MDMD(0) : Opening Call For The Mass Discussion of Mason & Dixon (lengthy, AF-related)

[Michael Lee Bailey]

Yes, I finally set up Evolution (Openoffice.org) instead of continuing
to rely on webmail...ridiculously easy, but it runs kind of slowly.
Part of the setup prompted me for a full name, so I complied,
being a compliant guy normally.
Thanks for noticing!

Eventually I want to move my mail into gnu/emacs and write little lisp
programs to customize it while glorying in geekdom...

I think Glenn's reference to doorstops was as a euphemism for
large, heavy books - one thread over the past few months
dwelt on a bumper crop of doorstop novels published recently,
including Russian, Spanish and even Catalonian titles.
Maybe something in the water inspiring prolixity lately.

But there are reasons an autofellatio connoisseur might be
interested in M&D, as you astutely note.


Pee-dantic Intro(-mission statement)

As I understand Glenn's take, autofellatio has functioned as
a tool (any and all puns may be intended, of course) toward
a spiritual awakening which moved him (as these things
sometimes do) through madness into metanoia.

While he doesn't flinch from graphic description,
the mechanics of the act or the sensual pleasure are
secondary considerations to the mental journey of which 
AF and AC (auto-cunnilingus) are a part.

It's also inspired him to find kindred insights in
widely varied authors, most notably Pynchon, but also
Emily Dickinson and Nabokov, as well as, of course,
seminal religious texts such as the Bible, myths and
legends, and even math (the sensorium-involved-in-AF as
Klein bottle, for instance)

In perusal of Glenn's posts, and on his old website (the gist, or
jism one might say, of which is still available as notes in
his excellent freeware program, WordsEx -- this valuable
program, by the way, searches the web using intelligent
algorithms, and continues to get better and more useful...)
one finds a multifarious development of personal incident,
apocalyptic insight, and literary interpretation.

AF, then, functions in the writings of Glenn as,
for example, queerness figures in those of Samuel Delany,
and drug use might function in some of the
writings of Burroughs.  It's a Archimedean standpoint
from which one might leverage the world, given a 
long enough lever (-; 

Now, as regards Pynchon, we know from Charles Hollander's
research that he (ie Pynchon, or OBA (Our Beloved Author))
wrote a paper at Cornell about Johnson - (any & all puns...)
such a good paper about _Rasselas_ in fact, that the professor
told Mr Hollander that he'd kept the paper to show successive
classes as an example of fine work - even before OBA achieved
literary fame.

The reason I bring up Johnson 
is that in _Rasselas_ he spoke of the knowledge a poet needs:
"But the knowledge of nature is only half the task of a poet; he must be
acquainted likewise with all the modes of life. His character requires
that he estimate the happiness and misery of every condition; observe
the power of all the passions in all their combinations, and trace the
changes of the human mind as they are modified by various institutions
and accidental influences of climate or custom, from the spriteliness of
infancy to the despondence of decrepitude. He must divest himself of the
prejudices of his age or country; he must consider right and wrong in
their abstracted and invariable state; he must disregard present laws
and opinions, and rise to general and transcendental truths, which will
always be the same: he must therefore content himself with the slow
progress of his name; contemn the applause of his own time, and commit
his claims to the justice of posterity. He must write as the interpreter
of nature, and the legislator of mankind, and consider himself as
presiding over the thoughts and manners of future generations; as a
being superiour to time and place.

"His labour is not yet at an end: he must know many languages and many
sciences; and, that his stile may be worthy of his thoughts, must, by
incessant practice, familiarize to himself every delicacy of speech and
grace of harmony."

This, I believe, is the task OBA set himself as a writer,
and while in lesser hands it would appear quixotic,
study shows his attempt to rank with some of finest.
("A tale of a cock and a bull - and one of the best of
its kind, I have ever heard" as Tristram Shandy might have said)

There is a certain elan that great works of art and insight
share - and perhaps it is the afterglow of AF.

Please to consider an analogy: writing is to conversation
as AF is to coitus.  

