Happy New Year

[Clement Levy]

Dear all,
with my sincere apologies because I couldn't make this available on  
Monday.
Here are Douglas Kløvedal Lannark's Greetings for the Chinese New Year.
You may know Douglas at least from his works published on Otto Sell's  
website, ACHTUNG.

So down there is Douglas's very much informed observation, and here,  
a link to Marca's picture:
http://i.imgur.com/VnCKO.jpg

I really like what they did!

Best,
Clement

The Year of the Water Dragon

What there are, however, are Provisions for Survival in a World less  
fantastick.” M&D p. 22

In Western Culture the Dragon is a mythological figure, more often  
than not of a greedy evil character hording and protecting gold and  
other precious objects, devouring livestock at will as well as any  
human attempting to challenge or attack him and devastating its  
surroundings be they forests, open fields, mountains – special  
preference for volcanoes – rivers and lakes. An ugly almost  
invincible fire-spitting destructive creature it can only be slain by  
either higher entities (the Archangel Michael), predestined chosen  
individuals like Saint George and Siegfried to name the most well- 
known, or certain animals like small dogs who can sneak up to a  
sleeping dragon and puncture its eye or the Scandinavian Buffalo  
Giffion in an open field head-on clash.
In Chinese Culture the [fantastick] Dragon is regarded as a  
benevolent creature symbolizing power, people in influential  
positions, good fortune and general luck. The Chinese consider  
themselves to be direct descendents of the Dragon! Whereas the  
Buffalo represents the supreme Yin (Earth, the female principle) the  
Dragon represents the supreme Yang (the male principle): the  
Creative; the Ruler of Heaven, especially bringing rain; as figures  
or statues on temples and public buildings they signify protection  
against evil spirits. The Dragon does have a different influence on  
especially ambitious females though, often causing jealousy,  
possessiveness and direct malice – the “Dragon Lady” so to speak. As  
a symbol the dragon image has been used for centuries at various  
festivities and as a decoration on clothes, garments, furniture,  
walls and other objects especially boats.
On Monday January 23, 2012 at 15:39:05 CCT  (8:39:05 CET, 7:39:05 UT,  
2:39:05 EST, etc.) the Chinese Year of the Water Dragon begins. It  
will be a year of 13 months (a double Wood Snake month in the Spring)  
extending until Sunday February 10, 2013.
The Water Dragon?! Will this be a benevolent oriental or a  
destructive occidental Dragon? The elusive Loch Ness, a stingy  
Scottish Dragon luring speculators on false financial trails? Or  
Fafnir, the Teutonic Dragon guarding the Nibelungen Gold in the Rhine  
River, eventually slain by Siegfried? Or simply a primitive  
insatiable crocodile, often associated with a dragon? These  
occidental Water Dragons are more influenced by the fleeting illusion  
of wealth than the [fantastick] magic of “rain-making,” controlling  
ocean tides, the flow of rivers and the state of glaciers, permafrost  
and Arctic ice. An “Aqua-ecological” year in the making, who and what  
Dragon will win, and will victory mean defeat, loss?
Now what does Thomas Pynchon have to say about this in his seven  
novels? Before going on, one related Chinese astrological matter of a  
certain Pynchon symbolic connection: the Dragon stands opposite to  
the Dog, together with the Pig, Pynchon’s most depicted animal. In  
his seven novels the Dragon is mentioned at least [only] 36 times: 20  
in M&D, 6 in GR, 5 in V.,   3 in AtD, 1 in Col49, 1 in VL, 0 in IV.  
That’s not all that many dragon mentions, but Pynchon himself is born  
in the Year of the Fire Buffalo, one of the few Dragon Slayers!!  
Guess he unconsciously prefers to avoid too much Dragon symbolism in  
his writings in order to preserve his strength for creative purposes.

