I really like Anaiti’s conceptualization of the vastness of the sea. I’ve thought a lot about the horror of vast bodies of water. We look at a map and wonder how the ancients could have ever thought of Galilee (a mere pond) as a “sea” but it just goes to show how fragile boats were that the people used back then. In the book of Job there’s a line that reads “Out of whose womb came the ice, and the hoary frost of Heaven, who hath gendered. The sea is covered as with a stone and the face of the deep is frozen.” Now, what I find odd about that is where in the Middle East would a writer have come up with that image of a “sea covered in ice”? It makes me wonder if this was a literary topos making its rounds through the region that perhaps came to the middle east from someplace like the Central Eurasian steppes where lakes freeze over, or from places like Turkey or Anatolia, because I don’t think it was terribly common for either the Mediterranean or the other seas in the Middle East to freeze over and there’s a metaphorical vastness to that biblical line. I know this is rambling and going off course of what Anaiti is imagining but I can sympathize with her mind conceptualizing the horrors of unbounded dimensions, and what’s interesting is that, yes, I have felt that same horror staring out across a “sea” of sand in the Libyan Desert.
I love how you make horses into characters. Roach, the horse from The Witcher, is a famous one that comes to mind. They become a big part of the story and are just as integral because without them we can’t travel these huge distances in such a short time. Anyway, I enjoy the horses.
Have you seen See? It’s a show on Apple TV. There’s a character named Tamacti Jun, played by Christian Camargo. I imagine him as Antisthenes.
I really like Anaiti’s conceptualization of the vastness of the sea. I’ve thought a lot about the horror of vast bodies of water. We look at a map and wonder how the ancients could have ever thought of Galilee (a mere pond) as a “sea” but it just goes to show how fragile boats were that the people used back then. In the book of Job there’s a line that reads “Out of whose womb came the ice, and the hoary frost of Heaven, who hath gendered. The sea is covered as with a stone and the face of the deep is frozen.” Now, what I find odd about that is where in the Middle East would a writer have come up with that image of a “sea covered in ice”? It makes me wonder if this was a literary topos making its rounds through the region that perhaps came to the middle east from someplace like the Central Eurasian steppes where lakes freeze over, or from places like Turkey or Anatolia, because I don’t think it was terribly common for either the Mediterranean or the other seas in the Middle East to freeze over and there’s a metaphorical vastness to that biblical line. I know this is rambling and going off course of what Anaiti is imagining but I can sympathize with her mind conceptualizing the horrors of unbounded dimensions, and what’s interesting is that, yes, I have felt that same horror staring out across a “sea” of sand in the Libyan Desert.
I love how you make horses into characters. Roach, the horse from The Witcher, is a famous one that comes to mind. They become a big part of the story and are just as integral because without them we can’t travel these huge distances in such a short time. Anyway, I enjoy the horses.
Have you seen See? It’s a show on Apple TV. There’s a character named Tamacti Jun, played by Christian Camargo. I imagine him as Antisthenes.