eating trees

maa32 · 29 Mar 2002, 17:05 · from urth-v0203.mbox · original
This is the message as the crawl holds it, before anything here touched it. What the conversation shows has been through ingest: transfer encodings decoded, attachments dropped, quote markers repaired, and the archiver’s ? resolved into quotation marks and dashes. Those repairs are judgements and some of them are wrong, which is what this page is for. Email addresses are obscured here as they are everywhere else on the site, so it is before our repairs rather than byte for byte.
From: maa32 <maa32 at dana.ucc.nau.edu>
Subject: (urth) eating trees
Date: Fri, 29 Mar 2002 10:05:46 -0700
Message-ID: <urth-v0203-506 at digest.urth.net>
X-Urthmirror-Source: http://www.urth.net/urth/archives/v0203/506.txt.shtml
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

This is primarly for Blattid ( or whoever asked me about "sentience" in=20
conjunction with the trees).In response to proof that the trees eat things:=
 I=20
can't find it right now (my notes are not with me) but there is a scene in =
On=20
Blue's Water where Horn is talking about green and says that the trees eat=20
other trees, then he says the strangling female lianas are the scariest thi=
ngs=20
on Green.  It's in the first book.  I'll keep looking for the exact quote. =20
I'm sure some other people remember it.

The trees are in cahoots with Horn, and therefore empathize with his goal a=
nd=20
want to help him liberate Silk's psyche.  One of the scenes that argues=20
against Babbie being Horn is the Horn claims he is sentient:
"ONCE, when Seawrack and I were on the riverbank, I felt that there were th=
ree=20
of us .  ... after an hour or more of this uneasiness, I realized that the=20
third person I sensed was merely Babbie, whom I had by a species of mental=20
misstep ceased to consider an animal." SFBC BOTSS 79 Immediately after this=
,=20
Babbie comes tooling around:
"In half an hour [Babbie] was back, still swimming strongly but not making=20
anything like the progress he had earlier becuase he was pushing a SMALL TR=
EE=20
ahead of him , roots and all" ..."For a moment there I thought I saw somebo=
dy=20
... a face, very pale, down under the water.  It was probably a fish, reall=
y,=20
or just a piece of waterlogged wood." (80) The tree can be used to explain =
the=20
sentience of that the narrator senses - the tree is the other presence he=20
feels just that "ONCE":
In this same scene, the song of the mother starts, and he says" there was t=
hat=20
in it that sounded very far away indeed.  I have since that that the distan=
ce=20
was perhaps of time, that we heard a song on that warm, calm evening that w=
as=20
not merely hundreds but thousands of years old, sung as it had been sung wh=
en=20
the Short Sun of Blue was yet young, and floating to us across that lonely =
sea=20
with a pain of loss and longing that my poor words cannot express" (81).  T=
his=20
is the scene where we have Babbie as sentient, and a tree, roots and all,=20
shows up, and this transtemporal song starts playing.  All in one scene in=20
Chapter 5: The Thing on the Green Plain.  Indeed, at the end of the previou=
s=20
section, Horn makes a point of pointing out that there was a bunch of weed,=20
but absolutely no driftwood in the water.  In the next section he says:

"and yet it seemed irrational that so vast a quantity of vegetable matter=20
should go to waste. Pas, who built the Whorl, would have arranged things=20
better, I felt, litlle knowing that I would soon encounter one of the gods =
of=20
this whorl of Blue that we call ours in spite of the fact that it existed=20
whole ages before we did, and that it had been only a scant generation sinc=
e=20
we came to it." (82).  Vegetable matter is always on his mind.  All the tim=
e.

