re: Rivers

hey Caion how you know what the hell a river is, and why does samudra have so many metaphors utilizing them

Honestly, that’s a very good question and one I’ve been thinking about ever since a conversation with, I think it was Wolf, about him having had words / concepts for the Sea despite Almachadta not having one.

The “River Without Water” is an important concept in Academy culture, and I remember being -told- what a river was - being told to imagine a vast amount of water in a channel conforming to terrain. I know we’ve made models of rivers on sand tables in the Academy. We have a theoretical understanding of what they are, and how they work - but none of us have ever actually seen one with our eyes, and yet it’s still a fundamental metaphorical / symbolic structure we invoke – well. I’m invoking it every day now, I didn’t used to before, and I’m finding it coming easier to me every single time, it’s strange.

The River Without Water is an idealised way of thinking about… both knowledge and also the passage of time. We’re all floating in it - it’s made out of our collective understanding and effort. It’s flowing from what are, to our perspectives, an unknowable past and to an unknowable future - but if you were standing on the riverbank, or flying overhead, your perspective would be entirely different…

…is that a little bit like what it’s like to be you, I wonder?

aaah, yeah I think that makes sense.

Hmm. right now, kinda, I guess? You know, it’s kinda funny, we had a saying back home… well, I say that but I’m not sure I ever actually heard anyone say it before, but it goes something like - Time flows like a river, and history repeats - and after that last study session you all had I can’t really help but think about it. Probably doesn’t mean anything, but it’s funny to think about.

…Also if I had to hazard a guess, it’s probably degrees of pre-sundered knowledge? Like. Language is fucking weird right? Sometimes you just keep using turns of phrases or saying things even if they don’t carry the same literal meaning anymore. Or even become completely separate from it. So you guys talking about rivers has gotta be something along those lines right? Which is still, also, kind of strange to think about. Kinda makes you wonder what other overt left overs are still lingering about.

Well, it certainly seems… like it has some serious resonance with both Samudran culture and the general structure of what’s been happening with the worlds, hm. Different scholars often converge on the same physical metaphors for the same concepts, and then we get to have arguments about whether that is saying anything valuable and true about the reality underlying everyone’s model, or the culture both scholars came up on, or &c. &c…

Which is to say, yeah, language is fucking weird.

I can’t believe you people have me using your delightful profanity, speaking of coming to terms with an adjustment in my vocabulary alarmingly quickly. Now I have to be careful in the middle of Important Academy Meetings or I will have to engage in a 3-hour digression about what the word ‘fuck’ means, it’s utterly untenable.

3h for samudra nerds seems pretty light for covering the entire ass breadth of usage form fuck can have, at least??? but yeah, point.

oh speaking of profanity, I noticed no one in samudra ever made mentions to a Goddess or God, or even gods more generally. is that not really a thing there?

It’s a brilliant word, honestly. It can fill in basically any spot in a sentence and its meaning is utterly polymorphic with respect to its usage! I don’t know how we ever got on without it.

As for God or gods, I don’t think we’ve ever had anything like that here. I’ve talked to Salme a bit about what things were like in Almachadta but… no, nothing. I think there are some towers that have established some pretty idiosyncratic small-scale belief systems of their own, and I guess… in a way the Irós are devotees of the Sea itself, in a manner of speaking? I wouldn’t want to speak for them in that regard, but I think I’m right.