Nonsense (but no Nonsensibility)

[mrissa]

So here I am in the middle of chapter 32, and the backstory that has just been revealed makes no sense. It doesn't even make good nonsense. I can tweak it so that it does make sense, and so that the bits that relied on its general outline aren't changed, so it's not a total disaster, but apparently my ability to discern rational behavior went for a holiday somewhere in the middle of chapter 32. I only hope it's come back for the rest of the book, or it will be an even longer slog than I fear.

Nooooo sense! None! Yarg! The earliest I could have written this scene is 2001, and I was a comparatively rational adult, capable of making sense, in 2001! Whyyyyyy?

Ahem. Anyway. seagrit pointed out that I haven't explained the Sampo. I didn't want to put that in the poll about it as a title ("Here's what a Sampo is. Do you know what a Sampo is?"), but it's also not entirely clear. It gets described as a "magic mill" that "grinds" one third things to eat, one third things to use, and one third things to sell. As wshaffer pointed out, the end of the Sampo story is often told alone, as "Why the Sea Is Salt." What "a magic mill" actually meant in terms of physical appearance is not certain. It either had a lid or was related to a drum or other musical instrument with similar terminology to that for lid. It was "rooted in the stone." It's a freaky Finnish magical thing, and when they decide to make another one in my books (beginning in 1950), it will be a freaky Finnish magical thing involving thermionic technology. Vacuum tubes. A computing Sampo.

Elsewhere on the net, nineweaving asked about which archetypes we got dealt. I said, in part, that I have the Snow Queen, who sometimes shifts into the Ice Queen. I also have the Tinkerer, the Eccentric Genius (female), the Green Man, the Moon Maiden and Crone (but the Mother seems to have wandered off somewhere -- maybe I should look for her), and an entire suit worth of Lost Boys of various ages and genders. Also the Battering Ram, whose card shows a pointy-chinned female between the ages of 12 and 60 ready to charge. Also a very shaggy dog, but I hope that doesn't make them into shaggy dog stories.

I also have two whole books full of conscious archetypes and a bunch of concrete nouns wandering around a set of my short stories, but that didn't really seem to be what she was asking.

The gods I have are different. (And I should mention here that this is just who shows up in some of my stories; I am something approximating monotheistic, by my own definitions.) I have the entire Norse pantheon, including all nine daughters of Ran by name. But there are big gaps of Greeks missing: I have Persephone and Hades but not Demeter, Artemis but no Apollo, Hephaestus but no Aphrodite. I have all the -akkas from the Saami and also the Blood Man and the Birch Man. Anubis and Bast and Horus but not Ra. Hanuman and Saraswati but no Ganesha or Kali or Brahma or Indra. Somewhere I got the Dagda, which is good, but not the Morrigan, which is suboptimal (the lack of her/them is suboptimal, I mean, in stories).

I don't really know why my brain does this. Does your brain do this? Or anything like it?

Comments

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

My research didn't turn up the three-way split mentioned anywhere, so that's something new I've just learned. (My research also had to add -TV -DVD to the google string to get anything about Finnish mythology at all :-)).

It strikes me that a Sampo is pretty much what's called a cornucopia in current near-singularity SF; though probably much less controlable. Does that use of "mill" date to the early industrial revolution?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

No, this is more along the lines of a pepper mill or a mill for rock salt. Only much larger, apparently, or else not, depending on which story you pay attention to. (The "Why the Sea is Salt" simplification -- which leaves out the major motivations of the female characters, mostly! -- seems to assume a much smaller Sampo than the Kalevala passages.)

[apis-mellifera.livejournal.com]

I must confess, that whenever I hear about a Sampo I think of MST3K. Sampo!

Also. Been meaning to ask you--what is a good translation of the Kalevala? It's on my list of books I want to read in the near future.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I am irrationally attached to my elderly and battered Francis Peabody Magoun translation, which does not shy away from weirdness when it comes up in the original Finnish. You really need a Kalevala translation that says "milk from hell" and not "milk from far away." I don't remember which one Marymary had that didn't like the weirdness, but it was no good at all.

[apis-mellifera.livejournal.com]

Is this (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0674500105/) it? Weirdness is good. I like weirdness.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I sound my barbaric yep.

[apis-mellifera.livejournal.com]

Excellent. Added to wish list so I don't forget.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

Is that anything like the littlest Who from Horton, who hollered "Yop!" ?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I meant it more like Not-My-Uncle Walt, but Horton is good, too. Better, even.

[stillsostrange.livejournal.com]

I've heard the mill story, I think, though I can't remember if they called it a Sampo or not.

Are stories expected to make sense? Is so, I have a problem.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

They're at least supposed to know that they don't make sense, I think.

For some reason, I now have Robert Redford in his "Sneakers" role reciting some of my dialog in my head, like the bit where he's caught in the mathematician's office. I don't think, "Don't you see? We're just pawns in their sordid little game" is going to serve, although it's certainly accurate in this case....

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

I dreamt the other night that I was sleeping with the Dagda. (A version somewhat like his Julian May incarnation but a real god, not just a boozy old king). I have no idea why, and it's even a little weirder that at some points he was also simultaneously a guy I went to grade school with and haven't seen since high school. (I'm pretty sure I didn't go to school with any old gods. Well, farly sure.)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Not grade school, at least.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

Well, it would certainly explain Victor and his lectures on Indian mythology during English class. Though he was in grade school too - but I don't see why a god *wouldn't* manifest as grade-school-aged. There are a lot of perks.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

And come to think of it he'd have been Vishnu, not Dagda anyway.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Grade-school-aged, certainly, no problem. But at my grade school, no. The gods had clearly forsaken every bit of the Ralston Public School District. Even the mean ones.

College, now, that was different. Insert my standard line about pameladean's Tam Lin here.

[markgritter.livejournal.com]

You can't just go around showing your archetypes to everybody! They'll never bet into you that way.

[merriehaskell.livejournal.com]

*snicker*

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure that the way the gods show up in my stories are at all believable as a portrayal of religion as it exists in this world. Well -- you're in the middle of Dwarf's Blood Mead, you tell me!

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

This is not the sort of compliment I go around discarding, so of course I'll agree that it adds strength to my writing in all kinds of good ways! Thank you!

I think that fundamentally I believe I am part of something, of many somethings. I think this is a worldview difference along the lines of being an optimist or a pessimist by nature: something you can work around in various directions but can't really get rid of. I'm glad it's coming through in my books, though, because I do think my characters are part of different somethings, too.