the littlest mason

[jporter]

Although some might declare yesterday's list activities to have been
hideous, gnostic and fowl, I am proud of my younger sisters and brethren. I
offer you this, from the rim of the nest:

61:04, Beginning, "How can this be..." Mason is wondering here at how
Joahanna Vroom can find his looks so fascinating...And then, for the entire
rest of the page, Pynchon digresses to get to the point, incredibly
expanded by that time, of the nature, but not the true motivation of the
"Fascination" in Johanna's stare, which Mason finds so surprising.

        "But Mason is another story. Mason the widower with that melancholick
        look, an impassion'd, young-enough Fool willing to sail oceans and
        fight sea-battles just to have a chance to watch Venus, Love Herself,
        pass across the Sun,-- in these parts exotic even in his workaday
        earth tones, coming in starv'd from the Sea with all those strange
        Engines, and obviously desparate for a shore-cooked'd meal. None
        of this has appear'd to him in any mirror he's consulted."

 Switching back to the beginning of this passage, where mu is introduced:
the assigned "coefficient of mercy" to every "Looking-Glass" is clearly the
factor Mason's vanity assigns to the varying mirrors reflecting his "Stoop"
and "Frontal Hemisphere" on any given day- to make image jibe with
self-image. Given even his most flattering "cheat factor," call it mu, he
cannot account for this newly met Johanna's seeming fascination with his
appearance. But, of course, he doesn't know (nor do we), as yet, that her
interest lies mainly in sizing up the potential stud value of his
whiteness, as it might present itself,  on the Cape Town slave market. What
difference does the coefficient make if the mercy approaches zero? Get rid
of the u altogether.

jody, on vacation from play.


p.s. Okay yo sleeping sixties types:

 Dylan wrote both "Visions of Johanna" and "I Dreamt I Saw St. Augustine,"
     right? Did Joan Baez sing them both? Does anyone remember?

And couldn't we see the seeds of the awfulness to come?