Roland, the signs, the wind

[Joseph Tracy]

	“Once transected into the realm of Dominus Blicero, Roland found that all the signs had turned against him. . . . Lights he had studied 	so well as one of you, position and movement, now gathered there at the opposite end, all in dance . . . irrelevant dance. None of Blicero’s traditional progress, no something new . . . alien. . . . Roland too became conscious of the wind, as his mortality had never allowed him. Discovered it so . . . so joyful, that the arrow must veer into it. The wind had been blowing all year long, year after year, but Roland had felt only the secular wind . . . he means, only his personal wind. Yet . . . Selena, the wind, the wind’s everywhere. . . .”

There is an opposition here between the words “transect”,  “position", “studied", “movement” on one side  and the words “dance", “wind", “veer", “joyful" on the other. It is  also odd that the medium( Eventyr/fairytale) is  first narrating  and then speaking directly for Felspath . The pasage is a partial microcosm of our discussions on the flexibility of narrative structure. It also implies the difference between description and direct experience. That difference brings my thoughts back to Mark’s notes on control of the uncontrollable. 

Direct experience, especially when it is fee from constraint( Feldspath is free from the mortal coil) is incommunicable in it’s saturation,  better conveyed through poetry than prose but always beyond language. This problem is also a problem of the gap between a  science/actionable-intelligence approach to gaining reliable information and the possibility of understanding through the shamanic or paranormal means of knowledge.  The whole idea with science is to isolate and control the phenomena under question, but whole organisms get hard to manage in this way because of the variables in a complex system.  In this passage Feldspath has been somehow directed to cut into the “realm of Dominus Blicero”. Transect is a very linear abstract concept, a left brain approach to knowing. Realm is metaphoric, complex, a combination of imagined and real structure. Despite some shared preparation,” Lights he had studied so well as one of you, position and movement,…” he finds "the signs had turned against him, lights are gathered in irrelevant dance, none of Bliceros progress, no something new… alien.”  
Roland has been directed here by a left brain manipulation, a desire to add to a usable dossier, but he is in an immersive complex right brain experience unfiltered by expectations.  
    What is startling in a way is that here in the first mention of Bicero he who is the hungry witch is associated with wind, spirit, joy, at least for Felspath. Regardless Feldspath is overwhelmed with a direct experience that doesn’t fit the plan. Does this discord srike other readers? Further thoughts?

To me this discrepancy makes more sense of Felspaths next thoughts on internal pre-planned control systems. 


-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l