Day 3, p 304--306 DEEP READ (11) Pages 296--326, June 11--15

[Mark Kohut]

p.304. Dally sometimes feels her dad is her kid. She's strong. What about such strong women in AtD, Pynchon in general?....(I know some of you female p-listers have strong
  thoughts about this)
   
  p.305. Dr. Emmens and his 'argentaurum' were historically real, of course. Profoundly differing reports on his 'achievement'.  It does seem that with massive pounding pressure,
  he said he smashed impure silver coins with some gold in them---Mexican coins!--into an impure substance containing a bit more gold than was there.  But measurements were not precise and results could not be duplicated. He did sell some gold to the US Treasury, it seems, but it may just have been what was in the coins or other substances, it seems. 
   
  Such pressure on silver does create, I learned, a gold-colored silver (or silver coating) !
  which becomes relevant to the rest of the text.
   
      Adept Alchemy. Part II. Chapter 1. Transmutations of Silver to Gold        Dr. Stephen Emmens used high-pressure hammering (500 tons/sq. in.) of allotropic silver at low temperature, followed by fluxing, granulation, more hammering ...
www.levity.com/alchemy/nelson2_1.html - 45k - Cached - Similar pages - Note this
    AMERICA'S AMAZING ALCHEMIST        Did Dr. Stephen H. Emmens find the key to the dreams of the medieval alchemists, or was he a clever imposter? The question remains unanswered. ...
www.borderlands.com/archives/arch/alchem.html - 13k - Cached - Similar pages - Note this

   
  p. 306 Now, looking through the "wafer-thin rhomboid' that is a calcite spar:
  1) Doubles everything (as we know) and makes scenes seen GROW BRIGHTER.  (Are you reminded of the spaces/rooms in M & D that are bigger inside than measureable from the outside?    
   
  2) Makes the two overlapping images appear as gold and as silver. ("Make new friends, but keep the old; one is sliver and the other gold" is an old song rhyme which just occured to me surely irrelevantly, but I hope entertainingly. Is it stll sung?)
   
  So, how could light make metals transmute? (lines 22-23, 306) 'down here where "it's all weight [gravity] and opacity....where 'in the higher regions, the light-carrying Aether penetrating everyplace, etc....."
   
  Light, light, light......Light Over the Ranges.............is like successful alchemy????
  Talk to me about that......
   
  Mark
   

 
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