SH Comments
Reged: Feb 16 2004
Posts: 1166
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This thread is for comments about The House Beyond Your Sky, by Benjamin Rosenbaum, illustration by Vladimir Vitkovsky
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Beautiful but difficult.
Glad SH published this.
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Aperion
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Excellent, really interesting piece. I think it helps some if your familiar with Heidegger.
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David Moles
Regular reader
Reged: Jan 07 2004
Posts: 65
Loc: Basel, Switzerland
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Reminds me a lot of "In the Late December."
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-- David
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BenjaminRosenbaum
New user
Reged: Mar 08 2004
Posts: 13
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Tell me more about the Heidigger, Aperion!
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BenjaminRosenbaum
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Reged: Mar 08 2004
Posts: 13
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> Reminds me a lot of "In the Late December."
Yep. Good point. I love "In The Late December".
Ben
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Aperion
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Well, your the author, am I right or way off base?
Your use of the word ontic, Heidegger's philosophy was a distinction between the ontic (real, physical, 'stuff') and the ontological. His study rests with the ontological, phenemonolgy, and Dasien as being which can have 'care' and question its own existence...it tends to get a little involved here. Pick up Heidegger's Basic Writings.
Your story, to me in some ways was a really interesting play between the ontic and ontological, as well they way you used your coined words. Unless you think I'm just really way off here...
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BenjaminRosenbaum
New user
Reged: Mar 08 2004
Posts: 13
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I suspect you're quite on base; the author, in my experience, is often the last to know what the story is about.
I haven't read much Heidigger, though I've picked some up in pop contexts. In this story, I was looking for a kind of "future physics" to characterize where Matthias's House is. I wanted it to evoke string theory -- branes and hidden dimensions -- but also to incorporate "new stuff we don't know about that". Taking my cue from the last pages of The Dispossesed, where Le Guin goes to philosophy for a similar trick, I decided on "ontotropes", which would be Greek for "something striving to be". Prowled around wikipedia to flesh this out. My sense is that "ontic" is "things as they are, beyond any person's knowing of them" and "ontological" is "things in terms of the nature of our knowledge of and existence with them".
I am just, magpie-like, decorating my nest with pretty things, some of which I am somewhat ignorant about.
So if you have an account of the story, as, say, an allegory of the relationship of the ontic and the ontological, and can tell me who represents what, I am eager to hear it, and will gladly take the credit (yeah, I meant to do that.. subconsciously...) :-)
Ben
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Leonid Korogodski
New user
Reged: Apr 14 2007
Posts: 1
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Hi,
May I ask a stupid question? Why does Matthias offer the keys to Geoffrey but refuses them to the pilgrim?
Leo
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BenjaminRosenbaum
New user
Reged: Mar 08 2004
Posts: 13
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Hi Leo
That's not a stupid question, it's a great question. Sorry I didn't see it earlier.
Matthias has known Goeffrey for a long time and trusts him. He wants to give the keys to the pilgrim, and he almost does, but he detects something off about the pilgrim (specifically about the relationship between the pilgrim and the internal subset of the pilgrim who is Matthias's 'mother'). He decides the pilgrim isn't trustworthy, which proves to be an accurate assessment.
Ben
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