LPPM MMV "Esoteric Language"

[Dave Monroe]

"Presumably intelligent talk flickered around the room
with the false brightness of heat lightning: in the
space of a minute Siegel caught the words 'Zen,' 'San
Francisco,' and 'Wittgenstein,' and felt a mild sense
of disappointment, almost as if he had expected some
esoteric language, something out of Albertus Magnus." 
(MMV, p. 7)


heat lightning

Main Entry: heat lightning
Function: noun
: vivid and extensive flashes of electric light
without thunder seen near the horizon especially at
the close of a hot day and ascribed to far-off
lightning reflected by high clouds

http://m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=heat+lightning


Zen

"'Travelers return'd from the Japanese Islands tell of
certain religious Puzzles known as Koan ....'" (M&D,
Ch. 3, p. 22)

Zen is short for Zen Buddhism. It is sometimes called
a religion and sometimes called a philosophy. Choose
whichever term you prefer; it simply doesn't matter. 
Historically, Zen Buddhism originates in the teachings
of Siddhartha Gautama. Around 500 B.C. he was a prince
in what is now India. At the age of 29, deeply
troubled by the suffering he saw around him, he
renounced his privileged life to seek understanding.
After 6 years of struggling as an ascetic he finally
achieved Enlightenment at age 35. After this he was
known as the Buddha (meaning roughly "one who is
awake"). In a nutshell, he realized that everything is
subject to change and that suffering and
discontentment are the result of attachment to
circumstances and things which, by their nature, are
impermanent. By ridding oneself of these attachments,
including attachment to the false notion of self or
"I", one can be free of suffering. 

The teachings of the Buddha have, to this day, been
passed down from teacher to student. Around 475 A.D.
one of these teachers, Bodhidharma, traveled from
India to China and introduced the teachings of the
Buddha there. In China Buddhism mingled with Taoism.
The result of this mingling was the Ch'an School of
Buddhism. Around 1200 A.D. Ch'an Buddhism spread from
China to Japan where it is called (at least in
translation) Zen Buddhism. 

http://www.ibiblio.org/zen/faq.html

And see, here, e.g., ...

MacAdams, Lewis.  Birth of the Cool:
   Beat, Bebop, and the American Avant-Garde.
   New York: The Free Press, 2001

Ch. 4, "The Bodhisattvas of Cool," pp. 145-81 ...


San Francisco

"'In San Francisco; there's none--'" (Lot 49, p. 69)

http://www.ci.sf.ca.us/

"In late '40s and '50s, San Francisco was the center
of American poetic style ..." (MacAdams, Birth of the
Cool, p. 15)

"At the simplest level, it had to do with language. We
were encouraged from many directions--Kerouac and the
Beat writers ..." (SL, "Intro," pp. 6-7)

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0211&msg=72330


Wittgenstein

"DIGEWOELDTIMSTEALALENSWTASNDEURFUALRLIKST" (V., Ch.
9, p. 295)

"1 - Die Welt ist alles, was der Fall ist."

http://www.ottosell.de/witt.htm

Wittgenstein, Ludwig Josef Johann (1889-1951)
380; Austrian-born British philosopher whose highly
influential works dealt with mathematics and with
language. He served with the Austrian army in WWI and
was taken prisoner on the Italian front in 1918; "The
world is all that the case is," 278; song, 288-89; See
also Tractatus;

http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon/v/alpha/w.html#wittgenstein

Tractatus
1921 work by Wittgenstein on the nature and limits of
language; opening proposition: "The world is all that
the case is. The world is the totality of facts, not
of things." 278; song, 288-89; See also Wittgenstein

http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon/v/alpha/t.html#tractatus

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com