Ahnonay and the Big Picture
In Uru, we have an Age called Ahnonay. When you begin the journey into this Age, you are met with a "Cathedral". You walk through the grand stone door and down a hallway of pictograms...
As you link through, you go to a "watery" Ahnonay...
After "watery" Ahnonay, you link through to a version of Ahnonay that is supposedly time shifted. There is thunder and lighting, mist swirls around in every crack and crevasse.
Then, as you link through again, you find yourself in "Space" Ahnonay...
Even again, as you link, you find another "Unfinished" Ahnonay...
I remember when I first attempted the puzzle in Ahnonay. LOL...I can remember it so wonderfully, the scenery was breathtaking, the music divine...but it was like a sadistic gym coach came up with it, because the biggest thing I remember from it was, "Link, take a lap, Link, take a lap, link, take a lap". Every time you would link through the book in Ahnonay, it would take you back to the Cathedral, then you would link again through that linking book, and it would take you to another version of Ahnonay. THEN, because it linked you to the start point, you had to run all the way around the broken circle to get back to the linking book. It was like Master Kadish was Kerath's Chairman of the Council on Physical Fitness. Irregardless, there I was, "Link, take a lap, link, take a lap".
Finally, after the puzzle was finished, you finally got to understand that you weren't traveling through time, rather, you weren't given enough of the big picture to see what was really going on...
You actually linked from sphere to sphere to sphere. Each time you linked through the book, you would actually be telling the platform to turn the spheres so that the Age would appear to be changed.
As I was listening to the music from Uru tonight, it reminded me of how Ahnonay was a lie. Yes, a bold-faced lie by Master Kadish. You see, he had claimed that he could write a book that would enable the user to travel through time. But, as we find out in the end, we're just not given a big enough picture to discern what was going on until the end when we had put together all of the pieces to the puzzle.
It reminded me of something. Right now, in the Uru Community, there are 'wars' being waged over what is and what isn't right to create for the new Myst Online that will be Open Source. Yep that's right, they're releasing the code for the game, sometime after the New Year, so that the community can create their own ages and whatnot to keep the game alive. But, right now, all the community can do is speculate. All they can do is "Link, take a lap", because there is nothing to go on at the moment.
Being an Uruite is like being the hamster in an Ahnonay Hamster wheel. You can keep running, but you're really not going anywhere. Everything keeps changing around you, but still, you have no idea of the big picture that is happening around you.
Only when the code is released will we see the tunnel that takes you on the ride to the end of Ahnonay...
Who knows, maybe one day, we'll get to see the big picture...
Like RAWA always says, "Sometimes we focus too much on the little details to fully understand the big picture."
OR, Uru is the lie that everyone keeps believing in, like the Linking Book that can make you travel through time.
I tend to believe that only time can show us the big picture that is Uru. I hope that the mass of humanity that is the Uru Community has the wisdom to understand that it takes time and certain "leaps of faith" to get to see the end of the puzzle and see Rand Miller's dream to fruition and a long life.
Uru truly is "the game that the fans won't let die". It keeps getting resuscitated. It's like every time we turn around, there is some big deal coming up that will give us our homeworld back, only to have to have someone call 911 again to bring the paramedics to administer some sort of MMOG CPR. We know perfectly well who the paramedics are, they're the fans...they just won't let it go, they won't let it die, so they load it up in the ambulance for a ride to the MMOG hospital until Uru can come back in another incarnation once again.
Partly, I'm glad that Uru just won't go quietly into the night. I'm a self-proclaimed "Canon Junkie". The Myst Reader and I have gone through a lot together. It's reminded me how I must live without pride, to love something even though it gives me trouble, to persevere in the darkest of hours.
I count myself as one of the D'ni. We're known by many names, "Cavern Dweller", "Uruite", "Uruvian"...the list goes on and on. But the one thing I find remarkable about my people is that while they are very human, there is something that tends some of them to be "the cut above", the cream that invariably rises to the top and rises, without fail, to adapt and overcome. I don't say that pridefully, I say it honestly.
In my world, beyond all of my seemingly "superhero"-like qualities (that people in some online worlds believe I possess, but truthfully, I'm just ordinary but really gifted, I can do things others can't), I find myself at peace in the pages of the Myst Reader, in Uru, and in my niche inside the Myst Universe. It's almost like Clark Kent being able to stroll the cities of Krypton in a dream. Where you feel, deep in your heart, like it's where you belong, where it's moral center and beliefs are very much your own and impossible to find anywhere else, but as always, it's stripped from just beyond your reach constantly by it's destruction. Fatefully, you are cast back down to Earth to try to save a world that just doesn't want to seem to help itself or rise to the moral plateau that is a part of your blood.
I don't know, maybe I'm just tired. Maybe I'm so sick of being gifted and talented that for once, I'd like to see the world through the eyes of someone who can't do what I do. I know those of you who read me regularly will think that I'm full of myself. No, not really. Trust me, I'm not full of myself at all. My husband has to keep reminding me and reminding me that...like Bill said in Kill Bill Volume 1... even though I would like to hide behind a Clark Kent persona, I'm still Superman. When I wake up in the morning, I'm Superman, and I have to dress up as Clark Kent to feel like I fit in. It's sad really. I don't have a complex. I don't think I'm that special, but as has been proven time and time again to me...there are things I can do that not many others can come close to. *sigh* THAT is why Uru is my MMO Homeworld.
LOL...Gertrude Stein..."America is my home country, but Paris is my hometown." Feel ya on that...Uru is my hometown. But I also agree with one other statement she made..."Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense".
I don't know...maybe I'm just that right mix that has both genius and common sense. LOL However, I do know one thing...that I have just enough genius that my common sense can fly out the window if I don't watch where it's going.
