{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/whorl/1519", "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": "whorl", "thread": { "id": 1519, "subject": "Neighborly transmigration and other observations", "messages": 2, "voices": 2, "first": "2002-01-04T18:17:04+00:00", "last": "2002-01-04T19:49:09+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "maa32", "address": "maa32 at dana.ucc.nau.edu" }, "date": "2002-01-04T18:17:04+00:00", "subject": "Neighborly transmigration and other observations", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "In response to my theory that Horn is in Babbie, Nutria wrote" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "The rest of your post is interesting, and you may be right, but at present \nI'm more inclined to think this was" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": " a Neighbor calling to Horn as a \"baby.\" I don't see evidence that Horn \ncan \"transmigrate his soul\" in any\n way apart from Neighborly help. Maybe I'm forgetting something. \nDoesn't he only have such astral\n visitations and transportations when in contact with a Neighbor or a \nNeighborly artifact (such as an\n inhumu)?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Well, it seems to me that you answer your own objection, there. If a Neighbor \nis calling to him as Babbie, then he IS around a Neighbor or one of their \nartifacts, especially if he lays his head upon their knee. \nHow else can you read that whole part about the hus being more human than \nscylla in the astral part, and his special treatment of Hoof? Come on, admit \nthat I'm right, just this once. Remember the dream that Hide had of a doll \nsearching for him? he hides under a couch with eight (or ten) legs. There is \na two legged soul in the hus, and I'm pretty sure it is, by the end of the \nbook, Horn. Also, look at the prophecy of Marble: the last thing for Horn is \nriding a beast with three horns, after wealth and command. He had wealth and \ncommand in Gaon, then he winds up in Babbie. I really think it fits pretty \ngood, and I also think that Brother, Sister, and Cugino (cousin) are all \nsomehow related and somehow involved with the vanished people. Cousin cuts \nhis the narrator's staff out of a liana vine, and the vanished people are \nusually associated with trees. If you don't believe me, re-read chapter 17 of \nReturn to the Whorl (narrated by Hoof): He took me with him. Look at all this \ngreat evidence for all my theories in that chapter (I shall only quote from \nthat chapter now, I think it is a very important one):\n\non the ring that should be with Sinew unless Sinew (or Auk and Chenille) \nreturned to Blue with it and Oreb stole it:\n\"This was given me by a woman I called Seawrack.\"\n\"I held it up to my eye. The weather was cool and clear, the wind northeast. \n.. I noticed the limb of a tree floating upright to starboard. The leaves \nwere still silver and green, and the limb was so big it looked like a whole \ntree even though I would think there must have been a trunk floating the \nregular way since a floating tree does not stick up like that. There was \nsomebody sitting in one of the branches, and it was one of the Vanished \nPeople.\" The vanished people sit on those trees like the vines do.\nLater Hoof says, \"There must be a word for the time when we see something we \nhave seen before turn out to be something else, like when a stick is a snake \nwithout moving.\" The narrator's stick is one of those liana vines, and there \nis some kind of connection between the sentient vegetation on green and the \nvanished people. I am inclined to believe that the inhumi are descended from \nan engineered vegetation meant to adapt to its environment and assuming the \nqualities of animals as it fed from them, and people as it fed from them.\n\nAnd since I am quoting from that chapter, let's look at how Hide talks about \nLune (if you absolutely despise this Green as Lune of the future then you \nmight want to just stop reading my post here, because I am going to put a \nbunch of quotes together that you may or may not see any connection in, but I \nthink it's interesting. I myself, as I said, am just fooling with ideas and \ndon't take this particular assertion as seriously as I take the Horn as Babbie \none):\n\"Green came up, bigger and brighter than we ever see it on blue.\"\nHoof talks about making an anchor. An anchor keeps you in one place. When \nthey journey to the red sun whorl, they go from one boat to another, from \nshore to shore: the environment has to resemble the one they leave from, but \nthis is not the case in most of the other astral journeys that have occured.\nHe talks about how the difference between the Red Sun Whorl and Blue was \"in \nthe wind\" and the water, which had much more salt in it. He repeats several \ntimes that the water is much saltier on Urth. \"It was like our sea, and it \nwas not. If you wanted to look for what was the same, there was a lot. But \nif you wanted to look for what was different, there was a lot too. The smell \nwas different. The color was not the same, either, but it was hard to say \njust what was changed. That may have been the dark sky, mostly, and the \nstars. This sea knew night was cming, when everything would die. There was \nmore foam, and I think this Red Sun Sea had more salt in it.