MDMD(8): Another weather report.

[Terrance]

Michel Ryckx wrote:
> 
> There's something weird going on p. 107:  The italics are the
> author's.
> 
> "what Mason sees, from his first Nightfall there, is Darkness, rising
> up out of the sea, [. . .] (M&D, 107.2-3)
> 
> "the sea appears to lie above the Island [. . .]" (M&D, 107.35).
> 
> Then there is the Rain, apocalyptic as ever, or more or less symbolic
> --which I've never understood, living in a country where there's a lot
> of rain, so the force of the image somehow eludes me; rain to me is a
> natural background.
> 
> There is, I think, a large difference between the description of the
> rain at the Cape, maybe obnoxious, but mainly purifying, and here, on
> St Helens: "After Rain-Storms, the water rushes downhill, in Eagres
> and Riffles and Cataracts, thro' the town, rooftop to rooftop, in and
> out of Windows, leaving behind a shiv'ring Dog from uphill [. . .]"
> (M&D, 107.24-27)
> 
> The "introduction to the Rainy Season" (M&D, 89.36) results on page 89
> in a kind of slapstick scene, starring Charles Mason, whom we (or I)
> laugh at because of his misery.
> 
> p. 91: "the Rain-Beetles are in Song"
> 
> The storm at p. 92 "which sheds the Rain in Sheets" (M&D, 92.9) causes
> to drink  Madeira wine.  You know: the weather is bad, but you're safe
> inside.
> 
> And not to forget: while the Reverend is telling chapter 11, "frozen
> Rain sweeps briefly yet pointedly at the glossy black Window-Panes
> (M&D, 105.19-20).  And he, maybe others in the room too, are drinking.
> 
> Then there is the Wind, of course.
> 
> Michel.




Michel Ryckx wrote:
> 
> Then there is the Rain, apocalyptic as ever, or more or less symbolic
> --which I've never understood, living in a country where there's a lot
> of rain, so the force of the image somehow eludes me; rain to me is a
> natural background.
> 
> There is, I think, a large difference between the description of the
> rain at the Cape, maybe obnoxious, but mainly purifying, and here, on
> St Helens: "After Rain-Storms, the water rushes downhill, in Eagres
> and Riffles and Cataracts, thro' the town, rooftop to rooftop, in and
> out of Windows, leaving behind a shiv'ring Dog from uphill [. . .]"
> (M&D, 107.24-27)
> 
> The "introduction to the Rainy Season" (M&D, 89.36) results on page 89
> in a kind of slapstick scene, starring Charles Mason, whom we (or I)
> laugh at because of his misery.
> 
> p. 91: "the Rain-Beetles are in Song"
> 
> The storm at p. 92 "which sheds the Rain in Sheets" (M&D, 92.9) causes
> to drink  Madeira wine.  You know: the weather is bad, but you're safe
> inside.
> 
> And not to forget: while the Reverend is telling chapter 11, "frozen
> Rain sweeps briefly yet pointedly at the glossy black Window-Panes
> (M&D, 105.19-20).  And he, maybe others in the room too, are drinking.

MD.107

A very small town clings to the edge of an interior that must be
reckoned  part of the Other World. No change here is gradual,-- events
arrive suddenly. All distances are vast. The Wind, brutal and pure, is
there for its own reason,  and human life, any life, counts for close to
naught. The town has begun to climb into  the Ravine behind it, and
thus, averaged
overall, to tilt toward the sea. After Rain-Storms the water rushes
downhill, in Eagres,
and Rifles  and Cataracts, thro' the town, rooftop to rooftop, in and
out of
Windows, leaving behind a shiv'ring Dog from uphill, taking Coffee Pots,
till leaving it in its turn somewhere else, for a Foot-Stool,-- thus
bartering its way out to sea. 






Now in contiguous drops the flood comes down,
Threatening with deluge this devoted town.
To shops in crowds the daggled females fly,
Pretend to cheapen goods but nothing buy.
The Templar spruce, while every spout's abroach,
Stays till 'tis fair, yet seems to call a coach.
The tucked-up sempstress walks with hasty strides
While streams run down her oil'd umbrella's sides.
Here various kinds by various fortunes led
Commence acquaintance underneath a shed.
Triumphant Tories and desponding Whigs                        
Forget their feuds and join to save their wigs.
Boxed in a chair the beau impatient sits,
While spouts run clattering o'er the roof by fits;
And ever and anon with frightful din
The leather sounds; he trembles from within.
So when Troy chairmen bore the wooden steed,
Pregnant with Greeks, impatient to be freed,
(Those bully Greeks, who, as the moderns do, 
Instead of paying chairmen, run them through),
Laocoon struck the outside with his spear,           
And each imprisoned hero quaked for fear,
     Now from all parts the swelling kennels flow,
And bear their trophies with them as they go:
Filth of all hues and odours seem to tell
What street they sailed from, by their sight and smell.
They, as each torrent drives, with rapid force
>From Smithfield or St. Pulchre's shape their course
And in huge confluent join at Snow Hill ridge,
Fall from the conduit prone to Holborn Bridge.
Sweepings from butchers stalls, dung, guts, and blood,
Drowned puppies, stinking sprats, all drenched in mud,
Dead cats and turnip-tops come tumbling down the flood.

Wicks describes the rain on  St. Helena as estuarial tides clashing,
waters
constricted, broken, a deluge through windows and houses, carrying on
the tides, downhill where all shit flows, its domestic goods and
animals. 

Euphrenia says, "The St. Helena of old had been a Paradise." 
What does it matter who is talking? 
Wicks is making it all up. Or so it seems. How else could he have access
to 
the thoughts of these men, their dreams? 

