tantivy, 8 to 4

[jporter]

For all you Slow Readers out there (like me), before I say goodbye to
GRGR2, that troubling concatenation of autumn themes...I can't quit it
quite yet and move out to catch up with the bivouac until I've attempted to
make some wild sense out of the hints TRP has tossed us in this somewhat
confusing section. The key for me (and this is why I love and dislike this
section: It is like a lock begging for a key; Joycean, but at the same time
faking it) is Bloat's interlude at AHCTUNG. That should be enough of a clue
there...pay attention reader, here it comes, but not too much attention,
take it too literally and you're liable to fall through a facade into...

Oliver Mucker-Maffick (OMM), or Tantivy. Oliver offers associations galore.
Starting with Oliver Hardy, Oliver Heaviside (discoverer of the ionosphere)
Oliver Evans (inventor/perfector of high pressure steam engines, mass
production techniques, founder of the Mars Iron Works- we'll meet him again
in Mason&Dixon, along with Eli Whitney, et. al., I bet). Mucker- friend,
yes, but also shit. Maffick, celebration, with South African, Boer War
connections. That gives us so far, a slapstick celebrartion of shit, with
certain sinister overtones.

 And then there is Tantivy- The sympathetic strings on the sitar are
beginning to tremble- yet the word has literal meaning- jargon from the The
Hunt,- it must be beginning, the bugle call has sounded. But there is much
more here. The term is used self-reflexively, which means you have to
stretch it's meaning thin to bring out it's true colors, overtones, and
highlights. And with a little stretch, bend, warp, (think harmonica here)
that note becomes Tantra, Sanskrit for The Loom, but literally: to warp.
(If you follow tantra up through the Indo-European to the Greek-  *thin*,
and to *stretch thin* begin to resonate (think plasticman here). Tantrism
is a tradition which is shared by both Hinduism and Buddhism, especially
Tibeten Buddhism. Integral to the tantric tradition, besides the focusing
of energy through various sexual techniques, is the use of mantras and, the
mandala, to chart the progress of ones consciousness enroute to
enlightenment.

Bloat, with reader's view in hand, makes his spy's way to the grey stone
town house, "neither large nor historic enough..." but from which you can
hear, if the conditions are just right, and it happens to be 8:20..."winter
birds cheeping outside..." Rather a fine focus here, in order to hear the
birds. What can we make of the 8:20? (That's big hand on the 8, little hand
on the 4) Well given the Tantric overtones already alluded to, how about
the 8 fold path and the 4 noble truths, the commom denominators of all
Buddhist traditions. And futher, perhaps, an allusion to the 84
mahasiddhas, or *great magicians* of both Hindu and Tantric Buddhist
traditions, representing a synthesis of both systems, the *84* by
convention signifying totality.


The pyramidal sandbags- provisional, yes, but aren't all pyramid schemes?
And what has society always been but a series of pyramid schemes, even the
"Great Pyramids"- the elect few at the top, the great masses of exploited
preterite forming the base, always mystically aligned to suggest harmony
with the stars, as if the stars cared, to make it all seem legitimate and
inevitable.

The map room, the map itself, the orthogonal desks, the "vectors" Tantivy
and Tyrone (shit celebrating sloth?). Yes, Tantivy and Tyrone at right
angles, warp and woof- they can influence eachother, alternately revolve
around eachother depending on point of view, but like centrifugal/petal
force, they'll be no *useful* work done here.

Bloat's camera lays waste to the most valuable information available to any
who might be charting the progress of Slothrope's journey, on his personal
mandela. In it's insatiable thirst for *useful* information, The System
erases Slothrope's feelings. They'll be no mixing of emotion into this
equation. Maxwell's demon- cross another Atlantic and say hello to J.
Willard Gibbs.

But this is a journey toward death, as the psychics of the next (present)
section remind us. Or, if it's already "too late" as the dream implied,
then a journey after death. And for guidance on this journey?...rockets may
use gyros and accelerometers,...but for the soul?

The passage in question gives clues. The pyramids suggest the Egyptian Book
of the Dead, Tantivy stretched to Tantra suggests The Tibetan version. It
is perhaps interesting to note that the Tibetan Book of the Dead tells us
that the lot of days in the soul's journey to a new home is exactly 49.

I'll always be troubled by this part of the book, it's slippery and
elusive, like the season. As the rate of change of the length of the days
goes maximum, and the curve goes from concave down to up, what phase change
of the soul?

It's the season of the witch.

Jody