Harmonic Motion

[David Pelovitz]

First off, sorry if I sent two messages here.
I think the first got cancelled tho.

> On Sat, 25 Feb 1995, Jon Fram wrote:
> 
> > By the way James, why did you ask about "crystal oscillations" with respct to
> > eigenvalues in the first place?
> > FRAM

> 	Someone had been talking about harmonics in V. and wanted to know,
> I think, whether anyone had any leads on this score.  Eigenvalue sprang 
> to mind.  Come to think of it now, so does the yoyo theme and the band 
> pass filter in the form of the kilroy drawing.  But I don't know enough 
> about the science end of this stuff to make anything much of it.

What bothers me about the whole harmonic Motion thing in V.
is how little anyone has mentioned it in the criticism I've
read.  We have all seen yo-yoing discussed, and many have noted 
all those pendulum clocks and bedsprings - but it is everywhere.
Malta is a hand holding a yo-yo.  Esther gets her nose changed
from the Jewish upward curve to the Irish downward curve
("a Jew nose in reverse") with Schoenmaker thinking about what
could harmonize a face as the trees oscillate outside the window.
Esther later becomes yo-yo champion by going to Cuba to have
an abortion, achieving the highest kinetic energy while bringing
her potential to zero.  

Since I sent that first post on this subject, someone has commented
on the number of bipolar choices Pynchon throws into his works.
The joke there (it seems to me) is that they multiply so quickly.
I think those bipolar oppositions remind us that having only
two choices is not limiting - after all, binary code has only
two choices and the combinations are infinite.

The harmonic motion curve, like the excluded middle, is all
that space between one and zero.  If the one and zero remind
us of the binary code of digital machines - the curve should
remind us of analogy machines.  Not that it matters. The larger
joke is that both forms of communication allow for an infinite
number of possible messages and the possibility of misinterpretation
on some level.  

David Pelovitz - DocPat at ix.netcom.com
                 PELOVTZD at Acfcluster.nyu.edu