AtDTdA: (9) 248 Wednesday's kick-ass question

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

             Jasper gasped:
             Today's kick-ass essay question
             This chapter has a lot about mirrors and opposites, 
             "landmarks" and "anti-landmarks", the dualities of 
             Venice itself, etc. Describe how this theme relates 
             to the book as a whole, and/or to Pynchon's body of 
             work. How many doubles or mirrors come to mind? 
             Contrast the use of mirrors with the use of glass. 
             How do the two combine or oppose one another?
 
             Ahem!  Mirrors?  Opposites?  Doubles?  Nothing?
 
             Anyone for Lolita then?  All kinds of cool mirrors and 
             doubles in there....  Tennis, chess, butterfly wings, 
             HH....  Yeah, Lolita kicks ass.

Yep, she shore do, now don't she [I've really gotta re-read that 
one, remember loving that book when I read it a few decades ago.]

Well, first and foremost, there's Echo Courts, isn't there?
Just gathered up my copy of "The Crying of Lot 49" picked from the shelve 
at work a year ago. The QP cover design is cooly postmodern, a female 
figure (Oedipa?) enveloped in a dark background, gazing into an enormous 
billboard of a subtly muted horn. The font for the title is army stencil in 
bright red, with patches of spray-paint shadow. not as Go-Go-Go (keep it 
bouncing!) as the original mass market paperback---Oed and the 'noids 
swimming in paisley---not de-horned, like the current QP (is the cat finally 
out of the bag?) but the scariest is the  photo-realist interim MM, weirdly 
enough the one illustration for the I couldn't find in Google images. When 
I grabbed my copy off the shelf this morning, a Chick Publications pamphlet
---Bewitched?---fell out. But I'll get to that digression later. That 80's cover 
for COL49 has a photorealist painting of this scene:

                  Still, when she got a look at the next motel, she 
             hesitated a second. A representation in painted 
             metal of a nymph holding a white blossom towered 
             thirty feet into the air; the sign, lit up despite the 
             sun, said "Echo Courts." The face of the nymph 
             was much like Oedipa's, which didn't startle her so 
             much as a concealed blower system that kept the 
             nymph's gauze chiton in constant agitation, 
             revealing enormous vermillion-tipped breasts and 
             long pink thighs at each flap. She was smiling a 
             lipsticked and public smile, not quite a hooker's but 
             nowhere neat that of any nymph pining away with 
             love either. Oedipa pulled into the lot, got out and 
             stood for a moment in the hot sun and the dead-still 
             air, watching the artificial windstorm overhead toss 
             gauze in five-foot excursions. Remembering her 
             idea about a slow whirlwind, words she couldn't hear. 
             15

The image on the 80's mass market issue of COL49 has Oed's back to the billboard,
more like 32 than 27. . . .

                  Grace looked suprised. "There's a certain harassed 
             style," she said, '"you get to recognize. I thought only 
             kids caused it. I guess not. 
             124

Perhaps the most paranoid (and "impossible") moment in the book. Whoever
"They" might be, "They" are on to her, and she doesn't even know there's a 
"They" to be concerned about just yet. Soon to come, Baby Igor drowns, all the 
Paranoids plug in and all the lights go out. But not before some ritualistic sex. . . .

For the Chums, Miles picks up on the Picardy thirds (mirroring, reversing and 
distorting) from a gondilier, singing praises for his gondola. You just don't 
get more refectively recurvsive that that. Note that Miles is both a Paranoid 
and a Chum, and that the word "Miles" signifys the muted horn, something 
Pynchon deploys in COL 49 as a sigil against revelation, against daylight, 
favoring the dark:

http://www.shanepruitt.com/miles_davis.html

That photographing of the "Empty Sea", which in fact is the Isle of Mirrors 
and might be Atlantis, constitutes an act of Scrying:

             Scrying is a method of divination and takes on many 
             forms. Information received varies with the type of 
             scrying one is using to get answers. Information can 
             be objective, message given that are independing of 
             the scryer - or subjective, determined or influenced by 
             the scryer. Scrying can also be viewed as a form of 
             mediumship, messages allegedly coming from another 
             realm. This all goes to the scrying tool used and the 
             interpretation of the symbol shown. A dream dictionary 
             is often helpful.

             As consciousness is evolving, so too are the meanings 
             of the symbols.

             Scrying comes from the Old English word descry 
             meaning "to make out dimly" or "to reveal." Adding the 
             prefix/suffix 'be' (often 'gye' in Germanic languages), gives 
             us the modern word 'describe'.


