Help, please

[Michael Bailey]

Heikki Raudaskoski wrote:
>
>  It's from Oedipa's contemplation on DT and metaphor.
>
>  The old man is having regular fits of delirium tremens, Oedipa
>  presumes. The etymology of "delirium" is "off the furrow". In
>  Oedipa's contemplation, that's what he does during a nighttime
>  DT fit of his: gets cammed out of
>
>         To cam out (or cam-out) is a process by which a screwdriver slips
>         out of the head of a screw being driven once the torque required
>         to turn the screw exceeds a certain amount.
>

ooh, aah, great reference, so it's sort of like a Germanic construction,
"aus-cammen" -
and to carry the reference a perhaps uncalled-for turn of the screw further...

a screw itself is a spiral furrow along a shaft
and the path of the earth in space,
moving around the sun as the sun itself moves along
is also a screw


also, from David Payne's OED gleanings:
"Obs. exc. dial.
[Adopted from Celtic: in Welsh cam crooked, bent, bowed, awry, wrong,
false; Gael. cam crooked, bent, blind of one eye; Manx cam (as in
Gaelic);
-- brings the urge to do a little riffing on the Dr Hilarius scene,
"Ewan CAMeron"
the crooked doctor, Dr Benway, Dr Pointsman messing with people's minds,
their potions not so very different from those dispensed to the alcoholic

but also,
Bekah wrote: "Cammed each night out of that safe furrow..."  - then
"...the bulk of this city's waking each sunrise again set virtuously
to plowing"

-- I'd suggest also "which" ie: "that safe furrow which the bulk of"  (etc)

and to bring a little pedantry into the metaphor,
if delirium literally comes from "the ox leaving its furrow"
then let's note that the ox is still hooked up to the plow and is
tearing up ground
not slated for cultivation -- maybe flower beds or pushing down fences
or walking right over chickens or eating already-ripe crops

 that's why it would be a matter for consternation
and become a good metaphor or objective correlative for madness

ie, he goes delirious and his mind digs into stuff outside the normal,

like Glenn's ruminations, too vigorous for the admitting physician's
sense of normalcy