In the vast expanse of the Andromeda Galaxy, the critical Gateway Space Station becomes the focal point of a historic gathering. Esteemed scientists, engineers, and military leaders convene to address Professor Weaver’s startling findings about Commander Belle, a distinguished science officer whose vessel was tragically lost in an explosion while investigating a mysterious asteroid eight years prior.

The revelation unfolds as Professor Weaver explains how Belle was inadvertently exposed to alien blue crystalline spores that assimilated into her neural network, triggering a perpetual state of hyper-awareness. Despite deploying advanced technologies, her enigmatic condition remains untamed, challenging the limits of human understanding.

The tension escalates when Belle, amidst a presentation, collapses under the grip of a vivid, cosmic vision, her eyes mirroring the swirling galaxies. At this moment, she utters a chilling premonition, “They have arrived,” which coincides with the blaring of a station-wide red alert.

Emerging through a star portal, highly advanced beings from another era reveal themselves, seeking Belle’s unique abilities to confront an existential threat. Recognizing her critical role as a bridge between worlds, the assembly is faced with a decision that could alter the fate of galaxies.

Admiral Redback, balancing curiosity with caution, authorizes the recommissioning of "The Huntsman," a legendary warship from the Duality Wars. Equipped for the unknown, Captain Minardi joins Belle in a bold leap through the star portal, catapulting them ten billion years into "Milkdromeda" — a realm where the merged Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies exist in splendid isolation.

Here, they encounter the Descendants, a civilization that has evolved beyond their biological origins to establish a harmonious society intertwined with sentient AIs. At the heart of their culture is "The Weaving," a philosophical matrix that integrates life, intelligence, and the cosmos, maintained by god-like entities known as the Minds.

However, the peace is threatened by the Ascendant, a mysterious force manipulating dark matter to absorb and transform star systems indiscriminately. This looming menace challenges the Descendants to defend their enlightened existence or attempt to decode the motives of this unfathomable enemy.

As Belle and Minardi navigate this new, complex reality, they find themselves in the midst of escalating conflict. The Ascendancy, viewing the temporal portal as an existential threat, destroys it, igniting a chain reaction of galactic hostilities. As Belle harnesses her newfound crystalline powers and Minardi takes command, they must balance their personal destinies with the broader fate of civilizations.

"The Huntsman" weaves a tale of cosmic intrigue and introspection, where survival and discovery intertwine against a backdrop filled with interstellar mysteries and conflicts. It is a journey that tests the resilience, understanding, and the very nature of existence in a universe brimming with the unknown.

Don't be scared to be dependent, but never base your total happiness on another individual, You alone are the only one who can truly fulfil yourself

My recommended list with books to read:

• Don Quixote - Cervantes
• Moby Dick - Melville
• The Trial - Kafka
• The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho
• Gravity's Rainbow - Pynchon

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“I can’t,” she said, resting on her elbows, still beneath him but ready to pull away.

“I can,” Alec said slyly. The storm outside was almost there, the stars now gone. A bright flash and a loud boom shook the tower windows. He moved to kiss her again.

“No!” she shouted, and pulled herself away from him, kicking him square in the chest with both of her bare feet. He reeled back a few paces to the wall. She quickly spun off the other side of the bed and fetched her sword from its scabbard at the bed’s head, aiming at Alec, ready for him to fight.

But Alec had no sword. She looked; it wasn’t even in the room. She looked back to Alec, still holding her sword at the ready, and was shocked to see the smile on his face. Confusion flitted across her face.

“Welcome back, Eleanor.” Alec chuckled. “Didn’t take as much as I thought to bring you back to life.”

Eleanor frowned, then realizing he was no threat, lowered the sword. Her anger turned inward to herself. “I would have let you!”

Alec laughed even harder. “No, you wouldn’t have. You didn’t! You have a sword pointed at me. And you kicked me! A weaker man could have broken a rib with that one.” He rubbed his chest. “I almost thought for a minute that I had convinced you, but I guess I’ll have to keep trying.” Then he stilled himself, looking her in the eye through the torchlight as the storm flashed outside again, on top of them now, the rain starting. “You are stronger than you think, Eleanor.” He walked around the bed to her, wary still of her sword arm. “And not just physically, Eleanor.” He tapped her heart with his index finger. “Here. You can overcome this, and whatever else is coming your way. You are strong.”

Eleanor’s lip quivered as the rain blew in the open window, sending a spray of water across the small room to them. She went to it, the sword still in her right hand. The wind blew her hair back from her face as the rain spattered her dress to an even darker red. Her tears were washed by the storm. When she turned back to face Alec, framed by the open window behind her and the flashes of lightning, the torchlight from the far wall glowing on her sharp features, she was a fearsome sight to behold. Battle Storm indeed.

Lady Eleanor de Levan was born anew.

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Haskell ambled across the cul-de-sac toward the Tall Treeman’s chipped green door. His meeting with Winifred ran through his mind. Had he presented himself correctly? She wasn’t at all what he’d expected. Rules and conditions didn’t factor into his picture of the Questers Guild. It was the Questers Guild, after all. To quest after glory and gain by fighting orcs, goblins, and trolls was his calling, not adherence to a handful of legalistic dictates. This wasn’t the High City; these were the borderlands, where bandits, barbarians, and bugbears roamed.

He ducked into the Treeman’s long, smoky common room. It was furnished with large tables worn smooth from years of heavy use. The room was partitioned by a two-sided fireplace with a barroom in the back. A staircase on his left rose steeply to a railed landing overlooking the front room. Seeing no sign of Bror and Torg, or anyone else for that matter, he strode to the back. His heavy footfalls were muffled by a generous layer of fragrant pine shavings spread over stained floorboards. He ducked through an arch to where the innkeeper was setting out long lines of pewter tankards on the bar. He was a brick of a man, all muscle and mutton chops around a broad nose and pointed chin.

