Interpreting Flange and Nerissa

[Glenn Scheper]

Thank god I was out'ed last week, how autofellatio
is the core icon to decode all religious metaphors.
Now I can get down to business. I have been making
a wide web search for "sea" with poetic; and along
with some of the names of my favorite avatar/poets.
I'll be distilling that heap down for you shortly,
but let me now comment on your mentions of Flange.
 
The name Flange, like a pipe flange, suggests to me
orthogonality and the cessation of "continuance and
progression". I quote that, because some time back,
when I was casting about for a basis of an ethic, I
suggested to myself one might valorize "continuance
and progression" and, in a rare moment of rebellion,
a rarely heard-aloud spirit, or alter-ego, arose in
my mind to denounce those two terms, unworthy goals.
 
It is orthogonal, both in a sense that if time were
a line, one has lept off at the moment of metanoia.
Rather than be subjugated by an Oedipalizing socius,
one chooses schizophrenia, the truth of the freedom
of raw unlegalized desire: as to cut off a piece in
the penetrating gaze of a passerby, or to penetrate.
Also, because it is normal: It has no projection on
the vector of law, which tallys lawful and unlawful,
but is secretive of this very act, religion's taboo,
of becoming the totem oneself, priest and sacrifice.
 
In terms seen in Deleuze & Guattari's Anti-Oedipus,
it is to be the phallus, that...(I'm still reading)
but stands outside mommy-daddy-child, the triangle
which holds apart the three concepts: parent-child,
male-female, and life-death, that blur in metanoia.
 
Naturally, this situation causes marital difficulty
with a wife who remains and wants him stuck on just
part of the triangle. I suffer a similar condition.
In fact, I attribute my cure from Manic-Depression
to the fact that my wife used to beat me up when I
would "talk crazy", thus essentially privatized and
drove inward my interest. And she wasn't the first;
 
I have a vivid memory of arriving at a respectable,
private hospital's psychiatric ward after spending
one day as zonked-out zombie at some crisis center.
A young male orderly showed me to my secluded room,
and when I, now lucid, related to him how I came to
be there, that I had blown myself, he shut the door
and then slammed me against the wall, demanding of
me "just what I thought I was doing?", hindering me
from ever bringing it up with the doctors or staff.
 
So Flange (and Pynchon) participates in a different
idea-space, anathematized, cursed: a "waste" space.
 
When I heard of the 3.5 foot Nerrissa, I went out to
the big mirror, and measured: I'm about 5'10, but if
I, like Atlas, bear up the world on my neck, just as
Moses describes in Exodus 33:21-23, or as Baudelaire
tells in Carrion, or Shelly in Ozymandias, I am only
22 inches tall. But if I stand, bend over and clasp
my arms behind my knees: Voila! The 42 inch Nerrissa.
 
Aside from Cervantes' Dulcinea, I recognize the same
type of female figure is in Dante's Beatrice, and in
Poe's Lenore, and a deluding dream in Fairie Queene.
Surely there will be many more, but I am poorly read.
 
Now to discuss the "midget problem" with Nerrissa is
only politically incorrect if mapped on the everyday
world and taking it to be about real midgets. Rather,
it is like Exupery discussing the difficulty in The
Little Prince, of explaining a boa eating an elephant.
(for the boa *IS* the elephant, which only reflexive
bodily speech-act hermeneutics can properly handle.)
 
Here, the rat operates as the boa. I wonder, pray tell,
does Pynchon have her bite it's head off, as Nietzsche
counseled the shepard, with a snake bit into his mouth?
 
As for the sea, wait. You'll see: I'll do it justice.
 
Yours truly,
Glenn Scheper
 <mailto:scheper at antelecom.net> scheper at antelecom.net
 <http://www.antelecom.net/~scheper/> http://www.antelecom.net/~scheper/
Copyleft(!) Forward freely.
 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20030119/3a3c7cd1/attachment.html>