From the rigging of his yacht as it enters the bay, Terai Lohannaso experiences:
The Pey D'Or (scroll down) is in Kemper/Quimper. (See image.)
We read that food and rent have gone up but not wages, that the food-growers' association cannot keep out cheap grain from the South, that the city Ligues, the Trademaster and other damned officials should be scrapped, that people should sink or swim or cooperate freely if they want to but with the right to opt out and that's how they do it in the Northwest Union. Strange new notions circulate.
We learn that languages have changed so much that sailors from the Northwest Union do not speak Angley.
The concluding paragraph displays several points of interest:
"'It became a memorable evening, though not one that anybody remembered clearly. A few did recall that toward the end, Ronica Birken leaped onto a table, beaker aloft, and shouted something about Orion rising. Mikli Karst was quick to hush her. Nobody knew what it signified. Foreigners had peculiar ways." (p. 121)
Try shouting, "Erinn go Brach!" in an English pub. (No one will understand - or someone might and object.)
Turning the page, we find that CHAPTER NINE returns us to Terai Lohannaso and that is too big a change of scene and perspective for this time of night.
There are wheels within wheels here.
Worse and worse. Jovain is aghast that Iern might become the next Captain of Skyholm and the Domain:
Orion Shall Rise, CHAPTER EIGHT, 3.
Yes, we are told the truth about whether Jovain tried to kill Iern - and the answer does not cast a good light on Gaeanity.
Meanwhile, Jovain reflects:
"Bibulous, gluttunous, lecherous old Ucheny Mattas, he has direct experience of the Oneness of Life, over and over. In him it is an ecstasy; in others whom I have known it appears to be a total serenity; but always the seer transcends self. Meanwhile, those like Faylis and me stand wistfully inside the prison of ego." (p. 113)
It is a matter for Mattas whether he drinks alcohol and enjoys good food as it is a matter between him and certain women whether they and he have sex. However, if he is addicted to drunkenness, to overeating and to sexual activity, then he is not transcending self and is imprisoned in his ego.
Our impression of Gaeanity declines further.
Talence Donal Ferlay's sudden death reminded us of Psalm 90. At his funeral, the coffin slides past a door engraved with Psalm 23. Coffin and contents are laser-cremated and the ashes are ejected from Skyholm into the stratosphere, an appropriate apotheosis for an Aerogen.
We note every Biblical reference, numerous though they are. See here and here.
The seeress, Vanna:
"...had had an experience of Gaea that decided the whole meaning of her life..." (p. 104)
There are several ways to interpret that statement:
she experienced Gaea as described by Gaeans, assuming that that description is accurate;
she deluded herself;
she experienced oneness with her environment and interpreted this experience in terms of Gaeanity;
she began to approach God but, at this stage of her understanding, misunderstood God as "Gaea."
When, at University, a Theological student spoke of a person's "experience of God," I interpreted this to mean a person's experience of life, theistically interpreted. Experience plays a big part in religion but discussion of it is not straightforward.
Vanna Uangovna Kim, a Gaean priestess (?), guides and blesses an old man on his death bed. Do they practice "mediation" (p. 100) or meditation? Leaving the man smiling but unconscious, she advises his family, waiting in an outer room, that he will probably remain unconscious and definitely die soon.
A doctor said that about CS Lewis, then, after a clergyman had administered Last Rites, Lewis woke up and asked for a cup of tea! For an account of a post-mortem apparition of Lewis, see here.
I remember learning the difference between a fiction and a lie. Is there a third category: the yarn? A tall tale presented as a reminiscence but primarily intended to entertain? I was concerned when a teacher denounced a comic strip that I enjoyed reading as "Lies!" He was confounding my recently learnt distinction between lies (bad) and fictions (good). A child once asked me to confirm that a Wild West TV series was set so long ago that its characters would now be dead. She had it partly right. She understood that the drama was set a long time ago but I had to explain, in addition, that those were fictional characters. They had never existed in any case. In my second year at secondary school, I was amazed when a new pupil said that he did not believe that there was such a person as Superman! I had never thought that there was.
This is all relevant. In this chapter of Orion Shall Rise, the fiction contains a lie but whose? Iern alleges that Jovain tried to kill him but the latter denies it. Which of them is lying? Are we told later? I can't remember. If we are not, then who knows...?
In "The Hildebrand Rarity" by Ian Fleming, a man has been murdered either by his wife or by another man but James Bond cannot deduce which. So which of them did it? It matters to Bond because he cannot risk having a relationship with a woman capable of killing her husband but, having published an ambiguous text, even Fleming cannot tell us which of them did it. He could have written a sequel but he didn't...
"'I see a lot of funny doings and high living - wasteful, shameless - amongst the Clansfolk, 'specially the youngsters. Not like it used to be.'" (p. 92)
This has been said throughout history, no doubt.
Usman, a local Muslim entrepreneur, once told me that the younger generation do not have the same attitude. I replied that I was sixty-four (at the time) and that people had been saying that since I was four. However, I think that I did him an injustice. His generation had come to Britain, set up businesses and established themselves. The following generation, born and growing up here, were bound to have a different attitude.
Meanwhile, fiction reflects life. Things change also in the Maurai History. Many people are restless as:
"Change blew in on the winds from the sea, the winds in the sails of foreign ships." (ibid.)
