Rock Bridge, Republic of Tinselman

Beginners' guide to Khanology 2

2007-01-25T11:39:00.000+11:00

I am sitting in a boat, drifting slowly downstream. My thoughts turn to the Republic of Tinselman - now so distant a place - and I have not made any plans for what will happen when I return. Aside from Rock Bridge, attending ministerial ceremonies and overthrowing Qarl Qhan and President Rupey, what will I do with my life? Can a returned hero, haunted by exotic traumas, ever fully re-integrate?

Then I get the idea of going back to university. It has been politely pointed out to me, by no less than the Universal Khan himself, that my recent Beginners' guide to Khanology was a load of irresponsible semi-truths, likely to provoke sectarian conflict. I have therefore decided to enrol part-time at the Tinselman Khanological College. No one would dare argue with a Degree in Khanology.

But my plans have hit a rock, and my hopes are overboard. I went to the College website and saw it has been infiltrated by evil totalitarian ideologues with a taste for dictator chic and ersatz coats-of-arms.

Tinselman Khanological College coat-of-arms

I am disgusted. Where they ought to be reciting the deeds of Shatner, or interpreting the sayings of Miller, these charlatan proponents of the "Science of Khanology" instead glorify the likes of Napoleon - and worse. It must be that the President is funding research into the terrible Dark Arts of Statecraft, which are quite different from true Khanology, in a vain attempt to strengthen his rule. Rupey secretly fears that the Old Khan will one day invade the Republic, and he will try to resist by any means available. He does not anticipate the Universal Khan, I think.

Beginners' guide to Khanology

2007-01-18T10:51:00.000+11:00

Now that he has been found, the question naturally arises: who is the Khan? Although still a beginner when it comes to Khanology, I thought I'd make a record of what I know.

The short explanation is that there is not one but three Khans - the Nirmana-khan, the Sambhoga-khan, and the Dharma-khan.

1. Nirmana-khan

This is the historical Founder of the Republic of Tinselman, known to his people as Khan Miller. He appears in a variety of physical forms at different times, depending on the needs of the Republic. It is this Khan who met with Museum of Dust representatives during last year's election campaign. It is this Khan who was imprisoned at Al Khazneh, and later burnt at the stake. He is a national hero.

Archive photos of the Nirmana-khan

Of him it was prophesied:

'The Museum of Dust will destroy the Republic of Tinselman by capturing the Khan and handing him over to the National Park Service (NPS) for harsh interrogation.'

Something else was said about him, but all we know of this is the following, incomplete petroglyph:

2. Sambhoga-khan

I like to think of this second Khan as the puppeteer behind the various manifestations of the historical Founder. He is a kind of spiritual bridge between the wordly and transcendent Khans. The Sambhoga-khan became visible some time after the Founder's Absorption, but only to his chosen disciples. Sometimes he looks like the King of medieval religion, other times he tranforms into the Megophias megophias of prehistoric shamanism.

Digital impressions of the Sambhoga-khan, reconstructed from brain scans of Khan devotees

This Khan commands a retinue of saints who he sends into battle against the demonic forces which threaten the Republic of Tinselman. Museum of Dust-based terrorist El Cacaracha Libre ought to watch his step, or face the Khan's famous wrath.

El Cacaracha Libre: (left) photo; (right) artist's impression.

3. Dharma-khan

I've never properly understood this Khan, and there are no pictures of him, so I'm just going to quote the leading Khanologist, Nalinaksha Dutt:

Dharma-khan
The only real Khan is the Reality as conceived by the Tinselfolk, and is not different from the things or beings of the universe. Though an attempt to define it by current words and expression is bound to be not only incorrect but misleading, the Tinselman texts tried to give an idea of it as far as the language permitted. . . . It is, according to them, immeasurable and illimitable. It fills all space. It is the basis of the Sambhoga and Nirmana-khans. . . . It is possessed of eternal, real and unlimited tinsel. . . . Dharma-khans may have their individual Sambhoga-khans but they all have one Dharma-khan.