“I suppose you just arrived and want a room?” he said.

Haskell flashed a strained smile; he couldn’t take another gruff local. “Word travels fast. I just signed on with the Questers Guild, Master…”

The innkeeper grunted. “Griswold. Five talents a month for your own smaller room and board, if you’ll have it.”

Haskell was shocked; most inns charged four times as much for a private room and board. Guild discount, indeed. “I will, thank you. Say, did you see—”

“Simeon!” Griswold shouted, polishing another tankard.

Griswold’s boy came out of the kitchen covered in flour. “C’mon, Sir,” Simeon said, heading to the front.

Sir? Haskell could get used to this sort of treatment. He followed the boy through the common room and up the steep, creaky stairs. They went through an arch and down a narrow hall to the right. Simeon paused at a door halfway down and pushed it open. Haskell peered inside and understood why the rates were so reasonable: his smaller room was nothing but a closet with a tiny cot wedged between the walls, a washstand crammed beside the door, and a bedpan tucked under the cot. He turned to his young guide, who was already slipping back through the arch to the landing. Haskell rolled his eyes. So be it; at least the price was right. He sighed and ducked into his closet. A commotion rose in the hallway as his pack hit the floor. He poked his head through the door only to be seized by a gang of scarred adventurers and grizzled hangers-on.

“There’s th’wee boy!” Bror cried, pointing at Haskell from behind the throng. Torg had a massive grin on his face.

Haskell’s attackers dragged him down the hall and onto the landing. Several burly men hoisted him into the air and carried him down the Treeman’s treacherous stairs; Haskell’s stomach dropped like he was cresting a waterfall in a barrel. They swayed dangerously down to the first floor and threw him onto a stool in a corner. His head glanced off the wall and shins knocked against the table as he fought to remain upright.

The adventurers called out for ale and Griswold obliged them; he emerged from the back with a fiendish grin and what looked like fifty sloshing tankards in his meaty fists and balanced on his broad forearms. Haskell was boxed in by an unruly crowd jostling and pounding his table. “Season the meat! Season the meat!” they shouted, shoving three tankards in front of him. Haskell spied Bror and Torg in the background smashing their pewter tankards together. He glared at them and took up his own. He had no choice but to drink himself into oblivion.

Rory Sullivan couldn’t help but smile whenever he saw his lover, even after almost a year of dating. Today Lacey wore a green flapper dress with silver embellishments dangling around her knees. It was surprisingly tame for her - she preferred to be more flashy - but their dates weren’t a time for her to draw attention. That was why Rory was dressed in a plain shirt and trousers. The only preparation he’d made for this date was combing his hair. It was the same outfit he’d be wearing to work later tonight, but he tried not to think about that just yet.

She saw him, smiled, and waved, the blonde curls in her wig bobbing as she jogged towards him. Several of the surrounding cinema goers saw her and stared in awe, for Lacey was popular throughout all of Over York. If they’d undressed her, like Rory had so many times over the last year, they’d mistakenly think her body made her a man all the time.

“Hey,” he said when she reached his side, taking her hand and kissing her. “You look lovely.”

“So do you. As always,” Lacey replied, sharing his smile. Rory’s own smiles had been more frequent over the past year. “I wanted to wear a suit today.”

Rory couldn’t help but feel a twinge of guilt at those words. For the sake of appearances, Colin always had to attend their dates dressed as his female persona, Lacey, whether he felt like being her or not. Two men holding hands would draw too much suspicion, and neither of them could risk it, especially in their professions. It was better when they were on their own and he could be whoever he wanted. But they didn’t want to only see each other in their apartments or in the hidden portions of the sky city. They wanted to see each other in the daylight, too. Or in the street lighting of Over York’s indoor areas, as they were now.

No one knew what the nutrigel was made from. The official version advocated a mixture based on harvested tholin from the Outer System and protein farms’ gelled deposits. A more fanciful explanation suggested the involvement of cockroach juice or seniors recycled for the common good.

Shaping food from this compote was an art. A craft so difficult to master that most stellar canteens offered the radiation-free nutrigel and its derivatives directly in raw form; usually an emerald-colored gum cobble with an indeterminate taste and a consistency that couldn’t be placed on any chart. That said, the chefs of the lost stations on the space highway, stretching from Earth to Saturn, managed to make dishes worthy of the name. Sushi, burgers and tartiflettes, everything remained imaginable with the nutrigel because it could be shaped as desired. Thanks to a few spices and black-market condiments, it was even possible to recover the flavors of yesteryear, when humans were cramming into our native world.

It was nevertheless with deep sadness that I revel in such refined meals as, that day, a multi-cheese pineapple pizza. Because, alas, my cat’s stomach wouldn’t allow me to eat them in their entirety.

“What an injustice! What a misery! What a suffering!”

In this outmoded diner, my last slice lay immaculate before me on the chipped Formica table; within paws’ reach and yet so far away.

“Are you monologuing alone in your head again, Lee?”

I had apparently let the conclusion of my lament slip away. But what could Ali understand about my agony? Slumped on the peeled cracked mauve wall bench, she was gluttonously eating enough to feed a supercargo crew alongside their lot lizards. Golden crumbs were covering her black suit, and she even had hot sauce on the blond hair falling over her narrow shoulders. This girl’s stomach appeared to be a bottomless wormhole. I, meanwhile, was overcome by a few counterfeit pieces of tropical fruit on a slice of fake bread despite a real appetite.

