a relatively quiet weekend. my roommate is back from vacation, so i’m back to spending time behind a closed door. i know he mans well, but i also know he either didn’t understand or didn’t believe me when i said i have a need of quiet.
it may well be that my preference at home has ruined me for living with others. it seems the only time it has been otherwise was when i was raising my daughter or living with a partner.
anyway.
i just finished reading a rather amazing series by jaqueline carey, the kushiel triology. if you read here much, you know i have a tendency to see meaning all over the place. usually, it deals with self-identification or some mirror of thought or perspective. i usually find them in my reading as well, of course.
it was no different this time. a line in particular, in which the main character and a priest of her order are speaking about the peculiarity that has her being the only one of her kind in many generations and he tells her why this is so.
‘her kind’ being called within the book by turns ‘anguissette’, ‘painbearer’, and ‘kushiel’s chosen’. all of which are reference to her ability and willingness to endure torment and horrors that they not land upon others. this is only half the ‘meaning’ of the terms, the other being her psychological predilection for denial and in some cases, pain, for pleasure.
it’s a damn finely written series. i highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys intrigue, philosophy, politics, and adventure.
the line that has stuck with me went as follows:
“Throughout the history of Terre d’Ange, there surface tales of anguissettes. The lineage of Elua’s Companions carry dangerous gifts, and none moreso than Kushiel’s. To impart suffering without compassion is an abomination…” He raised his eyes skyward. “It is an abomination. Thence the need for an anguissette to balance the scales. To endure suffering untold, with infinite compassion.”
I found it interesting for many reasons, not the least of which is that the heroine in question was not one who ‘dealt suffering’ but who always seemed to be on the receiving end of it. The mythos of the series had each scion of the pantheon in question served by a guild or house in which the traits most associated with the deity in question was revered.
kushiel, it was set forth, was the punisher of gods and, when their deeds brought horror and unrest into the world, he would send his chosen to bear them and either set them to rights or bear the weight of them from the world upon their passing.
as i said, a deftly woven tale stock full of the deeper myths and well done by all of them.
so then, three books of four devoured in this 24 hour period. one remains. heh. whenever i bury myself in reading, i always wind up with a sense of hyper-reality when i lift my head from it. part and parcel of too active an imagination, i’m sure. that and an overt willingness to take the skeins of fantasy and prose and lay them alongside “reality” to find parallels and lessons where possible.
i think i admire the fiction writers most of all for how they speak in ways that allow otherwise heavy thoughts to be born under light of day. it’s always easier to endure the fanciful notion of mythic meaning than the boulder-like thought that there is none to be had.
i think perhaps i am a throw-back in this fashion. old blood running slower here, and a willingness to remember ancient days when humans thought the wind and animals and things of the world spoke to them or held helpful lessons for the learning and those things for which no explanation could be had were, of course, the workings of gods.
not too long ago, i read a medical paper in which it was theorized that what those early humans thought were the ‘voice of god’ were in fact the thoughts of the right brain. that the link between the hemispheres was far less developed and because of this, perception was rather bifurcated.
it intrigued me. still does, to a degree. i often read papers relating to schizophrenic behavior in particular, as there are a number of researcher’s who now hold some episode’s of it are caused by a deformity or neurological issue in this bicameral linkage (corpus collosum).
meh. i do not much write of these things. they rarely interest anyone but myself. suffice to say, i tend toward the conclusion that humans were a much happier race before they came to the belief that they were somehow entitled to dominate and domineer, and i thorough enjoy fiction in which our symbols of meaning and stories of our purpose are linked to being integral and intimately connected to the world around us.
this, of course, just one onion-skin layer of my own and ongoing struggle with issues relating to belonging, i suppose. but perhaps not only this.
a break here. i am thinking. i do think the world would be a better place if we put less emphasis upon our rules of territorialism, dominance, and personal power and a little more emphasis upon our ability to care, share, and coexist. i know i have written about it many, many times… the question of what the world would be like if all who said they wished to see it be different were to actually live in accord with that wish rather than set it aside the first time it became inconvenient or difficult.
the world is not, i fear, a place that lingers long or well upon its contradictions, to its detriment, i think.
someone asked me recently why i bothered to care. why it hurt me to see it in the world around me. why i spend so much time thinking about it or letting it get to me. i didn’t really have the right words to answer them. i don’t think it is a thing that will really fit into words. and i think, perhaps, if you can ask the question without guile, it may be that you cannot hear the answer, no matter how well given.
i sit here and struggle with that sentence, because i never like to think such things impossible.
but it reminds me of an exchange i had in a game a couple of years ago. back in the days when the guild was shattering, heath was busy using fleschettes upon my heart, and i was too snarled up in all of it to do more than struggle to balance it all.
among my acquaintances was this one who, in the real world, works as a military psychiatrist. they dealt with folks coming back from distance places who needed help to cope with the things they’d seen… or done. he enjoyed the roleplay and the game and particularly enjoyed the atmosphere and guild i’d created. he told me many times that i’d missed my calling. i remember how i used to laugh for it. much of our ‘debate’ on matters of ideology and psychology took place under the guise of roleplay, both as an intellectual exercise as well as a recreational one.
it was in this manner of environment he asked about the choice to have the entire guild and it’s ‘character’ be that of non-aggression and non-retaliatory nature. he, of course, posited that it was unnatural for people not to react and retaliate when affronted or injured. that it was an aspect of humanity that could not be overcome and it was a foolishness to try.
i asked him his thought on evolution. he began to opine and i stopped him. i asked him to define what it was. so he did. i then asked him to tell me how it was that a trait became part of the inherited set. so he did
he could see where i was headed and told me rather abruptly, “i’m not that enlightened yet. i know few who are.”
i replied, “i am not that enlightened yet, either… but one doesn’t become something without first making it part of themselves and refusing to let what is impede what may be.”
then, i asked him, “if there is a behavior or behaviors that you wish to see perpetuated in the world, does it make more sense to foster them in yourself and as well anywhere you may, or to sit back and say it is impossible to do so?”
heh. from that day on, the joke between us was that i should be an attorney.
heath. you know, i haven’t thought of him in some time. i cannot tell you the relief to be able to think or say or write that name without having all the things that used to crash down upon me arrive.
but i think it is an even greater relief to be able to think of him and smile for the things that once made me smile and have no need to do, say, or feel anything in relation to the rest of it.
i suppose i will end here. so far as this post goes, anyway. you know me, the thoughts will spin on a while yet.