From the Narrow Desert: Europa

Showing posts with label Europa. Show all posts

Saturday, July 13, 2024

Europa again

Today I was once again trying to go to archive.org, but autocomplete sent me to archive.4plebs.org/x/random/ instead. The random post it served up was this:

Sunday, June 2, 2024

Just how far did Hinbad and Rinbad travel?

William Wright has persuaded me to take my recent nonsense poem “With?” more seriously than the spirit in which it was written. I mean, why not? Nonsense writing has long been recognized as a modality of inspiration.

Hinbad the Hailer traveled far

By riding in a yellow car.

I wrote this with no deeper thought in mind than that a “hailer” could be someone who hails a cab. Reading it now with my interpreter’s spectacles on, though, I can scarcely believe I wrote it without noticing a second meaning. Who traveled far in a yellow car? Who but Elijah, who ascended to heaven in a chariot of fire?

The j, pronounced as y in Hebrew, is not really a distinct sound from the adjoining i, which is why it is omitted in the Greek form of the name, Elias (which even begins with an H in Greek). Notice anything about the title Hailer? Try spelling it backwards.

Where does Hinbad the Hailer go? “Outside,” presumably, the same place Joan goes to make her snowball. Europa?

Hast thou entered into the treasures of the snow? or hast thou seen the treasures of the hail, which I have reserved against the time of trouble, against the day of battle and war? (Job 38:22-23)

There may also be a link to the One Mighty and Strong:

Behold, the Lord hath a mighty and strong one, which as a tempest of hail and a destroying storm, as a flood of mighty waters overflowing, shall cast down to the earth with the hand (Isa. 28:2).

The ice must flow! And doesn’t “cast down to the earth with the hand” sound like throwing a snowball?

If a Hailer takes a cab, a Railer must take a train, which was all I had in mind with the next couplet:

Rinbad the Railer, in a sleeper,

Traveled just as far, and cheaper.

Doesn’t that suggest someone who goes as far as Elijah, not in a spacecraft but simply by dreaming true? Perhaps a certain “Lucid Dreamer of Faery” whose middle initials were R. R. and who put his dreams in the mouth of a character called Ramer?

There are, it may be, so many kinds of voices in the world, and none of them is without signification.

Friday, May 17, 2024

The 96, the 48, and the white bull

In his May 15 post "Alpha and Omega, and the 144 or gross," William Wright writes that in Tolkien's writings there were originally 144 elves who were invited to Aman. Two-thirds (called the Eldar) accepted the invitation, while one-third (called the Avari) declined. (As the Babylon Bee recently complained, "every time a group of elves does something they get a new name!") Two-thirds of 144 is 96, a number which William goes on to discuss extensively. He doesn't mention the number 48, but that's how many Avari there would have been.

The number 48 is potentially interesting because of the recent emphasis on the word buy. ("'Come buy, come buy,' was still their cry.") In Simple English Gematria (S:E:G:) -- where you add up the value of a word by counting A as 1, B as 2, and so on -- we get these interesting equations:

buy = 2 + 21 + 25 = 48
sell = 19 + 5 + 12 + 12 = 48
trade = 20 + 18 + 1 + 4 + 5 = 48

I was thinking about this as I ate my lunch today. After lunch, I went to the place where I had parked my motorcycle, only to find that a big white SUV had parked me in. Motorcycles are maneuverable, and I was able to wriggle my way out, but it took some time and was annoying.

The thought popped into my head, "Parking you in was a good way to make sure you notice this particular car." Then I realized that I hadn't really processed the car at all beyond "white SUV," so I turned and looked at it:

I noticed the number 96 first and then the word bull. (The numeral 1 looks like a lowercase l -- so if you wanted to write "BULL 96" in ABC-1234 format, this is how you'd do it.) The moon Europa has been in the sync-stream of late, and what is the Europa of mythology best known for? Being carried away by a big white bull:

This event is commonly known as the Rape of Europa. Speaking of rape, after discovering the novella Europa Affair (about the moon, not the mythical figure), I checked its Amazon page. The top review gave it one star, citing "violence against women":

For William Wright, Europa has to do with Númenor, while the number 96 has reference to elves, so I'm not sure what to make of seeing them together on that SUV, but I note it for future reference.