I was morose. The imperial roundness of my overfilled belly reflecting through the empty Coke glass was more to blame than my usual existential depression. I always had the blues when I had eaten too much. “My life is nothing but pain,” I concluded, rolling over the greasy table; only to rehash my sad failure.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.

There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root, and it may be that he who bestows the largest amount of time and money on the needy is doing the most by his mode of life to produce that misery which he strives in vain to relieve. It is the pious slave-breeder devoting the proceeds of every tenth slave to buy a Sunday's liberty for the rest. Some show their kindness to the poor by employing them in their kitchens. Would they not be kinder if they employed themselves there? You boast of spending a tenth part of your income in charity; maybe you should spend the nine tenths so, and done with it. Society recovers only a tenth part of the property then. Is this owing to the generosity of him in whose possession it is found, or to the remissness of the officers of justice?

Philanthropy is almost the only virtue which is sufficiently appreciated by mankind. Nay, it is greatly overrated; and it is our selfishness which overrates it. A robust poor man, one sunny day here in Concord, praised a fellow-townsman to me, because, as he said, he was kind to the poor; meaning himself. The kind uncles and aunts of the race are more esteemed than its true spiritual fathers and mothers. I once heard a reverend lecturer on England, a man of learning and intelligence, after enumerating her scientific, literary, and political worthies, Shakespeare, Bacon, Cromwell, Milton, Newton, and others, speak next of her Christian heroes, whom, as if his profession required it of him, he elevated to a place far above all the rest, as the greatest of the great. They were Penn, Howard, and Mrs. Fry. Every one must feel the falsehood and cant of this. The last were not England's best men and women; only, perhaps, her best philanthropists.

I would not subtract anything from the praise that is due to philanthropy, but merely demand justice for all who by their lives and works are a blessing to mankind. I do not value chiefly a man's uprightness and benevolence, which are, as it were, his stem and leaves. Those plants of whose greenness withered we make herb tea for the sick serve but a humble use, and are most employed by quacks. I want the flower and fruit of a man; that some fragrance be wafted over from him to me, and some ripeness flavor our intercourse. His goodness must not be a partial and transitory act, but a constant superfluity, which costs him nothing and of which he is unconscious. This is a charity that hides a multitude of sins. The philanthropist too often surrounds mankind with the remembrance of his own castoff griefs as an atmosphere, and calls it sympathy. We should impart our courage, and not our despair, our health and ease, and not our disease, and take care that this does not spread by contagion.

Be sure that you give the poor the aid they most need, though it be your example which leaves them far behind. If you give money, spend yourself with it, and do not merely abandon it to them.

As I preferred some things to others, and especially valued my freedom, as I could fare hard and yet succeed well, I did not wish to spend my time in earning rich carpets or other fine furniture, or delicate cookery, or a house in the Grecian or the Gothic style just yet. If there are any to whom it is no interruption to acquire these things, and who know how to use them when acquired, I relinquish to them the pursuit. If there are any to whom it is no interruption to acquire these things, and who know how to use them when acquired, I relinquish to them the pursuit. Some are 'industrious,' and appear to love labor for its own sake, or perhaps because it keeps them out of worse mischief; to such I have at present nothing to say. Those who would not know what to do with more leisure than they now enjoy, I might advise to work twice as hard as they do — work till they pay for themselves, and get their free papers. For myself I found that the occupation of a day-laborer was the most independent of any, especially as it required only thirty or forty days in a year to support one. The laborer’s day ends with the going down of the sun, and he is then free to devote himself to his chosen pursuit, independent of his labor; but his employer, who speculates from month to month, has no respite from one end of the year to the other.

But the startling result was a significant difference between the reaction patterns in the right and in the left visual fields. When the odd square out appeared on the right side of the screen, the half that is processed in the same hemisphere as language, the border between green and blue made a real difference: the average reaction time was significantly shorter when the odd square out was across the green-blue border from the rest. But when the odd square out was on the left side of the screen, the effect of the green-blue border was far weaker. In other words, the speed of the response was much less influenced by whether the odd square out was across the green-blue border from the rest or whether it was a different shade of the same color.

So the left half of English speakers' brains showed the same response toward the blue-green border that Russian speakers displayed toward the siniy-goluboy border, whereas the right hemisphere showed only weak traces of a skewing effect. The results of this experiment (as well as a series of subsequent adaptations that have corroborated its basic conclusions) leave little room for doubt that the color concepts of our mother tongue interfere directly in the processing of color. Short of actually scanning the brain, the two-hemisphere experiment provides the most direct evidence so far of the influence of language on visual perception

Short of scanning the brain? A group of researchers from the University of Hong Kong saw no reason to fall short of that. In 2008, they published the results of a similar experiment, only with a little twist. As before, the recognition task involved staring at a computer screen, recognizing colors, and pressing one of two buttons. The difference was that the doughty participants were asked to complete this task while lying in the tube of an MRI scanner. MRI, or magnetic resonance imaging is technique that produces online scans of the brain by measuring the level of blood flow in its different regions. Since increased blood flow corresponds to increased neural activity, the MRI scanner measures (albeit indirectly) the level of neural activity in any point of the brain.

In this experiment, the mother tongue of the participants was Mandarin Chinese. Six different colors were used: three of them (red, green, and blue) have common and simple names in Mandarin, while three other colors do not (see figure 10 in the insert). The task was very simple: the participants were shown two squares on the screen for a split second, and all they had to do was indicate by pressing a button whether the two squares were identical in color or not.

