POWER PLAYERS: The Annotated Aztlan 
Back to Overview
Full text of Aztlan annotations
[JUNGLE CAT] Because their vile masters pervert their magics so they cannot use it to heal the land. Paejaki.JUNGLE CAT recognises that the magics are perverted: that they should heal the land, but don't. "Watch your language ..." It is the automatic retort so many of us have heard so often: but twisted to make it simultaneously a joke, a truth, and a prerequisite of understanding. (How can children learn if they don't understand what is being said?) Again, only one among those present is likely not to understand the word: LADY OF THE COURT. Perhaps predictably, it is she who tells Harlequin -- not JUNGLE CAT -- to "Be quiet". Still smarting from Harlequin's tip of the hat to HECATE just previously? She can't take it out on her teacher -- but she can on Harlequin.[THE LAUGHING MAN] Watch your language, there are children present. They might not understand what you mean.
[LADY OF THE COURT] Oh, be quiet.
[UMSONDO] Cat is not so ill-advised to speak. Barrenness is fertility. Destruction sows the seeds of vile growth. Why else are we here to speak?
That the comment is to Harlequin is evident because if she were reacting to JUNGLE CAT instead, his words at least being perceived to be relevant to the text, she would have been silent, or else she would have rebutted or otherwise rejected his points instead of just telling him to shut up ... with dignity, of course. (To approach new information or a new perspective with the aim of rebutting it is the same as rejecting that new information or perspective out of hand ... or perhaps even worse: since even though one is instantly prepared to dismiss, the exercise of rebuttal allows the illusion of such dismissal coming through open-minded and considered logic. Thus, setting out to rebut even before having read the entire text might perhaps express the ultimate in closed-mindedness.) Harlequin, however, makes no points that she considers valid -- or even perceives -- and so she dismisses him instead. After all, in what he said, he cannot possibly be considered appropriately dignified for an immortal elf.
Since she was not talking to JUNGLE CAT or addressing his comments in any way, UMSONDO's subsequent analysis of JUNGLE CAT's words cannot be addressed to her. Rather, I suggest the initial "Cat is not so ill-advised to speak" is aimed at Harlequin's "Watch your language" comment, by way of deflecting even this small suggestion as a sidewise censorship of raw truth.
Interestingly, in contrast to what we have seen in the introduction and will continue to see throughout the text, Harlequin seems to feel no need to cap this comment, to have the last word. But why on earth wouldn't he? He does it to everyone else. He feels the need to punctuate even Dunkelzahn's "Quiet." (p.98) But -- never to USMONDO.
If USMONDO is indeed Mynbruje, the first goal, even before judgement, is observation and understanding through the other person's eyes (ED). Thus JUNGLE CAT must be allowed to speak his mind in his own words, not those others would choose for him. For any to cut down another's informed speaking is antithetical to truth and justice, and so Mynbruje would have to support the necessity of the other's speaking.
Barrenness is fertility. Destruction sows the seeds of vile growth.At least a double meaning here, and both utterly precise if somewhat cryptic: and the one which might seem the more relevant perhaps is not. In the context of the main text:
The second meaning ties directly to the exchange between JUNGLE CAT and Harlequin, and could be taken as a subtle form of guidance and warning to Harlequin: