GR translation: shearing alongside for miles

[Mike Jing]

Thanks, Monte, for the explanation and suggestion. At first glance, the
Chinese term for "wind shear" doesn't seem to fit, but I'll have to think
it over some more.

On Tue, Jul 25, 2017 at 4:27 AM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com> wrote:

> ​Closest to "wind shear" in meteorology or aviation: notional layers of a
> fluid (gas or liquid) moving adjacent to each other at different
> velocities, with momentum transferred more or less smoothly between them at
> the interface -- turbulence arises (i.e. the layers mix and tangle into
> vortices) if the velocity difference is too great. (For me, this also harks
> back to Achtfaden & co. and the "boundary layer" at the skin of an A4 as it
> moves through the air.) The same applies to convection currents in a heated
> cauldron: look at a patch of oil or fat sliding across the surface.
>
> I may be stretching here, but I wouldn't put it past P. to have in mind
> that the whole picture of successive sliding layers -- foundation of
> aerodynamics for  decades before 1945 -- is a *fiction* for mathematical
> tractability, the reality being uncountable gas molecules moving with all
> speeds and velocities in all directions, the layers emerging only as
> statistics. Maybe there's a hint that the tribal/ethnic labels are also
> fictions? That after their near-death experience as victims of abstraction
> and systematization, the "Czechs" and "Slovaks" streaming along side by
> side might be better off as individual I and Thou?
>
> Anyway... look back to your Peenemunde passages, and if possible translate
> "shearing" with a technical flavor, maybe whatever a Chinese weather
> forecaster uses for "wind shear"
>
> On Mon, Jul 24, 2017 at 7:44 PM, Mike Jing <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> V549.28-36, P559.5-13   . . . Sudetens and East Prussians shuttling
>> between Berlin and the DP camps in Mecklenburg, Czechs and Slovaks, Croats
>> and Serbs, Tosks and Ghegs, Macedonians, Magyars, Vlachs, Circassians,
>> Spaniols, Bulgars stirred and streaming over the surface of the Imperial
>> cauldron, colliding, shearing alongside for miles, sliding away, numb,
>> indifferent to all momenta but the deepest, the instability too far below
>> their itchy feet to give a shape to, white wrists and ankles incredibly
>> wasted poking from their striped prison-camp pajamas, footsteps light as
>> waterfowl’s in this inland dust . . .
>>
>> What does "shearing" mean here?
>>
>>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20170726/5f193b35/attachment.html>