AtDtDA(28): A Presence Come to Earth

[Dave Monroe]

"Two small black birds who had not been there now emerged ..." (AtD,
Pt. IV, p. 782)


"Two small black birds"

Cf., e.g., ...

Huginn and Muninn, sometimes Anglicized Hugin and Munin, are a pair of
ravens associated with the Norse god Odin.

Hugin and Munin travel the world bearing news and information they
have collected to Odin. Hugin is "thought" and Munin is "memory"....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugin_and_Munin
http://altreligion.about.com/library/glossary/symbols/bldefshuginmunin.htm

Heckle and Jeckle was a theatrical cartoon series created by Paul
Terry, and released by his own studio, Terrytoons. The characters were
a pair of identical magpies who calmly outwitted their foes ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heckle_and_Jeckle
http://www.archive.org/details/the_talking_magpies
http://www.bcdb.com/cartoons/20th_Century_Fox/TerryToons/Heckle_and_Jeckle/index.html


"forms of life were a connected set"

http://www.mountainman.com.au/gaia.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaia_hypothesis


"Somewhere on the other side of the world"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_paradox
http://prola.aps.org/abstract/PR/v47/i10/p777_1


"a state of total attention"

Cf. ...

   "She could, at this stage, recognize signals like tha, as the
epileptic is said to—an odor, color, pure piercing grace note
announcing his seizure." (Lot 49, p. 76)

"the direct, epileptic Word, the cry that might abolish the night"
(idem., p. 87)

http://www.innternet.de/~peter.patti/thomaspynchon-thecryingoflot49.htm

Oklahoma City University Law Review
Volume 24, Number 3 (1999)

INTRUDING WORLDS AND THE EPILEPTIC WORD: PYNCHON'S DIALOGUE WITH THE
LAWS OF SURREALISM AND NEW PHYSICS

KATHLEEN IUDICELLO

http://tarlton.law.utexas.edu/lpop/etext/okla/iudicello24.htm

Mattessich, Stefan
Ekphrasis, Escape, and Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49
Postmodern Culture - Volume 8, Number 3, May 1998

http://www.iath.virginia.edu/pmc/text-only/issue.598/8.3mattessich.txt
http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals/postmodern_culture/v008/8.3mattessich.html


Transfinitum

Cantor's mathematical concept of transfinite numbers, indefinitely
large but distinct from one another.

http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_768-791#Page_782

Cantor's Concept of Infinity:
Implications of Infinity for Contingence

by THE REVEREND BRUCE A. HEDMAN, Ph.D.

>From Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 46 (March 1993): 8-16.

http://www.asa3.org/asa/PSCF/1993/PSCF3-93Hedman.html


"chosen to reenter the finite world ... mortality ... a presence come to Earth"

The Incarnation is the mystery and the dogma of the Word made Flesh.
ln this technical sense the word incarnation was adopted, during the
twelfth century, from the Norman-French, which in turn had taken the
word over from the Latin incarnatio. The Latin Fathers, from the
fourth century, make common use of the word; so Saints Jerome,
Ambrose, Hilary, etc. The Latin incarnatio (in: caro, flesh)
corresponds to the Greek sarkosis, or ensarkosis, which words depend
on John (i, 14) kai ho Logos sarx egeneto, "And the Word was made
flesh"....

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07706b.htm

"And the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us, and we saw
his glory, the glory as of the Father's only Son, full of grace and
truth." --John 1:14

http://bible.cc/john/1-14.htm
http://www.usccb.org/nab/bible/john/john1.htm

The incarnate Word is the new mode of God's presence among his people.
The Greek verb has the same consonants as the Aramaic word for God's
presence (Shekinah)....

http://www.usccb.org/nab/bible/john/john1.htm#foot9

"sshhhghhh" (GR, Pt. IV, p. 680)


dungur

A dungur is a shamanic drum.


"homeopathic echoes to protect from its return"

The homeopathic principle is that small doses of what kills will cure
or prevent; drumming prevents return of the huge sound.

http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_768-791#Page_783