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a name that has no meaning in any language
May. 6th, 2010 02:36 amTomorrow we have an election.
And I do plan to vote. But other than that, I expect to be busy with work.
I find my old reading of Judge Dredd coming back to me. ("Klegg-hai! Klegg-hai!") That would have been the Judge Cal saga, and I vaguely remember reading a friend's copy of that when I was at boarding school. Today earlier I was reading a collected Strontium Dog set that a friend lent me. Ah, 2000 AD memories.
Oh, and I do admit my influences -- that is, the things that have influenced me. But I try to make something new with them.
---
In winter it was different. He was sent with seven other boys across Roke Island to the farthest northmost cape, where stands the Isolate Tower. There by himself lived the Master Namer, who was called by a name that had no meaning in any language, Kurremkarmerruk. No farm or dwelling lay within miles of the Tower. Grim it stood above the northern cliffs, grey were the clouds over the seas of winter, endless the lists and ranks and rounds of names that the Namer's eight pupils must learn. Amongst them in the Tower's high room Kurremkarmerruk sat on a high seat, writing down lists of names that must be learned before the ink faded at midnight leaving the parchment blank again. It was cold and half-dark and always silent there except for the scratching of the Master's pen and the sighing, maybe, of a student who must learn before midnight the name of every cape, point, bay, sound, inlet, channel, harbour, shallows, reef and rock of the shores of Lossow, a little islet of the Pelnish Sea. If the student complained the Master might say nothing, but lengthen the list; or he might say, "He who would be Seamaster must know the true name of every drop of water in the sea."
-- A Wizard Of Earthsea, Ursula Le Guin
And I do plan to vote. But other than that, I expect to be busy with work.
I find my old reading of Judge Dredd coming back to me. ("Klegg-hai! Klegg-hai!") That would have been the Judge Cal saga, and I vaguely remember reading a friend's copy of that when I was at boarding school. Today earlier I was reading a collected Strontium Dog set that a friend lent me. Ah, 2000 AD memories.
Oh, and I do admit my influences -- that is, the things that have influenced me. But I try to make something new with them.
---
In winter it was different. He was sent with seven other boys across Roke Island to the farthest northmost cape, where stands the Isolate Tower. There by himself lived the Master Namer, who was called by a name that had no meaning in any language, Kurremkarmerruk. No farm or dwelling lay within miles of the Tower. Grim it stood above the northern cliffs, grey were the clouds over the seas of winter, endless the lists and ranks and rounds of names that the Namer's eight pupils must learn. Amongst them in the Tower's high room Kurremkarmerruk sat on a high seat, writing down lists of names that must be learned before the ink faded at midnight leaving the parchment blank again. It was cold and half-dark and always silent there except for the scratching of the Master's pen and the sighing, maybe, of a student who must learn before midnight the name of every cape, point, bay, sound, inlet, channel, harbour, shallows, reef and rock of the shores of Lossow, a little islet of the Pelnish Sea. If the student complained the Master might say nothing, but lengthen the list; or he might say, "He who would be Seamaster must know the true name of every drop of water in the sea."
-- A Wizard Of Earthsea, Ursula Le Guin
