The Lochage's Rant...

Jeff Wilson · 31 Aug 2010, 04:46 · from 2010-August.txt.gz

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From: jwilson at io.com (Jeff Wilson)
Date: Mon, 30 Aug 2010 23:46:25 -0500
Subject: (urth) The Lochage's Rant...
In-Reply-To: <A1E758CE-6ECF-4CF6-8F4B-B34C7E5D2592 at liftingfaces.com>
References: <A1E758CE-6ECF-4CF6-8F4B-B34C7E5D2592 at liftingfaces.com>
Message-ID: <4C7C8921.5060609 at io.com>

On 8/30/2010 9:31 PM, Ryan Dunn wrote:
> Hello All,
>
> I have had a hard time with a passage from Shadow... the rant the lochage gives to Severian in the bartizan. He is telling Severian how vast Nessus is, how all attempts to count them have failed, and so forth.
>
> But he describes the city in this passage, as follows:
>
> "The city grows and changes every night, like writing chalked on a wall. Houses are built in the streets by clever people who take up the cobbles in the dark and claim the ground - did you know that?"
>
> I think I understand the second part. I'm not sure what taking up the cobbles in the dark means exactly, but this has something to do with clever people claiming land as their own by stealing it in the dark? Anyhow...

If you google on "cobblestone street" you can see lots of streets, 
sidewalks, and plazas paved with a variety of cobblesstones from natural 
found rocks to shaped and polished stones to bricks, closely or loosely 
tesselated to form a durable, weather-proof surface for foot and 
vehicular traffic in these public areas.

"Clever people" can arrange for a party to clear an area of these stones 
and put up a quick-and-dirty shed in the place so that by the light of 
the next day, it looks like the place was never paved to start with and 
has been a private home all along. The cobbles are also worth money if 
they can be hauled to where new development is taking place.

> More importantly, what does he mean by the city changing every night? And how is writing chalked on a wall the right metaphor here. Is he saying there are so many people, that every day a line of buildings might appear, while another might crumble?

With multiple hand-made buildings per person, there are always 
opportunities to tear down here and reassemble there. I imagine it 
yields something like the the Brazilian favelas:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Favela

-- 
Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com
Computational Intelligence Laboratory - Texas A&M Texarkana
< http://www.tamut.edu/CIL >

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