loose canons

[V055QRSH at ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu]

Kevin Crosby wrote on Feb 9 'After reading about St. Hilarius
I browsed through the Lives of the Saints for a while, looking
for other characters from TP's work, but didn't come up with
anything,' which made me remember somewhat of a mystery I have
decorating pg 320 of my Vineland.  It's in my hand-writing,
although I couldn't tell you when I wrote it (my best guess-
Spring 94), and it says simply, 'St. Claire of Assisi, a pope
patronized him/her as patron St. of TV.' Yesterday I got ahold
of a saint dictionary and this Claire or Clare seems to have
been quite the powerful woman.  I suppose an argument could be
made that TP may have fashioned the Sisterhood of Kunoichi
Attentives from what's known about the church she founded of
Poor Ladies, or Poor Claires.  It's also interesting to note
that St. Francis helped her out (sounds a bit like Frenesi),
and even more apropos is that emblems depicting her usually
show her with a monstrance.  I realize delving into etymos are
dangerous, but monstrance comes from Latin monstrare, to show.
Isn't Frenesi's camera a kindof monstrance?  I recommend we 
look more closely at Sasha's cousin Claire.

Anyone else ever hear of St. Claire being sillily canonized in
our virtueless anti-avatar, the impious Tube?  It could be that
I laid it there as a red-herring to deter me from writing out-
side the margin.  For all of our sakes perhaps Pynchon's next
book will begin with a dedication page depicting a lollypop-
shaped road-side sign, with the word MARGINALIA in the circle,
and a line thru it.  My downfall has always been my mini-hand-
writing, thus my annotated GR.  I'm trying to cut down, been
doing great ever since 93, having traipsed thru Europe - The
Zone - with my GR as a pillow on midnight trains, a charm to
ward off black knights.  It worked.  A two-month run of good
luck.  Coincidence?  Well, I felt indebted to my big red badge,
so I swore off using its pages as tp for my intellectual ex-
crement.  Instead I sketched.  Open it now and you'll find
chess pieces clashing beyond the rooking lass, balloons rising
along the pageside, lit zippos mocking the flammable paper,
capedfanged beings lurking unable to sink their teeth into
pies on other pages, yes there a pig oinkoinks, there an owl
hoothoots, a choral arc indeed.  But I'm off the track.

One more thing, and you must forgive my love of etymos, but
'cannon' (as in the softoff-phallus-shaped weapon) comes from
'canna': a reed, or tube... or should I say Tube.

Saint Rick
Patron de l'ouest