Curiouser and Curiouser

From the text of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll:

"...we can see that tea-time is 6 o'clock. However, because the Hatter has upset Time, who is described as though it were a living person, it's ALWAYS 6 o'clock, and therefore always tea-time. 'And ever since that,' the Hatter went on in a mournful tone, 'he [Time] won't do a thing I ask! It's always six o'clock now.'"

Well, yesterday was certainly curious.

Again, thank you to those of you who wrote me kind words on CC and privately--it means a lot to me.

I'll try and post more ideas here on my blog or my Hot Spot blog--because I have many ideas recently...curious, fantastic, and amazing (and maybe crazy) ideas you won't want to miss. ;)

Okay, so let's talk about those wacky Viking Norns. Stick with me to the very end-- I promise this relates very closely to the chase!

From the Poetic Edda:

There stands an ash called Yggdrasil,
A mighty tree showered in white hail.
From there come the dews that fall in the valleys.
It stands evergreen above Urd’s Well.

From there come maidens, very wise,
Three from the lake that stands beneath the pole.
One is called Urd, another Verdandi,
Skuld the third; they carve into the tree
The lives and destinies of children.

The Norns were the three divine female beings of destiny. They lived quite happily in The Well of Urd (Urd/Destiny), carving the destinies of newborn children (and all things, for that matter) into the trunk of Yggdrasil.

Those three wise ladies had some awkward sounding names. The first was Urd, the deity that represented "what once was." Then there was Verdandi ("what is coming into being"), and Skuld ("what shall be").

I'm glad they didn't have to go to school, where all the Thors and Thoras and Svens and Haralds would push them down. However if Verdandi really looked like this artist's depiction of Verandi, I don't think her name would have mattered much:

That picture was interesting. It appears that tiny Pokemon things fly around Yggdrasil.

This is where you'll want to perk up your ears and listen.

The ancient Germanic peoples thought of time differently than we do. The Norns did not represent past, present, and future in a linear concept of time, but represented past, present, and necessity in a cyclical concept of time. Think of "ever drawing nigh" for a second...

The ancient Germanic language, like the English we use today, has no true future tense. The Well of Urd and Yggdrasil correspond to just two tenses: the past tense, which indicates something has happened and isn't still happening (or something has happened in the past and is still happening now) and the present tense, which indicates something is happening in the here and now.

Past tense: Thor destroyed the city of hate.
                  Thor has been listening to the whispers with casual interest.

Present tense: Thor is laughing at the puny humans right now.

To indicate something happening in time akin to, but not exactly, the future, we use verbs like "will be." Say, for example, "Your effort will be worth the cold."

Verbs like "will" and "shall" express a concept that's not exactly the future, but more like "intent," or "necessity." I call it "future-ish."

So, The Well of Urd represents that which has past and/or is currently still happening, and Yggdrasil represents that which is actively happening in the present.

The water of the magical well is very telling of how the Norse viewed time--as a cyclical, and possibly variable, continuum. The water springs up from the well to nourish Yggdrasil in life giving dew from the roots to the leaves. Then the dew slips from the leaves back into the well, completing the cycle and beginning again, ever and ever onward.

The Norse believed the present returns to the past, and from there, the past can reshape the present. They didn't believe in an unalterable fate, and yet they also didn't believe in absolute free will. Instead, the branches of their existence intertwined and melded somewhere between the two extremes.

So, how do the Norns fit into this complex cycle of time? Well, although the Norns carve every single thing's destiny into Yggdrasil's wood, the water which flows up from the well into the tree, represents a fluidity that gives every thing the power to alter, even just by a split-second pause in the flow, that destiny.  The dew that falls from the leaves influences the past, which in turn influences the future.

The Norns carved destinies with magic runes. This is the "elder futhark."

I think of the Norseman's view of time and destiny as the hours, minutes, and seconds etched into the face of a clock by the Norns, and the Norns have wound this clock, setting each hand (living thing) on it's destiny.

However, depending on how actively you participate in shaping your destiny, you have the ability to nudge those hands a little, altering the flow, or maybe just touching one of the hands so it pauses in it's track, thereby influencing the past as the hands slide by that etched number on its successive cycle, which influences the present by coming around just slightly different than the time before.

Does that make sense? It's a complex idea to grasp, especially since our modern view of time is very linear.

The analogy of the well being the past, the tree being the present, and the water that flows between them being a fluid dynamic with the ability to influence both is a pretty good way to imagine it, too.

So, the Norns represented destiny in an endless cycle of watering, growth, and potential change.

Now, here we are at the moment I promised at the beginning of this post. Looking at Forrest's poem, we can sense the magic cycle of the Norse concept of time.

First, we are in the point of view of some unknown enitity, who has gone alone somewhere. This places us squarely in the past. Then, in the very same sentence, this unknown entity or a different unknown entity "can keep" and "hint" in the present. The "melding" of past and present in this stanza is in-your-face curious, at the very least. 

The entire second stanza is present tense. Like a recipe, we begin something, and put something in. But unlike a recipe, in between the beginning and the putting in, we must take something out.

The first part of the third stanza is past tense--it has happened and is still happening--"it's no place for the meek, the end is ever drawing nigh;"

That curious semi-colon doesn't seem quite so mysterious now, does it? You can hopefully now see it signifies a shift in time--where the next line represents what the Norns helped the Norse to comprehend--that future-ish concept of necessity in time, the "will be."

"There'll be no paddle..."

The beginning of the fourth stanza shifts backward again, to the past. "If you've been wise and found the blaze,"

And again, the comma signifies a pause in the fluidity of time, and another shift is made to the present-- "Look quickly down,"

"Your quest to cease," indicates future-ish necessity, and "but tarry scant...take the chest and go..." shifts us again into the here and now present.

Feel like you're on a roller coaster, or in a time machine? Or the cray-cray clock from The Twilight Zone or Alice in Wonderland? Well, the ride's not over.

"So why is it..." -- the present... 

"that I must go and leave... for all to seek?" -- Future necessity...

"I already know..." -- the present...

"I've done it..." -- the past...

"now I'm weak." -- the present...

"hear me all and listen..." -- the present...

"effort will be..." -- the future-ish necessity...

"you are brave and in..." -- the present... or could possibly be future-ish necessity.

"I give you title..." -- the present. (Notice he doesn't say, "I will," or "I'll," which is the future-ish necessity, but purposely keeps it in the unmistakable present.)

So, after seeing the way Forrest has presented the poem, does it change the order of things? Yes, you must follow the clues consecutively, in order, but couldn't that mean in their order of time? The past, the present, the future-ish necessity. Remember, it's not messing with the poem to follow the clues in their proper order. Forrest has recently said no one has given him the clues "in order." Maybe because they weren't following Forrest's concept of time...

And speaking of time, I got up way too early to put these thoughts together, and probably didn't do a very good job of it. Now, it's time for me to get moving and by the time you've read this, I will be on my way to work. And tonight, Joe and I must be at James's.

See what I attempted there? :)







 
We have an end that is "ever drawing nigh," but never actually becoming the future. If the end is "ever drawing nigh," the future doesn't really exist, does it?

And if our effort "will be" worth the cold, that's not really the future, either, is it? It's the present with the verbs "will be" giving it a similarity to futurity, but is more like necessity. It "will be."

And then, at the end of the poem, we are standing fast in the present, because we "are" brave and in the wood.