ATD the norse/nunatak/serpent/odialesque thing

[Mark Kohut]

These are brilliant obs which I feel just on the verge of "getting"...[smoaking in M & D]...
  Yes, portals are everywhere...have we or the wiki "cataloged' them all-----I'm checking the wiki....
  and more relate to time than space,k it seems....but they do co-relate...like co-consciousness?

  I was confused over the 'some ancient catastrophe: far older than the City.....
  I thought two things:
  1) There have always been and will always be catastrophes 
  2) The 'ancient catastrophe was such as losing our natural relation to the world?
   
  ????
Tore Rye Andersen <torerye at hotmail.com> wrote:
  Ya Sam:

>If NY was destroyed by the Figure in some other dimension, maybe the arch
>encountered by the Chums may serve not only as the reminder but also as a
>portal into that dimension, provided you have the necessary knowledge how 
>to
>use it.

Yes, that struck me as well: there are certainly plenty of 
windows/portals/doorways into different dimensions in AtD, and the Dante 
portal may very likely be one of them. The word "transition point" (used 
about the portal on p. 154) is never an innocent one in Pynchon's novels. 
M&D is filled to the brim with bridges, ferries, etc., and the words 
"transition" and "passage" are very frequent in that novel. St. Helena, for 
instance, is described as a "Transition between Two Worlds" (M&D, 180), and 
in that allegorical description of Mason and Dixon on the Atlantic Ocean, we 
hear this:

"They are content to reside like Ferrymen or Bridge-keepers, ever in a 
Ubiquity of Flow, before a ceaseless Spectacle of Transition" (M&D, 713)

The theme is of course also predominant in AtD. The Dante arch, e.g., is 
mirrored by the giant Arch Kit passes through on his way into "shamanic 
Asia". His passing through that arch (see pp. 768-771) is one of my 
favourite passages in AtD. After passing through/making the transition, Kit 
has a dream/vision, where he himself becomes "the bridge, the arch, the 
crossing-over" (771).

If the Dante arch is indeed a portal, what exactly is it a portal into, 
though? Another dimension, or another time? Of course, the line between 
dimensions and time is a fluid one in AtD, but it seems to me that the 
emphasis in the description of the Dante arch on p. 401 is on time: "They 
approached a memorial arch, gray and time-corroded, seeming to date from 
some ancient catastrophe, far older than the city." This seems puzzling, ne? 
The catastrophe is caused by the ancient force of the Figure, but the 
catastrophe itself is surely not ancient. Or is it?

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