\"\nWhy does he keep saying it is more salty? We all know that if the polar ice \ncaps melted, the sea would rise and the salt would be diluted. If the sun's \ngravitational pull were increased, it could also disturb the orbit of Lune and \npull it out. The color would change with a rejuvanted sun. And that whole \nthing about Seawrack talking about a huge wall underwater is just bizarre. \nAll these changes can be eliminated by the coming of a new sun. \nIf we read the conclusion of the Book of the Short Sun in light of the \nimportance of communicating with the Red Sun Whorl Scylla to learn from Scylla \n(the mother)\nhow to get to Seawrack, I think it infuses something of the importance of \nkeeping an eye on Seawrack and the mother to the entire text. After they \nreturn to Blue, Hoof notes:\n\"Out on the water there were the stars and quite a bit of light from Green; \nfor nighttime it was really pretty bright, but there was sort of a shadow \nbetween the side and the water. Green was halfway up over to starboard. So \nto port there was this sadow, and I fel like she was down there, watching and \nlistening, adn she could make the bird talk for her when she wanted to.\" \nGreater Scylla is on the Short Sun whorl as well as on the Red Sun Whorl. On \nthe vanished people, Hoof has a very interesting thing to say while he \nconsiders Nessus:\n\"So it was all so big that when I looked at it, it was hard to breathe. \n...Finally I shut my eyes and would not look at it anymore. I had seen the \nway things really are, and I knew it. I knew that I was going to have to \nforget it as much as I could if I wanted to go onliving. After Father left I \nwas still curious about the Vanished People, and I asked a man I met one time \nabout them because he seemed like somebody who might know something. He said \nthere were things that we are not supposed to know. I think he was wrong, but \nright, too. I do not thik that there is anything about the Vanished People \nthat we should not know, just a whole lot that we do not. but the way things \nreally are is something that we cannot deal with. I had to shut my eyes, and \nif you had been there you would have had to shur yours, too.\" What do the \nVanished People have to do with the soon to be submerged city of Nessus? And \nhere are all my time references: In on Blue's Water, the mother sings a song \nof time. In In Green's Jungles, the narrator says his astral travel is a \ndream in his mind. In Return to the whorl the narrator says the only way to \ngo back in time is through dreams. Hoof observes \"It's been three hundred \nyears.\" Father says, \"It's been much longer than that\" (of course I am aware \nof the light speed time distortion)\nand in Chapter 19 in Return to the Whorl Hoof says \"Father stopped talking, \nand it seemed to me that he had stopped a long time ago someplace a long way \nfrom where I was.\" There are a lot of clues that suggest that Blue and Green \nare the same, including blatantly calling Lune Green and that fact about a \nhuge wall of the vanished people, who are also called \"The people of that \nTown\". Why can't we handle the truth about the vanished people, as Hoof puts \nit? Is it something about ourselves (humanity, in any case)? I really don't \ncare so much about this Blue/Green \\Ushas/Lune thing at all, but I do care \nabout the big symbols: the wind, vines and the narrators staff that might walk \nand talk, and the fate of Horn's soul --> re-read chapter 17 and 19 of Return \nto the Whorl, and you must face up to the fact that Horn is in Babbie." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "James Jordan", "address": "jbjordan4 at home.com" }, "date": "2002-01-04T19:49:09+00:00", "subject": "Re: (whorl) Neighborly transmigration and other observations", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "At 11:17 AM 1/4/2002 -0700, you wrote:\nWell, it seems to me that you answer your own objection, there. If a \nNeighbor\nis calling to him as Babbie, then he IS around a Neighbor or one of their\nartifacts, especially if he lays his head upon their knee." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Good point." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "How else can you read that whole part about the hus being more human than\nscylla in the astral part, and his special treatment of Hoof? Come on, admit\nthat I'm right, just this once." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "No problem. You may well be." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": " Remember the dream that Hide had of a doll\nsearching for him? he hides under a couch with eight (or ten) legs. There is\na two legged soul in the hus, and I'm pretty sure it is, by the end of the\nbook, Horn. Also, look at the prophecy of Marble: the last thing for Horn is\nriding a beast with three horns, after wealth and command. He had wealth and\ncommand in Gaon, then he winds up in Babbie." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Good point. The 3-horn business comes after the rule. Now, am I \nunderstanding you right? Are you saying that Horn's spirit first goes into \nSilk's body, and then when Silk is revived by Severian, Horn enters \nBabbie's body? That's an intriguing thesis. I'd like to hear from some of \nthe others on this list, who have devoted more attention to the problem of \nwho the Narrator is at various points.\n Now, rather than repost all of your interesting missive, let me \nask this: Are you suggesting that the Green Man who meets Severian might be \na Neighbor from Ushas? From what you wrote, I gather you are suggesting \nsomething like this:\n\n1. Urth becomes Ushas.\n2. Intelligent plants, perhaps \"descended\" from humans, take over Ushas as \nNeighbors/Green Men.\n3. Neighbors create inhumi on Green/Lune.\n4. Much later, they transcend Ushas and \"move on.\"\n5. The Whorl arrives back at Ushas/Lune (Blue/Green), perhaps a million \nyears later (because I don't see how all the above could have happened in \n1000 years).\n\n I'm not trying to be funny, just trying to figure out what your \nthesis is. Perhaps you can unpack it. (BTW, I find your investigations very \nstimulating.)\n\nNutria\n\n " } ] } ] }