ATDTDA (3) One interesting compound, 75-79

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

     Monte Davis:
     Let's get this over with.

Oops. . . .     . . . .too late. I found our introduction to Webb Traverse
one of the crucial passages in Against the Day, in particular how
we observe so many of the concerns of Vineland in nacsent form.
Also of great interest are the exchanges between Merle and Webb,
nearly in code and definitely fine examples of ritual reluctance.

     "In Colorado they found a farm outbuilding, forgotten years earlier 
     after the farm went under and the farmhouse burned down, leaving 
     this overgrown shed, which Merle managed to fill up to the rafters 
     with photographer's or, if you like, alchemist's stuff---containers 
     ranging from banged-up vegtable cans to jugs and bottles holding 
     liquids or powders of different colors, to gigantic glazed crocks, 
     fifty gallons and more, that you might be able to lift empty but wouldn't 
     necessarily want to, carefully bent glass tubes and copper coils 
     running everyplace, a small forge over in one corner, an electric 
     generator hooked to an old bicycle, battery cells dry and wet, 
     electromagnets, burners, an annealing oven, a workbench littered 
     with lenses. . . ." AtD, 76

          "Frenesi and the Pisks had taken over what was left of the Death 
     to the Pig Nihilist Film Kollective, based in Berkeley, a doomed 
     attempt to live out the metaphor of movie camera as weapon. 
     The Kollective's assets included camera bodies, lenses, lights 
     and light stands, Movieola, hydraulic camera mount, fridgeful of 
     ECO, and, at first anyway, a rump of the Kollective's more stubborn 
     personel, who had put some of the language of their old manifesto 
     into 24fps's new one---"A camera is a gun. An image taken is a death 
     performed. Images put together are the substructure of an afterlife 
     and a Judgement. We will be architects of a just Hell for the fascist pig. 
     Death to everything that oinks!"---which for many was going too far, 
     including Mirage, on her feet to insist that pigs are really groovy, in 
     fact groovier than any humans their name ever gets applied to.

          "Say 'roaches.' " suggested Sledge Poteet,

          "Roaches are cool," protested Howie, who happened to have a joint 
     in his mouth. Krishna, the sound person, put in with a stipulation 
     that all life, even that of roaches, is holy. "Wait a minute," cried one 
     of the original Death-to-the-Piggers, "that kind of talk invalidates our 
     conceptual base, this is about shooting folks here, is it not?"

          "Oh yeah? what's your sign, man?" Howie wanted to know.

          "Virgo."

          "It figures."

          "Signism!" Mirage screamed. "Howie, that's worse than racism!"

          "Ladies, ladies," boomed Sledge, gesturing with his 'fro pick, 
     while Howie, eyes ablush, held out a smoldering of gold
     Colombian as a token of peace. Vineland 197/198

          ". . . .Most of the photographs, printed by what looked to be some 
     new kind of gravure process, in a grain so fine that squint as he 
     might he could find no evidence of screenwork, featured Erlys. . . .      

     . . . . He had no illusions about what could be done in the darkroom 
     to enhance a human image. . . ." AtD 75

          "Frenesi had absorbed politics all through her childhood, but later, 
     seeing older movies on the Tube with her parents, making for the first 
     time a connection between the far-off images and her real life, it 
     seemed she had misunderstood everything, paying too much 
     attention to the raw emotions, the easy conflicts, when something 
     else, some finer drama the Movies had never considered worth 
     enobling, had been unfolding all the time. it was a step in her political 
     education. Names listed even in fast-moving credits, meaning nothing 
     to a younger viewer, were enough to provoke from her parents groans 
     of stomach upset, bellows of rage, snorts of contempt, and in extreme 
     cases, switches of channel. "You think I'm gonna sit and watch this 
     piece of scab garbage?" Or, "You want to see a hot set? Watch when 
     she slams that door---see that? Shook all over? That's what scab 
     carpentry by some scab local the IA set up, that's what scabs do to 
     production values." Or, "That asshole? thought he was dead. See 
     that credit there?" getting right up beside the screen to zero in on the 
     offending line, "That fascist fuck," tapping the glass over the name 
     fiercely, "owes me two years of work, you could've gone to college 
     on what that SOB will always owe me." Vineland, 81/82

          " 'Alchemist' work, that's what you're doin up here? Well but mercury 
     now, there is this one interesting compound I keep runnin into, 
     fulminate I believe it's called. . . ."

          "Basic ingredient of the du Ponte blasting cap, not to mention our 
     everyday well-known .44 round. . . .

     . . . ."You mean to say gold, silver, these shinin and wonderful metals, 
     basis of all the worl's economies, you go in a laboratory, fool with em a 
     little, acid and so on, and you get a high explosive that all you got to do's 
     sneeze at the wrong time and it's adios, muchachos?"

          Merle, with a fair idea where this was going, nodded, "Sort of the 
     infernal side to the story, you could say."

          "Almost makes you think, if there's a Philosopher's Stone, there might 
     not also be---"

          "Careful," said Merle.

          Webb peered at him, almost amused. "Something you fellas 
     don't talk about?"

          "Can't. Or that's the tradition." AtD, 77/78

         "The two men looked at each other, each pretty sure who the 
     other was. "Mine engineers take a dim view," Merle pretended 
     to explain, "old-time superstition from back in the Dark Ages, 
     nowhere near's scientific as modern-day metallurgy. " He 
     paused, as if only to catch his breath. "But if you look at the 
     history, modern chemistry only starts coming in to replace 
     alchemy around the same time capitalism really gets going. 
     Strange, eh? What do you make of that?"
     
          Webb nodded agreeably. Maybe capitalism decided it didn't 
     need the old magic anymore." An emphasis whose contempt 
     was not meant to escape Merle's attention. "Why bother? Had 
     their own magic, doin just fine, thanks, instead of turning lead 
     into gold, they could take poor people's sweat and turn it into 
     greenbacks, and save the lead for enforcement purposes."
     
          "And the gold and silver . . ."

          "More of a curse than they know, maybe. Sittin right there 
     in the vault, just waiting for---"

          "Don't say it!"

          But Webb rode away with the grand possibility repeating in 
     his mind like a heartbeat---the Anti-Stone." AtD 79