Help, please

[Bekah]

That's on page 125 of the Harper Perennial (mid Chapter 5) and you've  
got it typed correctly.  Here's a bit more.

**********
  He gave Oedipa a letter that looked like he'd been carrying it  
around for years. "Drop it in the," and he held up the tattoo and  
stared into her eyes, "you know. I can't go out there. It's too far  
now, I had a bad night."

"I know," she said. "But I'm new in town. I don't know where it is."

"Under the freeway." He waved her on in the direction she'd been  
going. "Always one. You'll see it." The eyes closed. Cammed each  
night out of that safe furrow the bulk of this city's waking each  
sunrise again set virtuously to plowing, what rich soils had he  
turned, what concentric planets uncovered? What voices overheard,  
flinders of luminescent gods glimpsed among the wallpaper's stained  
foliage, candlestubs lit to rotate in the air over him, prefiguring  
the cigarette he or a friend must fall asleep someday smoking, thus  
to end among the flaming, secret salts held all those years by the  
insatiable stuffing of a mattress that could keep vestiges of every  
nightmare sweat, helpless overflowing bladder, viciously, tearfully  
consummated wet dream, like the memory bank to a computer of the  
lost? She was overcome all at once by a need to touch him, as if she  
could not believe in him, or would not remember him, without it.  "
**************
I was thinking that the problem word is cammed and so I looked that  
one up:

cam   [kam]   noun, verb, cammed, cam⋅ming.
–noun
1.
Machinery. a disk or cylinder having an irregular form such that its  
motion, usually rotary, gives to a part or parts in contact with it a  
specific rocking or reciprocating motion.
2.
Automotive Slang. camshaft.
–verb (used with object)
3.
to provide (a machine part or mechanism) with a cam or cams.
Origin:
< D or LG kam, kamm. See comb 1
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Now perhaps the narrator is describing the eyes of the old man -  
"Cammed each night out of that safe furrow..."  - then "...the bulk  
of this city's waking each sunrise waking each sunrise again set  
virtuously to plowing"  (everyone else gets up and goes to work)   
"...what rich soils had he turned, what concentric planets  
uncovered?"  (what had the old man seen?)

Just a guess - wild one perhaps because I'm kinda lost in that  
sentence, too.

Might be a typo for crammed or camped - but cammed,  as in a disk  
mechanically set in,  could be eyeballs in the furrow (wrinkles) of  
his brow,  but it's also a term used in farming (furrows of the  
field) hence the "plowing."

???
Bekah




On Nov 11, 2008, at 4:35 AM, Natália Maranca wrote:

> I'm reading CofL49 and it was a very smooth read so far, but now  
> I'm stuck in this bit. I'm not a native speaker, so be condescendent.
> It is on p. 102 in my Harper Perennial edition. She is  
> hallucinating all over San Francisco and in the dawn she meets this  
> old man who asks her to drop a letter to his wife under the  
> freeway, in the W.A.S.T.E. box.
>
> ' "Under the freeway." He waved her on the direction she'd been  
> going. "Always one. You'll see it." The eyes closed. Cammed each  
> night out of that safe furrow the bulk of this city's waking each  
> sunrise again set virtuously to plowing, what rich soils had he  
> turned, what concentric planets uncovered?"
>
> This is absolutely incomprehensible to me. I loose the line of  
> thought there and everything he says after doesn't seem to make  
> much sense. Can anyone please explain it to me?