GR translation: What passes are these, so blurred, so old and perfect?

[Mark Kohut]

a great reading here. Jochen getting the typo and proven indubitably correct within days is why 
the plist is worth it, yes?
 
Also, a quick google search of 'passes' in card games shows the word is used often with those
games out of the scribbage family, like bridge, but most perhaps--again in a very hit & miss
browse---in the so-popular Hearts. 
 
So, maybe that is what game They are playing, another chance for TRP to hide in plain sight
a resonant metaphor if only in the name......

From: Mike Jing <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com>
To: Pynchon Mailing List <pynchon-l at waste.org> 
Sent: Friday, June 15, 2012 3:04 AM
Subject: Re: GR translation: What passes are these, so blurred, so old and perfect?

I think I understand it better now.  Thanks all.

On Thu, Jun 14, 2012 at 3:30 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
> This is a numinous segment at a pivotal point in Slothrop's journey.
> In the middle of these observations of this evil room Slothrop
> *almost* sees a manlike/rootlike figure that will reappear after
> Slothrop has become a mandala, a crossroads, a Buddha:  The mandrake
> root.  But he's not there yet, not "to be let off quite so easy."
>
> The "Forbidden Wing" of the song might refer to a section of the White
> Visitation, but it more likely refers to the hospital wing where he
> was an infant experimental subject.  Slothrop is here again abandoned
> w/o understanding or defenses in an environment designed to break him
> down, use him.  And he recognizes his plight.
>
> The "passes [..]  so blurred, so old and perfect" probably refer to
> gestures in a card game, declining another card or bet.
>
> The moment passes with his "Fuck you," "the only spell he knows, and a
> pretty good all-purpose one at that."
>
> BTW, the "Forbidden" would also be the place in the Temple (Holy of
> Holies) where the ark was kept, and where no one was allowed.  God's
> earthly abode.
>
> David Morris
>
> On Thu, Jun 14, 2012 at 12:41 AM, Mike Jing
> <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com> wrote:
>> P205.32-206.3   Why here? Why should the rainbow edges of what is
>> almost on him be rippling most intense here in this amply coded room?
>> say why should walking in here be almost the same as entering the
>> Forbidden itself—here are the same long rooms, rooms of old paralysis
>> and evil distillery, of condensations and residues you are afraid to
>> smell from forgotten corruptions, rooms full of upright grayfeathered
>> statues with wings spread, indistinct faces in dust—rooms fall of dust
>> that will cloud the shapes of inhabitants around the corners or deeper
>> inside, that will settle on their black formal lapels, that will
>> soften to sugar the white faces, white shirt fronts, gems and gowns,
>> white hands that move too quickly to be seen . . . what game do They
>> deal? What passes are these, so blurred, so old and perfect?
>>
>> What are these "passes"?  Anything specifically related to gambling,
>> magic, or just card games?
>>
>> And what is "the Forbidden"?
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