MDMD(3)--Just a thought

[Doug Millison]

Consider Amsterdam today. The Oude Kerk, dedicated to St. Nicholas, patron
saint of sailors, famed for its 16th century stained glass windows known as
Nieuwe Vrouwenkoor (depicting the life of the Virgin), with a late gothic
spire that rises in the center of the city's red-light district, photogenic
prostitutes on display in picturesque lace-curtain framed picture windows;
drugs cafes with multiple varieties of marijuana and hashish on the menu;
funseekers lurching in the canal maze of streets --  not so much a combat
zone where low-life criminals are left alone to prey on one another but
instead a safe, well-planned ghetto of cheap indulgence, a carnal
Disneyland, the stops clearly laid out on tour bus routes on the tourist
maps, with salvation close at hand in the Oude Kerk. All quite tame here in
the metropole, compared to Cape Town.

-Doug

At 9:19 AM 7/8/97, Steven Maas (CUTR) wrote:
>Dixon, or Pynchon, asks the question--". . .how can there be any room for
>excess in this gossip-ridden Town. . . ?"  and answers that it's ". . .as
>if Judgment be near as the towering Seas and nothing matter anymore,
>especially not good behavior, because there's no more time--the bets are
>in, ev'ry individual Fate decided, all cries taken by the great Winds, and
>'tis done."
>
>So I was wondering, is, or was, there in fact a strain of Dutch Calvinist
>thought that would lead the Cape Dutch to imagine that once Time was about
>to end it no longer mattered what one did, that one's fate was decided and
>would not change no matter what?  This seems to go well beyond the
>Elect/Preterite dichotomy, where even the Elect are expected to follow
>certain codes of conduct.
>
>        Steve Maas
>
>Meg submits for our consideration this excellent, though inexplicably
>lacking references to Librarians and NoCal dope dealers, excerpt from
>chapter 8, page 78 of M&D:
>
>>       "He [Dixon] feels like a predatory Animal,--as if this Town were
>> ancient to him, his Hunting-Ground, his Fell so mis-remember'd in nearly
>> all Details, save where lie the Bound'ries he does not plan to cross.
>> Tho' how can there be any room for excess in this gossip-ridden Town,
>> crowded up against the Mountains that wall it from the virid vast
>> leagues of Bushmen's Land beyond? as behind these carv'd doors and
>> Gothickal Gates, in the far Penumbrae of sperm tapers, in Loft and
>> _Voorhuis_, in entryways scour'd by Dusk and blown Sand, these Dutch
>> carry on as if Judgment be near as the towering Seas and nothing matter
>> anymore, especially not good behavior, because there's no more time--the
>> bets are in, ev'ry individual Fate decided, all cries taken by the great
>> Winds, and 'tis done. Temporally, as geographically, the End of the
>> World.  The unrelenting Vapor of debauchery here would not merely tempt
>> a Saint,--Heavens, 'twould tempt an Astronomer.  Yet 'tis difficult, if
>> not impossible, for these Astronomers to get down to a Chat upon the
>> Topick of Desire, given Dixon's inability to deny or divert the Gusts
>> that sweep him, and Mason's frequent failure, in his Melancholy, even to
>> recognize Desire, let alone to act upon it, tho' it run up calling Ahoy
>> Charlie. "How could you begin to understand?" Mason sighs. "You've no
>> concept of Temptation.  You came ashore here _looking_ for occasions to
>> transgress. Some of us have more Backbone, I suppose. . . ."
>>       "A bodily Part too often undistinguish'd," Dixon replies, "from a
>> Ram-Rod up the Arse."


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