MDDM Ch. 70 The Obvious Question

[Dave Monroe]

"Mason can think of no way to ask the obvious
Question, as he did of the Learned Dog, and has been
reluctant to of the Frenchman's Duck." (M&D, Ch. 70,
p. 685)

   "'There is something I must know,' Mason hoarsely
whispers, in the tone of a lover tormented by Doubts,
'--Have you a soul,-- that is, are you a human Spirit,
re-incarnate as a Dog?'
   "The L.E.D. blinks, shivers, nods in a resign'd
way.  'You are hardly the first to ask.  Travelers
return'd from the Japanese Islands tell of certain 
religious Puzzles known as Koan, perhaps the most 
fam'd of which concerns your very Question,-- whether
a Dog hath the nature of the divine Buddha. A 
reply given by a certain very wise Master is, "Mu!"'

[...]

"'But please do not come to the Learned English Dog if
it's religious Comfort you're after. I may be
praeternatural, but I am not supernatural.  'Tis the
Age of Reason, rrrf?  There is ever an Explanation 
at hand, and no such thing as a Talking Dog,-- Talking
Dogs belong with Dragons and Unicorns....'" (M&D, Ch.
3, p. 22)

Note, by the way, Rebekah Mason's "plainly visible
Phantom" (M&D, Ch. 16, p. 172) ...

"Her eyes have broken into white, and grown pointed
at the outer ends, her ears are back like a cat's."
(M&D, Ch. 15, p. 164)

"She bares her Teeth, and pales, and turns, drifting
away, evaporating before she is halfway across the
slain forest." (M&D, Ch. 16, p. 172)

And, later, at Dixon's graveside ...

"At the grave, which by Quaker custom was unmark'd,
Mason beseech'd what dismally little he knew of
God, to help Dixon through.  The grass was long and
beaded with earlier rain.  A Cat emerg'd from it and
star'd for a long time, appearing to know them"

[...]

   "'It's your Mate,' Doctor Isaac assur'd him, 'It's
what happens when your Mate dies.'" (M&D, Ch. 78, p.
768)

Hence Mason's ongoing interet in metempsychosis,
reincarnation?  But exactly who is the "Mate" referred
to here?  Mason's wife, or his friend?  Note ...

"At the moement of the Interdiction, when their Eyes
at length meet, what they believe they once found
aboard the Seahorse fails, this time, to appear."
(M&D, Ch. 70, p. 678)

But I digress ...

   "Tom does a better job on the Decoy, than he knows.
 Soon the Duck is spending hours, still'd,
companionably close to the expressionless Object.  One
day, in an access, she throws herself upon it, going
to beak-bite its neck, and of course the Truth comes
out.  'Wood.' [...] 'Well, it's a beginning,' she
says.  'It floats like a Duck,-- it fools other Ducks,
who are quite sophisticated in these matters.  It's a
Basis.  Complexity of Character might well develop, in
time....'" (M&D, Ch. 69, p. 667)

Not only ...

http://www.mtholyoke.edu/~ebarnes/python/witch-trial.htm

http://www.humboldt.edu/~awm3/files/witchscn.html

http://www.montypython.net/cgi-bin/dl2/grail.cgi?whyburn.wav

http://www.montypython.net/cgi-bin/dl2/grail.cgi?aduck.wav

http://www.montypython.net/grailmm.php

But also ...

http://www.abelard.org/turpap/turpap.htm

http://www.turing.org.uk/publications/testbook.html

http://www.turing.org.uk/turing/scrapbook/gsoh.html

http://cogsci.ucsd.edu/~asaygin/tt/ttest.html

And note as well here ...

"If our world survives, the next great challenge to
watch out for will come - you heard it here first -
when the curves of research and development in
artificial intelligence, molecular biology and
robotics all converge...."

http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/05/18/reviews/pynchon-luddite.html

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