gravity's rainbow (556)

[lorentzen-nicklaus]

* ... so finally he sailed back to old england, not in disgrace so much as 
despondency, and that's where he died, among memories of the blue hills, green 
maizefields, get-togethers over hemp and tobacco with the indians, young women 
in upper rooms with their aprons lifted, pretty faces, hair spilling on the wood 
floors while underneath in the stables horses kicked and drunks hollered, the 
starts in the very early mornings when the backs of his herd glowed like pearl, 
the long, stony and surprising road to boston, the rain on the connecticut 
river, the snuffling good-nights of a hundred pigs among the new stars and long 
grass still warm from the sun, settling down to sleep....

could he have been the fork in the road america never took, the singular point 
she jumped the wrong way from? suppose the slothropite heresy had had the time 
to consolidate and prosper? might there have been fewer crimes in the name of 
jesus, and more mercy in the name of judas iscariot? it seems to tyrone slothrop 
that there might be a route back---maybe that anarchist he met in zürich was 
right, maybe for a little while all the fences are down, one road as good as 
another, the whole space of the zone cleared, depolarized, and somewhere inside 
the waste of it a single set of coordinates from which to proceed, without 
elect, without preterite, without even nationality to fuck it up.... ***