AtDTDA (43) 949, 973, 975 Roses

[kelber at mindspring.com]

There's a "make love, not war" tone to the passage, and, in fact, we never see any scenes of WWI in the book.  Is TRP saying here (looking back on his youth, from the vantage-point of an aging family man) that those of us who are part of the preterite can only do our best to turn away from militarism and concentrate on the things we can at least partially comprehend and control, i.e. love, family, etc.?  If so, it's an odd, conservative moment, given that soon Frank, Stray and Jesse will be out there fighting the good (losing)fight against the mine-owners.  Then, there's something oddly diminishing about Yashmeen's turn away from math and towards family, Cyprian's retreat into the monastery, Reef's turn away from fighting for justice (vengeance?) towards a mundane future.

Laura

-----Original Message-----
>From: robinlandseadel at comcast.net

>There is an interesting passage I stumbled on this morning, 
>somehow it relates, don't ask me how:
>
>      Persisting behind the world's every material utterance, the 
>      Compassionate now took steps to re-establish contact with 
>      Yashmeen. As if the Balkan assignment had never been 
>      about secret Austrian minefields at all, but about Cyprian 
>      becoming a bride of the Night and Ljubica being born during 
>      the rose harvest, and Reef and Yashmeen getting her safely 
>      to Corfu---thereby sucessfully carrying out the "real" mission, 
>      for which the other, mines and all, was what the Compassionate 
>      liked to call a metaphor. . . .
>      AtD 973
>
>Were the 90's my time as a would-be bride of the Night?
>Was the marriage, the garden, the roses---metaphors like those 
>minefields? Was the real point for me to morph into a raving 
>streetfreak and land in Judy Foster's basement? Was that the 
>"real" assignment?