AtdTDA: Your Answers Questioned

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

     Robert Mahnke:
     I saw this last night and thought it had curious echoes of AtD:
 
     Perhaps history in this century, though Eigenvalue, is rippled 
     with gathers in its fabric such that if we are situated, as 
     Stencil seemed to be, at the bottom of a fold, it’s impossible 
     to determine warp, woof or pattern anywhere else.  By virtue, 
     however, of existing in one gather it is assumed there are 
     others, compartmented off into sinuous cycles each of which 
     come to assume greater importance than the weave itself and 
     destroy any continuity.  Thus it is that we are charmed by the 
     funny-looking automobiles of the ‘30’s, the curious fashions of 
     the ‘20’s, the peculiar moral habits of our grandparents.  We 
     produce and attend musical comedies about them and are 
     conned into a false memory, a phony nostalgia about what 
     they were.  We are accordingly lost to any sense of a 
     continuous tradition.  Perhaps if we lived on a crest, things 
     would be different.  We could at least see.
 
     V. 155-56 (1986 ed.).

And strong echos of Julius Evola as well:

     Modern civilization stands on one side and on the other 
     the entirety of all the civilizations that have preceded it 
     (for the West, we can put the dividing line at the end of 
     the Middle Ages). At this point the rupture is complete. 
     Apart from the multitudinous variety of its forms, 
     premodern civilization, which we might as well call 
     "traditional," means something quite different. For 
     there are two worlds, one of which has separated 
     itself by cutting off nearly every contact with the past. 
     For the great majority of moderns, that means any 
     possibility of understanding the traditional world has 
     been completely lost.

     "The Hermetic Tradition", Julius Evola, page 14

     Mark Kohut:
     Is it a metaphor for we readers looking at History 
     (the past)....if we had looked at it rightly, it would 
     have been different?.....Since we have NOT seen 
     History correctly, it has changed the present?

     a different path.....He remembers bi-location........
     Roswell is almost annoyed when Lew questions 
     him about the subject's possible other lived lives
     .............Of course that is possible, knows Roswell.  

Yup, Area 51 revisited: 
"Scully said to Muldar:
"Get me a Nun!"

I mean, let us not forget the incredible wealth of cheap tricks 
and bottom bracket puns OBA employs—bilocation* is also 
a cheap trick, thus "Roswell." Pynchon is no mere satirist, 
he's a satirist devoted to Road Runner cartoons and really 
bad puns. The fabric of time [more like a chunk of Iceland 
Spar, come to think of it] is trespassed by anachronism 
everywhere—"Burgher King" anyone?—and on some level 
Yashmeen, Lew and Cyprian are trespassers from our time. 

*Echoing "Nick Danger—Third Eye in: 'Cut 'Em Off at the Past'", 
where discontinunities in the fabric of time form the center of 
the plot and the program ends with an interruption from FDR, 
announcing the United States' complete and total surrender 
to the Japanese. As the "NIck Danger" resumes we hear 
Nicky-nick-nick-nick-nick say:

          The great prince issues commands,
          Founds states, vests families with fiefs.
          Inferior people should not be employed.

. . . .from Richard Wilhelm's translation from the original Chinese of 
"The Army" from the I Ching, OBA reiterating the shared theme of 
absurdist resistance—a hallmark of both Pynchon and the Firesign 
Theater.

 7.   Shih / The Army
          -- --
          -- --     above     K'un   The Receptive, Earth
          -- --
          -- --
          -----     below     K'an   The Abysmal, Water
          -- --
     The Judgement
          The Army. The army needs perseverance
          And a strong man.
          Good fortune without blame.
     The Image
          In the middle of the earth is water:
          The image of the Army.
          Thus the superior man increases his masses
          By generosity toward the people.
     The Lines
          Six at the beginning means:
          An army must set forth in proper order.
          If the order is not good, misfortune threatens.
     ()   Nine in the second place means:
          In the midst of the army.
          Good fortune. No blame.
          The king bestows a triple decoration.
          Six in the third place means:
          Perchance the army carries corpses in the wagon.
          Misfortune.
          Six in the fourth place means:
          The army retreats. No blame.
     ()   Six in the fifth place means:
          There is game in the field.
          It furthers one to catch it.
          Without blame.
          Let the eldest lead the army.
          The younger transports corpses;
          Then perseverance brings misfortune.
          Six at the top means:
          The great prince issues commands,
          Founds states, vests families with fiefs.
          Inferior people should not be employed.

http://www.religiousworlds.com/taoism/ichingtx.html
.