Views and descriptions of the island: 

http://www.telepath.com/bweaver/sh-lib.htm#books



The coffee and the oranges that once flourished on the island are now 
almost lost. The oranges are sold at the hangings as exotic fruit.
Throughout the chapter the island is compared with the Garden of
Paradise. 
The Cross is become a Gallows. The Forbidden Fruit (Christ) has become 
an exotic fruit for sale.  
The land, deforested, is subjected to the natural climate
that created it. Reminds me of a Clive Ponting's 
*A Green History of the World: The Environment and the  Collapse of
Great Civilizations*

http://www.primitivism.com/easter-island.htm

Orange you glad I didn't say it's not easy being Green? 

And we have circled back to one of the political arguments Dixon and
Mason had earlier.  The Town is Jamestown. A Jacobite name. 

But there does seem to be an environmental message here. 
And this will, no doubt, as this dirty joke keeps waiting for a punch
line, take us down to a Jesuit, a Chinaman, a Corsican, and a Lady on
there way to 
Bath. Or a bath. A black bath. A measured bath. A Jewish Bath. Anti-soap
bath. 
Pynchon is punning his way into indeterminate postmodernist history. 


Cutting up and down we go. 

Anatomy Theatre 

http://www.theodeboer.com/visscher.htm

http://www.usask.ca/ecs-at-uofs/spectacle/english/anatomy.html

Lord Ferrers 

http://www.microwaredata.co.uk/murder-uk/bookhtml_f/ferrers_e00.html

Pynchon is stitching back through earlier chapters and he is leaving
loops  to be embroidered down the line. 

In this Chapter, as in previous ones,  we've circled back.  back to the
Fops and the Gambling back rooms and to Wapping boys, Tyburn, etc. 

What's with all these Chickens and Fowl? 
Do chicken really tilt there heads back in the rain and drowned? 
If you're already dead such Gluttony is a punishment to fit
the crime. 

Anyway the Advent/Mechanical Calendar....is still moving right along.
All that
pounding by the waves is like an earthquake (we have earthquakes in NYC
all the time and we had one the other day. It was very early in the
morning.  Naturally,  I thought it was a bomb). There is, as part of the
Tenebrae and the Advent candle lighting ceremonies and rituals some
world shaking.  Quakers, Shakers, Bakers, P-List
Fakers....


In the Cape Chapters we were circling through the Five Books of Moses.
We had Nimrod, the hunter of men, Job, Moses, Jethro, etc., and  etc.,
(Oh editor, comma here please you stopped colon) and we had lots of
suicide black and white, Armageddon of the Races, purification...here it 
continues...Exodus...and Dante....

Anyway, I don't think Pynchon demonstrates a keen understanding of
economics, but is speaking metaphorically here. 


Medieval thinking, in theology as well as in law, went well
beyond Aristotle's views in these matters. Aristotle had
acknowledged the importance of private property and the need
for money in the functioning of the state, but he condemned
retail trading as unnatural and usury as worst of all. The
same mistrust of merchants and their work is found in Peter
Lombard's Sentences, where he says that soldiers or
merchants unwilling to give up their professions should not
be received as penitents because they could not exercise
those professions without sin (4, d.16, q.4, a.2). But the
major thirteenth-century commentators on the Sentences,
Albert, Aquinas, and Bonaventure, modify his position
considerably. They recognize that countries are not
necessarily more self-sufficient than individuals and must
rely on the services of those who can procure supplies for
them, that in a complex society one cannot always
buy directly from the producers.


Dante's attitude towards commerce is essentially a moderate
one, accepting it as a fact of life, a potential benefit to
society, as long as it serves the common good and does not
harm the community in order to advance individuals. He
presents the distribution of wealth as the result of divine
providence in the passage on fortune  and justifies craft
and manufacturing.  

The importance he accords both to personal property and to a
stable currency is manifest in his treatment of their
abuses; he discusses in some detail a variety of economic
and monetary sins, not just greed, but plunder, squandering,
usury, fraudulent buying and selling of different kinds of
goods, theft, and counterfeiting. Each one appears in a
separate section of Hell, and several are attacked in
Purgatory and Paradise as well. He employs the technical
language of commerce literally, in connection with the
abuses, and metaphorically, applying it to spiritual
treasures and moral debts. The technical language and
commercial details would have been a particularly effective
means of reaching the members of the audience attuned to
them and would presumably have added a whole other sphere of
application to Dante's message. The metaphorical use of the
same language seems to be Dante's way of countering
"corporal usury," which is forbidden, with "spiritual
usury," which multiplies the benefits of God's gifts, a
distinction made by canonists and theologians.

http://dante.ilt.columbia.edu/books/polit_vis/pvc.html

Dixon off with the clock and Mason and Mask climb around on this island
Purgatory. 
In Canto XXXIV the Pilgrim and Virgil can't quite figure out where they
are.  Then Everything is reversed, not simply reversed, like the stars
and the sea and the sun and the light and darkness, the dawn and dusk,
but
reversed and not reversed, paradoxical conflicts and discontinuities as
in the yin, but they are not in the womb of the world, they are in the
devil's own asshole. 

Look Ma, I'm gonna put some people up the devil's
holy wholly hole. 
Cocktail strollers. High rollers. Economists even. You! 
Don't cry. Here, a mug for you, my social Lite beer guzzling goon. 
A Bill Blass for me, with tails.
Did you see that guy at the Village Halloween  parade with the school
bus costume? 
I didn't ask him for his autograph. I asked him, "Can you read all them
fat books and
shoot and drive your school  bus all at the same time? 

He said,
"Yup!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" 
And I said, "I see you put shiny hubcaps on the bus."
And he said, "It drives the dugs crazy."