thinkin' 'bout V

[meikle at mail.utexas.edu]

Roky E sez Ok now lets think about V.  V is the triangulation Henry Adams
talked about, the triangulation of a historian in 1901 attempting to plot
the new century just as Victoria dies and Stencil is born.  V is Adams's
blissfully secure unity expanding into blooming, buzzing, terminally
confusing multiplicity, or, reversing the image, the multiform expressions
of civilization blurring, decaying, fading, converging onto the zero point,
the lowest common denominator, life as they knew it going down the tubes,
with the swirling V as the final whirlpool over the century's drain, as the
Vorticists' inexorable vector of forces, emerging outward, on "the other
side" (with a tip o' the hat to Walther Rathenau and Lyle Bland, no doubt),
beyond the zero, into....  (well, we know where that goes...into the Zone).
V is also the classic opposition of virgin and vamp, revolving around the
delta of venus (check out those prehistoric Maltese fertility goddesses--no
wonder the V-Mann is called Wimpe).  V is also that miraculous point--that
kiss of cosmic pool balls, to mix texts and metaphors--where parallel lines
meet, where Hothouse and Street, right and left, memory and hope,
incomprehensibly converge.  Sorry foax, I can just barely see out of the
corner of my eye as that huge cartoonish hook emerges from stage
left--strangely angular rather than curved--and I fear I've worn out my
welcome...

Jeff