(helio)tropism

[Heikki Raudaskoski]

One might argue that water, more than sun, is in Melville crucial
to the experience of SPACE which Olson takes "to be central to man
born in America". The watery Pacific as the solid Plains repeated.
Over this space, Americans want to make a curve. "Space had a stubborn
way to sticking to Americans, penetrating all the way in, accompanying
them. It is the exterior fact. The basic exterior act is a BRIDGE.
Take them in order they came: caravel, prairie schooner, national road,
railway, plane. Now in the Pacific THE CARRIER. Trajectory. We must go
over space, or we wither." (Olson, 114) This space may sometimes take 
the form of a Zone. Where guys like Slothrop are "under the bridge", 
thrown out from all kinds of carriers. But still Americanesquely (or 
Puritanesquely) involved with this bridge, with a trajectory. (Someone
pointed to the correspondence between "bridge" and "trajectory" in GR 
on the list some time ago.) But now I have to take a train over the 
space of Finland. Back the day after the First of May, the ungraceful 
spring feast in Finland. No, let's be realistic: two days after 5/1/96.

Heikki