GR and Iraq: the Zone

[Prsamsa at aol.com]

In a message dated 4/11/2003 4:53:09 AM US Mountain Standard Time, 
quail at libyrinth.com writes:


> Watching CNN last night....seeing Baghdad and Iraq, no government, filled
> with US troops, people of all different temperaments, looting palaces, 
> freed
> prisoners, roving bands of violent partisans, knowing so many various
> interests are waiting to arrive; this trembling feeling that something is
> about to happen, that fortunes are changing....and then, somewhere in Iraq,
> a native leads troops to an al-Samoud missile...!



   Good point, Mr. Q. and after reading GR several times I've concluded that 
TP
presents a kind of encyclopedia of "chaos", in the last two sections.  I 
believe the original meaning of chaos was an abyss or chasm, in Greek, and 
"chaos" or
"anarchy" are just loaded words imposed on situations when They are'nt in 
control.
 Yet;  soon, the scientist-snatchers show up, the tech-grabbers, in GR and 
chase around the free spirits like Ty Slothrop and the mythseekers like the 
Hereros. 


   Is it too trite to point out that native peoples around the world existed 
for eons in ways that are uncultured to others?; and shades of H. Stencil and 
Under the Rose,  Egypt and the Greeks famed for their culture while my 
(Eng-Irish) ancestors were burning peat and living on grubs and coneys.


     I'm not sure about TP's intentions on those last two sections, The Zone 
and the 
Counter-force;   I agree with those who say TP can't help being of his time.  
But if that's true, to put this symbolically, so much happened between, say 
1964 when America loosened up culturally, to "launch" the '60's--  to "fly" 
over 1966 and 1967,  then to "descend" into the mirror-paranoia of RM Nixon, 
and effective dissent splintering (the Dems), dying:  Kerouac, Neal Cassady, 
Joplin, Morrison, Hendrix all dying between 1968 and 1971 or being silenced 
(the Chicago 8 trial, the black radicals murdered by feds,  Ken Kesey on a 
literary blacklist? etc.)--
that I intuit that TP was emphatically of two minds....Since  Dickens already 
used
the classic, "best of times, the worst of times", we're presented instead a 
past, or future?
destructive screaming through the sky.
 
Obviously I'm not pro or con the "chaos" in Iraq, just reductionist 
explanations.  Somehow I go more for the symbolic--cummings'  "I sing of 
Olaf" or Yeats' "The second coming", or as I finis, this verse of a 
"counterforce song," p. 746  , my Bantam GR:   

             "Light one up before you mosey out that door,
             Once you cuddled and kissed 'em,
             But we're bring down Their system,
             and it isn't resistance, it's a war."           
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