On dream travelers

Lee Berman · 12 Feb 2011, 08:14 · from 2011-February.txt.gz

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From: severiansola at hotmail.com (Lee Berman)
Date: Sat, 12 Feb 2011 03:14:18 -0500
Subject: (urth) On dream travelers
Message-ID: <SNT123-W2048240116F16E570F0FA2CFEE0 at phx.gbl>

>> Roy-
>> Not even from the perspective of other people are spirit travelers entirely
>> human; humans can't walk through locked metal doors like Jahlee did in the
>> Matachin tower, as I cited, and both Merryn and Severian saw her do it.

>James Wynn: That is irrelevant. Astral bodies have powers that corporal bodies do 
>not, that is true. However, astral bodies can be touched. There is no 
>indication that people touching them sensed something wrong.

This is an interesting debate. It reminds me of the debate last year with Tony Ellis
on whether Yesod is to be found forward or backward in time relative to Briah. The
evidence presented by both sides would make the answer appear to be "both".

That this is incomprehensible is a desired outcome by WOlfe. How else can he describe
something incomprehensible to the human mind except via such paradoxes? I think it 
must be the same with dream travelers. They are corporeal but somehow also incorporeal
and James and Roy are each focusing on one side of the coin (Roy to the exclusion that
there is another side to the coin, if I understand correctly).

We are shown the reverse of dream travel. That is, Horn encounters Neighbors who are
dream travelling. He is able to shake one's hand, notice stiff bristly arm hair....
yet somehow he is unable to count their limbs or even heads. Then the perception is reversed
when the troupe dream travels to Urth. Combining the experiences of being on both sides
of this process is all we have to understand it. But it is incomprehensible so we won't
be able to fully understand it, just like inter-universal travel.

I really think David Stockhoff's idea of Faerie is relevant (not restricting it to a Celtic
view; more of a combined multi-cultural view of similar phenomena). Can it be that demons and
angels (and/or mythological gods) exist in a sort of Faerie world or parallel plane to ours?
In legend, somehow they are able to have sex with humans, perhaps even bleed...yet they are
not fully, physically mortal either. Hard to imagine an angel wrestling with biblical Jacob
or demon having sex with a witch or Zeus raping Europa and also having a digestive system and 
going off to poop in the woods, eh?

Perhaps the idea of the Secret House is relevant here. A Secret Whorl? Could the Neighbor Whorl
be somehow in close parallel to Blue, almost built within it? Or perhaps a better way to describe
it would be that Blue and the Neighbor Whorl are adjacent branches on the timeline (Brook Madregot?).
So close that it is possible for certain elements of both whorls/worlds to co-mingle in certain
ways without being fully, physically present to each other.

Perhaps this is the key to Marc's ideas about Urth and Green. Not "the same" but so close on time
strands that...well....something like that. If WOlfe can't describe the indescribable, I certainly
can't.

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