Help, please

[David Morris]

Adding a little punctuation and missing pronouns, this is how I take
the sentence:

Cammed each night [as opposed to in the daylight] out of that safe
furrow[,] [the old man's clenched REM-eyes][,] the bulk of this city's
waking each sunrise again set virtuously to plowing, what rich soils
had he turned, what concentric planets uncovered?

David Morris

**********
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.  "
**************

On Tue, Nov 11, 2008 at 4:11 PM, David Payne <dpayne1912 at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> * "Cammed each night out of that safe furrow" -- i.e., the old man is cammed out (pushed out by his own energies which are redirected vertically) of that safe furrow (i.e., the straight & narrow path of life) each night?
>
> * as opposed to (camming requires oppositive forces): "the bulk of this city's waking each sunrise again set virtuously to plowing" -- i.e., most of the people in the city wake up each morning to dutifully plow along the straight and narrow life ("the bulk" have sufficient mass to overcome the counter pressure of the old man, so he is cammed out of the safe furrow)
>
> * and back to the old man: "what rich soils had he turned, what concentric planets uncovered?" -- i.e., "she" (Oedipa) is wondering what the old man turned up during his evening plowing, which was conducted along a different furrow than the safe furrow that the bulk of the city woke to do? (i.e., what poetic truths have been unearthed by this old man's shadowy, counter-culture living)
>
> The old man is against the day, so to speak, but one against the bulk is beaten down?