One of the benefits of writing for you, my imaginary friends from a long lost Earth, is that I can indulge in discursive and explanatory side tracks that in a quality piece of writing from your time would have been excised by an editor with a stern red-pencil 'tell a story, don't explain, damn it!'. Of course, Linda, Mitch, Nitram Ram, and Syvlang are familiar with the lesser tsaheylu, the tsaheylutsyìp and us entering that lovely trance together would call for no special comment. Both Humans and Na'vi enter tsaheylutsyìp si with dearest friends of both sexes and both species regularly and we do so from childhood.
These closest of friends, and close family members are lenikre ayeylan, one's grooming partners or hair friends, those who one would trust with all but the very most intimate of emotions and whose death is like a wound to part of one's own soul. To become lenikre 'eylan is never offered or accepted lightly as the bond is strong, sometimes shattering, and life-long, though not as strong as the great tsaheylu made with one's life mate, ones mother, a Na'vi's with an irkan, a Human's bond to one's familiar animal or that of a Go-captain's bound to the Live-ship. To enter tsaheylutsyìp si is always erotic, in that Eros allows one to See the Other fully reflected in oneself, but it is never sexual among Na'vi and only occasionally among Humans.
The full network all lenikre ayeylan span the Six Systems in networks of love and shared joys and pains than link most all Na'vi and Humans. That some of my 23 lenikre ayeylan are also those of others and so on and on creates entwined tendrils of connection that hold our society and lives together. The twentieth century wit who created 'six-degrees of separation' could not imagine the effect of tsaheylutsyìp, where the connections with my loved lenikre 'eylan contain echos, of course very much attenuated, of the souls of most all Na'vi and Humans.
To have no lenikre 'eylan at all is to both Human and Na'vi one of the most serious of pathologies and when a small group of hair friends has no connections at all outside of a particular small and inbred group those people become solipsistic and prone to selfishness, a society among themselves. Thus, we do have our criminal mafias, small and secretive gangs, outcast tribelets, who hold themselves apart as islands who See no one except themselves, and thus See nothing at all.
As the morning lengthened, each of us began the day's responsibilities. Mitch and Nitram Ram were assisting in enhancing Pandora-forming of a plateau about 150 km north of our Tree, while Syvlang, Linda, and myself felt a day assisting the cooks would be both useful and would allow for continued discussion and debate. Mitch and Nitram Ram were to fly together on Nitram Ram's irkan, Luthien (Nitram Ram is my student after all) to their worksite while our 'commute' involved a climb down and gathering some knives for some serious vegetable chopping.
After 15 or so minutes cutting in attentive silence, Syvlang spoke as we and the cooks and their other helpers listened, "Na'vi communities of Jakesully's time were quite closely tied together across such long distances. Being aviators, a young Na'vi irkan makto, such as Natyiri might have a couple of lenikre ayeylan in clans as far away as 600 km from her clan's home. An elder might have a ring of hair friends that could span a continent or even farther. One of the privileges and pleasures of gaining one's wings was and still is the ability to visit allied clans across a wide radius and make ones own friends and lenikre ayeylan.
Being in tsaheylu si with ones irkan and flying as high as 5,000 meters also made for a very personal view of the vastness of the moon and her place in a larger cosmos. In exploring the relationship of language and community among the ancient Na'vi I have come across a transcript of Natyiritelling Norm Spellman about Grace Augustine and Rabbi Rosenbaum's attempt to teach Na'vi about the vast human knowledge of the vast cosmos in the early days of the school. I think the 20th century word for their attitude was 'imperial', and I think the ayevang "gave a finger to the 'man' " quite adequately if sweetly in return. This is how Natyiri told the story to Norm in English. This must have been from several years after the war because her English has become so good."
"Norm, there was this one day, when Toctorgrace and Rabbidav'it were teaching. They brought in this, this 'u, this 'contraption' of circles of wires and paper and they were so, so nitram, so happy with themselves, so proud as they tied it to the roof of the school-room. Toctorgrace said in Na'vi, 'Children, do you know what this is?' She did not expect us to answer or maybe to guess and we looked at her at, Rabbidav'it and then at each other."
"Ma Jake laughed when I told him this story, 'I know that game! She expected you all to sit there like slack jawed boot camp recruit idiots, and say 'duh' and 'no Sargeant, what is it?' Then the DI could make you 'boots' look like idiots with all she knew and you didn't'".
"We were silent for a few seconds and just as the Toctor was about to open her mouth, Sylwanin looked at the balls and circles, then at Ninat, who looked at Tsu'tse, who looked at me. Then Sylwanin began to sing, as Nanit joined her, and all us others began to dance the way Eywayä peyä yatsmukan ulte yatsmuke, Eywa's Song of her Brothers and Sisters which was about the one-eyed old Father, and his eleven children who dance around him, and how their shadows fall on him and are cast by Great-Grandmother Big Sun. How the Old Father's wife and sister, Sister-Wife Little Sun are in love but kept apart. How Eywa and her Brothers and Sisters dance around their Father, and Old Father dances with his Brothers and Sisters forever and ever around Great-Grandmother Sun, and Grandmother Little Sun are holding hands with arms so long and spinning forever about each other. How the stars are so, so far away and send their love on this Forever Dance and on us Na'vi. Then this Song, Norm you taught me this word and I like it, segued into the Song of the First Toruk Makto who circled all of Ewya's body and returned and she how she sang to the Na'vi on all five of the great lands and the many little islands in the Sea and we all danced in circles and all sang in that school-room. And it was Toctor Grace and Rabbidav'it who dropped their jaws and were silent until even they tried to join our Song".
"Norm, Doctorgrace, she was one who knew so much and so little. But she had never flown holding onto her own mother's back along with her sister, on the huge Irkan, as a very very little girl. Flying so high, so high above the mountains as the air got thin and cold and the Irkan could go no higher. The edge, the . . . , the horizon became a curve, and then my mother began to sing that Way, the Song I just spoke about as the Grandmother set, and Sister Sun Set, and the Old Father set and the Stars shone in their love and we greeted three of Eywa's sisters as we flew in the night in glow of the stars and glow of Eywa's body below for hours as my mother sang that Way to us, to her irkan, to the Stars, which were oh so far away."
"Norm, there was no way for the Toctor or the Rabbi to know, yet that silly 'contraption', that 'u, of paper and wire showed that in some dumb human way, they did."
Syvlang finished her story and Linda asked. "When was this transcript first sent to Earth?" "I am not sure, but I believe it was discovered at Hell's Gate only recently, why do you ask?" Syvlang answered.
"Because Father Diego Rodrigues, founder of the Co-Benedictines wrote as early 2180 about how the Na'vi had to know their moon circled Polyphemus and Polyphemus circled their sun. He was writing about the nature of Na'vi tsaheylu and its relation to human intuitive knowledge and understanding of the wisdom of divine Christ. Perhaps Grace Augstine had written about that day in the School. If so that writing or Tri-V has been lost," said Linda.