VL-IV pgs. 98/99: Postmodern Mysticism

[Robin Landseadel]

On Jan 19, 2009, at 10:19 AM, Joseph Tracy wrote:

>  Any mirror that tells you that you are the fairest of
> them all is a piece of shit, as is any mirror that tells
> you you have no power, no choice, no hope. . .

Oh boy Oh boy, goodie, goodie. . .

	In her pack, Geli TrIpping brings along a few of Tchitcherine's
	toenail clippings, a graying hair, a piece of bedsheet with a
	trace of his sperm, all tied in a white silk kerchief, next to a bit of
	Adam and Eve root and a loaf of bread baked from wheat she
	has rolled naked in and ground against the sun. She has left off
	tending her herd of toads on the witches' hillsides, and has
	passed her white wand to another apprentice. She is off to find
	her gallant Attila. Now there are a good few hundred of these
	young women in the Zone who're smitten with love for
	Tchitcherine, all of them sharp as foxes, but none quite as
	stubborn as Geli-and none are witches.

	At noon she comes to a farmhouse with a floor of blue and
	white tiles in the kitchen, elaborate old china plates hung like
	pictures, and a rocking-chair. "Do you have a photo of him?" the
	old woman handing her a tin army plate with the remains of her
	morning's Bauernfriihstuck. "I can give you a spell."
	
	"Sometimes I can call up his face in a cup of tea. But the herbs
	have to be gathered carefully. I'm not that good at it yet."

	"But you're in love. Technique is just a substitute for when you
	get older."

	"Why not stay in love always?"

	The two women watch each other across the sunny kitchen.
	Cabinets with glass panes shine from the walls. Bees buzz
	outside the windows. Geli goes and pumps water from the well,
	and they brew some strawberry-leaf tea. But Tchitcherine's face
	doesn't appear.

This is from page 732 of my Penguin Edition of Gravity's Rainbow.

The author goes to great pains throughout GR to show that the  
differences in the quality of information gathering extends well into  
the psychic realm. there are mirrors and then there are Mirrors, and  
attention must be made, you have to pick up every stitch . . .

I include the following passage [a continuation of op cit.] as a  
demonstration of the importance of the skin theme in GR:

	The night the blacks started off on their great trek, Nordhausen
	felt like a city in a myth, under the threat of some special
	destruction-engulfment by a crystal lake, lava from the sky . . .
	for an evening, the sense of preservation there was lost. The
	blacks, like the rockets in the Mittelwerke, had given
	Nordhausen continuity. Now the blacks are gone: Geli knows
	they are on collision course with Tchitcherine. She doesn't want
	duels. Let the university boys duel. She wants her graying steel
	barbarian alive. She can't bear to think that she may already
	have touched him, felt his scarred and historied hands, for the
	last time.