BtZ42 Section 6: Roger Mexico

[Mark Kohut]

This time I also see Roger M as the statistician of the excluded middle, so
to speak.  0--1 binary = Either/Or at each number. Life is in the middle.
he implores Jessica to see him not as a cold scientist but as an emotional
being.

What are the thoughts, theories on his name?  Roger as in Over &
Out....Mexico as......the country Americans escape to? Visit? Outside the
Zero to One?

And, Plato gave the West the first metaphoric image of Love, perhaps, in
the Symposium when he wrote of the Round Form that was whole but had split
into two interlocking halves. (like lovers coupling face-to-face but in one
of the Kama Sutra self-rounding  positions, or Beast with Two Backs in the
low road version). WE find Love when we find the Other Half.

Here P goes further.I think.( You'll have to check out my memory of Plato)
 lovers become a new entity. Magic as P writes. Almost mystical if pressed
to be understood beyond loose metaphor.

 a force so elemental per Dylan Thomas a new 'being'' is created? Or even
that Love is more than All even.





On Fri, Apr 22, 2016 at 10:05 AM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Roger the statistician: "By the time one has pulled one’s nth victim or
> part of a victim free of one’s nth pile of rubble, he told her once, angry,
> weary, it has ceased to be that personal . . . the value of n may be
> different for each of us, but I’m sorry: sooner or later . . ." (p. 41).
>
> Still in a Dylan Thomas mood, I'm hearing here "After the first death,
> there is no other."
>
> https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/refusal-mourn-death-fire-child-london
> <https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/refusal-mourn-death-fire-child-london>
>
> Seen from one angle (sometimes but not always Jessica's), Roger is almost
> as inhuman(e)ly odd and chill as his colleagues. Seen from another
> (sometimes but not always Pointsman's), he is a threatening wild card,
> given to probabilities and the acceptance of random fluctuations rather
> than on-off (flip-flop in V.?), mechanistic certainties and strict
> causality.
>
> Statistics and probability theory themselves have Janus faces. Yes, they
> strip experience to bare chill manipulable numbers: that certainly seems
> bad. But yes, they *also* strip away preconception and anecdotal impression
> and bias to reveal what experience actually *is* over broader scales of
> time, space, and number than any one of us can grasp -- which is kinda good
> if you want to stop an epidemic (or a traditional but ineffective/harmful
> therapy), forestall a famine, anticipate global warming, etc.
>
> CF. my earlier remarks on P.M.S. Blackett, "running a war on gusts of
> emotion," and both the V-weapons and Allied area bombing as examples of the
> latter. From one angle, we can see both programs as embodiments of
> implacable science / technology / industry... but had they really been
> evaluated by chill statistics, rather than as "oboy, here's a new way to
> hurt the enemy," neither would have been pursued.
>
> On Fri, Apr 22, 2016 at 6:33 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Statistician. ( we will learn of his belief in the range between zero and
>> one. Meanings here?)
>> Works for The White Visitation. " The Dour Young Man of.."
>> Doesn't get on with his colleagues
>> Doesn't understand Pavlovians, but has to help Pointsman.
>> Unappealing looks ( accepts jabs about) seemingly youthful looking.
>> Pirate sez he's been euchred into a Byzantine exercise of psychological
>> warfare conducted by The White Visitation. His " enthusiasm grows" with
>> each film delivery from Bloat. (Section 5)
>>
>> " Never a prophetic dream, no telepathic messages, never touched The
>> Other World directly"
>> YET, he tells us of his first experience of " magic" : " data he can't
>> argue away" ...." The feeling of actually being joined" w Jessica. IN love.
>>
>> Comments wanted.
>>
>>
>>
>> Sent from my iPad-
>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>>
>
>
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