If anyone understands this, or has any other information about the Khan, please post your comments below.

- Danxia

Competition over

2007-01-17T23:15:00.000+11:00

Now that the Khan has been found, the House on Rock Bridge Competition is finally over. The winners are:

Bonnie, for being the first to find the Khan this time around;
Joelson and Alli, for finding the Khan the time before that;
Indie for her helpful suggestions; and
Cog, for offering us her decryption skills.

As promised, you are all to be allocated a portion of Rock Bridge on which to build a house. (Joelson and Alli - do you mind sharing a house?) Which reminds me - in response to the first ever post on this blog, Cog seemed to doubt the former existence of the old Rock Bridge, asking "Do you have any pictures of the original[?]"

Seeing as you're a competition winner, Cog, I've decided to answer your question. Yes, I do.

Satellite image (1940) of the original rock bridge, Republic of Tinselman.

Unsaved, but not (yet) despairing

2007-01-06T12:43:00.000+11:00

Firstly, I would like to thank you, my readers, who have been working hard to release me from my prison. Joelson has come up with the brilliant idea of meditating our way to liberation and deliverance. As I said to him at the time,

I've been confined to the same room for . . . I can't remember how long . . . all alone . . . for such a long time that I'm already in a kind of involuntary, sensory-deprivation induced trance. I'm currently trying to shift from a state of hypnotic absorbtion to one of nirvanic insight.

(Did I mention I've gone bald while I've been here? It happens to the best of us.)

Alli and Indie have been also been doing whatever it takes to get me out of here - even placing our enemies in stress positions. And it paid off - for they confessed everything:

To exit the Room of Illusion, um.... well, I'm colorblind, but I know the answer had something to do with red and green - I never went in there myself.

If it hadn't been for this vital information, I would not have noticed this inscription on the wall, made from mysterious red and green letters:

I quickly re-entered the meditative state in an attempt to fathom the meaning of this. COIL'D SERPENT KNIFE initially made me think of some neo-pagan trinket (see below).

But I couldn't see how that would help me. On the other hand, the Tibetan phurpa - a Tantric ritual dagger with coiled serpent motif on its blade, used in the subjugation of demons - would definitely come in handy at a time like this. Like a special key, perhaps.

a phurpa

There is no such ritual dagger inside this room, so I suspect it must be found and used from the outside - by you, my dear readers. While you are at it, if you can tell me what BLUR MAGIC ORB refers to, that would be a great help. What is an 'orb', really, anyway?

Logistics

2006-12-16T07:41:00.000+11:00

So. Rupey has left the starship and returned to the Republic of Tinselman. Wilmey now leads the expedition to recover Khan Miller.

As for myself, I'm in a dilemma. I am anxious to return to the Republic to begin work on Rock Bridge. So it is tempting to follow Rupey.

On the other hand, it was the Khan who put me in charge of this project in the first place - so if I give up on the Khan there's no reason for me to return to the Republic. They say there’s always a third way . . .

Well, it turns out that I’m not free to choose either of these options, anyway, because I’m still inside the Trompe l'oeil Room. I keep thinking I've found the door, but it always turns out to be painted on, or else the room behind it is, or both.

A desert of death and fire

2006-11-27T03:23:00.000+11:00

There’s no need for me to fill you in on what happened since my last post, you can read all about it in Notes from Mount St. Tinsel. Suffice to say: we tried to rescue the Khan, but he’d already been burned alive by an unidentified robot (pictured); we got back to the ship and started dying one by one; then the holodeck stopped and we flew safely to a nearby planet.

But there’s one thing I still don’t get: we all know when the holodeck recording ended, but when did it actually begin? Was it:

Just after the robot lit her match?
While I was writing the post ‘Life is a Bridge’?
Just before I began the Rock Bridge blog?
Other?

