MDDM ch. 68 "yet these do live..." (660.20)

[Terrance]

jbor wrote:
> 
> Bandwraith wrote:
> 
> > The junction
> > allusion, though, would explain the ability to "tunnel"
> > to the seemingly unreachable giant vegetable patch,
> > before crossing the other rivers involved
> 
> What's also paradoxical here is that although the visit to the giant veggies
> happens *after* the journeying recounted in Chs 68 and 69 the way we get
> there in the text is via a *prior*, documented meeting with those "Indians!"
> 
> The time is out of joint, as another character who is haunted by spectres,
> doubt, and the near-certainty that "there are more things in heaven and
> earth than are dreamt of in [our] philosophy" might say.
> 
> best

Act I

SCENE I  Elsinore. A platform before the castle.
[FRANCISCO at his post. Enter to him BERNARDO]

BERNARDO
            Who's there?
FRANCISCO
            Nay, answer me: stand, and unfold yourself.

Francisco is at his post, but it is Bernado who asks, "who's there?"  

The play opens upside downand out of joint and the fist lines are
reversed. Francisco should ask, "Who's there?" and not Bernardo. 



In any event, I'm back at M&D241
We have learned of Dixon's family, his mom and dad, their courtship. 
Dad dies and Dixon at age 22 goes into a bit of a funk. He's working as
a journeyman surveyor  during the day and hitting the pubs at night. 

We learn that "spaces not yet enclosed" make Dixon uneasy. 

Kinda like being an claustrophobic elevator operator. 

Believe it or not, this is not as uncommon as it sounds. I worked on
high with many a man afraid if height. After a while you don't poke fun
at their fear or advise them to find a trade on the ground, you don't
pity them, but come to understand that just as some men need a drink in
the morning to stop the shaking in their knees, and some men love to
walk on the wind, others live with  that shaking in the knees because
they don't feel alive without death under their boots.  

 His job requires him to cross the Fell from time to time. It's a
dangerous place, murderers could be waiting for him there or Spirits.
The Spirits are  "ALMOST in human form, but not quite," kinda like those
ghost fish and not unlike a lot of the Spirits that haunt the lands and
waters of this novel. And now, Dixon when in doors, perhaps after
tipping a few, thinks he should like to be killed out there on the Fell,
murdered and devoured out there or to become one of them, predatory and
forever unsheltered, either way, transformed. 

All reminds me too of a chapter in Richard Farina's Novel BDSL. Chapter
8
And Jemmy's Trial of Passage at M&D652, but Dixon only imagines that he
would like to be transformed, he doesn't do anything, only broods (and
no more turn aside and brood) and drinks and works, his knees shaking.
Is he hung over? Or afraid? Or is he Hamlet? We do get a bit about his
mom and dad and the hint that something incestuous has, well not really,
although the gossip is in the air. But Dixon goes indoors, drafting,
mixing his own inks, obsessively mapping his own overhead view of 
fantastic world he can Escape too and in which he will get lost because
he has the map of the world he fancies. But thank god for gin mills!
Dixon, at night, into the pubs seeking a smile, a gesture, a remembrance
from some old man who knew his old man. He listens to the stories about
the coal business. Now, Dixon himself, just before shipping to  America,
out of his funk, becomes a tale teller. 

Mr. Ice and Mr. Snow
down to America and into hell we go
Mr. Ice & Mr. Snow
Hi Ho, Hi Ho. 
It's off to work we go


   I felt the coldness of my winter
   I never thought it would ever go
   I cursed the gloom that set upon us
   but I know that I love you so
   but I know that I love you so.

   These are the seasons of emotion
   And like the winds they rise and fall
   This is the wonder of devotion-
   I see the torch we all must hold.
   This is the mystery of the quotient-
   Upon us all a little rain
   must fall.