V-2nd: Pondering Paola

[Michael Bailey]

a) Hod, as all good Qabalists know, is Sephirah # 8, relating to,
among other references, Mercury, or Hermes, whereof
this link
http://zero-point.tripod.com/holistic/Hod.html
has some interesting ruminations;

in my own words, not only would I not rule out this reference but I
would tend to rule it in,
because of other indications in this author of perusal of quaint and
curious volumes of forgotten lore...

(sidelight: Pappy Hod, the little man in the boat...
(R Crumb or S Clay Wilson has a nifty illustration of that))

Hod as representative of the Hermetic Tradition, with Paola
representing the seeking soul, and Hermeticism appealing to her,
taking her a long ways
toward her goal but not all the way there, but, all things considered,
an experience that she chose to undergo when the opportunity presented
itself...

Hod vis a vis Paola: someone who put her in the way of Benny (and the
Jets...), brought her into the story, a survivor of long times on the
rolling seas,
certainly a repository of many forms of wisdom, I tend to like him in
general but he is seen here robbing the cradle, and (as an avatar of
Popeye) fallen away from his true love, Olive Oyl


b) recurrent topic: older men/younger women (men chasing an illusion,
fleeing responsibility,
the depiction allowing some sympathy for the attractiveness of the
illusion, and the onerousness of responsibility,
although deploring it in the main;

women subordinating romance and "love among equals" (Roger Mexico
e.g.) in favor of material security, raw power,
and a place in the Establishment (Beaver, e.g) with more than a
soupcon of sympathy for those who make that choice,
but still in general deploring it...

a-and 1st world romance with 3rd world (tending to be exploitative, to
say the least)

there are suggestions of overlaps in the respective Venn diagrams for
these things







> She leaves the 'security' of Pappy's bed........and wants Profane to
> 'be good to her"......"the way Pappy wasn't"..............but she is an
> unreliable narrator about Pappy's treatment of her----if Benny is to be believed.
>
> [Benny] "believed about half; half because a woman is only half of something there are
> usually two sides to.".....two sides to every story in common parlance BUT
>
> is TRP alluding to one of the first stories of Love......Plato in The Symposium with the story of Zeus
> of real lovers originally one sphere which was torn asunder so the two halves have been searching for
> their other half ever since? When found, Love. Pappy waren't it.
>
>
>
>
>



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