Horn also comments about ways of killing the inhumu in Chapter 4: the Tale =
of=20
Pajarocu, and he states that they decay very rapidly: "These people, like=20
people everywhere here, seem to fear than an inhumu  may live on even with =
its=20
head severed.  That is not the case, of course; but I cannot help wondering=20
how the superstition originated and became o widespread.  Certainly inhumi=20
have no bones as we understand them.  POSSIBLY their skeletons are cartilag=
e,=20
as those of some sea-creatures are.  On Green, Geier maintained that the=20
inhumi are akin to slugs and leeches.  No one, I believe, took him seriousl=
y;=20
yet it is certain that once dead they decay very quickly, though they are=20
difficult to kill and can survive for weeks and even months without the blo=
od=20
that is their ONLY food."(62) Doesn't this schema of the inhumu seem=20
derivative of a hardy vegetable system: survive wihtout all their limbs, ne=
ed=20
food every couple of months, may have a keratin cell wall, and decay very=20
quickly? Perhaps at one time the early inhumu could survive if you cut off=20
their heads: and plants can certainly do that if their upper extremities ar=
e=20
removed.  Another argument for low-g is that the inhumu have weak, weak leg=
s.=20
Which is why I see them as vines rather than the trees: those vines probabl=
y=20
don't have extensively branching or strong roots.
Leeches are like those liana vines; only animal rather than vegetable.

Also, Brother and Sister at the end of On Blue's Waters see the Vanished=20
people sometimes, and they talk about the vanished Gods, at which point the=20
narrator tells them about "the one" in the forest.  Read this next passage=20
carefully:
"Another halt, and this one must be for the night - a hollow among the root=
s=20
of (what I will say is) just such a tree as we had on Green.  It is what we=20
call a very big tree here, in other words." (222).  He knows about the god=20
there because he slept under it.

Later there is a scene in In Green's Jungles, Chapter 25: The God of Blue:
"I don't see how I would be harmed by knowing whoyour gods were, unless you=20
mena that it would be better for me to work it out for myself." (464).  The=
se=20
"gods" have previously been discussed in a purely Christian context - but t=
hey=20
are the trees who control everything going on (perhaps the agents of God, b=
ut=20
the trees none the less).

The narrative differences between On Blue's Waters and In Green's Jungles a=
re=20
obvious.  A shift to the present rather than the past as the primary tense=20
Silk writes in, a sudden shift into third person to describe his old=20
experiences on Green as a "tale", and a much, much, much more cheerful and=20
conservative outlook  on life and violence.  Horn was a violent man; Silk=20
really isn't.  You must recognize that the narrators of the two are almost=20
completely different; this is obvious from the end of ON Blue's waters wher=
e=20
Silk re-reads what Horn has written and says he starts talking about the=20
things he should have written more about: Hari-Mau's smile and other cheerf=
ul=20
details that Horn would never think of.  Also, this is where the narrator=20
claims "I should have lived my lives differently" and claims that he caught=20
the ball and one the game.  Clearly, Silk is in control now.  Part of Horn =
is=20
still there, but the majority of his essence has fled into Babbie because H=
orn=20
WANTS to.  He says goodbye to his family and the trees help him out.

I could pull out a million quotes that support where vegetable matter is=20
personified with human qualities, but over and over you could say that was=20
simply "symbolic" language.  Next time you read through the text, pay=20
attention to how vegetable matter is described.  It's quite consistent and=20
enlightening.
And you could say that all this psuedo-religion actually refers back to God=20
and his angels rather than the trees.  Now I have accounted for BAbbie's ea=
rly=20
humanity with the presence of a living tree: roots and all.  How many times=
 do=20
I have to set up scenarios in parallel?  Wolfe doesn't always include=20
exposition; he sets up an almost infinite series in a metonymic relationshi=
p=20
and you have to infer the paradigmatic conclusions to make sense of the tex=
t. =20
Of course, this brings in interpretive relativism: I may interpret all the=20
series in one way, you in another.  But I don't think you can argue against=20
the textual basis for the sentience of the trees, or their relationship to =
the=20
vanished people.  We don't see them spit out copies - that is my own infere=
nce=20
based on the importance of hybridization in the text - I am "applying" the=20
hybrids, just as someone could apply the color schema set up by Olivia when=20
she wraps her little coffin basket in a blue ribbon and you can infer that=20
Peacock is going to kill her because his name is associated with Blue.  It=20
doesn't directly say Peacock kills her - you have to put it together.

Marc Aramini



--=20
An unofficial mirror of a public mailing list · about & removal requests · download the archive · before the list · original archive at urth.net