Note added (May 18):

The YouTube algorithm served up this video, a commentary on the symbolism of Under the Silver Lake, a 2018 movie I'd never heard of:

In Under the Silver Lake, there's a scene with a white Volkswagen Rabbit, and the video emphasizes that this is a white rabbit, as in Alice or The Matrix:

Sam's whole journey begins after Sarah disappears by trying to find her following three girls literally driving around in a white Rabbit -- you know, a redhead, a blonde, and a brunette that drive a white convertible Rabbit, so he's following three women in a white Rabbit. He's following a white Rabbit.

This is conceptually very similar to my post above, where a white SUV with bull on its license plate represents the white bull of Greek myth.

Cracking eggs on Europa

I’ve just started reading Europa Affair by M. D. Thalmann, the novella mentioned in my recent post “The ice must flow!”

Keep in mind the synchronistic background here. William Wright had posted about Europa because of my own post about Humpty Dumpty staying on the wall and freezing. Eggs crack when they freeze, and Europa is a frozen moon covered with cracks. That was not my first post about Humpty Dumpty. On May 3, I had posted “Hometo Omleto” — that being the Esperanto name for Humpty Dumpty, literally “Manlet Omelette.” In a comment on that post, WanderingGondola quoted an old post of mine saying “Supergod can make omelettes without breaking eggs.”

Got that? Now on to Europa Affair.

The first reference to Europa is on p. 11. The main character so far, a cyborg named Marwick, is making a rather dangerous landing on that moon, thanks to his boss, Elliott. I quote the sentences immediately following the first instance of the name Europa:

Elliot had disabled the autopilot for this run so that Marwick could push the boat harder than safety regulations would tolerate.

“If you want to make an omelet…” Elliot had said.

Two pages later, Marwick suggests a way of improving the efficiency of his spaceship’s controls.

“Noted,” said Elliot, “That’s why we chose you.”

“I thought I was just broken eggs,”Marwick said . . . .

What are the odds that that particular saying would be referenced in the opening pages of a book I started reading for no other reason than that the cover said Europa Affair: The Ice Must Flow?

Thursday, May 16, 2024

The ice must flow!

Yesterday, William Wright posted "Can Pharazon repent? AND a frozen egg up high on a wall," which as I suppose you can tell by the title is largely in response to my poem about Humpty Dumpty, in which Humpty stays up on the wall all through the fall and then freezes when winter comes. Having previously connected Humpty with Ar-Pharazôn, the last king of Númenor in Tolkien's mythology, William suggests that Númenor might now be something like Europa, the ice-covered moon of Jupiter, and perhaps might even be Europa itself.

This dredged up some vague memory I had of once having read a sci-fi story set on Europa, which I tried in vain to track down. In the course of my search, though, I discovered this book which I'd never heard of:

It's called Europa Affair: The Ice Must Flow (2017). The subtitle is presumably a punning reference to "The spice must flow," the well-known catchphrase from David Lynch's 1984 Dune movie, but it also happens to be uncannily relevant to William's post.

In answering the question in his title, William suggests that Ar-Pharazôn's possible redemption might involve playing a role in "the restoration of Numenor, part of the 'highway' that will come out of the depths, as the wave that covers it is rolled back." This idea of a highway from the deep comes from one of the revelations of Joseph Smith. Here is the immediate context:

And they who are in the north countries shall come in remembrance before the Lord; and their prophets shall hear his voice, and shall no longer stay themselves; and they shall smite the rocks, and the ice shall flow down at their presence. And an highway shall be cast up in the midst of the great deep (D&C 133:26-27).

William didn't quote the part about the ice flowing, even though it seems relevant to his frozen-Númenor theory, but I found it just by searching for sci-fi novels with Europa in the title.