ATDTDA (38)Pink Tabs, cover

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

          In the Craft, we pray to an imminent goddess; she permeates 
          all walks of life, within and without us. We do not just pray to 
          her "above" but also "within." When patriarchal religions talk 
          about the "grace" that comes to those who pray, they are 
          talking about the same things we did thousands of years 
          before them.

          Cultivate your deeper mind and be well.

          Zsuzsanna Budapest. "The Holy Book of Women's Mysteries"

So I start the flashbacks before the trip is quite over.

I finally figured out the Pink Tabs—those passages that reminded 
me of The Crying of Lot 49 and Tris/Trystero. It's the intersection of the 
Occult and the Encrypted, some of the backstory of heretics forced to
encrypt their messages in order to save their skins.

Let's start with the cover, shall we? The book's title is seen through a 
hunk of clear, optical grade Calcite. The topmost layer—the present—
has some sort of stamp of the Tibetian Chamber of Commerce. We see
the three different fonts representing the layers of time in three different 
styles of typeface. Pynchon's novels always have Un-named
characters driving the book's plots, both literary plots and and the plots
of crimes being committed. Somehow, murmuring in the background of
Gravity's Rainbow I sense Crowley. Lurking in the background of
Against the Day is Einstein. The overarching theme of the book is light 
itself and Against the Day's cover [the first printing] encrypts a paradox
or two—if light is both a wave and a particle, Iceland Spar demonstrates
one particle becoming two. Pynchon works from the notion that
those two particles are now running along different time axes. And there 
you are—different time axes, the notion that there are other presents, 
other futures we may or may not be living in.

One of those other futures is Shambhala, earthly paradise.

That stamp on the cover of Against the Day is bilocated.

The illustration on the stamp is from about the time of the Tungusga 
Event, but the inscription of "Tibetan Chamber of Commerce" is
from the present. The significance of that stamp will become quite 
apparent later, in August, when we are on the Rue du Départ:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091874/

http://www.last.fm/music/Anouar+Brahem/_/Rue+du+départ

http://www.hotel-paris-waldorf.com/hotel-waldorf-english/location.html

http://outofthewoodsnow.blogspot.com/2008/06/rue-du-dpart.html