Cellular theory of MJJG

[Raphael Saltwood]

The DNA gives rise to the RNA, and only then does the RNA travel to the ribosome, where it produces various proteins.

The text should give rise to a continuous linear read, and then that familiarity can produce various viewpoints and commentary.

Fortunately, we have the beginnings of a linear read to return to. And diligently pursue.

But first, however (or, “howsomever,” as I seem to recall Dean Moriarty or some other character saying in _On the Road_ & retain lo these many years, although never hearing or seeing it anywhere else, doubtless because of Kerouac’s word-cunning sticking to one’s verbal ribs) -

There’s a passage on pg 239-40:

(Earline) - Pop, I believe in Jes Grew now.

(LaBas) - You do?

(Earline - ) Yes, she answers as they walk past a fashion store whose inventory of Haitian clothes and jewelry has been drastically reduced in price, down the streets of boarded-up cabarets, gone now is the zest of the days when people were waiting for Jes Grew to invade and join its jazzed-up scouts already on the scene.

————

There are a lot of pieces to that - some of it is “business cycle,” “irrational exuberance,” the zeitgeist that Reed earlier refers to in terms of a dog show & a road race, the father-daughter dynamic, the perseverance in the face of setbacks...

It’s evocative of similar phenomena one might have experienced in one’s own times, like the 60s segueing into the 70s as Pynchon shows so well in _Vineland_ and _Inherent Vice_, and Cheech and Chong summed up as “recession - repression - same thing, man.”

The 60s clothing, new music, anti war advocacy, civil rights, and a rising stock market.

The early 70s were by comparison gray, dispirited days.

Or the tech bubble, it was exciting to be alive in the late 90s.

Watching 401k growing, learning new computer stuff everyday, being able to afford stuff that didn’t even exist not so long before.

Then - well, _Bleeding Edge_ captures some of that nexus.

The show “Psych” refers constantly back to the 80s as such a time, but although I like the show & even enjoy the references, that one was capsulized early on by Al Franken (spellcheck tried to foist Al Frankenstein) as his decade & he can have it...even though the decade was pretty good to me in retrospect...big-picture societywise, imho, things weren’t clicking in any kind of a Csikszentmihalyi kind of flow - ymmv of course...

But I guess as Mr Reed winds the book down he lets Earline broach accepting the idea of Jes Grew - not defining it verbosely at that juncture, but resting on the accumulated descriptions- being a sort of force enlivening that temporo-cultural flourishing, and - maybe? - any other particular rhubarb that might be being bruited.

Logically this might point to a single cause behind multiple occurrences, a creative genius ensuing from a pantheistic totality, or the Brahma aspect of the triune Hindu deity-cluster...but mere logic puts us in peril of Atonism.

As everyone knows now, including me (now that I’ve looked it up) —-

Reed borrowed “Jes Grew” from James Weldon Johnson, who might have been quoting a popular twist on a line from the Harriet Beecher Stowe character “Topsy” in _Uncle Tom’s Cabin​_, who, unaware of a God or a mother to explain her genesis, said, “I ‘spect I just growed. Don’t think nobody never made me.”

Apparently she was quite popular & several doll manufacturers came out with “Topsy” dolls -

https://blackdollcollecting.blogspot.com/2010/02/moments-in-black-doll-history-topsy.html?m=1

(Is the doll Earline notices in the café at all relatable to a Topsy doll? Inquiring minds want to know!)

At any rate, it’s a great statement of humanist philosophy a-& maybe even existentialism, isn’t it?