             Art of Scrying

             Scrying can be an auto-deepening trance process 
             that progresses in stages using tools such as a 
             crystal ball, or other medium. Initially, the medium 
             serves as a focus for the attention, removing 
             unwanted thoughts from the mind in the same way 
             as a mantra. Once this is achieved, the scryer 
             begins a free association with the perceived images 
             suggested, for instance in a crystal ball, by the tiny 
             inclusions, web-like faults and/or the cloudy glow 
             within the ball under low light (i.e. candlelight).

             The technique of deliberately looking for and 
             declaring these initial images aloud, however trivial 
             or irrelevant they may seem to the conscious mind, 
             is done with the intent of deepening the trance state, 
             wherein the scryer hears their own disassociated 
             voice affirming what is seen within the concentrated 
             state in a kind of feedback loop. This process 
             culminates in the achievement of a final and desired 
             end stage in which visual images and dramatic 
             stories seem to be projected within the mind's eye 
             of the scryer, like an inner movie. This overall process 
             reputedly allows the scryer to "see" relevant events 
             or images within the chosen medium.

             Scrying has been used for thousands of years by 
             different cultures. Ancient Egypt used scrying in 
             their Initiations. This included water scrying, dream 
             scrying, oil scrying, and mirror scrying. One legend 
             states that the goddess Hathor carried a shield that 
             could reflect back all things in their true light. From 
             this shield she allegedly fashioned the first magic 
             mirror to "see."

             Ancient Persia -- the Shahnama, a semi-historical 
             epic work written in the late 10th century, gives a 
             description of what was called the Cup of Jamshid, 
             used in pre-Islamic Persia, which was used by 
             wizards and practitioners of the esoteric sciences 
             for observing all the seven layers of the universe.

             Ancient Greeks and Celts practiced scrying using 
             beryl, crystal, black glass, polished quartz, water, 
             and other transparent or light catching bodies. 
             Nostradamus is believed to have employed a small 
             bowl of water as a scrying tool into which he gazed 
             and received images of future events. Alchemists 
             Edward Kelley and John Dee employed a form of 
             scrying using a small crystal ball or shewstone - a 
             piece of polished obsidion. The crystal ball and wax 
             tablets used by Dee and Kelley are on display at 
             the British Museum in London.

             Scrying is the occult practice of using a medium, 
             most commonly a reflective surface or translucent 
             body, to aid perceived psychic abilities such as 
             clairvoyance. The media often used to "see" are 
             water, polished precious stones, crystal balls, or 
             mirrors. Scrying, in this context, uses a "visual" 
             process. There are some who believe the art of 
             scrying is not limited to the use of "reflective" or 
             "translucent" bodies only, but includes other media. 
             Scrying has been used in many cultures as a means 
             of seeing the past, present, or future; in this sense 
             scrying constitutes a form of divination.

http://www.crystalinks.com/scrying.html

My favorite visual realization of scrying comes from Peter Greenaway's
"Prospero's Books":

             Book 2. A Book of Mirrors: Bound in a gold cloth and 
             very heavy, this book has some eighty shining mirrored 
             pages; some opaque, some translucent, some 
             manufactured with silvered papers, some coated in paint, 
             some covered in a film of mercury that will roll off the 
             page unless t reated cautiously. Some mirrors simply 
             reflect the reader, some reflect the reader as he was 
             three minutes previously, some reflect the reader as he 
             will be in a year's time, as he would be if he were a child, 
             a woman, a monster, an idea, a text or an angel. One 
             mirror constantly lies, one mirror sees the world backwards, 
             another upside down. One mirror holds on to its reflections 
             as frozen moments infinitely recalled. One mirror simply 
             reflects another mirror across a page. There are ten mirrors 
             whose purpose Prospero has yet to define.
             - Unfinished

http://www.wanderingmoon.com/ProsperosBooks/books.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGQbQfdMD-4

What Miles gets out of the reflection is music and also a wonderful hall of 
mirrors take on self reference. What Scientific Officer "Chick" Counterfly 
gets out of it is the "Ray Race" in progress all around, the race that leads 
to the twentieth century as we know it (technologically). We see the 
start of the Cold War here, as well as a few echos of Rocky & Bullwinkle.

One more thing, that copy of "Bewitched?" that fell out of my copy of COL 49?:

http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0045/0045_01.asp

If there's a "Harry Potter" in AtD, I'll nominate Miles Blundell. He obviously 
has the gift. There is the notion of a vast Occult global conspiracy in Chick 
Publications, just like Pynchon, only crunchy!!! I'll get to more on that later.