V2nd, C3

[Ian Livingston]

Is it me, or does the opening of section v call to mind The Woman in
the Dunes? There is something very Zen about the second paragraph. "It
happens, nothing else." Resonates, too, with Waldetar's contemplation
of the besouled and that which is not besouled.

The descriptions of Gebrail's life and his milieu in the workday again
call to mind Baldwin and the roles of self and society. For which,
see:

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/20522/20522-h/20522-h.htm#CHAPTER_IX

Gebrail's private angst is a reflection of his community, his
Feuerbachian and Nietzschean philosophy is shaped by the desert: "the
city is only the desert in disguise;" and, the desert "has no voice.
If the Koran were nothing, then Islam was nothing. Then Allah was a
story and his Paradise wishful thinking;" "Nothing was coming. Nothing
was already here;" he enjoys starless nights, "As if a great lie were
finally to be exposed."  Oppose this sort thought to Waldetar's
contemplation on the permanent residents of Baedeker land.

He takes Porpentine to meet Goodfellow reminiscing the day's work with
this fare as he visits apparently random places in the city. The
Coptic girl is a loose end, yes? I don't recollect her appearance
anywhere else. Just a glimpse of a pawn in the play.

And the parting shot from Goodfellow reintroduces VW to events....

These two sections feel to me like a descent into the structural nadir
of events in this chapter. All the perspectives so far (Aieul, Yusef,
Max, Waldetar, and Gebrail) are so lost in their introspections, they
are unable to really process the role of the Europeans in their lives.
As the Austrians (Lepsius) try to topple English favor (Sir Alastair
Wren) by way assassination (first the train, next the opera), in order
to gain the upper hand in Formosa, the locals aid them at the cost of
their own autonomy, ultimately. Does this say something about all of
us living under the rose, victims of our own daydreams? Are we not
stencils? Our plowshares, as someone noticed, are made from
instruments of death.

As I wrote that line, the warplanes arrived overhead. They often
practice maneuvers over Fort Hunter-Liggett, my nearest neighbor. We
also hear the occasional mock battle, with 50-cal machine gun fire and
all. We are a Buddhist retreat. Interesting resonances, that's all.

And where is V. in these two sections? We know from his own words that
Stencil is "he who pursues V.", but we are brought back here, I think,
to Sidney's "not who, but what." Is Victoria an emblem leading us into
and out of the heart of the cross, where all eight stations meet in
empty blackness (starless nights)? Some of the monks here will go a
round or three with me from time to time about the universal elements
of world religions, and that centering on the ineffable at the heart
of all our ruminations seems to me one of those universals. But then,
I woke up at 3 a.m. this morning and realized that I have never
understood anything. Must be reading too much Henry Adams.

-- 
"liber enim librum aperit."