From: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org (stillpt-digest) To: stillpt-digest@smoe.org Subject: stillpt-digest V2 #121 Reply-To: stillpt@smoe.org Sender: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk stillpt-digest Wednesday, May 31 2000 Volume 02 : Number 121 Today's Subjects: ----------------- b/I Walk ["Donald G. Keller" ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 30 May 2000 07:50:08 -0400 (EDT) From: "Donald G. Keller" Subject: b/I Walk TARA: [for 1st Slayer]: The Slayer does not walk in this world. BUFFY: I walk. I talk. I shop, I sneeze. I'm going to be a fireman when the floods roll back. There's trees in the desert since you moved out, and I don't sleep on a bed of bones. The second or third time through "Restless," I was struck by that stark sentence of Buffy's, "I walk." I'd heard that line before. Just like that, a two-word statement, and the context had a very similar numinosity. But what in the world was it? Couldn't remember, and it drove me crazy for 24 hours. Yesterday evening, while I was dozing on the train, my unconscious finally deigned to spit it out. It's from Greer Gilman's =Moonwise=, and it =is= the same context. It's from the second section, "Darkfast," p. 50, and concerns the mythological origin of the action of the story, the conflict between light of moon and dark of moon, between summer and winter (and other fundamental symbolic oppositions: they are also a stone and a thorn-tree, death and life), between shadows/doubles of one another. I.e. it's =the same moment=. Here's the dialogue in question (which may not make much sense out of context: it's the most difficult part of the book, I think): Has turned, said wind in thorn. I blow, I bear. And I did hunt. And I will in turn, turn stone. Time is. I call you. ... No, the witch said. Time is not. Will you not dance? I walk. Keep hallows, and your cage of thorn: I go by Law. And I by light. Will you not turn? Have bound whatever turns and dies, forever, elsewhere. I am I. Unbound and shadowless. Do you not see my crown? Conscious influence? I doubt it. But a striking coincidence, in any case. This is an interim report; I'm working on a synopsis/analysis of "Restless," with results I hope to post Soon. Until then. ------------------------------ End of stillpt-digest V2 #121 *****************************