atddta 32: flaps, chaos, Fantasia pt 3

[grladams at teleport.com]

I wanted to say thank you for the posts that included these topix..
Don't know if I included this in any of my last postings (it's been one of
those weeks where I composed and then self-edited myself into a corner and
then posted nothing..) that in response to Laura's quesion about whether
chaotic systems appear that way because "we don't have "initial data
precise and fine-grained enough to capture every flap or no-flap"? (I think
it's more about the equipment. I think it's chaotic because on this list we
have people who've sharpened their fancy devices and are triangulating at
the "truth" with equipment (metaphorically speaking) from Math, Witchcraft,
Literature, Chemistry, History, Theosophy, Opera, Music.. And equipment has
it's own needs. Are we sharpening our equipment with whetstones other than
pynchon? (or am I spending too much time reading Pynchon and not enough
attending opera or travelling..)

And thanks to Robin's posting that had this in it -- because the buildup to
the unmentionable (war) is what this book's about, the ever lengthening
stroll on the edge of a shape that no one understands, all wish that it
would go on forever, and no one knows when it will flip over, and maybe it
already has.. and people like Pynchon have the audacity to illustrate it
for us.

peace-Jill

-----------------robin's posting snippet-------------------------
It's his greatest grandfather's heresy---the heresy of a man, 
like Byrd, like Tallis who knows how to get along in the real 
world, much more Taoist than Calvinist. And that path, the elect 
will tell ya, leads directly to that most trancendant of evils, the 
invisible and very great pan-shamanic empire. Witchcraft, 
Shamanism, "New Age Thinking", Ascended Masters, The 
Golden Dawn, developing interest in Taoism and Buddhism--- 
all these concepts are trotted out, paraded before us as if in 
a masque, in Against the Day. There is something in heresy 
itself that drives the motor of all of Pynchon's writings, nowhere 
moreso than in Against the Day. 

Once publick discussion of religious rights veers off towards 
that traverse direction, it often can lead to war. War really---as 
Tallis pointed out---is fuming and fighting over nothing. People 
are hypnotized by words like "Patriot" and "Hero", "Heretic and 
"Terrorist". 

The perception of the intended victims as 'the other', or 'preterite' 
aids and abets this damn near pavlovian manuvering of people's 
will as they go off to some weird land, kill a bunch of strangers, 
steal their stuff only to give it to their warlords and then say they 
did it all in the name of God. Tallis, Byrd and Pynchin saw through 
that ruse. The composers just settled into comfy old church modes 
and collected their remittances. Billy boy musta've been a self 
described high roller, the boys in Boston weren't gonna listen to that 
kind of talk, no siree. . . . 


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