[extropy-chat] 10th Planet Discovered

[Amara Graps]

Eugene:
>http://www.hvgb.net/~sedna/story.html

>Sedna is a very significant figure in Inuit mythology. There are a number of
>different versions of the myth of Sedna. There are a number of
>different versions of the myth of Sedna. I will share with you the
>one I prefer.

Here's mine: (this one is a Sedna reborn from the depths)

Story:       THE SKELETON WOMAN
from the Intuit Eskimos

Every good story begins with "Once upon a time...", because that
signals to the listener to relax and open to another world.


Once upon a time ---

She had done something of which her father disapproved, although no
one any longer remembered what it was. But her father had dragged
her to the cliffs and thrown her over and into the sea. There, the
fish ate her flesh away and plucked out her eyes. As she lay under
the sea, her skeleton turned over and over in the currents.

One day a fisherman came fishing, well in truth, many came to this
bay once. But this fisherman had drifted far from his home place,
and did not know that the local fisherman stayed away, saying this
inlet was haunted.

The fisherman's hook drifted down through the water and caught, of
all places, in the bones of Skeleton Woman's rib cage. The fisherman
thought, "Oh, now I've really got a big one! Now I really have one!"
In his mind, he was thinking of how many people this great fish
would feed, how long it would last, how long he might be free from
the chore of hunting. And as he struggled with this great weight on
the end of the hook, the sea was stirred to a thrashing froth, and
his kayak bucked and shook, for she who was beneath struggled to
disentangle herself. And the more she struggled, the more she
tangled in the line. No matter what she did, she was inexorably
dragged upward, tugged up by the bones of her own ribs.

The hunter had turned to scoop up his net, so he did not see her
bald head rise above the waves, he did not see the little coral
creatures glinting in the orbs of her skull, he did not see the
crustaceans on her old ivory teeth. When he turned back with his
net, her entire body, such as it was, had come to the surface and
was hanging from the tip of his kayak by her long front teeth.

"Agh!" cried the man, and his heart fell into his knees, his eyes
hid in terror on the back of his head, and his ears blazed bright
red. "Agh!" he screamed, and knocked her off the prow with his oar
and began paddling like a demon toward the shoreline. And not
realizing she was tangled in his line, he was frightened all the
more for she appeared to stand upon her toes while chasing him all
the way to to shore. No matter which way he zigged his kayak, she
stayed right behind, and her breath rolled over the water in clouds
of steam, and her arms flailed out as though to snatch him down into
the depths.

"Aggggggghhhh!" he wailed as he ran aground. In one leap he was out
of his kayak, clutching his fishing stick and running, and the
coral-white corpse of Skeleton Woman, still snagged in the fishing
line, bumpety-bumped behind right after him. Over the rocks he ran,
and she followed. Over the frozen tundra he ran and she kept right
up. Over the meat laid out to dry he ran, cracking it to pieces as
his mukluks bore down.

Throughout it all she kept right up, in fact grabbed some of the
frozen fish as she was dragged behind. This she began to eat, for
she had not eaten in a long, long time. Finally, the man reached his
snowhouse and dove right into the tunnel, and on hands and knees
scrambled his way into the interior. Panting and sobbing he lay
there in the dark, his heart, a drum, a mighty drum. Safe at last,
oh so safe, yes safe, thank the Gods, Raven, yes thank Raven, yes
and all-bountiful Sedna, safe ... at ... last.

Imagine when he lit his whale oil lamp, there she/it lay in a tumble
upon his snow floor, one heel over her shoulder, one knee inside her
rib cage, one foot over her elbow. He could not say later what it
was, perhaps the firelight softened her features, or the fact that
he was a lonely man. But a feeling of some kindness came into his
breathing, and slowly he reached out his grimy hands and using words
softly like mother to child, he began to untangle her from the
fishing line.

"Oh, na, na, na." First he untangled the toes, then the ankles. "Oh,
na, na, na." On and on he worked into the night, until dressing her
in furs to keep her warm, Skelton Woman's bones were all in the
proper order that a human's bones should be.

He felt into his leather cuffs for his flint, and used some of his
hair to light a little more fire. He gazed at her from time to time
as he oiled the precious wood of his fishing stick and rewound the
gut line. And she in the furs uttered not a word- she did not dare-
lest this hunter take her out and throw her down to the rocks and
break her bones to pieces completely.

The man became drowsy, slid under his sleeping skins, and soon was
dreaming. And sometimes as humans sleep, you know, a tear escapes
from the dreamer's eye; we never know what sort of dream causes
this, but we know it is either a dream of sadness or longing. And
this is what happened to the man.

The Skeleton Woman saw the tear glisten in the firelight, and she
became suddenly soooo thirsty. She tinkled and clanked and crawled
over to the sleeping man and put her mouth to his tear. The single
tear was like a river and she drank and drank and drank until her
many-years-long thirst was satisfied.

While lying beside him, she reached inside the sleeping man and took
out his heart, the mighty drum. She sat and banged on both sides of
it: *Bom, Bomm! ... Bom, Bomm!*

As she drummed, she began to sing out "Flesh, flesh, flesh! Flesh,
flesh, flesh!" And the more she sang, the more her body filled out
with flesh. She sang for hair and good eyes and nice hands. She sang
the divide between her legs, and breasts long enough to wrap for
warmth, and all the things a woman needs.

And when she was all done, she also sang the sleeping man's clothes
off and crept into his bed with him, skin against skin. She returned
the great drum, his heart, to his body, and that is how they
awakened, wrapped one around the other, tangled from their night, in
another way now, a good and lasting way.

The people who cannot remember how she came to her first ill-fortune
say she and the fisherman went away and were consistently well-fed
by the creatures she had known in her life under the water. The
people say that it is true and that is all they know.

[The story is from _Women Who Run With the Wolves_ by Clarissa Estes,
a most remarkable book and a most remarkable storyteller. ]

----More of my favorites
http://www.amara.com/astories/stories.html
and
http://www.amara.com/apoetry/poetry.html

-- 

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Amara Graps, PhD          email: amara at amara.com
Computational Physics     vita:  ftp://ftp.amara.com/pub/resume.txt
Multiplex Answers         URL:   http://www.amara.com/
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"We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." --Anais Nin