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

[Paul Mackin]

On Jul 28, 2007, at 3:49 PM, mikebailey at speakeasy.net wrote:

>
> 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 - -


Disregarded for the moment, but those who read on (very far on) will  
see fulfillment.

There will have been much sharing and not just of water.

Apropos of my post earlier today.

P.










> I still think the movie "Renegade"
> http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0276830/
> is a trip to a place pretty close to that cave
>
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> "...with duende it is easier to love, to understand, and be certain  
> of being loved, and being understood" - Federico Garcia y Lorca
>
>