TRP as Presence

[MASCARO at humnet.ucla.edu]

Ph.D acolyte hg Torquemada puts me to the test (fort et dure) with sharp questions:
>
>(Dr) johnny m writes:
> 
>>                                     I have been thinking that all of us harbor the 
>> secret thought. more a visceral feeling, at least for me, that TRP 
>is--here--somehow, 
>> among us, like Jesus on the road to wherever, or as Eliot writes about 
>(Wasteland?) 
>> that phenomenon, also noted by soldiers in foxholes, the sense that there is an 
>> unseen but felt companion lurking nearby.  Does Tommy haunt us like the 
>Holy 
>> Grail?  Are we Apostles awaiting the descent of the flickering tongue of fire? Or 
>> doubting Thomases doubting  Thomas,  looking to probe the wounds with our 
>> own hands? What difference would it make it he were--here?  Are we all, with 
>one 
>> or two synapses at least, partly talking to him (resisting the temptation to type: 
>> Him) when we talk to each other.
>
>Why so biblical, johnny m? Have you decided that we're all fans here, 
>looking for the ruggled messiah? Or is it the nature of the medium, 
>of the beast, of the list, to exist as such? as a congregation? 

Good questions, hg.  Responding to the obvious religious sensibility of TRP's 
writing?  Fan or not, you can't miss that; maybe, yes, the nature of this beast we're 
riding, a congregation of ones and zeroes (ah, but which is which? sez Alice); maybe 
my Sicilian blood (et tu, Romeo?) or Jesuitical training?  Maybe because I'm reading 
FOUCALT'S  PENDULUM and if ever there was a Templar still lurking, TRP's the 
boy.  And any reference to--presence--has to be a religious analog (not a digitog), but 
here we venture into casuistry.

johnny m, grail hunter ex officio