{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/whorl/752",
    "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": 752,
    "subject": "Digest whorl.v010.n068",
    "messages": 2,
    "voices": 2,
    "first": "2000-01-16T10:49:30+00:00",
    "last": "2000-01-16T20:29:20+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<whorl-v0010-0216@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Alice Turner",
        "address": "akt at attglobal.net"
      },
      "date": "2000-01-16T10:49:30+00:00",
      "subject": "(whorl) Re: Digest whorl.v010.n068",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "I still say that the secret (probably) is that when humans learn to live\nwith each other in love and charity (not enslaving one another, for\ninstance), the inhumi will follow suit, being imitators of humanity. That's\nwhy Quetzal is ambiguous, because he learned from Patera Pike. "
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "If that is the secret, I will eat my rat...er...hat.\n\n-alga\n\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun."
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "message_id": "<whorl-v0010-0217@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Josh Levitan",
        "address": "josh_levitan at hotmail.com"
      },
      "date": "2000-01-16T20:29:20+00:00",
      "subject": "(whorl) Re: Digest whorl.v010.n068",
      "in_reply_to": "<whorl-v0010-0216@digest.urth.net>",
      "reply_link": "subject",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "David Langford wrote:\nWhere does it say that Borges gives enough information? My reading of \"The\nSect of the Phoenix\" (also translated as \"The Cult of the Phoenix\") is\nthat it's a joke, practically a shaggy dog story, deliberately blurred by\nanti-information. Drop the teasing physical details about \"the cork and\nthe slime\", or push them sideways into metaphor, and ...\n\n[Does Borges need spoiler space on this list? Oh well:]"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Borges writes that there's enough info to figure it out in the prologue to \n\"Artifices,\" the second half of FICCIONES.  On page 105 of the new(er) Grove \nPress paperback -- \"In the allegory of the Phoenix, I imposed upon myself \nthe problem of hinting at an ordinary fact -- the Secret -- in a [sic] \nirresolute and gradual manner, which in the end, would prove to be \nunequivocal;  I do not know how fortunate I have been.\"\n\nBecause every other story in this collection is at least staggeringly \nwell-written, and some of them among the best I've ever read (like \"Tlon, \nUqbar, Orbis Tertius\"), I'm going to give Borges the benefit of the doubt \nhere and place the blame on my weak intellect."
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "... it does seem very much as though the Mystery Rite, which is despised,\ntrivial, not talked about, abstained from by the very virtuous, yet\nsomehow never dies out and may indeed have become instinctive, is\nordinary human sexual intercourse."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Actually, looking over the story again, that fits really nicely.  See, it IS \nmy own stupidity, not Borges' fault.  I just got thrown off by mentions of \nthe rite being performed with \"cork, wax, or gum arabic,\" or silt.  I don't \nreally see how cork, wax, gum arabic, and silt are metaphoric \nrepresentations of the sexual organs or the act.  Maybe I'm reading a crummy \ntranslation.  Is there any way that those things can be used in intercourse \n-- perhaps as primitive birth control or lubrication or something?  Or is \nBorges just throwing in red herrings?\n\nJosh, who still needs a Vironese name..."
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}