I guess it's all about understanding the big picture and your place in it.
As you link through, you go to a "watery" Ahnonay...
After "watery" Ahnonay, you link through to a version of Ahnonay that is supposedly time shifted. There is thunder and lighting, mist swirls around in every crack and crevasse.
Then, as you link through again, you find yourself in "Space" Ahnonay...
Even again, as you link, you find another "Unfinished" Ahnonay...
I remember when I first attempted the puzzle in Ahnonay. LOL...I can remember it so wonderfully, the scenery was breathtaking, the music divine...but it was like a sadistic gym coach came up with it, because the biggest thing I remember from it was, "Link, take a lap, Link, take a lap, link, take a lap". Every time you would link through the book in Ahnonay, it would take you back to the Cathedral, then you would link again through that linking book, and it would take you to another version of Ahnonay. THEN, because it linked you to the start point, you had to run all the way around the broken circle to get back to the linking book. It was like Master Kadish was Kerath's Chairman of the Council on Physical Fitness. Irregardless, there I was, "Link, take a lap, link, take a lap".
Finally, after the puzzle was finished, you finally got to understand that you weren't traveling through time, rather, you weren't given enough of the big picture to see what was really going on...
You actually linked from sphere to sphere to sphere. Each time you linked through the book, you would actually be telling the platform to turn the spheres so that the Age would appear to be changed.
As I was listening to the music from Uru tonight, it reminded me of how Ahnonay was a lie. Yes, a bold-faced lie by Master Kadish. You see, he had claimed that he could write a book that would enable the user to travel through time. But, as we find out in the end, we're just not given a big enough picture to discern what was going on until the end when we had put together all of the pieces to the puzzle.
It reminded me of something. Right now, in the Uru Community, there are 'wars' being waged over what is and what isn't right to create for the new Myst Online that will be Open Source. Yep that's right, they're releasing the code for the game, sometime after the New Year, so that the community can create their own ages and whatnot to keep the game alive. But, right now, all the community can do is speculate. All they can do is "Link, take a lap", because there is nothing to go on at the moment.
Being an Uruite is like being the hamster in an Ahnonay Hamster wheel. You can keep running, but you're really not going anywhere. Everything keeps changing around you, but still, you have no idea of the big picture that is happening around you.
Only when the code is released will we see the tunnel that takes you on the ride to the end of Ahnonay...
Who knows, maybe one day, we'll get to see the big picture...
Like RAWA always says, "Sometimes we focus too much on the little details to fully understand the big picture."
OR, Uru is the lie that everyone keeps believing in, like the Linking Book that can make you travel through time.
I tend to believe that only time can show us the big picture that is Uru. I hope that the mass of humanity that is the Uru Community has the wisdom to understand that it takes time and certain "leaps of faith" to get to see the end of the puzzle and see Rand Miller's dream to fruition and a long life.
Uru truly is "the game that the fans won't let die". It keeps getting resuscitated. It's like every time we turn around, there is some big deal coming up that will give us our homeworld back, only to have to have someone call 911 again to bring the paramedics to administer some sort of MMOG CPR. We know perfectly well who the paramedics are, they're the fans...they just won't let it go, they won't let it die, so they load it up in the ambulance for a ride to the MMOG hospital until Uru can come back in another incarnation once again.
Partly, I'm glad that Uru just won't go quietly into the night. I'm a self-proclaimed "Canon Junkie". The Myst Reader and I have gone through a lot together. It's reminded me how I must live without pride, to love something even though it gives me trouble, to persevere in the darkest of hours.
I count myself as one of the D'ni. We're known by many names, "Cavern Dweller", "Uruite", "Uruvian"...the list goes on and on. But the one thing I find remarkable about my people is that while they are very human, there is something that tends some of them to be "the cut above", the cream that invariably rises to the top and rises, without fail, to adapt and overcome. I don't say that pridefully, I say it honestly.
In my world, beyond all of my seemingly "superhero"-like qualities (that people in some online worlds believe I possess, but truthfully, I'm just ordinary but really gifted, I can do things others can't), I find myself at peace in the pages of the Myst Reader, in Uru, and in my niche inside the Myst Universe. It's almost like Clark Kent being able to stroll the cities of Krypton in a dream. Where you feel, deep in your heart, like it's where you belong, where it's moral center and beliefs are very much your own and impossible to find anywhere else, but as always, it's stripped from just beyond your reach constantly by it's destruction. Fatefully, you are cast back down to Earth to try to save a world that just doesn't want to seem to help itself or rise to the moral plateau that is a part of your blood.
I don't know, maybe I'm just tired. Maybe I'm so sick of being gifted and talented that for once, I'd like to see the world through the eyes of someone who can't do what I do. I know those of you who read me regularly will think that I'm full of myself. No, not really. Trust me, I'm not full of myself at all. My husband has to keep reminding me and reminding me that...like Bill said in Kill Bill Volume 1... even though I would like to hide behind a Clark Kent persona, I'm still Superman. When I wake up in the morning, I'm Superman, and I have to dress up as Clark Kent to feel like I fit in. It's sad really. I don't have a complex. I don't think I'm that special, but as has been proven time and time again to me...there are things I can do that not many others can come close to. *sigh* THAT is why Uru is my MMO Homeworld.
LOL...Gertrude Stein..."America is my home country, but Paris is my hometown." Feel ya on that...Uru is my hometown. But I also agree with one other statement she made..."Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense".
I don't know...maybe I'm just that right mix that has both genius and common sense. LOL However, I do know one thing...that I have just enough genius that my common sense can fly out the window if I don't watch where it's going.
I guess it's all about understanding the big picture and your place in it.
Comments