The task did not involve language in any way. It was again a purely visual-motoric exercise. But the researchers wanted to see if language areas of the brain would nevertheless be activated. They assumed that linguistic circuits would more likely get involved with the visual task if the colors shown had common and simple names than if there were no obvious labels for them. And indeed, two specific small areas in the cerebral cortex of the left hemisphere were activated when the colors were from the easy-to-name group but remained inactive when the colors were from the difficult-to-name group.

To determine the function of these two left-hemisphere areas more accurately, the researchers administered a second task to participants, this time explicitly language-related. The participants were shown colors on the screen, and while their brains were being scanned they were asked to say aloud what each color was called. The two areas that had been active earlier only with the easy-to-name colors now lit up as being heavily active. So the researchers concluded that the two specific areas in question must house the linguistic circuits responsible for finding color names.

If we project the function of these two areas back to the results of the first (purely visual) task, it becomes clear that when the brain has to decide whether two colors look the same or not, the circuits responsible for visual perception ask the language circuits for help in making the decision, even if no speaking is involved. So for the first time, there is now direct neurophysiologic evidence that areas of the brain that are specifically responsible for name finding are involved with the processing of purely visual color information.

We saw in chapter 3 that Russian has two distinct color names for the range that English subsumes under the name "blue": siniy (dark blue) and goluboy (light blue). The aim of the experiment was to check whether these two distinct “blues” would affect Russians' perception of blue shades. The participants were seated in front of a computer screen and shown sets of three blue squares at a time: one square at the top and a pair below, as shown on the facing page and in color in figure 8 in the insert.

One of the two bottom squares was always exactly the same color as the upper square, and the other was a different shade of blue. The task was to indicate which of the two bottom squares was the same color as the one on top. The participants did not have to say anything aloud, they just had to press one of two buttons, left or right, as quickly as they could once the picture appeared on the screen... This was a simple enough task with a simple enough solution, and of course the participants provided the right answer almost all the time. But what the experiment was really designed to measure was how long it took them to press the correct button.

For each set, the colors were chosen from among twenty shades of blue. As was to be expected, the reaction time of all the participants depended first and foremost on how far the shade of the odd square out was from that of the other two. If the upper square was a very dark blue, say shade 18, and the odd one out was a very light blue, say shade 3, participants tended to press the correct button very quickly. But the nearer the hue of the odd one out came to the other two, the longer the reaction time tended to be. So far so unsurprising. It is only to be expected that when we look at two hues that are far apart, we will be quicker to register the difference, whereas if the colors are similar, the brain will require more processing work, and therefore more time, to decide that the two colors are not the same.

The more interesting results emerged when the reaction time of the Russian speakers turned out to depend not just on the objective distance between the shades but also on the borderline between siniy and goluboy! Suppose the upper square was siniy (dark blue), but immediately on the border with goluboy (light blue). If the odd square out was two shades along toward the light direction (and thus across the border into goluboy), the average time it took the Russians to press the button was significantly shorter than if the odd square out was the same objective distance away—two shades along—but toward the dark direction, and thus another shade of siniy. When English speakers were tested with exactly the same setup, no such skewing effect was detected in their reaction times. The border between "light blue" and "dark blue" made no difference, and the only relevant factor for their reaction times was the objective distance between the shades.

...

The results thus prove that there is something objectively different between Russian and English speakers in the way the visual processing systems react to blue shades.

And while this is as much as we can say with absolute certainty, it is plausible to go one step further and make the following inference: since people tend to react more quickly to color recognition tasks the farther apart the two colors appear to them, and since Russians react more quickly to shades across the siniy-goluboy border than what the objective distance between the hues would imply, it is plausible to conclude that neighboring hues around the border actually appear farther apart to Russian speakers than they are in objective terms.

...

To test whether language circuits in the brain had any direct involvement with the processing of color signals, the researchers added another element to the experiment. They applied a standard procedure called an “interference task” to make it more difficult for the linguistic circuits to perform their normal function. The participants were asked to memorize random strings of digits and then keep repeating these aloud while they were watching the screen and pressing the buttons. The idea was that if the participants were performing an irrelevant language-related chore (saying aloud a jumble of numbers), the language areas in their brains would be "otherwise engaged” and would not be so easily available to support the visual processing of color.

When the experiment was repeated under such conditions of verbal interference, the Russians no longer reacted more quickly to shades across the siniy-goluboy border, and their reaction time depended only on the objective distance between the shades. The results of the interference task point clearly at language as the culprit for the original differences in reaction time. Kay and Kempton's original hunch that linguistic interference with the processing of color occurs on a deep and unconscious level has thus received strong support some two decades later. After all, in the Russian blues experiment, the task was a purely visual-motoric exercise, and language was never explicitly invited to the party.

A great deal is known today about the retina and its three types of cones, each with peak sensitivity in a different part of the spectrum. As explained in the appendix, however, the color sensation itself is formed not in the retina but in the brain, and what the brain does is nothing remotely as simple as just adding up the signals from the three types of cones. In fact, between the cones and our actual sensation of color there is a whirl of extraordinarily subtle and sophisticated computation: normalization, compensation, stabilization, regularization, even plain wishful seeing (the brain can make us see a nonexistent color if it has reason to believe, based on its past experience of the world, that this color ought to be there). The brain does all this computation and interpretation in order to give us a relatively stable picture of the world, one that doesn't change radically under different lighting conditions. If the brain didn't normalize our view in this way, we would experience the world as a series of pictures from cheap cameras, where colors of objects constantly change whenever the lighting is not optimal.

