V-2 - Chapter 9 - Clockwork Eye

[Robin Landseadel]

	And now you find you fit this identikit completely
	You say you have no secrets
	then leave discreetly

A free-form rant today.

Open your hymnals to page 248 -- I've got the Harper Perennial Modern  
Classics edition -- it's about seven pages into "Mondaugen's Story."

This is the morning after Kurt has moved into Foppl's Baroque mansion.  
The young engineer is stringing his antennas "along the iron fanciwork  
that topped the villa's highest gable."

Curious word selection there . . .

He's looking deep into the eastward view, to eventual wastes of the  
Kalahari, "north to a distant yellow exhalation that rose from far  
under the horizon and seemed to hang eternally over the Tropic of  
Capricorn. . ."

A: 	Were Gottfried and Weismann already a gleam in the proud Papa's eye?

B: 	In 1649
	To St. George’s Hill,
	A ragged band they called the Diggers
	Came to show the people’s will
	They defied the landlords
	They defied the laws
	They were the dispossessed reclaiming what was theirs

	We come in peace they said
	To dig and sow
	We come to work the lands in common
	And to make the waste ground grow
	This earth divided
	We will make whole
	So it will be
	A common treasury for all

	The sin of property
	We do disdain
	No man has any right to buy and sell
	The earth for private gain
	By theft and murder
	They took the land
	Now everywhere the walls
	Spring up at their command

	They make the laws
	To chain us well
	The clergy dazzle us with heaven
	Or they damn us into hell
	We will not worship
	The God they serve
	The God of greed who feed the rich
	While poor folk starve

	We work we eat together
	We need no swords
	We will not bow to the masters
	Or pay rent to the lords
	Still we are free
	Though we are poor
	You Diggers all stand up for glory
	Stand up now

	From the men of property
	The orders came
	They sent the hired men and troopers
	To wipe out the Diggers’ claim
	Tear down their cottages
	Destroy their corn
	They were dispersed
	But still the vision lingers on

	You poor take courage
	You rich take care
	This earth was made a common treasury
	For everyone to share
	All things in common
	All people one
	We come in peace
	The orders came to cut them down

C:	So in this almost empty gin palace
	Through a two-way looking glass
	You see your Alice

Moundagen the gargoyle is perched high enough where he stands to look  
down as well. He's looking into the courtyard. The angles of light,  
the refractions and reflections of the courtyard's light all seem to  
conspire, to direct Kurt's attention "to illuminate a patch or pool of  
deep red. Twin tendrils of it extended to a nearby doorway."

First he sees the blood, the blood then forms into a bright, red,  
serpent's tongue, then the Sun's motion, by the great, quaternion flow  
of the greater spheres, directs Kurt's attention to another window  
swinging open, revealing;

	" . . . a woman of indeterminate age in a negligee of peacock
	blues and greens squint into the sun. Her left hand rose to
	her left eye, fumbled there as if positioning a monocle. . . "

Her clockwork eye.

Move forward a page or two:

	As the distance between them gradually diminished Mondaugen saw
	that her left eye was artificial: she, noticing his curiosity,  
obligingly
	removed the eye and held it out to him in the hollow of her hand. A
	bubble blown translucent, its "white" would show up when in the socket
	as a half-lit sea green. A fine network of nearly microscopic fractures
	covered its surface. Inside were the delicately-wrought wheels,  
springs,
	ratchets of a watch, wound by a gold key which Fraulein Meroving wore
	on a slender chain round her neck. Darker green and flecks of gold had
	been fused into twelve vaguely wdiacal shapes, placed annular on the
	surface of the bubble to represent the iris and also the face of the
	watch.

Odd how such concepts worm their way into Popcult:

http://amygrindhouse.com/christina-aguilera-bionic-album-booklet.html

Of course, and with a script written just two years later:

	The year 1927 witnessed the appearance in Germany of the most
	significant utopian film of the silent era— Metropolis . In the film,
	director Fritz Lang achieves the realization of his ideas about the
	possible future organization of society. The introductory sequences
	present this social organization in a very attractive light. In a
	magnificent, gigantic city with gleaming skyscrapers, suspension
	bridges, and bustling street, people live in comfort and plenty, with
	every possibility for intellectual and physical development. However,
	Metropolis is not a city of freedom and equality. Below ground, working
	for the chosen elite, are masses of nameless workers who have no
	more value within the social order than a cog in a machine or a tool or
	production. It is for this reason that the workers revolt and almost
	destroy the city; only then is there a reconciliation and an  
equalization
	of rights for the two strata, the elite and the workers. Lang honestly
	believed in this idea of reconciliation, and his attitude to a  
certain extent
	reflected the German reality, in which there were growing indications  
of
	stabilization and attempts to resolve social problems. But Lang's views
	on these questions, conveyed finally in the reconciliation of the two
	classes under the slogan "the heart must serve as intermediary
	between the brain and the hands," did not sound convincingly
	progressive, either when the film was made or in the years that
	followed. Lang himself acknowledged this when, after the Nazi Putsch ,
	Propaganda Minister Goebbels had him summoned: "(Goebbels) told
	me that years before, he and Hitler had seen my film Metropolis in
	some small town and that at that time Hitler declared that he would  
like
	me to make Nazi films." (Siegfried Kracauer: From Caligari to Hitler: A
	Psychological History of the German Film .)

http://www.filmreference.com/Films-Ma-Me/Metropolis.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolis_(film)

Stencil is tracking his absent womb, this pure child of modernity  
creates via historical fabrication his absent mother and in so doing  
creates a Great Monster, a Kali present at the creation of a series of  
catastrophes. 	

But this Mother/Monster is an early Cyborg. The Man/Machine barrier  
has been crossed. Welcome to the stainless steel womb.

Moundagen's nothing if not a voyeur:

  	"Mondaugen crouched behind curlicues of wrought iron,
	astonished not so much at anything in her appearance
	as at his own latent desire to see and not be seen. He
	waited for the sun or her chance movement to show
	him nipples, navel, pubic hair."

And this particular "V." fits Kurt's identikit completely -- note  
earlier, how the young engineer is described -- "More voluptuous than  
fat, with fair hair, long eyelashes and a shy smile that enchanted  
older woman . . ." And 'enchanted' is the perfect word for what Vera  
does to Kurt, though this enchantment is decidedly not sprinkled with  
fairy dust.

	I've got a feeling
	I'm going to get a lot of grief
	Once this seemed so appealing
	Now I am beyond belief

===========================

	I do want to thank you, I want to
	thank Studs TurKAL. I want to
	thank Mr. Knopf who just ran
	through the auditorium and I want
	to thank Breshnev, Kissinger –
	acting President of the Unites
	States – and also want to thank
	Truman Capote and thank you.