ATDTDA (14) references p 387 (alpha)

[mikebailey at speakeasy.net]

Frank's rep as el Famoso Chavalito del Quiselgur
having preceded him, he bluffs out everybody except
the parrot

tropas - troops

pynchonwiki sez: 
"Cuban claro
A kind of Cuban cigar or habanos 
made with a light-colored (claro) wrapper.

"Partidos wrapper
A region of Cuba, where some of 
the finest habanos are made."

(hmm, wonder if they have anything on puros:
not much - 
Vera Cruz puros
Spanish: Vera Cruz cigars.)

pynchonwiki also notes that a Reverend 
Toplady wrote the hymn "Rock of Ages"

-- sidenote & exposure of ignorance,
until yesterday I thought, hummed and
sang "cleft for me" as a verb phrase,
"come on and cleft for me, eh? open sesame!"

but of course it's more of an adjectival
past participle - Rock of Ages (which was)
cleft for me - so it's like the dude 
is finding and animadverting on sanctuary

iceland spar cleaves light (or, "clefts" it...)

the Rock of Ages... 
(can't help but think "Hard Times")

...has been cleft (has a cleavage)
to make a place for an individual soul to live...

(mining, time travel, iceland spar)

---------- volte face, back 1 page -----------
pynchonwiki notes that on p 386 Frank 
"seeming to enter a partial vacuum in the
passage of time, found half a minute to 
ask himself if this was really where he
ought to be"

ie - the Rock of Ages clefted for him....

(pynchonwiki also refers to the Anarchist sanctuary -
Cf. p. 373, "a place promised them, not by God, 
which'd be asking too much of the average Anarchist, 
but by certain hidden geometries of History*, 
which must include, somewhere, at least at a single point, 
a safe conjugate to all the spill of accursed meridians, 
passing daily, desolate, one upon the next.")

(* History, as a matrix for events, a mine
of happenings, a Rock of Ages...)