Home

[Mark Kohut]

Prairie goes in and out of that lucid waking dreaming state in a heavenly meadow recreated with Pynchon's wonderful lyricism embodying
his pantheism?, his panentheism?, his simple paganism?---as above, so below---and
with Desmond licking her she is now awake and Desmond is the image of HIS grandmother Chloe (as if reincarnated?)............????
 
Home is where what is left of nature is. Home in Vineland is in the land of vines.....




 


----- Original Message ----
From: Robin Landseadel <robinlandseadel at comcast.net>
To: pynchon-l at waste.org
Sent: Friday, April 17, 2009 12:35:34 PM
Subject: Re: Home

On Apr 17, 2009, at 9:08 AM, Kai Frederik Lorentzen wrote:

> 
> Robin schrieb:
> 
>> What really matters, in this family drama, is that somehow, we find
>> our way home. We all know where home is, but we all know that "home"
>> is slipping away.
> 
> 
> Makes me think of the very end of Ernst Blochs magnum opus "Das Prinzip
> Hoffnung" (The principle of Hope), where Home ("Heimat") gets defined as
> "etwas, das allen in die Kindheit scheint und worin noch niemand war"
> (p. 1628). Something that shines through everybody's childhood and where
> nobody has been yet ...
> 
> Kai

Except—maybe—Desmond:

    . . .suspecting already that he was no longer available, that the
    midnight summoning would go safely unanswered, even if she
    couldn't let go. The small meadow shimmered in the starlight,
    and her promises grew more extravagant as she drifted into the
    lucid thin layer of waking dreaming, her flirting more obvious —
    then she'd wake, alert to some step in the woods, some brief
    bloom of light in the sky, back and forth for a while between
    Brock fantasies and the silent darkened silver images all
    around her, before settling down into sleep, sleeping then
    unvisited till around dawn, with fog still in the hollows, deer and
    cows grazing together in the meadow, sun blinding in the
    cobwebs on the wet grass, a redtail hawk in an updraft soaring
    above the ridgeline, Sunday morning about to unfold, when
    Prairie woke to a warm and persistent tongue all over her face.
    It was Desmond, none other, the spit and image of his
    grandmother Chloe, roughened by the miles, face full of blue-
    jay feathers, smiling out of his eyes, wagging his tail, thinking
    he must be Home.

. . . it's such a fairy-tale ending, save little details like the R.I.C.O. destruction of the Wheeler Family home. And yet they are surrounded by a supportive [and huge] family. And yet, and yet.

Talk to me of Mendocino:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPopA5Y0XcE