(no subject)
Again I am overflowed with the odd corners of reality, courtesy of Teresa Nielsen Hayden, this time due to her footnotes in the Tor.com re-reading-with-commentary of the Sandman series.
Tonight's highlights: finding out that co-founder Jack Parsons of the Jet Propulsion Laboratories, where friends of my family have been known to work, was a colorful (to say the least) Satanist; and the connection between the Dead Marshes, that hell that Frodo and Sam traversed to get to Mordor, and trench warfare in World War I as Tolkien experienced it. Dead faces staring up from pools of filth? Yep, that fits with the parts of trench warfare they didn't mention in school.
There is so, so, so much about the world that I want to know and will never be able to. I want to know what archaic turns of phrase seemed opaque and mystical to the Old Testament-era people whose clear and obvious metaphors became our opaque and mystical formulas, and what older language those turns of phrase came from. I want to know if everyone everywhere at every time had available to them an opaque and mystical register in which to speak when they desired, or not. I want to know what it was like to be human but not have language yet, and what changed. And that's just one of hundreds of directions to look in.
Stopping before I get more prolix. Must be the prolix time of the month.
Tonight's highlights: finding out that co-founder Jack Parsons of the Jet Propulsion Laboratories, where friends of my family have been known to work, was a colorful (to say the least) Satanist; and the connection between the Dead Marshes, that hell that Frodo and Sam traversed to get to Mordor, and trench warfare in World War I as Tolkien experienced it. Dead faces staring up from pools of filth? Yep, that fits with the parts of trench warfare they didn't mention in school.
There is so, so, so much about the world that I want to know and will never be able to. I want to know what archaic turns of phrase seemed opaque and mystical to the Old Testament-era people whose clear and obvious metaphors became our opaque and mystical formulas, and what older language those turns of phrase came from. I want to know if everyone everywhere at every time had available to them an opaque and mystical register in which to speak when they desired, or not. I want to know what it was like to be human but not have language yet, and what changed. And that's just one of hundreds of directions to look in.
Stopping before I get more prolix. Must be the prolix time of the month.