Bodysurfing

[Joseph Tracy]

My sense of the Biblical meaning is  that the sea functions as a metaphor for the whole of humanity and also for death and transience( as in Jonah or the parting of the red sea, Moses out of waters).   There is a psalm that says the voice of the Lord is upon the waters.  Jesus uses the surface of Gallilee to amplify his voice. Also I think in Rev. his voice is as the voice of many waters. In Jung the waters are the subconscious.  In IV there is that scene in the seafood restaurant where we are asked to consider what we are dumping into one of the world's primary food sources and how long we can poison the waters we swim in). And Jesus was a sailor when... ............ 

Okay so  this is a pretty big metaphor-  transformation, language, flow of life, death and resurrection, primordial soup, beginning and end of all flow( all the rivers run into the sea , but the sea is not full .Eccl.) arena of naval power and colonialism,  3/4ths of the body of living things,  subconscious/ sleep/dream  . This is such a big metaphor it is more like the reason that all language is metaphoric, slivers of fast fish (As Alice would say) in a big blue dream, not so much a symbol as a source of the symbolic.

The sea in Pynchon seems an aspect of the concept of underground. In ATD there is a cavern which holds  a secret sea under a desert. In IV the sea holds the menace of inherent vice and the possibility of Lemurian redemption.  

I like the comparison to time. In that sense we all walk on the sea for a moment and carry all time with us. Everything we know is as eternal and ephemeral , as solid and un-supporting as the waters we walk on.   No miracle in board or body though; just harmonious physics, skill, saltwater and waves.  


On Dec 28, 2012, at 11:40 AM, Ian Livingston wrote:

> Hm. Odd I never made that association before. My Pa was a minister and I, in my anti-faith, researched the literature well and I don't recollect coming across the sea as the body of the church. I was taught that Christ was the body of the Church and that he was a fisher of men, i.e., one who pulled men out of the sea and to himself.
One must never be so inconsiderate at that point to ask if Jesus then proceeds to sell the fish in the market, grill and eat them, smoke them or hang them up to dry. A fisherman , after all, is not the fishes best friend or savior.  It could be better argued that the fish saves the fisherman than that the fisherman saves the fish.

> Jung, of course, a theologically literate type, associates water in general with the chthonic, pre-conscious darkness. From that perspective, walking, gliding, or sailing over it, while a dicey bit of work, is precisely the business of the conscious (awakened, enlightened) people of the world.
> 
> Surf's up!
> 
> On Fri, Dec 28, 2012 at 4:46 AM, <bandwraith at aol.com> wrote:
> Yea! Well, there are many different priesthoods in our complex modern society, whose collective motto might be: "Obfuscating you is just the nature of our game."
> Science and literature as much as religion, in that regard. But the sea is still the sea, and we shall see whose left standing, or swimming as the case may be, come Lemuria- a garden for octupi.  Occupying octupi, one would hope...
> 
> Happy New Year!
> 
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: lee momonin <momonin at gmail.com>
> To: bandwraith <bandwraith at aol.com>
> Cc: pynchon-l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Sent: Fri, Dec 28, 2012 7:07 am
> Subject: Re: Bodysurfing
> 
> 
> therefore happy new year!
> 
> Following the mood of bodysurfing
> http://www.zuguide.com/#Being-There
> the garden will make you happy too
> 
>