Needing some existential reassurance, I turned to the words of Rene Descartes:

Yet although the senses occasionally deceive us with respect to objects which are very small or in the distance, there are many other beliefs about which doubt is quite impossible, even though they are derived from the senses — for example, that I am here, sitting by the fire, wearing a winter dressing-gown, holding this piece of paper in my hands, and so on.
… Unless perhaps I were to liken myself to madmen, whose brains are so damaged by the persistent vapours of melancholia that they firmly maintain they are kings when they are paupers, or say they are dressed in purple when they are naked, or that their heads are made of earthenware, or that they are pumpkins, or made of glass.

But now I’m even more confused. If anyone knows, please enlighten me!

Khan found!

2006-11-10T02:50:00.000+11:00

I am proud to announce some amazing news: the Khan has been found by Alli and Joelson! Three cheers! The bad news is, we've lost Alli and Joelson, and they're still with the Khan . . . so altogether that's three we've lost.

It all began when the starship approached the moon of Petra, home of the Nabataeans. I'd heard of these guys, and knew that they were the galactic experts in glyph decryption. This gave me the idea of sending Joelson and Alli down to the surface to get some help translating these (see above).

I beamed them down, but kept in communicator contact from the starship bridge (where I was also playing holochess with Rupey). They soon found themselves in the middle of a vast desert, staring at the Nabataean City on the distant horizon.

Nabataean City, Moon of Petra

(I could hear Alli on the communicator - complaining that I could have dropped them off closer to the city - just as Rupey was taking my King's bishop.)

After a few hours trekking through the desert, they arrived and headed straight for the local Glyph Decryption Bureau with my notebook in hand. There they were greeted by a helpful Nabataean official.

"May I see your passports?"

Of course, they didn't have any.

"No passports? What!? You must be from the Republic of Tinselman! Perhaps you can tell me - who is this Woman X everyone's talking about?"

Ignoring the question, Joelson showed the petroglyphs in my notebook to the Nabataean, who then took them out the back for analysis. He promptly returned with two printouts, and placed one of them on the desk (see right).

"I have reconstructed the missing part of this glyph (from fragment 3). It says 'National Park Service'. So the first part of the inscription reads,

'The Museum of Dust will destroy the Republic of Tinselman by
capturing the Khan and handing him over to the National Park Service (NPS) for harsh interrogation.'"

Listening to all this on the communicator, I nearly forgot my turn at holochess. The NPS is the government agency behind Natural Bridges National Monument (NBNM), Utah. So it was them all along! First hate mail, now this!

The Nabataean was also getting excited at this point. He went on,

"Before I show you the next part, I think you ought to know something. We have intelligence suggesting the National Park Service are operating a secret prison right here on the moon of Petra. At Al Khazneh, exactly five miles west of here."

Alli and Joelson were already on their feet and out the door! They didn't even hear the official call after them "Wait - don't you want to know what the missing part of fragment 4 says?" (Somehow I could hear that on the communicator). But the two of them ran, without stopping, exactly five miles to the west, until they came to the NPS secret prison, and went inside.

NPS secret prison, Al Khazneh, Nabataean City

"You don't just walk into an NPS secret prison!" I yelled over the communicator. But they weren't listening - and they were in for a shock! You go in, and suddenly you seem to be standing on the edge of a bottomless chasm. But if you happen to be clever - like Joelson and Alli were clever - you try to throw tinsel over the precipice . . . revealing an invisible camouflaged rock bridge leading safely from one side of the chasm to the other! I so wish I knew how they made that!

Anyway, they both got across the bridge, and entered a small, dimly lit cell. And, there, waiting inside to greet them - was THE KHAN!!!

The Khan in his cell at Al Khazneh

(Even Rupey took his attention away from the holochess for a minute to view the image being sent to the Enterprise.) I must admit, the Khan looked a lot older than I remembered . . . or perhaps it was the chainmail. Whatever the case, I was just so ecstatic to see the Khan again that I didn't care what he looked like!

It was at this point that things started to go bad. A look of anxiety appeared over the Khan's wizened face, and a weird, robotic voice could be heard somewhere in the background.

