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I've been absorbed with my search for the vessel. Looking for links, for connections, for places and objects that might contain a clue to lead me to a clue to lead me to the vessel. It is quite the obsession.

I did have time to read some other blogs and then I read this. Is it true? Did A kill the Slender Man? Or did they somehow just drag their dreams within the Great and Silent City? It does seem like a pipe dream.

At this point, I am reminded of a passage from Borges:

It all began with a suspicion (perhaps exaggerated) that the Gods did not know how to talk. Centuries of fell and fugitive life had atrophied the human element in them; the moon of Islam and the cross of Rome had been implacable with these outlaws. Very low foreheads, yellow teeth, stringy mulatto or Chinese moustaches and thick bestial lips showed the degeneracy of the Olympian lineage. Their clothing corresponded not to a decorous poverty but rather to the sinister luxury of the gambling houses and brothels of the Bajo. A carnation bled crimson in a lapel and the bulge of a knife was outlined beneath a close-fitting jacket. Suddenly we sensed that they were playing their last card, that they were cunning, ignorant and cruel like old beasts of prey and that, if we let ourselves be overcome by fear or piety, they would finally destroy us. 

We took out our heavy revolvers (all of a sudden there were revolvers in the dream) and exultantly killed the Gods.

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Urbs inanitatis.

There is a city somewhere out there, a city that is large and small, with towering skyscrapers one instant and ruins the next. It is a million cities in one. It is the Great and Silent City.

For thousands of years, people have caught mere glimpses of the Great and Silent City. They have attributed it to dreams or hallucinations, discarding the wonder that they saw. Coleridge saw it once during an opium trip and even wrote a poem for it: 

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.

The poem, just like the Great and Silent City, will forever remain unfinished. The Silent City is unfinished due to its ever-changing nature. One could wander the City for years and years and never tread the same street 

twice. 

How do I know about the City? It is a knowledge gained through a meeting with a Mr. R. Kipling, who has now become an inhabitant of the City. Those who inhabit the City tend not to leave - the City does not let them. Mr. R. Kipling had an interesting view of the City, though it was perhaps tainted by the fact that his wife and son were lost within it as well.

Nonetheless, as I stated before, Jordan was poised between the Sea and the City. It appears that he has chosen the City, which I believe is a wise decision. The City is a representation of the Infinite, with its fractal streets and its non-Euclidean halls.

How does one go to the City? How does one find one of its Doors and open it? Unfortunately, the answer to that escapes my grasp.

Next: I shall tell you of where I went and then tell you of Tabularius scientiae, the Bookkeeper of Knowledge, one of the Others and another aspect of the Infinite.

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I'm sorry for not posting in a while. I thought I found the vessel and rushed to it, but it turned out to be for naught.

I promise, the next post I shall tell you all about the Great and Silent City.