GRGR(6) Episode 16: The Wind

[Kevin Won]

I'm glad that you mentioned all the winds in GR:  I find it a most vexing reoccurring element.  Though I can't really comment on the GR elements at this time, I hope that someone can elucidate what seems a very strong connection between the winds in GR and the strong role the winds play in _Moby-Dick_  In that text, the winds have the obvious role of moving the _Pequod_ from place to place, (i.e. the fates) but there is also this strange goings on between the White Whale and the direction of the winds.  It seems that 'ol Moby *only* swims to the lee (i.e. with the wind).  Moreover, much is made with the windward/lee directions throughout (i.e. "the lee shore" chapter, "Keep your weather eye open", etc).   I find many echos of this in the windy wanderings of GR, but they are fairly slippery and difficult to make a conjecture about.  I need a toe-hold.   Any suggestions?

Kevin
wonk at ohsu.edu


>>> "David Morris" <davidm at hrihci.com> 07/15 3:18 PM >>>

Jeremy Osner:
>I'm having trouble with episode 16 (pp. 120-136, about
>Roger and Jessica). I read it again and again, but the
>most I can get from it is a very broad sense of foreboding.
>It's like an impressionist painting; when I try to read
>it closely I can't make any sense of it. Any ideas?

First off, I gotta say it's hard to respond to such an non-specific
question.  What is it you have trouble following when you "try to read it
closely?"

Besides this being the second installment in the "Story of Jessica & Roger,"
it does contain some very abstract and dark images and themes.  There's the
ever present "Wind" coupled here with the "Advent" and the "Nativity."
Isn't the "Transition" in this part also?  Each one of these can be dug
into, but maybe not nailed down.

The Wind (very incomplete look):

I went to the HyperArts GR page to track down "wind" and found only
"windmill,"  which is surely related, but Redbug, why no "wind?"
----------
(121.22) in the nights with the Bofors door-knocking against her sky, with
his wind humming among the loops of barbed wire down along the beach.
----------
(131.30) Advent blows from the sea
----------
earlier:
(30.25)  Roland too became conscious of the wind, as his mortality had never
allowed him.  Discovered it so ... so joyful, that the arrow must veer into
it.  The wind had been blowing all year long, year after year, but Roland
had felt only the secular wind ... he means only his personal wind.  Yet ...
Selena, the wind, the wind's everywhere...
----------

The wind is first mentioned in the seance via a spirit communication.  That
is significant:

Main Entry: 1spir·it
Pronunciation: 'spir-&t
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Old French or Latin; Old French, from Latin
spiritus, literally, breath, from spirare to blow, breathe

The wind in GR is a very active force.  It is later credited as the force
which brings together the "founding fathers" of rocketry.

With "her sky/his wind" the wind (and the sky) is given gender.  This is not
compatible with the common symbology of sky = male / earth = female.  It is
maybe more an analogy of the active vs. the passive, as in the sky being the
space and the wind being movement w/in that space.

With Roland, death opens up the world of wind, the collective wind, to which
he joyously gives himself over.

That's all I've got now.
More later,
David