Row, row, row...

[V055QRSH at ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu]

This will not be another meteorological forecast for NW Cal.
It's just a small-boat advisory for everyone everywhere.

John Mascaro writes:
"After all, GR is a dream made real; VINELAND is reality
made into a dream.  The act of making a dream real requires
cloaking it... conversely, making reality a dream MIGHT
smell like "laxity" to some..." and "I think that VINELAND
is every bit as unlax as GR; it's just diff'rent, s'all."

The above, I think, reads like a warm draft coming through
an open window leading into another dimension.  This, I
say, to clear the air and start anew.  A laxative, if you
please...
Now, you're all feeling very sleepy...
There once was a poetry professor
who made his class Father Confessor
when he told them they dream
not in color, but seem
to think that they do.  What a messer!

Boyohboy, you think physical entropic breakdown is the
worst part about aging, just ask this "teacher" when was
the last time he remembered a dream.  A shame, a damned
shame.  But enough about THAT end of the time line.  Add
a leg and go back earlier in the Sphinxian day:  Did you
ever notice how much time a newborn spends in REM?  It's
something like 80 or 90% of sleeptime.  Sure, you just
come off The Long Blink and you're a wee bit tired, but
it's got to have something to do with needing to process
all this new stuff happenin'.

I often wonder what TRP's dreams are like (the only bit
of personal biz I wonder about).  Are his pre-sleeps as
as character-filled as his novels?  Does he have as fun a
time dreaming as he does writing?  I would really like to
believe that he's a "lucid dreamer," but it either him or
Van Meter (223) who misunderstand the concept as something
mystical, rather than physiological or psychological.

Having myself been lucid since the 6th grade, I've tried
several techniques, but a few years ago I camee across a
book by one Stephen LaBerge, a leading researcher in dream
studies.  His book (Lucid Dreaming) opened me up to the
science behind dreams: alpha waves, REM states (how they're
most active after about 5-6 hours of zzzzs, and how their
duration can increase geometrically from the moment your
head hits the pillow, how you can store REM time, etc...)
All very scientific.  None of your mumbo jumbo or prophetic
bullpoop here.  But what I was mad at for never having seen
before reading the book was a very important key to dreams,
and it answers Frenesi FAQ (FAVORITE asked question) posed
by her son, Justin: "How do you know when you're dreaming,
and when you're not?"  Well, that's an easy one, Frenesi,
honey.  I used to jump up in the air, and if I hung around
up there for more than what I was used to gravity's constant
always allowing me, then I'd know that I was dreaming, would
take control (become lucid), fly around, mange, get in all
sorts of trouble.  But it's even easier than jumping.  To
know whether or not you're dreaming (proved LaBerge and also
myself quite a few times), you just read something.  Read a
street sign, or your watch's brand name, or the logo on a 
case of beer.  If you're dreaming, your Timex will become a
Rolex or Bulova, Bud - Coors (no arguments here),  and a No
Parking Anytime might change to Toe Sparkplug Rhyme.  This
reading method comes in handy, if you're say in a mall and
think you're dreaming - not the kind of place you ought to
be jumping up and down in for no good reason.  And if you do
it enough during waking hours, you becme more atuned to your
surroundings, more awake, so that when your dreaming you're
more apt to notice things ain't quite right, so you can go
look for something to read and then you're lucid.  This is
beginning to sound too How To-ish.

(Said it before and I'll say it again) Let's wrap it up.
In reality, you read the world as a text and it affects you
a certain way, affects your perspective, let's say.  But in
a dream, seeing as how you are an acting participant in all
the world around you, what you're reading therefore affects
your PROJECTIVE.  So that reality isn't anything that anyone
should want to manipulate or control, but we should just take
what  we're dealt, and deal with it (Is their a redundancy
key on your keyboard - Someone should make one for us). Guess
what I'm trying to say is the language center in the brain is
THE center for those of us literate enough to read the signs
the universe has out there in the forms of connect-the-dot
constellations... What am I saying?  Does anyone know?

I liked CL49 alot more before I knew that all Oedipa had to
do was read her Arnold name tag a couple of times, and if it
changed to Pierce, Pynchon or Jamf, then she'd've known that
this is all just some grand illusion.  And if it just kept
saying Arnold, then she could've chucked those ruby slippers
into the corner and got on with her life.  Not that I'd ever
ask to borrow her green specks...

And as for comparing GR and VINELAND to the realm of dreams,
hell, we might as well call Freud's IoD an auto-epistolary
novel. -It all seems to me such an obviously poisoned cup of
tea you can smell it.  I rather like the popular opinion that
GR's a movie/musical (dancing rats, I mean, c'mon); VINELAND's
got to be a Sunday night made-for-the-tuber; and V., I'd have
to say it's Stencil's novel idea of living. CL49 is nmkmhmlgmn
dfvzfbdfbdz bvgbn vzgnbn bhm mk./ l  njk nkjnjkn.n  nhbj,mnjn
The above last line was done by my Golden Retreiver, name of
Moxie, having jumped up and put her paws on my keyboard. Don't
try and decipher it.  Let me translate as best I could.  She
just wants to say to everyone on the list that she's very happy
that her master is a pynchon reader, and speaking for canines
everywhere, she says everydog should have a Pynchon reader as a
buddy, but she was wondering if she could just borrow me for a
little while, you see, she'd really like to play and you know
it's getting pretty dark.  So, folks, before she jumps up here
again and starts typing something that "I" might try and read
into, you'll have to excuse us, we have an appointment with a
frisbee.

Rick and Moxie

p.s. don't read this post a second time, on account that your
computer might just want to change the text so that you'll think
you're dreaming, and you'll go out and do something you'd regret
like buy some hardware to make it more powerful.  Computers are
funny that way.  Dogs, being 4-leggers, they're another story...