(urth) time and mirrors.

[Sonofwitz at butcherbaker.org]

On Nov 8, 2010, at 2:51 AM, Jeff Wilson <jwilson at io.com> wrote:

> On 11/7/2010 6:19 PM, Sonofwitz at butcherbaker.org wrote:
>> It seems Baldanders must have some knowlege of Severian. It's too coincidental that They cross paths and travel together performing a preview of their future. I guess that the Heirodules, working backwards, have given Baldander's enough info to get him in Severian's path.  He must know he's been set up when he see's them in the audience at the House Absolute.
> 
>> The multiple timeline thing doesn't gel much with me. I see this time model as an Amphisbaena that has a foreward and backward perspective. They can see Severian cutting through the time spiral enough to start meddling. The story only happens one way. All the time meddling creates the story as it always was, like any great story of prophesy.
> 
> I think you will need to chose one of these two theses. If there is one, inevitable timeline, no involvement is required to arrange a  meeting between Sev and Baldy, since there are no other possibilities and the agents of the all-seeing Tzadkiel would know it.
> 
> But it may be that there are but two outcomes possible and the meddling strengthens one while weakening the other.
> After reviewing Mantiss' bear and cat essay, I am inclined to think that this is the case, the bearish wintry Ragnorok future opposing the feline sultry Ushas one.
> 
> This may be the substance behind Lee's observations of time-traveling architecture; it's not sequentially bound with up and down, but polarized: the jungle hut is Ushas-y, while Valeria's court is Ragnorok-y. We can even bundle in the Hypogeums: they represent the protective wolf den which both shelters from the cold but isolates from the renewed prey of the returned spring; they cannot serve as a refuge forever and the Epitome must emerge to the final fate of Urth whichever it may be.


No no.
I'm not saying there is one innevitable timeline. 
I'm saying that all of the time meddling always happened because some powers have a reversed time perspective.
All of the meddling shapes the plot as it comes out.
I do not subscribe, whatsoever — though anyone may if they want — that each tinkering with time branches multiple universes off ad nauseum.

Mirrors in this book echo the Amphisbaena time theme. The reality is somehow what gels in the image the two make as they reflect upon each other.
Both perspectives of time are simultaneous. 
Possibilities and Will abound, but out of all the time potentialities, (and we know future knowlege of Ushas or Ragnaraok are potentials) eventually cancel each other out into the one actuality.

And, as an aside, I think the Hut in the Jungle is Earth-y, not Ushas-y.
The sand garden (?) where the smilodon roar and the thorn are Ushas-y, no?
~Witz