"Now ve have ze Khan!"

. . . And then the communicator went silent. I don't know what happened next, but I'm worried.

Life is a bridge

2006-11-07T02:30:00.000+11:00

Someone once said "Life is a bridge. Cross over it, but build no house on it." That may be true of metaphorical bridges, but ours will be a bridge of solid rock, and it shall have many houses on it.

Bridge House, Ambleside, England

In the town of Ambleside in Cumbria there is house known as Bridge House, which was built on a stone bridge more than three hundred years ago, to store apples. The Rock Bridge of Tinselman will of course be several times larger than this. I’m thinking a small city would fit comfortably upon it, leaving just enough room to ride a bicycle from one side to the other.

But this all assumes we ever build Rock Bridge . . . which kind of depends on us returning to the Republic of Tinselman. From our mission to find the Khan.

The Khan

So, as an incentive to find the Khan quickly, I’m offering first preferences for space to build a house on Rock Bridge to anyone who volunteers to join the search.

So far we’ve had three volunteers: Joelson Carl, Alli and Cog. (Thanks guys! You all get houses.) I’d do it myself, except that – er - right now I’m fighting a foe far greater than even Wikipedia could imagine. I leave you my notebook. Everything you need to know should be in there. Go and find the Khan!

Heresy!

2006-10-31T03:01:00.000+11:00

I can't believe it! As a joke, I've been showing these photos around the crew, and everyone rated my theory as "highly probable" or "definitely true".

I never imagined no-one would tell the difference between, you know, our worst enemy, and, like, our national symbol.

Reconstructed Megophias Megophias glyph

That's right, crew - you all believed that Megophias Megophias was Octobrain. (Even Wilmey, who could have checked his T-shirt). Just wait till the Khan hears about this. He'll have a fit!

And, yes, this means what it seems . . . I've found fragment 3 and fragment 4. Believe me, it wasn't easy. Worse than Riven. Now all we have to do is find the 2nd fragment.

fragments 1,3 and 4 combined

I won't even ask you to guess the meaning of this glyph:

. . . . But I will admit to having difficulties translating the rest of the inscription. Looks kind of like a fly's wing and an obscure plumbing part . . .

fragment 3

fragment 4

I must not forget to rebuild Rock Bridge when I return to the Republic of Tinselman

(Just a theory)

2006-10-29T04:17:00.000+11:00

TOP: Glyph from fragment 1

BOTTOM: Octobrain, MoD leader

fragment 1

2006-10-27T18:59:00.000+10:00

Reader comment (from previous post "Expect delays," says Shatner)

Psychic Advisor Alli asks

"So, what were the petroglyphs of?"

Good question! I had been reading about the West Virginia petroglyphs. No one is sure what the glyphs really say - in the 1980s Barry Fell translated them as "A happy season is Christmas, a time of joy and goodwill to all people." On the other hand, Nyland (1996) interprets them as "Club blows in abundant measure (were needed) because many which had fallen into the ravine resisted with obviously broken legs. Brothers, come and help the slaughterer to finish them off." (Source 'Petroglyph', Wikipedia).

By coincidence, I have a similar problem right now. On a recent trip down to the surface of Titan (to investigate Museum of Dust supply-lines), I found a fragment of rock with petroglyphic inscriptions, which I have copied down into my notebook (see photo above). I have some theories about what they might mean, but I need to find more fragments before I can be sure.

- Danxia

“Expect delays,” says Shatner

2006-10-26T05:05:00.001+10:00

Captain Shatner and Mopher Wilmey watching the console TV

This morning I rushed excitedly on to the starship bridge, hoping to share with the crew something I’d just been reading about petroglyphs. But everyone was so transfixed upon the console TV that they were oblivious to my arrival.

“Crew,” I began.

“Shhhh,” interjected Captain Shatner, and pointed at the screen, (which was still buffering).

