AtDTDA 33 924 Doll-tits/Puppet-Pecker-Peyote

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

Welcome to the Dollhouse
>From the AYDWiki:

tetas de muñeca
Spanish: doll-tits.

pinga de títere
Spanish: puppet-pecker.

I suppose this is the spot upon which we decide what is 
real and what is not real. In this case, we are dealing 
with the core of the magic expressed in Against the Day. 
The model for the universe is the multi-verse, it's, as 
Jemmy Bluestein told me, all about string theory and idea 
that it's all "Ands", all possible worlds exist, it's all 
done with mirrors anyway. But right here in this passage, 
Our Beloved Author, Thomas Ruggles Pynchon lays out 
his notions, his experiences of the bi-located experierence, 
his dedication to shamanism, his knowledge of access to 
all these other worlds "between the worlds". 

Are you experienced? 

Pynchon obviously is.

If you've had the "experience" you have the sense that you 
are plugged into the vision, co-creating your version of the
future. In this passage---as good as anything Our Boy Wonder
has cooked up so far---we are tossed into the swirl and reign 
of a first class visionary/hullucinatory state. 

The Experience is not the use of drugs as such.  The regimens of 
fasting, chanting and the various sorts of meditation alter one's 
internal chemestry. Dimethyltryptamine is endogenous:

          Dimethyltryptamine (DMT), also known as N,N-dimethyl-
          tryptamine, is a naturally occurring tryptamine and potent 
          psychedelic drug, found not only in many plants, but also 
          in trace amounts in the human body wherein its natural 
          function is undetermined. Structurally, it is analogous to 
          the neurotransmitter serotonin and other psychedelic 
          tryptamines such as 5-MeO-DMT and 4-HO-DMT. DMT 
          is created in small amounts by the human body during 
          normal metabolism[1] by the enzyme tryptamine-N-methyl-
          transferase. Many cultures, indigenous and modern, ingest 
          DMT as a psychedelic in extracted or synthesized forms. 
          Pure DMT at room temperature is a clear or white to 
          yellowish-red crystalline solid. DMT was first chemically 
          synthesized in 1931. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimethyltryptamine

For what it's worth, the Cannibinoids are also endogenous.
When Mucho [post-Count Drugula] Maas sez that the Acid
Experience proved, for all time, that he was immortal, well
that theme is echoed and enormously amplified upon in 
Against the Day. There's a lot of hot-shit psychotropics in 
this hopped-up western potboiler [rilly, rilly hopped-up], and 
not a single counteracting PSA in sight. I'd swear the Cornell 
boy goes for this sort of psychoanarchistic drivel:

          Several speculative and as yet untested hypotheses suggest 
          that endogenous DMT, produced in the human brain, is 
          involved in certain psychological and neurological states. As 
          DMT is naturally produced in small amounts in the brains and 
          other tissues of humans, and other mammals,[11] some 
          believe it plays a role in promoting the visual effects of natural 
          dreaming, and also near-death experiences and other mystical 
          states. A biochemical mechanism for this was proposed by the 
          medical researcher J. C. Callaway, who suggested in 1988 that 
          DMT might be connected with visual dream phenomena, where 
          brain DMT levels are periodically elevated to induce visual 
          dreaming and possibly other natural states of mind.[12]

          Dr. Rick Strassman, while conducting DMT research in the 1990s 
          at the University of New Mexico, advanced the theory that a 
          massive release of DMT from the pineal gland prior to death or 
          near death was the cause of the near death experience (NDE) 
          phenomenon. Several of his test subjects reported NDE-like audio 
          or visual hallucinations. His explanation for this was the possible 
          lack of panic involved in the clinical setting and possible dosage 
          differences between those administered and those encountered 
          in actual NDE cases.

          . . .subjects also reported contact with 'other beings', alien like, 
          insectoid or reptilian in nature, in highly advanced technological 
          environments[6] where the subjects were 'carried', 'probed', 'tested', 
          'manipulated', 'dismembered', 'taught', 'loved' and even 'raped' by 
          these 'beings'. Those could be the same beings, that some of the 
          ancient cultures that consumed DMT rich beverages, like Ayahuasca, 
          considered their gods. Also, this leads to the idea that the alien 
          abduction phenomenon could be produced by high levels of 
          endogenous DMT in the human body, and that it might be a 
          physiological condition that could pass genetically to the descendants 
          of such people. (see Abduction phenomenon). Strassman noted 
          though, that the experience might be highly influenced by the actual 
          user's life, showing what the person needs, given their personal story 
          of the moment, more than what is wanted, and also that the setting 
          could play a partial role too.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimethyltryptamine

There is a hullacinatory aspect to the writing itself. If you've ever spent 
any time in the psychedelic neighborhoods that Tommy is describing
here then you know that he's writing from first-hand experience. 
Pynchon's embrace of the psycedelic experience is complete. 
Judging from Vineland, Gravity's Rainbow and Against the Day 
in particular, the LSD/Gaia vision---the bleeding edge of the 
awareness that everything in creation---everything---is interconnected,
is central to his writing. Pynchon is rather keen on the general 
subject of visions. If I were to go further [this is still boiling in my mind],  
I'd say the central mcguffin is heresy itself, the single constant that 
underpins all his writing---heresy---but like I said, it's still boiling away 
in the rusting cauldron of my my-yii-yiiiiiiiiiin-d (add slap and plate, 
fade on the echo) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0XnqWGhjo8

The interconnection----"Everything is Interconnected"---
is the Lifeforce [or "Chi" or "Prana"] that runs through 
everything. That force that interconnects everything is the
energy that magicians of all stripes are seeking to harness.
You know, like Tesla?