A few years ago, Lera Boroditsky and Lauren Schmidt... asked a group of Spanish speakers and a group of German speakers to participate in a memory game (which was conducted wholly in English, in order to avoid any explicit mention of the genders). The participants were given a list of two dozen inanimate objects, and for each of these objects, they had to memorize a person's name. For example, "apple” had the name Patrick associated with it, and “bridge” had the name Claudia. The participants were given a fixed period of time to memorize the names associated with the objects, then tested on how well they had managed. A statistical analysis of the results showed that they were better at remembering the assigned names when the gender of the object matched the sex of the person, and that they found it more difficult to remember the names when the gender of the object clashed with the sex of the person. For example, Spanish speakers found it easier to remember the name associated with “apple” (la manzana) if it was Patricia rather than Patrick, and they found it easier to remember the name for a bridge (el puento) if it was Claudio rather than Claudia.

Since Spanish speakers found it objectively more difficult to match a bridge with a woman than with a man, we can conclude that when inanimate objects have a masculine or feminine gender, the associations of manhood or womanhood for these objects are present in Spanish speakers' minds even when they are not actively solicited, even when the participants are not invited to opine on such questions as whether bridges are strong rather than slender, and even when they speak English.

Of course, one could still object that the memory task in question was fairly artificial and at some remove from the concerns of everyday life, where one is not often called upon to memorize whether apples or bridges are called Patrick or Claudia. But psychological experiments often have to rely on such narrowly circumscribed tasks in order to tease out statistically significant differences. The importance of the results is not in what they say about the particular task itself but in what they reveal about the effect of gender more generally, namely that manly or womanly associations of inanimate objects are strong enough in the minds of Spanish and German speakers to affect their ability to commit information to memory.

...

When a language treats inanimate objects in the same way as it treats women and men, with the same grammatical forms or with the same "he” and “she” pronouns, the habits of grammar can spill over to habits of mind beyond grammar. The grammatical nexus between object and gender is imposed on children from the earliest age and reinforced many thousands of times throughout their lives. This constant drilling affects the associations that speakers develop about inanimate objects and can clothe their notions of such objects in womanly or manly traits. The evidence suggests that sex-related associations are not only fabricated on demand but present even when they are not actively solicited.

What is more, the research that Guugu Yimithirr inspired has furnished the most striking example so far of how language can affect thought. It has shown how speech habits, imprinted from an early age, can create habits of mind that have far-reaching consequences beyond speaking, as they affect orientation skills and even patterns of memory. Guugu Yimithirr managed all this just in time, before finally going west. The "unadulterated" language that John Haviland started recording from the oldest speakers in the 1970s has now gone the way of all tongues, together with the last members of that generation. While the sounds of Guugu Yimithirr are still heard in Hopevale, the language has undergone drastic simplification under the influence of English. Today's older speakers still use cardinal directions fairly frequently, at least when they speak Guugu Yimithirr rather than English, but most people younger than fifty have no real grasp of the system.

How many other features of mainstream European languages are there, which we still take as natural and universal even today simply because no one has yet properly understood the languages that do things differently? We may never know.

In this particular case, the relevant question is what habits of mind might develop in speakers of Guugu Yimithirr because of the necessity to specify geographic directions whenever spatial information is to be communicated.

When the question is framed in this way, the answer appears inescapable, but no less startling for all that. In order to speak Guugu Yimithirr, you need to know where the cardinal directions are at each and every moment of your waking life. You need to know exactly where the north, south, west, and east are, since otherwise you would not be able to impart the most basic information. It follows, therefore, that in order to be able to speak such a language, you need to have a compass in your mind, one that operates all the time, day and night, without lunch breaks or weekends.

And as it so happens, the Guugu Yimithirr have exactly this kind of an infallible compass. They maintain their orientation with respect to the fixed cardinal directions at all times. Regardless of visibility conditions, regardless of whether they are in thick forest or on an open plain, whether outside or indoors, whether stationary or moving, they have a spot-on sense of direction. Stephen Levinson relates how he took Guugu Yimithirr speakers on various trips to unfamiliar places, both walking and driving, and then tested their orientation. In their region, it is rarely possible to travel in a straight line, since the route often has to go around bogs, mangrove swamps, rivers, mountains, sand dunes, forests, and, if on foot, snake-infested grassland. But even so, and even when they were taken to dense forests with no visibility, even inside caves, they always, without any hesitation, could point accurately to the cardinal directions. They don't do any conscious computations: they don't look at the sun and pause for a moment of calculation before saying "the ant is north of your foot." They seem to have perfect pitch for directions. They simply feel where north, south, west, and east are, just as people with perfect pitch hear what each note is without having to calculate intervals.

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The Guugu Yimithirr take this sense of direction entirely for granted and consider it a matter of course. They cannot explain how they know the cardinal directions, just as you cannot explain how you know where in front of you is and where left and right are. One thing that can be ascertained, however, is that the most obvious candidate, namely the position of the sun, is not the only factor they rely on. Several people reported that when they traveled by plane to very distant places such as Melbourne, more than a three-hour flight away, they experienced the strange sensation that the sun did not rise in the east. One person even insisted that he had been to a place where the sun really did not rise in the east. This means that the Guugu Yimithirr's orientation does fail them when they are displaced to an entirely different geographic region. But more importantly, it shows that in their own environment they rely on cues other than the position of the sun, and that these cues can even take precedence. When Levinson asked some informants if they could think of clues that would help him improve his sense of direction, they volunteered such hints as the differences in brightness of the sides of trunks of particular trees, the orientation of termite mounds, wind directions in particular seasons, the flights of bats and migrating birds, the alignment of sand dunes in the coastal area.

But we are only just beginning, because the sense of orientation that is required to speak a Guugu Yimithirr-style language has to extend further than the immediate present. What about relating past experiences, for instance?

