Profane's disassembling dream dream?

[Michael Bailey]

 Mark Kohut wrote:
> I'd say in V. the Street means the world of action, politics, where History is
> made.
>

that seems like the kind of a higher-order abstraction that his
layering works toward...
I mean, the peacock's tail of connotatiions and associations, that
comes along with every word an artist uses, includes a spectrum of
meanings

meanings that include those that are more and also less commonly
known, and varyingly literal also (maybe plottable as two axes...)

more common and literal - the street just, you know, that dry river of
concrete people step out across,

but also, broadly, in Kabbalistic terms, the paths between Sephiroth,
or in math terms, the line segments between vertices...
for me, in this broadest sense, he's OUT on the street because he's no
longer IN the Service...
and experiences the state of transit as a place to be

a cant or argot meaning of Street is as a short form of "Wall Street",
or a place of exchange, where values are in flux (as contrasted to
inside a house (or firm) where there are specific household gods and a
previously-agreed upon set of values and rules, particular chores,
take out the papers and the trash, let in the dog and put out the cat)

then there's the proverbial "street" as in "street-smart" or
"streetwise", which for me implies a certain exhilaration in being
able to function at all in a challenging environment, and a knowledge
of the things necessary for basic self-preservation - look both ways
before crossing, don't pee on the 3rd rail, don't mess around with
Jim, or Slim either - as well as a hope for some form of refuge (sit
down and patch my bones, and get back Truckin...)


>  Mark:
> I think we come to learn that TRP accepts some variantions of Taoism, Zen,
> (Tibetan)\
> Buddhism or other......but it is buried in bits in the early works......
>

Ian:
> especially The Street as
> all that ever was, that strongly echo Taoism. I brought this up before
> to resounding silence,

silence means consent?



-- 
Yippy dippy dippy,
Flippy zippy zippy,
Smippy gdippy gdippy, too!
- Thomas Pynchon ("'Zo Meatman's Gone AWOL")