[pre-script: predictions are not spoilers, unless they turn out to be right. so, quasi-spoiler maybe-warning?]

so i’m rereading the wheel of time series in rabid, salivating anticipation of the release of book the twelfth. some things are falling into place and my overactive imagination is reeling with the possibilities, the most interesting of which i shall detail for you:

• verin, you perfect enigma–my explanation for her bizarre behavior is that she has visited the twisted door ter’angreal in tear (fitting for her being brown ajah), and gotten some clue for victory from the aelfinn, and she’s working to bring it about; since she’s the only one with the answer, her behavior appears to the reader to be secretive or self-serving or contradictory. she’s good, just sneaky and duplicitous out of necessity. also, she is (as far as we know) the only one who knows where the horn of valere is (anyone remember the horn?), which may be the root cause of this. the saying it’s time to roll the dice, which she got from her father and which mat uses extensively, is what got me thinking on this path.
• elayne will be at the center of a big cease-fire between the seanchan, the borderlands, and the aiel (rand’s answer from the aelfinn). this is the explanation of elaida’s foretelling that the royal line of andor will be the key to victory in the last battle.
• siuan will feel the distinctive tingling that signifies moiraine’s channeling–that’s how she will learn that mat and gang have freed her from the tower of ghenjei. this latter will happen very soon (the story line will begin in book 12, i’m certain), though how soon siuan and moiraine hook up, who knows.
• also related to moiraine’s return: she gives thom the names of the aes sedai who gentled his nephew owyn, and one of them will be elaida. thom has a rich history of offing leaders who affront him in some way (taringail and galldrian), so it isn’t difficult to see where this one is going. the ‘one small thing’ moiraine knows about her future is that she and thom eventually marry–they will at the series’ end, i think. they have a son and name him owyn.
• slayer kills nynaeve in tel’aran’rhiod, and in an attempt to avenge her, lan fights and is also killed by slayer. either lan kills slayer also, or perrin does later.
• rand dies (everyone sees it coming), but it won’t be exactly death the way we all think of it. it’ll happen at shayol ghul fighting padan fain, and they’ll kill each other, and i like three scenarios for rand’s not-quite-death:

  1. he hangs out a while in tel’aran’rhiod, either because he has become bound to the horn, or by some other egwene/elayne/nynaeve dreamwalking voodoo. he’s called back later when mat sounds the horn.

  2. he actually dies, and in this option, it’s true physical death. death as the aelfinn see it might be fundamentally different; living in the ‘to live, you must die’ sense might mean his thread in the pattern still exists, and will later be reborn (just as he is lews therin reborn); or he’s healed by nynaeve and everyone is shocked because omg.

  3. there’s an interesting theme of threes with rand’s character–his actions fall into distinct ‘categories’ of rand al’thor, lews therin, and ‘the dragon’ persona–corresponding respectively to the naive shepherd, the formidable madman, and the balanced one rand needs to be. in this one, somehow just the rand al’thor and the lews therin partitions of rand’s existence die, but the part called the dragon survives long enough to travel to tar valon (recall the funeral bier viewing) to be healed and sent back into the fray. also: if this is what happens, min and aviendha will also die (they correspond to the rand and lews therin slices respectively)

  i’m currently thinking #3 is closest to how it’ll be, but i’m really shooting in the dark here.

• fain is bad. also, i think some of the forsaken may be loose.

this weekend the mates and i will be living off the land out of the trunk of a car, eating the food we caught bought ourselves, wearing clothes made of rawhide stitched by hand made in china.

happy anniversary of the start of a war! eighteenth century britain can suck it.

what did the iphone cost me? oh, not much. just some dollars, and the chin-scarf i got in greece. i could tell the wife wanted to do a little happy-dance around the ashes of my departed facial locks but bless her, she restrained herself.

[aside:
r.i.p.
beardface mk. ii
may 2009 - june 2009
we barely knew ye
]

we say things like it’s a small world without feeling their full meaning.

the world is small only in comparison with such things as the rest of the galaxy, which is itself only small in comparison with such things as the local supercluster. we’re to the point in our development as a thinking species where we can observe objects that emitted some bits of light near the beginning of the universe, and the light is only now reaching us. and light is fast, dig? if my calculations are correct it takes light approximately one year to go one light-year; do you know how long it would take you, even taking the entire journey at the fastest speed any human has ever gone? beyond the scope of supercluster one could take two, maybe three meaningful (however gargantuan) steps up, and half a dozen or more on the way down. we live near the bottom, and on the scale to which we are accustomed, the world is pointedly–almost arrogantly–large.

thank you for following so far; it’s important you understand where i’m coming from if you’re to understand where i’m going. it’s a matter of using the appropriate scale. though it’s not saying much, the difference between (1) the immensity and permanence of the rock we’re all floating on and (2) my own unimportance and brevity is more than the meat between my ears can process. and yet it is precisely this difference that made each bite of greek food, each sight of stacked ancient marble, each step taken on age-worn stone, each smile on the face of the girl i love–all so small when taken individually–so large when viewed through the lens of what i’m used to.

this is what i learned: we’re each so small, and each so temporary, but because of this each moment and every inch we have just becomes that much more meaningful. where we are, everything matters except you. you are exactly as self-important as you think you are; it is just your scale that is wrong.

i’m sorry, what was your question? … ‘how was greece?’

pretty frakking swell.

let this serve as an opening bookend to what will inevitably be several posts about the effing greece trip.

it is time for an unordered noun list.

• greek food!
• greek food. i mean, seriously
• ouzo?!
• inbred kittehs
• long hikes and almost-sunburns
• siestas
• ingenious monks
• culture, and history and stuff
• a healthy dose of perspective

ahem. w.r.t. this last. the world is enormous, beautiful, and full of everything. i just can’t even begin to explain the immensity of what i feel. it’s like this: take the biggest deepest breath you can, force the air in till your lungs hurt from it, and then in your utter engorgement imagine how much air there is left in the sky. the most you can contain is nearly enough to rupture you, and yet is absolutely nothing.

more soon.

today started yesterday at eighteen o’clock (going by the clock at home) in a bedbug-infested athens hostel, and didn’t end till just now.

there will be more later, obviously. for now i’m too tired even to

gone greeceing. be back maybe.