Latke-Hamantasch Debate Becomes Verbal Food Fight

[Fiona Shnapple]

The image of the tree was not chosen only to symbolize the cosmos but
also to express life, youth, immortality, wisdom. In addition to
cosmic trees like the Yggdrasil of Germanic mythology, the history of
religions records trees of life (eg., in Mesopotamia), of immortality
(Asia, Old Testament), of knowledge (Old Testament), of youth
(Mesopotamia, India, Iran), and so on. (29) In other words, the tree
came to express everything that religious man regards as pre-eminently
real and sacred, everything that he knows the gods to possess of their
own nature, and that is only rarely accessible to privileged
individuals, the heroes and demigods. This is why myth of the quest
for youth or immortality give prominent place to a tree with golden
fruit or miraculous leaves, a tree growing "in the distant land"
(really in the other world) and guarded by monsters (griffins,
dragons, snakes). He who would gather its fruits must confront and
slay the guardian monster. This in itself tells us that we here have
an initiatory ordeal of the heroic type; it is by violence that the
victor obtains the superhuman, almost divine condition of eternal
youth, invincibility, and unlimited power.

It is in such symbols of a cosmic tree, or tree of immortality or
knowledge, that the religious valences of vegetation are expressed
with the greatest force and clarity. In other words, the sacred tree
or sacred plants display a structure that is not to be seen in the
various concrete vegetable species. As we noted before, it is
sacrality that unveils the deepest structures of the world. The cosmos
appears as a cipher only in the religious perspective. It is for
religious man that the rhythms of vegetation simultaneously reveal the
mystery of life and creation and the mystery of renewal, youth, and
immortality. It could be said that all trees and plants that are
regarded as sacred (eg., the ashvatha tree in India) owe their
privileged situation to the fact that they incarnate the archetype,
the paradigmatic image of vegetation. On the other hand, what causes a
plant to be noticed and cultivated is its religious value. According
to some writers, all of the plants that are in cultivation today were
originally regarded as sacred plants

On Tue, Dec 24, 2013 at 9:46 AM, Fiona Shnapple <fionashnapple at gmail.com> wrote:
> In the exposition, as we meet Maxine, her family, and her "friends"
> and associates, get some history, we don't see her eat or use the
> toilet, but we see her party like a rock star, in high school,
> college, and after her seperation from Horst, she drinks a lot, but as
> the Pope sez, who am I to judge, but she  gets smashed, sleeps with
> and makes business deals with the men she sleeps with. Like Horst, the
> Commodities Trader from Chicago, Joel Weiner, the Real Estate Slum
> Lord, and so on, then we see that family food is about take-out food
> menus, again, who am I to judge, it's NYC, what people do, but, then
> home with the folks and the pastry wars...to the Bagel joint with Reg,
> the Flatirion crawls, local fusion food joint with Windust, where she
> brings up Leviticus.  The pastry Joint is shut down. March complains
> that the Piraeus is history, like so much that we love about our
> neighborhoods, gone, packmaned by Duane Reed and Mick Deez. Eating is
> a sacred act. Those local joints where you share a Sunday with people
> for years. Something worth keeping. Nostalgic? Maybe, but magical too.
>
> On Tue, Dec 24, 2013 at 9:34 AM, Fiona Shnapple <fionashnapple at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Ever eat in the Piraus Diner on Columbus? Didn't think so.
>>
>> On Tue, Dec 24, 2013 at 9:12 AM, rich <richard.romeo at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> c'mon man gal robot you
>>> stop with the cliche talk speak new york
>>> watching too many old woody allen movies you (when he was good)
>>>
>>> happy holidays to all
>>> rich
>>>
>>>
>>> On Tue, Dec 24, 2013 at 8:03 AM, Fiona Shnapple <fionashnapple at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Argue over food? In NY? Yeah, itz a thing in NY.
>>>>
>>>> https://www.mtholyoke.edu/offices/comm/csj/970404/food.html
>>>> -
>>>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>>>
>>>
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l