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John Haviland filmed a Guugu Yimithirr speaker, Jack Bambi, telling his old friends the story of how in his youth he capsized in shark-infested waters but managed to swim safely ashore. Jack and another person were on a trip with a mission boat, delivering clothing and provisions to an outstation on the McIvor River. They were caught in a storm, and their boat capsized in a whirlpool. They both jumped into the water and managed to swim nearly three miles to the shore, only to discover, on returning to the mission, that Mr. Schwarz was far more concerned at the loss of the boat than relieved at their miraculous escape. Except for its content, the remarkable thing about the story is that it was remembered throughout in cardinal directions: Jack Bambi jumped into the water on the western side of the boat, his companion to the east of the boat, they saw a giant shark swimming north, and so on.

Perhaps the cardinal directions were just made up for the occasion? Well, quite by chance, Stephen Levinson filmed the same person two years later, telling the same story. The cardinal directions matched exactly in the two tellings. Even more remarkable were the hand gestures that accompanied Jack's story. In the first film, shot in 1980, Jack is facing west. When he tells how the boat flipped over, he rolls his hands forward away from his body. In 1982, he is sitting facing north. Now, when he gets to the climactic point when the boat flips over, he makes a rolling movement from his right to his left. Only this way of representing the hand movements is all wrong. Jack was not rolling his hands from right to left at all. On both occasions, he was simply rolling his hands from east to west! He maintained the correct geographic direction of the boat's movement, without even giving it a moment's thought. And as it happens, at the time of year when the accident happened there are strong southeasterly winds in the area, so flipping from east to west seems very likely.

Levinson also relates how a group of Hopevale men once had to drive to Cairns, the nearest city, some 150 miles to the south, to discuss land-rights issues with other aboriginal groups. The meeting was in a room without windows, in a building reached either by a back alley or through a car park, so that the relation between the building and the city layout was somewhat obscured. About a month later, back in Hopevale, he asked a few participants about the orientation of the meeting room and the positions of the speakers at the meeting. He go accurate responses, and complete agreement, about the orientation in cardinal directions of the main speaker, the blackboard, and other objects in the room.

Forming your worldview by relying on the media would be like forming your view about me by looking only at a picture of my foot. Sure, my foot is part of me, but it's a pretty ugly part. I have better parts. My arms are unremarkable but quite fine. My face is OK. It isn't that the picture of my foot is deliberately lying about me. But it isn't showing you the whole of me.

A Chance for the Soul

Am I leading the life that my soul,

Mortal or not, wants me to lead is a question

That seems at least as meaningful as the question

Am I leading the life I want to live,

Given the vagueness of the pronoun “I,”

The number of things it wants at any moment.

Fictive or not, the soul asks for a few things only,

If not just one. So life would be clearer

If it weren’t so silent, inaudible

Even here in the yard an hour past sundown

When the pair of cardinals and crowd of starlings

Have settled down for the night in the poplars.

Have I planted the seed of my talent in fertile soil?

Have I watered and trimmed the sapling?

Do birds nest in my canopy? Do I throw a shade

Others might find inviting? These are some hand metaphors

The soul is free to use if it finds itself

Unwilling to speak directly for reasons beyond me,

Assuming it’s eager to be of service.

Now the moon, rising above the branches,

Offers itself to my soul as a double,

Its scarred face an image of the disappointment

I’m ready to say I’ve caused if the soul

Names the particulars and suggests amendments.

So fine are the threads that the moon

Uses to tug at the ocean that Galileo himself

Couldn’t imagine them. He tries to explain the tides

By the earth’s momentum as yesterday

I tried to explain my early waking

Three hours before dawn by street noise.

Now I’m ready to posit a tug

Or nudge from the soul. Some insight

Too important to be put off till morning

Might have been mine if I’d opened myself

To the occasion as now I do.

Here’s a chance for the soul to fit its truth

To a world of yards, moons, poplars, and starlings,

To resist the fear that to talk my language

Means to be shoehorned into my perspective

Till it thinks as I do, narrowly.

“Be brave, Soul,” I want to say to encourage it.

“Your student, however slow, is willing,

The only student you’ll ever have.”

Heart of Autumn

Wind finds the northwest gap, fall comes.

Today, under gray cloud-scud and over gray

Wind-flicker of forest, in perfect formation, wild geese

Head for a land of warm water, the boom, the lead pellet.

Some crumple in air, fall. Some stagger, recover control,

Then take the last glide for a far glint of water. None

Knows what has happened. Now, today, watching

How tirelessly V upon V arrows the season's logic,

Do I know my own story? At least, they know

When the hour comes for the great wind-beat. Sky-strider,

Star-strider—they rise, and the imperial utterance,

Which cries out for distance, quivers in the wheeling sky.

That much they know, and in their nature know

The path of pathlessness, with all the joy

Of destiny fulfilling its own name.

I have known time and distance, but not why I am here.

Path of logic, path of folly, all

The same—and I stand, my face lifted now skyward,

Hearing the high beat, my arms outstretched in the tingling

Process of transformation, and soon tough legs,

With folded feet, trail in the sounding vacuum of passage,

And my heart is impacted with a fierce impulse

To unwordable utterance—

Toward sunset, at a great height.

