Fish and Caves

Lee Berman · 23 Dec 2010, 22:07 · from 2010-December.txt.gz

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From: severiansola at hotmail.com (Lee Berman)
Date: Thu, 23 Dec 2010 17:07:46 -0500
Subject: (urth) Fish and Caves
Message-ID: <SNT123-W5340DBBCFB426EDCECE9B1CF1C0 at phx.gbl>

>Gerry Quinn: But he's speaking to people who have all just seen Monster Scylla on Urth. 
>So it's not so clear...he probably means the Mother rather than Monster Scylla.  Still, 
>there is a possible ambiguity there.

Not just possible it IS ambiguous. That is the point. WOlfe CAN'T be too clear in descriptions 
of god-like beings.If they were clear, they wouldn't be god-like. Is it really important to 
distinguish which giant being is which? These things reproduce asexually and have the capacity 
for interstellar travel. So it probably doesn't matter so much which is which.  The human 
conventions of distinct identity and distinct names may be something only we need, not they.

>I don't recall the female figure you mention, but as I've said I have only 
>read the Short Sun books once.

Horn is making some fish for Seawrack on the boat when:

>A new voice said, "Do not give it to her"  It seemed that the words issued from the sea itself.
>The top of the speaker's head broke the water, and she rose effortlessly until the oily swell 
>reached no higher than her waist. I can never forget that gradual facile ascension. Like the
>face of Kypris...it remains vivid today, the streaming form of a cowled woman robed in pulsing
>red, a woman three times my own stature at least..

>I knelt and bowed my head.  "Help my daughter into your boat"....Do not allow her to eat uncooked
>flesh or..do anything thqt your own women do not do.  I said, "Yes, Great Goddess".  etc. etc.

>More swiftly than she had risen, she slid beneath the swell. For a moment I glimpsed through the 
>water--or thought that I did--something huge and dark on which she stood.

Since we can't see this giant woman below the waist, I conclude she is budded and not really "standing".

>Gerry: Monster Scylla certainly has or can produces attached figures (feignings?), 
>as seen on their astral visit to Urth.  The ancestry of the undines is still not entirely certain.  
>You assert they are detached parts of some sea monster, and it seems logical given that Monster Scylla 
>seems to be budding, but there is no proof of it.

Gerry, are you suggesting that Great Scylla has these waves and waves of budded human female extensions 
in black hooded robes (abayas) for no reason. They won't detach and become undines, they will just sort 
of wave around in the ocean without purpose? Even I can admit that seems unlikely.

Wolfe is simply not going to hand you the mathematical "proof" on a silver platter. His mysteries
have multiple variables to solve simultaneously. You don't ever see a budded undine detach from Abaia or
Scylla or The Mother to become its own entity. Right. But you DO see a budded appendage break off and 
become an independent being with Tzadkiel. She (Tzadkiel) explains the process by comparing it to the 
budding of sponges. SEA CREATURES.(fishy things) If you can't add these clues together, then I think you 
might want to consider ending your quest. Wolfe will not ever make it easier to understand than that.

I hate to speak condescendingly but I don't know how else to say it. To understand Wolfe you have to stop
shrinking away from ambiguity and embrace it. You will never, ever get your "proof". And the reason he writes
this way (aside from being so frickin' smart) is that he is religious. He is pointing readers toward the path 
of having faith in that which you can only understand intuitively, not logically. In a word, God.

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