review Ch 11 real estate vs. community

[Joseph Tracy]

The 1st line of CH 11 is funny in both ways, ha ha and peculiar strange.
The shape of the brief but legendary Trasero County coast,… repeated  
the greater curve between SanDiego and Terminal Island.
So is the apparently buttocks like shape of the coastline brief,  
short lived? Or is it intentionally “legendary”; is the author making  
the fictiveness of this place extra explicit to present his own  
historical overview of an attempted revolution? And aren’t buttocks  
explicit enough thou naughty boy?

Calling it Trasero (buttock) buts the struggle in classic male  
colonial terms which are repeated in the retreat to Rex Snuvvle’s  
house in Las Nalgas(the rumps). So TRP casts the story of PR3 as a  
fight over a lovely piece of California ass. Frenesi echoing the  
notion on the contest between Atman and Vond. But the PR3 story is  
also an age-old struggle, a battle freedom as an actual liberating  
experience of mind, body and collective self determination versus  
freedom as a slogan, as in the words of Brock Vond ”logs to be built  
into more America”,  real-estate vs. community. Is the whole America  
thing a housing bubble, land speculation from Washington to Bush, or  
might we actually get to participate in this freedom thing..

The key issue that the entire 60’s revolution hinged on was the  
draft. To burn a draft card is to declare independence from the core  
power of the state. MLK wasn’t killed til he began to seriously  
confront militarism.
The College of the Surf students smoke Vietnamese weed and hear the  
wild ”subversive music” that is in the air. To the Nixonites  the  
students become ”a beachead of hostile natives”.  The transformation  
is fast- from  Nixon , Mike Curb and Dewy Weber  the students and  
Atman see clearly the true nature of authority when police beat up  
students; they become aware of their own sexuality and sexual liberty  
as adults; they begin to study with intensity,”rcognizing how  
deep,how empty was their ignorance”, they try to understand their  
place in history;they start to argue passionately about the direction  
of their “republic”.

Woodstock happened in 1969 . I was there and then went back to  
California to start my first attempt at College. I saw a nationwide  
campus and rock and roll  centered sense of empowerment and challenge  
to authoriies that swept through the society.  It was fun , it was  
scary , it scared the Nixon folks and it started or refueled a lot   
of fires and many still burn.

There is another aspect to this revolution that is more inward,  
theological/philosophical, spiritual which may have posed a greater  
threat to the social foundation and produced the most virulent and  
effective reaction in the form of a revival of conservative  
fundamentalist Christianity heavily tinged with racism. Again the  
struggle is put under the microscope in the Vond, Frenesi, Atman  
events.  In the eerie Frankenstein-like storm scene in Tulsa  Vond  
tells Frenesi that what he wants is Atman’s spirit.

Will pick this up with a deeper look at Atman’s name and role.