HELP!

[Vincent A. Maeder]

That poor brain out on the street corner, blind without its eyes, deaf
without its ears, tapping the ground with its rusty can, medulla
sweating in the heat, begging the passersby with that hollow cranial
voice, "Alms, alms for the poor brain."

T walks past, finished for the day from the latest roof, looks at this
now carmelized mess sitting on the sidewalk and says, in a polite voice,
"What do you mean?"

Silence.

Terrance turns toward his car--some 1996 Camry LE, no doubt--but that
voice freezing him to the spot, a chill up his spine which is an odd
feeling in this pressing heat, a voice that echoes in his head...

All the brain can say, "The construct of self that is created by the
mechanical mess inside your head has attempted to press the edges of
actuality into a coherent POV, a narration of life processed by the
gifts of your cranial components, a dendritical riff on consciousness,
by the very structure of your neurons, man!  It is your brain's attempt
to make sense of a world that makes no sense.  And so it comes round to
that Descartes fella sitting there coughing up blood, wondering if he
has pushed back the edges of his uncertainty.  Indeed, it is the brain
that interprets and conjectures and concludes based on a series of
inputs taken entirely by the random position and attitude of your very
self, a position and attitude which cannot be duplicated even by your
clone having, as all physical manifestations must, to occupy a different
'space' than your self."

Terrance turns slow, mouth a bit agape, eyes a bit wide, nostrils
flaring.

"Alms, sir, alms for the poor brain."

V.  Sorry for the POV switcheroo, just practicing...

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On
Behalf Of David Morris
Sent: Friday, June 06, 2003 8:59 AM
To: Terrance
Cc: pynchon-l at waste.org
Subject: Re: HELP!


--- Terrance <lycidas2 at earthlink.net> wrote:
> 
> 
> "All writing is indeed representation, which means
> all writing is fictional, ie a construct." 
> 
> 
> What is Paul N  saying here?

Following the words exactly he's saying that all:

1.  All writing is fiction.
2.  All constructs are fiction.
3.  Constructs = fiction.

Which is all about KNOWING.

But is is extremely reductive.  So reductive that it has almost no
value.

David Morris


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