The authority of government, even such as I am willing to submit to,—for I will cheerfully obey those who know and can do better than I, and in many things even those who neither know nor can do so well,—is still an impure one: to be strictly just, it must have the sanction and consent of the governed. It can have no pure right over my person and property but what I concede to it. The progress from an absolute to a limited monarchy, from a limited monarchy to a democracy, is a progress toward a true respect for the individual. Even the Chinese philosopher was wise enough to regard the individual as the basis of the empire. Is a democracy, such as we know it, the last improvement possible in government? Is it not possible to take a step further towards recognizing and organizing the rights of man? There will never be a really free and enlightened State, until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly. I please myself with imagining a State at last which can afford to be just to all men, and to treat the individual with respect as a neighbor; which even would not think it inconsistent with its own repose, if a few were to live aloof from it, not meddling with it, nor embraced by it, who fulfilled all the duties of neighbors and fellow-men. A State which bore this kind of fruit, and suffered it to drop off as fast as it ripened, would prepare the way for a still more perfect and glorious State, which also I have imagined, but not yet anywhere seen.

When I came out of prison,—for some one interfered, and paid the tax,—I did not perceive that great changes had taken place on the common, such as he observed who went in a youth, and emerged a gray-headed man; and yet a change had to my eyes come over the scene,—the town, and State, and country,—greater than any that mere time could effect. I saw yet more distinctly the State in which I lived. I saw to what extent the people among whom I lived could be trusted as good neighbors and friends; that their friendship was for summer weather only; that they did not greatly purpose to do right; that they were a distinct race from me by their prejudices and superstitions, as the Chinamen and Malays are; that, in their sacrifices to humanity they ran no risks, not even to their property; that, after all, they were not so noble but they treated the thief as he had treated them, and hoped, by a certain outward observance and a few prayers, and by walking in a particular straight though useless path from time to time, to save their souls. This may be to judge my neighbors harshly; for I believe that most of them are not aware that they have such an institution as the jail in their village.

There is as much music in the world as virtue. In a world of peace and love music would be the universal language, and men greet each other in the fields in such accents as a Beethoven now utters at rare intervals from a distance. All things obey music as they obey virtue. It is the herald of virtue. It is God's voice. In it are the centripetal and centrifugal forces. The universe needed only to hear a divine melody, that every star might fall into its proper place, and assume its true sphericity. It entails a surpassing affluence on the meanest thing; riding sublime over the heads of sages, and soothing the din of philosophy. When we listen to it we are so wise that we need not to know. All sounds, and more than all, silence, do fife and drum for us. The least creaking doth whet all our senses, and emit a tremulous light, like the aurora borealis, over things. As polishing expresses the vein in marble, and the grain in wood, so music brings out what of heroic lurks anywhere. It is either a sedative or a tonic to the soul. I read that "Plato thinks the gods never gave men music, the science of melody and harmony, for mere delectation or to tickle the ear; but that the discordant parts of the circulations and beauteous fabric of the soul, and that of it that roves about the body, and many times for want of tune and air, breaks forth into many extravagances and excesses, might be sweetly recalled and artfully wound up to their former consent and agreement."

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To the sensitive soul the Universe has her own fixed measure, which is its measure also, and as this, expressed in the regularity of its pulse, is inseparable from a healthy body, so is its healthiness dependent on the regularity of its rythm. In all sounds the soul recognizes its own rythm, and seeks to express its sympathy by a correspondent movement of the limbs. When the body marches to the measure of the soul, then is true courage and invincible strength.

...

Let not the faithful sorrow that he has no ear for the more fickle and subtle harmonies of creation, if he be awake to the slower measure of virtue and truth. If his pulse does not beat in unison with the musician's quips and turns, it accords with the pulse beat of the ages.

A man's life should be a stately march to an unheard music; and when to his fellows it may seem irregular and inharmonious, he will be stepping to a livelier measure, which only his nicer ear can detect. There will be no halt, ever, but at most a marching on his post, or such a pause as is richer than any sound, when the deepened melody is no longer heard, but implicitly consented to with the whole life and being. He will take a false step never, even in the most arduous circumstances; for then the music will not fail to swell into corresponding volume and distinctness and rule the movement it accompanies.

What is called politics is comparatively something so superficial and inhuman, that, practically, I have never fairly recognized that it concerns me at all. The newspapers, I perceive, devote some of their columns specially to politics or government without charge; and this, one would say, is all that saves it; but, as I love literature, and to some extent, the truth also, I never read those columns at any rate. I do not wish to blunt my sense of right so much. I have not got to answer for having read a single President's Message. A strange age of the world this, when empires, kingdoms, and republics come a-begging to a private man's door, and utter their complaints at his elbow! I cannot take up a newspaper but I find that some wretched government or other, hard pushed, and on its last legs, is interceding with me, the reader, to vote for it,—mere importunate than an Italian beggar; and if I have a mind to look at its certificate, made, perchance, by some benevolent merchant's clerk, or the skipper that brought it over, for it cannot speak a word of English itself, I shall probably read of the eruption of some Vesuvius, or the overflowing of some Po, true or forged, which brought it into this condition. I do not hesitate, in such a case, to suggest work, or the almshouse; or why not keep its castle in silence, as I do commonly? The poor President, what with preserving his popularity and doing his duty, is completely bewildered. The newspapers are the ruling power. Any other government is reduced to a few marines at Fort Independence. If a man neglects to read the Daily Times, Government will go down on its knees to him, for this is the only treason in these days.

Those things which now most engage the attention of men, as politics and the daily routine, are, it is true, vital functions of human society, but should be unconsciously performed, like the corresponding functions of the physical body. They are infra-human, a kind of vegetation. I sometimes awake to a half-consciousness of them going on about me, as a man may become conscious of some of the processes of digestion in a morbid state, and so have the dyspepsia, as it is called. It is as if a thinker submitted himself to be rasped by the great gizzard of creation. Politics is, as it were, the gizzard of society, full of grit and gravel, and the two political parties are its two opposite halves,—sometimes split into quarters, it may be, which grind on each other. Not only individuals, but States, have thus a confirmed dyspepsia, which expresses itself, you can imagine by what sort of eloquence. Thus our life is not altogether a forgetting, but also, alas! to a great extent, a remembering of that which we should never have been conscious of, certainly not in our waking hours. Why should we not meet, not always as dyspeptics, to tell our bad dreams, but sometimes as eupeptics, to congratulate each other on the ever glorious morning? I do not make an exorbitant demand, surely.