Back to the vision itself.

What comes to mind is Jorodowsky's [a founding member 
of the "Panic" movement, along with Jesus, I mean Fernando 
Arrabal] "The Holy Mountain". It is about as close as movies ever 
get to visions and every bit as confusing/misdirecting:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsjmaiJaCp8

Pynchon's women painted as birds recall the costumed lizards of the Holy Mountain.

          Joe Allonby:
          Mostly what I got from peyote was eyelid movies. 
          Some pretty damned vivid ones.

My first [mescaline, 16 years old] had the eyelid movie 
experience as well. The second [twice as much, the next 
day] the movies got out of my eyelids and onto the ceiling.
Lotta raunchy R. Crumb in them visions, btw.

          Laura:

          El Espinero:  "But the hikuli is not for everyone."

More to the point, the leap of awareness that enables
El Espinero the freedom of thought, of astral and inner travel,
is the knowledge shared by Witches of all stripes. He can get 
to any of those places described in the scenes of the utopia 
that Pynchon sets before us without ingesting those little cacti. 
He knows who to call, how to ask, what doors to open, what 
doors to lock. He knows how to. . . .

          . . . .slip along across the last borderline, into what 
          Wittgenstein once supposed cannot be spoken of, and 
          upon which, as Eliphaz Levi advised us -- after "To know, 
          to will, to dare" as the last and greatest of the rules of 
          Magic -- we must keep silent.

          Laura:

          For those, like me, who've never indulged (hell, no 
          one's ever offered it to me), here's a sample description 
          of the experience:

http://www.miqel.com/entheogens/first_western_peyote_trip.html

I guess it's only fair to note that sometimes the climax of a LSD 
or peyote experience occurs several weeks before taking the 
drug. Also, sometimes the meaning of a vision doesn't dawn 
on you until the moment you are in sync with the actual time of 
the event envisioned. I've been off by a whole Jupiter cycle, by 
a Saturn return. Some of this shit takes a long time to work out.
That time travel stuff has a link to them little cacti, far as I can tell.

          For those who have indulged, a question:  in the first 
          very long sentence ("Before too long ... view the sky."), 
          is Pynchon perhaps describing a peyote vision he 
          himself had. . . .

[me bursting in, disguised as Bugs Bunny, in the typical legs akimbo asana,
leaning against a billboard on a brickwall somewhere in downtown Brooklyn, 
still chomping on the carrot, orange crumbs spilling out of the side of my mouth]

"Hmmmmmmmmmm. . . .                                     . . . .Could Be!"

          . . . . . .or are we meant to parse the literal meaning of 
          Frank's vision?  . . . .

[Drops carrot, whips a tablecloth off a nearby cafe table, skirling it into 
a chic skirt, places the rose from the vase into his teeth, preparing 
for the tango, then shouts: "Eeeeeet's po-see-blay!]

          . . . . The second sentence takes Frank on a journey to/from 
          Aztlan.  There's somewhat a rehashing of what Wren told him 
          about the flight from Aztlan back on p. 277-78: fleeing from 
          invaders who forced them to make offerings in the form of 
          human sacrifices.

          In Frank's vision, they're trespassers, aka in ATD as The 
          Trespassers, possibly gringos who literally visited Aztlan 
          from the future (our present?), or a vision of the future           
          (from the Aztlan past) when the U.S. would seize the 
          Southwest (Aztlan) from Mexico.

And I say to you, that this is pure unvarnished Witchcraft that 
Frank is allowed to see, unveiled. This is the collective vision, 
the utopia of the nation of Aztlan, what it will be like as soon as things 
finally loosen up. And at the same time, it is Gnostic in the other 
sense as well. For the moment we are stuck in the black 
iron prison. But only a for little more time. The day is fast 
approaching. 


As we all know. . . .

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Some images:

a tlachiquero, or maguey cutter:

http://www.getty.edu/research/conducting_research/digitized_collections/mexico/i
mages/91.html

Frida Kahlo with her parrots:

http://visualarts.walkerart.org/detail.wac?id=3156&title=Current+Exhibitions

skeletons of raw sugar:

http://www.gourmetsleuth.com/sugarskullsmaking.htm

heliograph:  this is actually a device with mirrors used for long-distance Morse 
code communications.  Pynchon means heliogravure, a photoengraving technique.

http://www.cfmgallery.com/artists/Dali/pages/Heliogravurehtm.htm

Laura