BtZ: Some more banana molecule stuff

[David Morris]

Pynchon doesn't propose any consistent order in the realm of any structure,
though he does seem to believe in an inherent counterforce in nature which
is supernatural and corrective.  I think the order he proposes is one of
conflict and balance, a kind of yin/yang. When reading his descriptions of
the geo symbology, one needs to be clear who's voice is describing that
symbology.  But I would agree that he is more friendly toward earth-mother
that sky-father.  So am I, generally speaking.  But there is no Yin without
the Yang.

That said, I think he is acting like an Old Testament prophet of repentance
in GR, warning of consequences.

David Morris

On Tue, Mar 29, 2016 at 4:22 PM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com> wrote:

> I've sought but not found coherence and consistency in how GR's symbolic
> geology, biochemistry, etc.  link life, death, and various layers of the
> earth. That scumbled bananery topsoil, the soil in which a Herero woman is
> ritually embedded, the hot radioactive mud at Bad Karma, and the deep
> strata of metals and hydrocarbons all have different symbolic freight, and
> each bears a different relation to natural life and assorted unnatural
> analogues of life. Likewise, flight gets a few good vibes, but its
> extension intso pace travel is clearly nixed and __nicht_ed as a route to
> Good Transcendence.
>
> Sometimes I think Pynchon never got the memo about the fruitful,
> nourishing, ever-rebirthing Earth Mother and the wise, justice-dispensing
> Sky Father -- or even the one about the brawny dumb earth god and serene
> Queen Selene. He's just a suspicious cuss all around.
>
> On Tue, Mar 29, 2016 at 1:34 PM, Smoke Teff <smoketeff at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Here is the spirit of Herr Rathenau on p. 169 on steel, coal,
>> transformation, the interface between death and...life? Maybe this supports
>> Laura's reading of the source of the bananas a bit.
>>
>> "We thought of this as an industrial process. It was more. We passed over
>> the coal-tars. A thousand different molecules waited in the preterite dung.
>> This is the sign of revealing. Of unfolding. This is one meaning of mauve,
>> the first new color on Earth, leaping to Earth's light from its grave miles
>> and aeons below. There is the other meaning... the succession... I can't
>> see that far yet...
>>
>> "But this is all the impersonation of life. The real movement is not from
>> death to any rebirth. It is from death to death-transfigured. The best you
>> can do is to polymerize a few dead molecules. But polymerizing is not
>> resurrection. I mean your IG, Generaldirektor."
>>
>> This last section, behind enemy territory, seems to yinning the yang of a
>> bunch of stuff from the novel's opening chapters. Sort of obvious dark
>> matter--though of course that's the limited, first-order response. These
>> things are obviously inextricable.
>>
>> So I'm inclined to believe the distance between how Rathenau might
>> describe the bananas and how I might be more comfortable thinking about
>> them is maybe not as vast or distinguishable as I want to think. This seems
>> to be a fundamental question. And to have always been. Is it death v life
>> or is that an illusion--is it death v (really death w/) death-transfigured?
>> [Optimistic spin: can we make the same lateral move in our understanding,
>> to see the binary as life v life-transfigured? Or to see beyond the binary
>> entirely?]
>>
>> Imagine you live in that maisonette. How do you know if it's good to eat
>> the banana. What factors do you consider. All causes have, in turn, their
>> own causes. Eventually the question gets hopelessly entangled, and far from
>> you. It is probably wrongthinking to imagine we should be able to really
>> get to the bottom of it. On some level, our decision-making, our
>> categorization, has to rely on some sort of instinct. Instinct, at least,
>> leads me, for now, to do my best to choose to understand life as beyond a
>> real thing, whose value is self-evident. And if the bananas make me want to
>> share their scent with the whole desperate city, for free, I'm gonna call
>> that the good thing, even if it's not a stainless lineage. Steel, on the
>> other hand, is stainless, and rarely moves its handlers to share it for
>> free out of good feeling. I'll call that a different thing, a bad thing.
>> Maybe the distinction between the two is not rational, but I'm mortal, and
>> the categorization helps me.
>>
>
>
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