The wisest definition of poetry the poet will instantly prove false by setting aside its requisitions. We can, therefore, publish only our advertisement of it.

There is no doubt that the loftiest written wisdom is either rhymed, or in some way musically measured,—is, in form as well as substance, poetry; and a volume which should contain the condensed wisdom of mankind need not have one rhythmless line.

Yet poetry, though the last and finest result, is a natural fruit. As naturally as the oak bears an acorn, and the vine a gourd, man bears a poem, either spoken or done. It is the chief and most memorable success, for history is but a prose narrative of poetic deeds. What else have the Hindoos, the Persians, the Babylonians, the Egyptians done, that can be told? It is the simplest relation of phenomena, and describes the commonest sensations with more truth than science does, and the latter at a distance slowly mimics its style and methods. The poet sings how the blood flows in his veins. He performs his functions, and is so well that he needs such stimulus to sing only as plants to put forth leaves and blossoms. He would strive in vain to modulate the remote and transient music which he sometimes hears, since his song is a vital function like breathing, and an integral result like weight. It is not the overflowing of life but its subsidence rather, and is drawn from under the feet of the poet. It is enough if Homer but say the sun sets. He is as serene as nature, and we can hardly detect the enthusiasm of the bard. It is as if nature spoke. He presents to us the simplest pictures of human life, so the child itself can understand them, and the man must not think twice to appreciate his naturalness.

A true poem is distinguished not so much by a felicitous expression, or any thought it suggests, as by the atmosphere which surrounds it. Most have beauty of outline merely, and are striking as the form and bearing of a stranger; but true verses come toward us indistinctly, as the very breath of all friendliness, and envelop us in their spirit and fragrance. Much of our poetry has the very best manners, but no character. It is only an unusual precision and elasticity of speech, as if its author had taken, not an intoxicating draught, but an electuary. It has the distinct outline of sculpture, and chronicles an early hour. Under the influence of passion all men speak thus distinctly, but wrath is not always divine.

There are two classes of men called poets. The one cultivates life, the other art,—one seeks food for nutriment, the other for flavor; one satisfies hunger, the other gratifies the palate. There are two kinds of writing, both great and rare; one that of genius, or the inspired, the other of intellect and taste, in the intervals of inspiration. The former is above criticism, always correct, giving the law to criticism. It vibrates and pulsates with life forever. It is sacred, and to be read with reverence, as the works of nature are studied. There are few instances of a sustained style of this kind; perhaps every man has spoken words, but the speaker is then careless of the record. Such a style removes us out of personal relations with its author; we do not take his words on our lips, but his sense into our hearts. It is the stream of inspiration, which bubbles out, now here, now there, now in this man, now in that. It matters not through what ice-crystals it is seen, now a fountain, now the ocean stream running under ground. It is in Shakespeare, Alpheus, in Burns, Arethuse; but ever the same. The other is self-possessed and wise. It is reverent of genius, and greedy of inspiration. It is conscious in the highest and the least degree. It consists with the most perfect command of the faculties. It dwells in a repose as of the desert, and objects are as distinct in it as oases or palms in the horizon of sand. The train of thought moves with subdued and measured step, like a caravan. But the pen is only an instrument in its hand, and not instinct with life, like a longer arm. It leaves a thin varnish or glaze over all its work. The works of Goethe furnish remarkable instances of the latter.

There is no just and serene criticism as yet. Nothing is considered simply as it lies in the lap of eternal beauty, but our thoughts, as well as our bodies, must be dressed after the latest fashions. Our taste is too delicate and particular. It says nay to the poet’s work, but never yea to his hope. It invites him to adorn his deformities, and not to cast them off by expansion, as the tree its bark. We are a people who live in a bright light, in houses of pearl and porcelain, and drink only light wines, whose teeth are easily set on edge by the least natural sour. If we had been consulted, the backbone of the earth would have been made, not of granite, but of Bristol spar. A modern author would have died in infancy in a ruder age. But the poet is something more than a scald, “a smoother and polisher of language”; he is a Cincinnatus in literature, and occupies no west end of the world. Like the sun, he will indifferently select his rhymes, and with a liberal taste weave into his verse the planet and the stubble.

In these old books the stucco has long since crumbled away, and we read what was sculptured in the granite. They are rude and massive in their proportions, rather than smooth and delicate in their finish. The workers in stone polish only their chimney ornaments, but their pyramids are roughly done. There is a soberness in a rough aspect, as of unhewn granite, which addresses a depth in us, but a polished surface hits only the ball of the eye. The true finish is the work of time, and the use to which a thing is put. The elements are still polishing the pyramids. Art may varnish and gild, but it can do no more. A work of genius is rough-hewn from the first, because it anticipates the lapse of time, and has an ingrained polish, which still appears when fragments are broken off, an essential quality of its substance. Its beauty is at the same time its strength, and it breaks with a lustre.

The great poem must have the stamp of greatness as well as its essence. The reader easily goes within the shallowest contemporary poetry, and informs it with all the life and promise of the day, as the pilgrim goes within the temple, and hears the faintest strains of the worshippers; but it will have to speak to posterity, traversing these deserts, through the ruins of its outmost walls, by the grandeur and beauty of its proportions.