AtDDtA(15): "'Pee-culiar Goings-On'"

[Dave Monroe]

".. fading through the afternoon, into obsessively detailed
allegations of odd latrine behavior, evoking in short flashes white
porcelain fittings voluptuous of form, not necessarily toilets, though
in some way vehicles for the mysterious but as yet 'pee-culiar
goings-on,' presently allowing the whole picture to be viewed,  a
rapid swoop between the ranks of white fixtures, blurring mostly
violet at the edges, into the Latrine itself, into dark proximities
including--unavoidably--corruption and death, rows of mirrors facing
each other through a haze of secular use, the breath, atomized
dentifrice and shaving preparations, ascents of tapwater vapor bearing
traces of local minerals, each set of images chaining away for
uncounted leagues, everything reflected, headed for the Point at
Infinity along a great slow curve....
   "After that meeting, curiously, Alonzo was heard from no more.  The
Commandant's A.D.C. signed him out, handed him his weekly voucher for
services rendered, watched him saunter away between the symmetric
lines of trees before turning back to his own desk-work...." (AtD, Pt.
II, p. 422)


"odd latrine behavior," "white porcelain fittings voluptuous of form,
not necessarily toilets," "'pee-culiar goings-on'"

Help!


"ranks of white fixtures," "rows of mirrors facing each other,"
"symmetric lines of trees"

Cf. ...

"Lombardy poplars" (p. 421)

http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/natbltn/700-799/nb753.htm

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0708&msg=120971

Toiletship
448; aka Rücksichtslos (German: "inconsiderate" or "ruthless");
Swinemünde to Helgoland, 450; "a wind tunnel's all it is. If tensor
analysis is good enough for turbulence, it ought to be good enough for
history" 451

http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon/gravity/alpha/t.html#toiletship

http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=T


"into the Latrine itself, into dark proximities"

Cf. ...

"Upstairs in the men's room at the Roseland Ballroom he swoons
kneeling over a toilet bowl, vomiting [...].  With no warning, as
tears stream out his eyes, PLOP goes the harp into the, aagghh, the
loathsome toilet! [...] There's no calling it back.  Either he lets
the harp go, his silver chances of song, or he has to follow.
   "Follow? ...

[...]

"If Slothrop follows that harp down the toilet it'll have to be
headfirst [...].  He struggles to work himself farther into the toilet
hole as dimly, up through the smelly water [...]. A-and there's still
no sign of his lost harp. The light down here is dark gray and rather
faint. For some time he has been, aware of shit, elaborately crusted
along the sides of this ceramic (or by now, iron) tunnel he's in: shit
nothing can flush away, mixed with hardwater minerals into a
deliberate brown barnacling of his route, patterns thick with meaning,
Burma-Shave signs of the toilet world, icky and sticky, cryptic and
glyptic, these shapes loom and pass smoothly as he continues on down
the long cloudy waste line [...]" (GR, Pt. I, pp. 63-4)

U.s.w. ...


"including--unavoidably--corruption and death"

Cf. ...

"He had not meant to offend sensibilities, only to show the others,
decent fellows all, that their feelings about blackness were tied to
feelings about shit, and feelings about shit to feelings about
putrefaction and death...." (GR, Pt. I, p. 276)

"Shit, now is the color white folks are afraid of. Shit is the
presence of death, not some abstract-arty character with a scythe but
the stiff and rotting corpse itself inside the whiteman's warm and
private own asshole, which is getting pretty intimate. That's what
that white toilet's for. You see many brown toilets?  Nope, toilet's
the color of gravestones, classical columns of mausoleums, that white
porcelain's the very emblem of Odorless and Official Death...." (GR,
Pt. IV, p. 688)

http://www.webalice.it/tommasopincio/ZONE_5.html

And see as well, e.g., ...

