes me\nthink those final words are more like an irate deity whose thoughts are\nreality as in Dante's model of creation, stricken with an arbitrary\nweariness of holding the man as \"real\" in his thoughts any longer." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Yes, there is that approach ( I need to repost something of that nature here)\nwhere \"God's creature\" as Edwards calls Creation has no independent\nexistence any more than the image of my words can be independent of the\nmonitor you read them on. In this case, the Trinity can be considered the\natmans underlying created entities (and the Godhead the layer below them,\nperhaps).\n\nPerhaps \"Lord Harry\" is the hairy-armed man himself, and gives up the\nghost after his time bedeviling the human race is complete represented by\nthe union of all time and space. The trials of humanity thru the ages are\ncomplete and the tiresome Satan guise is dropped; the end of trials also\nmean the end of interesting opportunities for moral growth, and the static\nnature is also boring to the Creator.\n\nThis final dissolution of mortal identities would dovetail nicely with the\nfavored outcome of Buddhism as I understand it; individuals become\nenlightened dispelling the illusory \"self\" as their fundamentally\nconnected nature emerges, leaving only \"the\" atman behind.\n\nIt would then be an early example of GW's principle that false religions\nultimstely lead to true." }, { "kind": "sig", "depth": 0, "text": "Jeff Wilson - < jwilson at clueland.com >\nA&M Texarkana Computational Intelligence Lab\n< http://www.tamut.edu/cil >" } ] } ] }