Atdtda29: Any part of their day, 835

[Michael Bailey]

Paul Nightingale wrote:
> [835.26-29] ... and all question of alloyed steel, geometric purity of
>  gauge, railways and timetables and the greater network, not to mention
>  European time as it usually passed, ceased to be any part of their day, and
>  they were swept back into the previous century.

railroad technology, then...moving people and freight en masse;
train whistles dopplering sadly, goodbyes at stations,
missed connections, or felicitous train-catchings,
breakups (and reunitings)
noted repeatedly in AtD (transposing a country-western
theme to his historical-novelism of 19th-20th century world
history (one of the perennial country-music touchstones,
among drinking, mothers, prison, rain...

as in the perfect country western song -
"I was drunk the day my momma got out of prison
And I went to pick her up in the rain.
But, before I could get to the station in my pickup truck
She got runned over by a damned old train.")

compared to the individualist ethos of the private car
(ignoring for the moment the environmental woes),
the train represents more of a Procrustean baseline
imposed by world capitalism...

>  Cf. Foucault on "the age of space":
>  Cf. also Latour on the local/global distinction:
>
>  The problem is that social scientists use scale as one of the many variables
>  they need to set up before doing the study, whereas scale is what actors
>  achieve by scaling, spacing and contextualising each other through the
>  transportation in some specific vehicles of some specific traces.

I lack context to fully integrate these quotes: is he indeed talking
about actors, like in plays and TV shows?

at any rate, I get a sense that in addition to supplying
human needs, technology also supplies the means to
ignore human needs...
and maybe this is an important part of what Pynchon and
the philosophers are reacting to?

I reach for a friendly quote too:
The Divine Image 	
by William Blake


To Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love,

All pray in their distress:

And to these virtues of delight

Return their thankfulness.



For Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love,

Is God, our father dear:

And Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love,

Is Man, his child and care.



For Mercy has a human heart,

Pity, a human face:

And Love, the human form divine,

And Peace, the human dress.



Then every man of every clime,

That prays in his distress,

Prays to the human form divine,

Love, Mercy, Pity, Peace.



And all must love the human form,

In heathen, Turk, or Jew.

Where Mercy, Love, & Pity dwell,

There God is dwelling too.