BEg2 chapter 1 3rd pass - Vyrva!

[Michael Bailey]

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The mix we are adding Vyrva to:

Maxine walks her 2 sons to school and from there she “continues her
commute” by walking to her fraud investigation office, where she starts her
working day with phone messages and a call until Reg arrives without an
appointment.

It’s kinda meh, kinda bland without Vyrva.

Lacks verve!

Vyrva - there’s an Anton Vyrva who’s a painter from Belarus. Darn near
photorealist, seems to me.

https://www.saatchiart.com/vyrva


Per forebears.io, Vyrva is the

495,028th Most Common
surname in the World

Most common in Ukraine



1% first name found once in Russia
99% surname found at least 95 times in at least 8 countries (per
namespedia.com)

 Vyrva is a Ukrainian village with about 185 inhabitants. Also, Vyrva is a
stream there (small river) or to stretch a point but little, a “rill.”

Thanks, gomapper.com & mapcarta.com !

So there “rilly” is a Vyrva…to segue into her Valley persona…and evoke a
bit of Vineland.


Vyrva sez, “Maxi, hi?”
Which you could see as annoying tic that accesses and then disappoints
non-Valley speakers’ expectation of a question.

Or could it be the beginning of a cultural influence from tonal languages,
what with all the migration into California of speakers thereof?


Cross-cultural East and West Coast influences certainly figure in Vyrva and
Maxine’s friendship.

Which, to hazard a guess, probably began with a recognition like the one
between Zoyd and van Meter in Vineland, where he looks into the next car
over and sees himself.

Slight age difference, but kindred spirits.

“This morning Maxine notes a change from the normal weekday throwtogether,
what Barbie used to call an Executive Lunch Suit instead of denim overalls,
for one thing, hair up instead of in the usual blond braids, and the
plastic monarch butterfly earrings replaced by what, diamond studs,
zircons? Some appointment later in the day, business matters no doubt, job
hunting, maybe another financing expedition?”

Nice Iceland Spar double image with 3 points of comparison, and a surmise
about Vyrva’s plans.

Vyrva was graduated from Pomona - isn’t that a Pynchon hotbed?

Her husband, “Justin and a friend from Stanford have a little start-up that
somehow managed to glide through the dotcom disaster last year, though not
with what you’d call irrational exuberance. ”

(Greenspan, 1996)

Vyrva and Justin live in a brownstone on Riverside Drive, wowing Maxine on
her first visit.

“Magnificent residence,” she pretended to kvell, “maybe I’m in the wrong
business?”
   “Talk to Bill Gates here,” Vyrva nonchalant, “I’m just hangin out,
waitin for my stock options to vest? Right, honey?”

Kvell - Yiddish for “to be extraordinarily proud; rejoice” - in this case,
vicariously.


She wishes Vyrva well a little more meaningfully  than usual, suspecting
games afoot deeper than Vyrva’s usual, “California sunshine, snorkel-deep
waters, most of the time anyway.”

And watches Vyrva’s West Coast acknowledgement of the insight, “noting a
slow California double take”
prove her right.


Per nameslook.com, the numerology of the name Vyrva is 7.

Also, I was going to hit send, but then the image of Vyrva with “California
plates on [her] butt,” breaking the ice between her and Maxine, who’d been
serving her herbal tea rather than the coffee Maxine herself was drinking.

So we know there are “klatches” whether kaffee- or tee- between them.
Vyrva’s offhand reference to her butt is maybe tantamount to using “du” in
German.

California car license plates in 2001 were white with blue letters:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/222047440735



Completely irrelevant:

Not nearly as cool, imho, as the blue and yellow one Cheech and Chong’s
Impala sported in Up in Smoke:

https://www.bluescentric.com/p-1929-cheech-and-chongs-up-in-smoke-muf-dvr-license-plate.aspx