"V" Resonances

[David Morris]

This N.O.Brown quote brought me straight to Hugh's experience at Vheissu, 
where everything was rainbow iridescence - which he ultimately found 
distressing.  "Meanings" were inaccessible to him and he sought to dissect 
the surface even though that would have killed the life.  That segment of 
_V._ relates directly Brown's words below.

jporter hit on a great understanding of this segment in the last VV:
http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0102&msg=53050&keywords=VV%20antarctic%20vheissu

"Using the Anti-paranoia/free-will/no connections "epistemology," Hugh is 
terrified of the absence of history- everything in the present- constantly 
emerging- surface reality of Vheissu-land. This highlights the subtext that 
paranoia *depends* on a history- specifically a shared time- when seemingly 
unrelated events might have been proximal enough to effect eachother. It 
seems that paranoia is dependent on the fabrication of a particular history, 
in which the paranoid, or his mythical "big Other," enjoyed a central 
position.

"Hugh" finds Vheissu particularly distressing because it represents a
retinal "blind spot" (as an origin- i.e., before boundaries between the
various "hues" became established) where the optic nerve ties together all 
the retinal receptors and bundles back toward the 'ol optic lobes for 
integration. The brain ignores the blind spot and "gestalts in" a best guess 
estimate of what woulda, coulda, shoulda been.

David Morris

>From: "Vincent A. Maeder" <vmaeder at valderlaw.com>
>There is heavy symbolism in any intersection, with river's edge, 
>crossroads, edge of the forest, etc. Celtic and aboriginal beliefs posited 
>that Earth's energies are at they're greatest at such intersections. [...]
>
>>
>>[Living] Meaning is in the play, or interplay, of light.  As in 
>>schizophrenia, all things lose their boundaries, become iridescent with 
>>many-colored significances.  No thing, but an iridescence, a rainbow 
>>effect.  [...]
>>
>>[Living] Meaning is not in things but in between; in the iridescence, the 
>>interplay; in the interconnections; at the intersections, at the 
>>crossroads.
>>
>>N.O.Brown, _Love's Body_ p.257 UC Press, 1990

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