IVIV (2) skeletons

[Doug Millison]

On Aug 31, 2009, at 8:12 AM, rich wrote:

> I suppose one could look at that epigraph on the negative side--the
> dream that California represents for most is only masking the
> reality--desert
>
> (thought of this while watching yet again those wildfires this weekend
> on the tube--building on land that is prone to such disasters)


  Lots of California is dry as can be. Some places on the coast, you  
have to wait to build until you can get a water permit. Marin County  
is looking, again, at installing water desalination plants.

The epigraph strikes me as ambiguous at best.  Knowing how the 60s  
turn out, the beach party's over, in with the Me Generation, Reagan,  
Bush, and the rest of it.

>
> p.s. that IV passage below sounds alot like Cormac McCarthy
> rich

I haven't read him yet, I have several of his books on the bookshelf  
when I'm  ready.

>
>
> On 8/31/09, Doug Millison <dougmillison at comcast.net> wrote:
>> "The development stretched into the haze and the soft smell of the  
>> fog
>> component of smog, and of desert beneath the pavement--model units
>> nearer the road, finished homes farther in, and just visible beyond
>> them the skeletons of new construction, expanding into the
>> unincorporated wastes." (IV 20)
>>
>> "The desert creeps in on a man's land. […] Is the desert's attack too
>> powerful for any boy , or wall, or dead father and mother? […] And  
>> now
>> the house begins to fill with desert, like the lower half of an
>> hourglass which will never be inverted again. […] 'the city is only  
>> the
>> desert in disguise.' "
>> --V. ch3 section v; pp. 70-71  Bantam/Windstone paperback
>>
>>
>> alice quotes a magnificent passage:
>>
>> Now, amid the green, life-restless loom of that Arsacidean wood, the
>> great,
>> white, worshipped skeleton lay lounging --a gigantic idler! Yet, as
>> the ever-woven verdant warp and woof intermixed and hummed around  
>> him,
>> the mighty idler seemed the cunning weaver; himself all woven over
>> with the vines; every month assuming greener, fresher verdure; but
>> himself a skeleton. Life folded Death; Death trellised Life; the grim
>> god wived with youthful Life, and begat him curly-headed glories
>>
>> http://www.princeton.edu/~batke/moby/moby_102.html
>>
>>
>>
>>