ATDTDA (14) p 391 (b) // 392

[mikebailey at speakeasy.net]

so this duende or Mexican tommyknocker that
Frank's been waiting for the unreadable face of...

...who is going to lead him "up some slope, higher than
the last roofless wall..."
(as opposed to the last uninflected wall?)

"...into some thorn-screened mouth...allowing himself 
...to be swallowed by, rather than actively penetrating,
the immemorial mystery of these mountains - and that
now the moment of subduction had come, he would make
no move to prevent it."

is embodied to some extent in the Tarahumara.


"Frank had been looking at calcite crystals for
a while now, through Nicol prisms of lab instruments
whose names he had forgotten..."

(presumably back at school; also, if you look at
Iceland Spar through a Nicol prism, then you're looking
at Iceland Spar through Iceland Spar, because that's 
the material of the prism in the Nicol prism)

Pynchonwiki:
scalenohedral habit
Habit means the characteristic crystalline 
form of a mineral. Scalenohedral means the 
form is of a scalenohedron, a solid body the 
faces of which are all scalene triangles. 
Therefore, the calcite crystal Frank was 
looking at had the characteristic crystalline 
form of a scalenohedron.

then a flashforward to a conversation with
Ewball, where Ewball dispenses a spoiler,
disparages the magic "in a mischievous way",

392 - 
and does the math - if we're talking about a 
life for a life here, then Frank's still "got
two more deaths comin'"


"...and if I could put in a word, the other *should*
be old Huerta, 'cause that sumbitch is still
out there makin ever'body's life miserable."

(Ewball hasn't yet managed to Oust Huerta)

El Espinero makes an interesting point while
killing a rabbit.

Pynchonwiki:
a sun-bleached stick with an elegant warp
Carl Lumholtz, in Unknown Mexico 
(text available in Project Gutenberg), 
Vol. 1, Chap. IV, reports: "[A]n interesting find 
[in an ancient pueblo dwelling] was a 'boomerang' 
similar to that used to this day by the Moqui 
Indians for killing rabbits."

Hikuli
Peyote. This scene, with the brujo giving Frank 
peyote, followed by him barfing and then flying, 
is highly reminiscent of Carlos Castaneda's works, 
esp. Tales of Power.

while it was alive
(Most vegetables?)

(to which I'd add that I think a lot
of people just don't eat that much fruit
or vegetables, and what they do eat is
cooked or at least processed, 
and that held even truer back before 
the days of refrigeration, especially
for lower-income people)

(cactus is the cure...)
"For what?"
"For this," said El
Espinero, with an economical slide of his hand
indicating all the visible circumference of
the cruel llano." (plain)

everybody seems to want to pick a passage
of Pynchon and then build theories on it.
If I were to pick one, this might be it:
"At some point he found himself in the air,
hand in hand with young Estrella, flying quite swiftly,
at low altitude, over the starlit country.  Her
hair streaming straight out behind her.  Frank, who had 
never flown before, kept wanting to turn 
right or left and go explore arroyos filled with a
liquid, quivering darkness, and tall cactuses
and dramas of predatory pursuit and so forth 
that now and then seemed also to be glowing
in these peculiar colors, but the girl, who
had flown often, knew where they had to go,
and he understood after a while that she was
guiding him, so relaxed and flew along
with her."

not that I have any theory on that yet,
but I doubt anybody else will pick that
one, so I should have it to myself for awhile.

However, the next passage lends itself to 
analysis and probably will attract some
attention.  The thing about the cave.

"the idea was that water should be everywhere,
free to everybody.  It was life.  Then a few
got greedy....Tales you heard of haunted silver
and gold mines half the time were really about
this one hidden cave of rainwater, precious 
beyond price, but the old desert madfolk believed
they had to tell it in a kind of code, that others
would be listening, that saying anything out loud would
cause the place to grow that much more remote,
dangerous to approach...."

"And though this all had the alert immediacy 
of daytime Mexico in its ongoing dispute with its history,
it would someday be relegated as well to the register
of experiences he had been unable to find any use for."

female guidance and protection
the almost-universal tendency to share and cooperate
psychedelic experience
secret cave
the importance of water
aboriginal wisdom

-- yes, a lot of those things are 
widely disregarded, or haven't been incorporaed
like they could be -- but let's remember it's
Frank who fails to incorporate them, not 
necessarily the author; and also that Frank
did have that experience, that it might not
even be incumbent on him to have a use for them,
that those things had a use for him - -

I still think the movie "Renegade" 
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0276830/
is a trip to a place pretty close to that cave






"...with duende it is easier to love, to understand, and be certain of being loved, and being understood" - Federico Garcia y Lorca