GR excerpts right on target.

[barbara100 at jps.net]

Readings from Gravity's Rainbow today on the afternoon train:

"But the Rocket has to be many things, it must answer to a number of different shapes in the dreams of those who touch it--in combat, in tunnel, on paper--it must survive heresies shining, unconfoundable...and heretics there will be: Gnostics who have been taken in a rush of wind and fire to chambers of the Rocket-throne...Kabbalists who study the Rocket as Torah, letter by letter--rivets, burner cap and brass rose, its text is theirs to permute and combine into new revelations, always unfolding...Manichaeans who see two Rockets, good and evil, who speak together in the sacred idiolalia of the Primal Twins (some say their names are Enzian and Blicero) of a good Rocket to take us to the stars, an evil Rocket for the World's suicide, the two perpetually in struggle.
"But these two heretics will be sought and the dominion of silence will enlarge as each one goes down...they will all be sought out.  Each will have his personal Rocket. Stored in its target-seeker will be the heretic's EEG, the spikes and susurrations of heartbeat, the ghost-blossoming of personal infrared, each Rocket will know its intended and hunt him, ride him a green-doped and silent hound, through our World, shining and pointed in the sky at his back, his guardian, executioner rushing in, rushing closer...." (GR 848) 

"He [Enzian] must tell Christian everything he knows, everything he suspects or has dreamed.  Proclaiming none of it for truth.  But he must keep nothing back for himself .  Nothing is his to keep.  'They have lied to us. They can't keep us from dying, so They lie to us about death.  A cooperative structure of lies.  What have They ever  given us in return for the trust, the love--They actually say 'love'--we're supposed to owe Them? Can they keep us from even catching cold? from lice, from being alone? from anything? Before the Rocket we went on believing, because we wanted to.  But the Rocket can penetrate, from the sky, at any given point.  Nowhere is safe.  We can't believe Them any more.  Not if we are still sane, and love the truth.'" (GR 849)

"Between two station marks, yellow crayon through the years of grease and passage, 1966 and 1971, I tasted my first blood. Do you want to put this part in?] We drank the blood of our enemies.  That's why you see Gnostics so hunted.  The sacrament of the Eucharist is really drinking the blood of the enemy.  The Grail, the Sangraal, is the bloody vehicle.  Why else guard it so sacredly? Why should the black honor-guard ride half a continent, half a splintering Empire, stone night and winter day, if it's only for the touch of sweet lips on a humble bowl?  No, it's mortal sin they're carrying: to swallow the enemy, down into the slick juicery to be taken in by all the cells.  Your officially defined 'mortal sin,' that is.  A sin against you.  A section of your penal code, that's all. [ The true sin was yours: to interdict that union.  To draw that line.  To keep us worse than enemies, who are after all caught in the same field of shit--to keep us strangers." (GR 862)



I LOVE THOMAS PYNCHON !!!  








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