AtDDtA(16): "We Have Messages for You"

Thu Aug 23 13:22:35 CDT 2007

   "Like Balaam's ass, it was the camel tonight who first detected
something amiss ...."  (AtD, Pt. III, 432 f.)

"Balaam's ass"

Cf. Numbers 22

http://www.bartleby.com/108/04/22.html

http://www.nccbuscc.org/nab/bible/numbers/numbers22.htm

Refers to Num. 22:21-34 - Balaam rides out with the princes of Moab,
but the Lord sends an angel to prevent him. Balaam does not see the
angel but his ass does and will not go further. Balaam smites the ass
three times, to no avail, until "the Lord opened the mouth of the ass,
and she said to Balaam: What have I done unto thee, that thou hast
smitten me these three times?" Balaam's ass and the serpent (in the
Garden of Eden) are the only speaking animals in the bible.

http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_429-459#Page_432

"'We have messages for you'"

Cf., e.g., ...

"'Incoming mail.'" (GR, Pt. I, p. 6)

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0101&msg=52671

U.s.w, et soforthiam ...

Collect 'em all, trade with yr friends ...

"reported as long ago as Marco Polo"

>From Marco Polo's The Travels of Marco Polo (1298-99):

    ". . . When a man is riding by night through this desert and
something happens to make him loiter and lose touch with his
companions . . . and afterwards he wants to rejoin them, then he hears
spirit talking in such a way that they seem to be his companions.
Sometimes, indeed, they even hail him by name. Often these voices make
him stray from the path, so that he never finds it again. And in this
way many travelers have been lost and have perished. And sometimes in
the night they are conscious of a noise like the clatter of a great
cavalcade of riders away from the road; and, believing that these are
some of their own company, they go where they hear the noise and, when
day breaks, find they are victims of an illusion and in an awkward
plight. . . Yes, and even by daylight men hear these spirit voices,
and often you fancy you are listening to the strains of many
instruments, especially drums, and the clash of arms. . . . ."

(page 67, The Travels of Marco Polo, The Folio Society 1968 edition.)

http://www.silk-road.com/artl/marcopolo.shtml

http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_429-459#Page_432

Cf. p. 247 ...

http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_243-272#Page_247

mutatis mutandis

Main Entry: mu·ta·tis mu·tan·dis
Pronunciation: m(y)ü-'tä-t&s-m(y)ü-'tän-d&s, -'tA-t&s-, -'tan-
Function: adverb
Etymology: Middle English, from Medieval Latin
1 : with the necessary changes having been made
2 : with the respective differences having been considered

http://m-w.com/dictionary/mutatis%20mutandis

Medieval Latin. A direct translation from Latin of mutatis mutandis
would read, 'with those things having been changed which need to be
changed'. More colloquially, it can be interpreted as 'the necessary
changes having been made,' where "the necessary changes" are usually
implied by a prior statement assumed to be understood by the reader.
It carries the connotation that the reader should pay attention to the
corresponding differences between the current statement and a previous
one, although they are analogous. This term is used frequently in
economics and in law, to parameterize a statement with a new term, or
note the application of an implied, mutually understood set of
changes....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutatis_mutandis

This suggests we should view communication from the camel with the
same skepticism with which we view the voices, or possibly view this
communication as we would that from Balaam's ass.

http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_429-459#Page_433

"'... which so often may be resolved as polygamy.'"

Cf. Lake's conversion to (de facto) polyandry in Colorado Springs, p.
268. In both cases aquifers are the scene of the activity.

http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_429-459#Page_433

"pan-spectral fields full of wives"

Cf. ...

"The stars pasted up on Slothrop's map cover the available spectrum,
beginning with silver (labeled "Darlene") sharing a constellation with
Gladys, green, and Katharine, gold, and as the eye strays Alice,
Delores, Shirley, a couple of Sallys—mostly red and blue through
here-a cluster near Tower Hill, a violet density about Covent Garden,
a nebular streaming on into Mayfair, Soho, and out to Wembley and up
to Hampstead Heath—in every direction goes this glossy, multicolored,
here and there peeling firmament, Carolines, Marias, Annes, Susans,
Elizabeths.
   "But perhaps the colors are only random, uncoded. Perhaps the girls
are not even real...." (GR, Pt. I, p. 19)

See, e.g., ...

