BtZ42 Scene 16, Roger, Jessica, love, demob, religious longing and Puccini, et al.

[Joseph Tracy]

Here is my current version of chapter summary. A bit more than a map, as there is not that much plot to map, but leaving plenty of room for elaboration. Can we revive this group read? I really personally am  hoping for more inputs during the zone section which I feel less sure about my own understanding. The reading thus far has been more energizing and surprisingly relevant than anticipted. 
Scene+++16
Jessica and Roger have intense sexual pleasure with each other and play sweetly, there is scene where she takes off blouse in car and they are stared at by midgets in truck. He is jealous of possible rival in Jeremy. One day he wakes in White Visitation with a strand of J's hair in his mouth. She hadn't been there and he begins to freak out a bit with all the psi people about, he wants to get away realizing the only thing that matters to him is Jessica, that his mother the War may be jealous.  He sees her as a wave of life that has put him out of reach of past and future, on the beach( under the pavement, the beach) He is ready to abandon his cynicism. Jessica has stable 3 year relation with Jeremy who is more cheerful than the dour, when not having sex, Roger.   They are passing a church on Christmas and R, to J's surprise wants to go in and she does also. Jamaican man is singing in choir, the writing solemn and graceful and weirdly surreal with lists. Pynchon's long, 7th Christmas of the War sermon letting light sing like evensong through the endless details of the machinery and humanity of wartime London;  not  a children's story, a messa++ge for adults only a call past war id's, past false boundaries and caesar appointed roles and addresses, sounding the way home.
There is a contrast being drawn here where the sermon becomes a prayer for humanness, for the holding to one's breast of a child who is just a child of God not messiah,  not king but a call to freedom from assigned identities and assigned enemies and all the planted guidance mechanisms of culture , even perhaps a profound rejection of culture itself. This sermon gains its power and beauty by being contrasted with the machinations of authority, Feldspath's ghost and the aspiration to shaping  internal control systems, the implanted gyroscopic guidance of a rocket or any tool of imperial will, the plans of Pointsman. The sermon seems to rise from the debris of the war, from the sordidness, beauty and ordinary carrying on of London in 1944 and Jerusalem in the last days of the Herodian dynasty.  

> On Jul 6, 2016, at 9:13 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> pp 120-136. I am not going to do a summary, since the map is not the territory,  but anyone can
> who wants to can and it should be appreciated by all and with or without that, I urge all to
> simply reread these few pages again after following along so far, no matter how many times and
> how busy you are. 
> 
> Because the flag is flagging as it does. 
> 
> Because to feel the verbal territory anew is like fresh water in summer and, I bet, if you follow 
> the bouncing verbal ball in your head, you will feel/see something NEW or something old you
> haven't thought of since your last reading. (and I'm gonna try to make a few new connections)
> 
> It's about Love, after all.  

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