In V.  three of the Dragons are simply decorations, images on female  
garments (Beatrice’s kimono, Melanie’s tights), one is a dragon tail  
tattoo on the calf of V. and finally long teak boats carved like  
dragons paddling up a river in Vheissu. Yes, dragons certainly do  
belong to Vheissu, all five actually; but Pynchon in his youth here  
leaves us with just dragon-carved boats, black moths, butterflies,  
spider monkeys and colored dreams – all not that conclusive.
In Col49  the only mention of a dragon is when Oedipa writes in her  
memo book under the muted post-horn symbol she copied off the latrine  
wall of The Scope: Shall I project a world? Though anything might  
help confused and intrigued Oedipa, this is the supreme Yang Dragon,  
Ruler of the Heavens, and not really suitable as a constellation for  
her purpose. Pynchon will use the Dragon constellation repeatedly in  
M&D. No Water Dragon or rainmaker here either!
Unconsciously or not, as a Buffalo-born natural adversary Pynchon  
must have continued to slay, ignore or downscale Dragons as only six  
mentions appear in the 760 pages of Gravity’s Rainbow, published  
shortly before his 36th birthday in the Year of the Water Buffalo,  
not one of these six mentions even close to a Water Dragon: two  
Dragon Ladies, one a psychic non-believing W.A.A.F. officer and the  
other Blicero in Dragon Lady Drag before firing the rocket on Easter  
Sunday; Jessica’s hand-knitted scarf with a scarlet dragon’s tongue  
motif; aside wild lion and tiger statues a fang-mouth dragon drinking  
fountain at Zwölfkinder; burned out shells like dragon teeth in the  
countryside being taken back by nature and Pökler’s insomniac waking  
nightmare image of the scales of the Dragon. Sorry, although the  
statue comes close, it remains a statue. Looks like the Rocket also  
stole the show from the Dragon!
After seventeen years and much weird contradictory speculation about  
Pynchon himself, his whereabouts, still alive or already deceased,  
Vineland is published in 1990. Dealing primarily with California in  
1984 one might expect a few more dragon references than that single,  
and in this case rather stereotype Dragon Lady curse fantasy that  
Vato & Blood, two minority ethnic Americans and Vietnam veterans  
themselves, in all paranoid ignorance, project on Thi Anh Tran, their  
bookkeeper and thus financial trustee. As it turned out, she was far  
from being Tokyo Rose! However, although Brock Vond was transported  
to the other side, they were neither Siegfried nor rainmakers.
Shortly before his 60th birthday in the Fire Buffalo Year 1997, his  
natal Chinese Sign and the Dragon’s major antagonist,  Mason & Dixon  
is published. There are more mentions – mythological, astronomical,  
topographical –  to Dragons and the Dragon itself in M&D than in his  
six other novels together. Although both are “needle men,” an  
opposing attitude is clearly depicted in the conflict between  the  
occidental stargazers and the oriental Feng Shui master. Under the  
Zenith-Star Gamma Draconis Britain is thus put in the Terrestrial  
Sign of Draco, the Dragon, and London under the Dragon’s Head. Yet  
for most Brits the Dragon remains a serpent, a worm. . . . much less  
fantastic than the Chinese counterpart. As Captain Zhang explains, in  
Feng Shui everywhere on Earth boundaries follow nature, thus honoring  
the Dragon within and placing the Dragon of the land above all else.  
Upon completion of the Visto the Dragon is visible to those who can  
envision it on Dixon’s elegantly cartouch’d Map. It is a Water  
Dragon: “at last running, water becomes the underlying unit of  
measurement […] quietly, calmly, everything keeps coming back to  
Water, how it inhabits the Land, how it gets on with the Dragon  
beneath.”
Although relatively few in mention, yet compared to his previous four  
novels, it looks like Pynchon sort of exhausted the Dragon and its  
various symbolic, traditional and practical implications in M&D  
without, however, creating, “naming” the 13th Sign of the Zodiac! In  
the 1085 pages of Against the Day, dragon references appear only  
three times: as decorations in a chop suey joint on Pell Street in  
New York City’s Chinatown; airships as part of a great aerial  
flotilla, sewn together tightly into stellated polyhedra (Chinese  
Dragons) converging over Siberia in a sky-rendezvous after the  
Tunguska Event; and as the sinister Japanese Black Dragon Society out  
to subvert and destroy Russian presence in Manchuria. Guess Pugnax  
got the best of whatever Dragon was left after Mason & Dixon –  no  
“Great (dragon) Game” here despite the Inner Asia interests.
 From Shamanistic Inner Asia, perverse esoteric London, ever-changing  
Mexican revolutions, 1920’s Hollywood, etc. in Against the Day to Los  
Angeles in the Spring of 1970 there is not one dragon mention in  
Inherent Vice, published less than three years after AtD. Has Pynchon  
slain the dragon, or does he believe to have slain “his” own haunting  
dragon?! Not one single mention!! In a certain parallel similarity,  
perhaps Pynchon has developed a special sympathy for “Nessie” or is  
there still Gold on the beds of the Rhine River?
2012, the Year of the Water Dragon: a benevolent welcomed rainmaker  
in China; in Europe, however, a malicious creature renewing the  
animosity between Britain (Nessie, Saint George) and Germany (Fafnir,  
Siegfried) – the black coal and worms of Durham spitefully envious of  
the opulent golden grapes along the Rhine – a conflict potentially  
resulting in the splitting apart of the European Union – a greedy  
Dragon hovering over the British Isles and the irritable German Eis- 
Heiligen soaring over the continent. Furthermore, the Year of the  
Water Dragon is a Lunar Year of 13 months, a double Wood Snake month  
in the Spring – the return of the Lambton Worm Curse? Brits,  
especially you up northeast in Durham, you’d better do something  
quick about this! And you winemakers along the Rhine, forget not to  
send your prayers . . .
For all you “Yanks:” either, if there are any original legends,  
please tune me in to the “American Dragon,” or re-read Mason & Dixon  
and accept that you are living under a Chinese Dragon – according to  
tradition a far more benevolent dragon than the European!
One final remark before signing off and putting my head in the oven:  
between China and the West there is the legend of the Russian Dragon,  
slain by the Archangel Michael. In August 2009, Vladimir Putin, born  
in 1952, the previous Year of the Water Dragon, dove in a mini- 
submarine to one of the deepest parts of Lake Baikal and spend over  
four hours on the bed of our Planet’s deepest lake, perhaps partially  
seeking his personal Dragon within. . . .
  . . . anybody see a fork in the road – or a bend in the river – here?

Collage/Art Work: Marca Merica, a/k/a Marca van Wassenaar
Text: Douglas Kløvedal Lannark: North of Durham County, East of the  
Rhine River