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0708&msg=120718

"'the Great Wife-Bazaar of the World-Island'"

World-Island
The phrase was coined by English geographer and geo-politician Sir
Halford John Mackinder who formulated Heartland Theory (1904) in his
address to the Royal Geographic Society, "The Geographical Pivot of
History." "World-Island" refers not to the Earth, but to the
continuous landmass of Eurasia measuring more than 21 million square
miles (54 million km²). This landmass contains no waterways to the
ocean and is contained by the Arctic ice cap and drainage to the
north, the monsoon lands along the Pacific Ocean and the Indian Ocean,
the Near East or land of the Five Seas, and Europe. This landmass is
remote and inaccessible to its periphery. Mackinder argued in his
address that this was the strategic region of the foremost importance
in the World. The Heartland theory hypothesized the possibility for a
huge empire being brought into existence in the Heartland, which
wouldn't need to use coastal or transoceanic transport to supply its
military industrial complex but would instead use railways, and that
this empire couldn't be defeated by all the rest of the world against
it ...

http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_429-459#Page_433

Heartland Theory

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heartland_%28geopolitics%29

"An obscure local insult directed at himself?  Or was it the camel
they were trying to lure?"

Lindsay doesn't recognize the source and/or significance of said
"liquid sounds, kisses, suction"?  Hm ...

"star after star climbed to its meridian"

Main Entry: me·rid·i·an
Pronunciation: m&-'ri-dE-&n
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Anglo-French meridien, from meridien
of noon, from Latin meridianus, from meridies noon, south, irregular
from medius mid + dies day -- more at MID, DEITY
1 archaic : the hour of noon : MIDDAY
2 : a great circle of the celestial sphere passing through its poles
and the zenith of a given place -- see AZIMUTH illustration
3 : a high point
4 a (1) : a great circle on the surface of the earth passing through
the poles (2) : the half of such a circle included between the poles b
: a representation of such a circle or half circle numbered for
longitude on a map or globe -- see LONGITUDE illustration
5 : any of the pathways along which the body's vital energy flows
according to the theory behind acupuncture

http://m-w.com/dictionary/meridian

AZIMUTH illustration

http://m-w.com/mw/art/azimuth.htm

Cf. ...

"... a circular room with a great wooden sun, overlaid with gold leaf,
burning cold in the very center and round it the nine planets and
their moons ..." (V., p. 239)

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0103&msg=53719

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0103&msg=54158

"Shall I project a world?" (Lot 49, p. 82)

http://www.innternet.de/~peter.patti/thomaspynchon-thecryingoflot49.htm

'"Show us upon the Orrery'" (M&D, p.94 f.)

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0401&msg=87937

"... he'd been growing doubtful about starlight in any practical way
..." (AtD, p. 431)

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0708&msg=121102

"wild 'Euphrates' poplars"

One of the five classes of Poplars: turanga. Its scientific name is
populus euphratica, a subtropical poplar found usually in Southwest
Asia.

http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_429-459#Page_433

"either aryq or hasheesh"
aryq

Most likely variant of Arrack (OED): name applied in Eastern countries
to any liqueur of native manufacture, usually distilled coconut palm
sap. - Or rather arak, the Middle Eastern equivalent of ouzo, Pernod,
etc., which, according to Wikipedia, should not be confused with
southeast Asian arrack.

http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_429-459#Page_433

hasheesh

Fitz Hugh Ludlow, The Hasheesh Eater: Being Passages from the Life of
a Pythagorean (1857)

http://users.lycaeum.org/~sputnik/Ludlow/THE/

A little hand with the Greek here, please.  Thanks!

http://users.lycaeum.org/~sputnik/Ludlow/THE/greek1.gif

http://users.lycaeum.org/~sputnik/Ludlow/THE/chapter4.html

And see as well ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hasheesh_Eater

It is Ludlow's remarkable talent to be able to put words to
experiences which seem quite beyond the grasp of language. If he
resorted to allegory or hyperbole to extend his verbal reach, we
should not be surprised. As he said once, "the entire truth of Nature
cannot be copied" so "the artist must select between the major and
minor facts of the outer world; that, before he executes, he must
pronounce whether he will embody the essential effect, that which
steals on the soul and possesses it without painful analysis, or the
separate details which belong to the geometrician and destroy the
effect." That said, many of his passages which may have seemed like
fantastic mythmaking to his contemporaries ring very true today with
our slightly more advanced knowledge of the psychedelic state.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hasheesh_Eater#_ref-Visionary_1

http://www.sniggle.net/Ludlow/HasheeshAndHasheeshEaters/index.html

http://sniggle.net/Ludlow/

"a facilitator of passage between the worlds"

inside/outside

[...]

INTERFACE
See also delta-t; edges; fingernails; mirrors; naming; Zone

http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon/gravity/alpha/i.html

Interface

http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon/gravity/extra/interface.html

"a ghost-Unit"

http://www.toonopedia.com/ghostpat.htm

http://www.dcdatabaseproject.com/Ghost_Patrol