There is an energy in coitus
that passes from person to person and enlivens both,
causing a mind-blending.
When that energy is directed reflexively, as in AF,
the heightening of energy is confined (as in a Tokamak,
or magnetic nuclear fusion device; or in the ancient
myth of the worm Ouroboros, swallowing its own tail)
but would seem to be bound (so to speak) to create
unique changes of one kind or another.

Likewise, if a person takes up the pen, and puts words
to work by themselves - most easily done in solitude -
instead of using words to converse and taking turns, mingling
moment by moment, several effects might occur:
without focus, and some simulacrum of the encyclopedic
knowledge recommended to Rasselas, the energy might
dissipate, or trail off into recapitulations of various
idees fixe, in other words, "crank-dom" or what Bacon
called "The Fallacies of the Cave"

But if the person anticipates the possible failures
and guards against them, using whichever state-of-the-art
techniques (a popular metaphor is alchemy) help her or him
to refine the expression, then, one might say,
that poet has a chance to "give throat to" a higher
being, an Oversoul perhaps, a fount from which wisdom,
beauty, truth, all the desiderata may flow.

In Mason & Dixon, many have seen historical theories
of the closing of the frontier; the development of 
friendship among men; the pursuit of science amid the distractions
of politics; and the concept of family as one of the finest
but also most puzzling and demanding vehicles for moving through
history.  I personally am not as conversant
with M&D as I'd like to be, but I've also seen evocations of nature,
men and women, houses, apothecary's premises that somehow
shine from the page into my mind's eye, and make me happier.

Given the extent of the poet's mission, there may also be
AF components in M&D.  I'd be interested in the cheese-rolling
incident in the light of AF - perhaps Mason, unready for the
full extent of the AF revelation - the roundness of the
cheese symbolizing the circle achieved by the autofellator,
its weight and size symbolizing the kinetic energy of the
AF revelation bearing down upon him - is rescued by being
distracted toward coitus, or - at this early stage - at least
the possibility of coitus by, um, Rebecca(?).

Or, Wicks Cherrycoke in durance vile for the crime of anonymity.
This abjection, I believe, can be related to a phenomenon of
AF-guilt - the seeking of the higher truth, the appeal to
the unity of principle rather than the back-and-forth of
social intercourse which finally achieves a homeostasis of
exploiter-and-exploited - Wicks doesn't take his place in this
milieu (this Great Mandala) as a minor exploiter, but sees from an
ecstatic vantage, seeks out anonymity and writes (ie - autofellates)
from that vantage.

My mind (not to mention body) isn't even all that flexible
or attuned to AF.  Yet, like a Gloucestershire cheese, the
insights have started rolling, just from this cursory examination.

On Sun, 2007-08-26 at 17:48 +0000, David Payne wrote:
> Mike: You seem to have sprung a "Lee" midstream, but please don't
> yiz'll on the tomb machine. It's hydrophobic. 
>  
> And if that doesn't entice you to open the door, Glen, nothing ever
> will.
> 
> 
> 
> ______________________________________________________________________
> 
> > Subject: Re: MDMD(0) : Opening Call For The Mass Discussion of Mason
> & Dixon
> > From: mikebailey at speakeasy.net
> > To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> > Date: Sun, 26 Aug 2007 13:10:38 +0000
> > 
> > somethin' that happened 10 years ago, yiz'll need the toime
> machine...
> > 
> > 
> > On Fri, 2007-08-24 at 11:15 -0700, Glenn Scheper wrote:
> > > Entice me.
> > > Why should I buy a second doorstop?
> > > 
> > > I have heard of the talking dog.
> > > Is there tantra to be discerned?
> > > 
> > > Yours truly,
> > > Glenn Scheper
> > > http://home.earthlink.net/~glenn_scheper/
> > > glenn_scheper + at + earthlink.net
> > > Copyleft(!) Forward freely.
> > > 
> > > 
> > 
> 
> 
> 
> ______________________________________________________________________
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