like an open door

[michael baird]

>
>kai quotes
>       "l'ombilic des limbes" [1925]: "i want to write a book which 
>confuses the
>    people, which is like an open door leading them to a place where to go 
>they
>    would never have agreed, a door which is simply connected with 
>reality."


  many of us would 'agree' consciously to open the door connected with

reality... how often have we become conscious, emotionally and

intellectually, of a lifelong system of delusion.  our senses hum and

tingle, and we say to ourselves (perhaps now because there's noone left

to say it to?), "yeah, from now on, i'm gonna be real, i'm gonna face

reality...", only to find as the day, week or month progresses

that our coded physiologies, whose sensory windows may sometimes

through some circumstances be blown wide open, generally revert to what

are more or less their normal modes of operation... the flowers become

dull again, and people's words and faces are blurry and ambiguous.

  great art, as perceived by the audience (in other words, Steely Dan

for one, GR for another) has the power to galvanize the system... to

make it aware of its own reality. spines tingle, corners sharpen...

perhaps one of the reasons pynchon attracts such an intelligent

readership is that work has enough cerebral strength to penetrate the

intellectual armor with which him his readers must often protect

themselves from reality...  does that make sense? the only way to find

reality is to break unreality. people with alot of intelligence tend

use it to block out what they don't wish to see, or what they haven't

been told is allright to notice. bless pynchon for using this tool to

open up the sensory windows. (i like windows more than doors. and in an

ideal world, people use intellegence to illucidate reality, not to

medicate it.





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