MDMD(5) Chap 16----Questions

[Mark Smith]

> 171.35,  " occupies now an entirely new angular relation to Mercy." 
> Comments? Expansions? Exemptions? Parking Tickets?
> 

I'm still fascinated by this passage.  It's downright spooky.  I think
if you read the context of the passage, you'll find that Mason is, or
has been, gradually letting go of Rebekah, and feels guilty about not
honoring his debt to the dead "those refusals among the Living to act on
Behalf of Death or its ev'ryday Coercions...".  Then later (p. 172):
"I've betrayed you," he cries.  "Ah, - I should have -"
"Lit Candles? I am past Light.  Pray'd for me ev'ry Day?  I am outside
of Time."

He senses in her ghost an almost animalistic presence, and thinks he
sees black hellish fumes welling up from her soul.  Her voice almost
takes on the timbre of a beast. She is in hell, but what can he do?

At the top of p.172 there is mention of "moral Refraction" of her
passing over, and "measuring Angles along illuminated points"
(stargazing).  The new "angle of Mercy" is, I think, to do with Mason
feeling "pleasurably helpless" at the way he now relates to her.  The
thousand mortal coils of the living, the petty injustices and failures
of husband to wife - these are now over and done with, and Mason is both
unable to help with the past, but also relinquished of his temporal
duties to her.  He is now free to re-invent a new, idealized
relationship to Rebekah, and indeed seems to be doing so in his
comically bucolic cheese-rolling tale of their meeting.     
-- 
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make their sire/Stoop with oppression of their prodigal weight."