After what seemed like hours, a video began,showing what appeared to be a high-level meeting between representatives from the US military and the infamous Museum of Dust, plotting together the annihilation of the Republic of Tinselman. Proof, (if any were needed) that Octobrain was Inky!

There was a brief silence when the video ended, after which Shatner spoke.

“You know what this means.”

Wilmey pressed a button to bring up a visual display of our surrounds . . . revealing the entire Museum of Dust space fleet in menacing formation.

Shatner looked at me, and continued, “This means you should expect delays on the construction of this Rock-Bridge-thingy. We’re not going home any time soon.”

Construction myths

2006-10-24T11:17:00.002+10:00

Angel Arch, Arch Canyon, Utah, America (photo: Natural Arch and Bridge Society)

Today I received an email from Tom of the Natural Bridges National Monument (NBNM) in Utah. In the hope of heading off a (predicted) flood of similar inquiries in the future, I have decided to publish extracts from his correspondence here, along with my response:

Hi Danxia,
I just saw your blog post 'Rebuilding Rock Bridge' and wanted to point out that rock bridges are natural, NOT semi-natural structures (as you seem to imply).

This was not an encouraging start. I skipped a few paragraphs until I came across the following, absurd speculation, on the origins of RoT's own Rock Bridge:

As the curving meanders of streams carved down into the sandstone, they undercut the canyon walls and bent back upon themselves until only a thin fin of stone separated them. Flash floods periodically pounded against weak spots formed by the soft siltstone layers in the sandstone. Eventually, the water cut through the narrow neck of the meander, forming a natural bridge. At first each bridge is thick and massive, as is Kachina Bridge, but as erosion attacks them on all sides, the bridges become more delicate (as with Owachomo Bridge) and eventually collapse.

I stopped reading at this point, as Tom clearly had no idea what he was talking about, and typed out my reply:

Dear Tom,
I find it very telling that, with all your talk of Utah's numerous rock bridges, you don’t even mention NBNM's biggest rock bridge, Sipapu Bridge, which is also the second largest in the world. Could it be because – by the admission of NBNM’s
own website, and I quote - “In Hopi mythology, a 'sipapu' is a gateway through which souls may pass to the spirit world”? That doesn’t sound very ‘natural’ to me, Tom!

What about Angel Arch? (Clearly built by angels.) Then there's Jabal Umm Fruth Bridge at Wadi Rum in Jordan. As the Bedouin will tell you, the whole of Wadi Rum was built by the magical race of Jinn before the time of Adam. As for the Immortal Bridge on Mount Tai in China, it is common knowledge that eight Immortals pushed those boulders into place. Even you cannot deny that these formations are obviously semi-natural.

Yours faithfully,
Danxia

Rebuilding Rock Bridge

2006-10-23T15:05:00.001+10:00

Rock Bridge at Tiantai Mountain by Zhou Jichang, 12th century (Freer Gallery of Art)

Few citizens of the Republic of Tinselman even remember that we used to have a magnificent rock bridge. The total collapse of this semi-natural structure, formerly located at the foothills of Mount St. Tinsel, was one of the many undocumented disasters of the NSK war.

Not long after he got back from his ranch, Our Illustrious Khan took me aside in the corridors of Parliament and said, "Danxia, the Rock Bridge has been destroyed - I command you to document it. When you have finished doing that, rebuild it." Well, that was shortly before we were all distracted by the recent constitutional crisis, and the current epic quest to rescue the Khan from the clutches of deep space. As I sit here, in my single-person cabin aboard the starship, I can only assume that the rebuilding of Rock Bridge was - and remains - an issue of utmost importance to Our Illustrious Khan.

As Minister for Semi-Natural Structures, therefore, I propose that we do just that. We begin reconstruction of this legendary monument . . . as soon as we return to the Republic of Tinselman.

(Until then, for inspiration, here are some images of other rock bridges from around the world):

Jabal Umm Fruth Bridge, Wadi Rum, Jordan (photo by David Bjorgen)

Immortal Bridge, Mount Tai (photo by pfctdayelise)