excrement
"penguin shit" 11; "shit, money and the Word" 28; Pointsman's foot in
toilet bowl, 42; "street excrement" 46; cat shit, 51; Slothrop's
toilet adventure, 64-67; copromancy, 65; "jellied textures of human
shit" 79; "too much shit in these streets" 135; "piss-swollen men"
136; "excremental kisses" 150; "Earth's excrement" (coal tars), 166;
"preterite dung" 166; "footprints of shit the color of themselves"
173; "seagull shit" 203; "stained with genuine SS shit and piss" 211;
Pudding and Domina Nocturna, 234-36; "turds on the Bokhara rug" 246;
"shit-eating grin" 253; "feelings about blackness were tied to
feelings about shit, and feelings about shit were tied to feelings
about putrefaction and death" 276; Deutschmarks used as toilet paper,
284; "naughty bathroom moment" 296; "Colonies are the outhouses of the
European soul. . .where a fellow can. . .enjoy the smell of his own
shit." 317; coprophilia & urolagnia, 319; Outase (one of the many
Herero words for "shit"), 325; "you vill shit now?" 360;"oozing shit
that burns like acid" 360; "shit leaking out of him at gallons per
hour" 364; King Kong taking a shit, 368; "pleasant anticipation" 405;
baby Ilse's, 418; Pökler at ground zero, 426; Dora camp, 432; "pissing
in the center grooves of cobbled alleys" 434; "eyes like two pissholes
in a snowbank" 437; "diamonds in the shit of smugglers" 438;
turd-shaped monoliths, 451; "Little piece of Jewish shit" 478; giant
turds, 485; Bianca, 531; 535; "never-slackening shit" 586; "Europe
died meanly in its own wastes" 616; "trying to take a quiet shit" 631;
Mexico pissing on Mossmoon's table, 636 (aka "Urinating Incident"
710); "ladylike turds" 639; "prehistoric wastes" 639; "urolagnia
jokes" 649; Byron down the toilet, 652; "deep feelings about shit"
654; "Thanatz's asshole tightens a notch." 666; "Shit 'n' Shinola"
687; Tranvestites' Toilet, 688; "shit. . .is the color white folks are
afraid of" 688; "put the fuse out. . .right in the stream of piss"
689; rat turds, 692; They interdict the toilet, 694; "Bad Shit" 713;
"consecrated to shit" 722; "dark figure with a stream of luminescent
piss" 739; "fields of shit" 739; fart-driven siren ring, 740; "not one
trickle of shit, Liebchen?" 757; See also Toiletship, holy shit

http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon/gravity/alpha/e.html#excrement

http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=E


"a haze of secular use"

Why "secular"?  As opposed to ...?  How so?

vapor bearing... minerals
Alluding perhaps to radon gas emitted by radiation from radium eg from
the granite under Cornwall, UK. There are concerns about its presence
in the water and its carcogenic effects particularly. Occurs in the
Four Corners region and known to cause cancer in miners there. Also
consider the emission of helium-3 from the earth itself and the
ability of radioactive emissions/particles to pass through matter.

    A plainer reading: "ascents of tapwater vapor bearing traces of
local minerals" refers to rising vapor (steam) from the sinks, the
vapor formed from tap water that contains minerals derived from
groundwater. Result: mineral deposits staining the walls and creating
"images."

http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_397-428#Page_422


"each set of images chaining away for uncounted leagues, everything
reflected, headed for the Point at Infinity along a great slow
curve...."

Cf. ...

".. destroyer sailors larking at the troughs, (gigantic troughs!
running the whole beam of the ship, even, legend has it, off into
mirror-space, big enough to seat 40 or 50 aching assholes side by
side, while a constant river of salt flushing water roared by
underneath) ..." (GR, Pt. II, p. 451)

And see as well, e.g., ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palace_of_Versailles#Galerie_des_Glaces

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SukwEme_WSQ


"Alonzo was heard from no more"

Cf. ...

"It's doubtful if he can ever be 'found' again, in the conventional
sense of 'positively identified and detained.'" (GR, Pt. IV, p. 712)

A.D.C.
Aide-de-camp, administrative assistant to a commanding officer.

http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_397-428#Page_422