SLPAD - 126 ?Low-Lands? - 37

[O G]

I'm curious about this hairblessed hitchhiker, this non-internalizing
itinerant.  Traveled the world, absorbed nothing.

Considering the significance of headbumps.

Was this a frequent occurrence with this fellow, being bonked on the
bonger?  Why did he bring it up?  Were you telling him about this
tiretumbling scene in Lowlands?  Do you suppose his headbumps were related
to his massive waves of hair?  Was it a coverup?  A covert combover?  A
covering?  Or were his brainbashings perhaps related to all the bumps *in* his
head, if you catch my drift?

It might depend on the significance of the bump.  Of sufficient magnitude,
all right, there will be a bump in your life.  Coma.  Did he mean that the
only way for him to change his life was to be nailed in the noggin?  Good
reason to keep blowing the bumps.

What was something interesting the hitchhiker said about Sri Aurobindo and
The Mother?

In Pynchon's terms, who are the Preterite and what is their place in the
world, and why does Pynchon keep returning to that theme?



> It?s not like Nerissa is a solitary phenomenon, easily fobbed off as a
> delirium tremens consequence of Dennis?s prodigious wine-bibbing.
>
> - I remember picking up a hitchhiker with an amazing array of facial and
> head hair back in the ?70s who told me some interesting stuff about Sri
> Aurobindo and The Mother, his life as an itinerant, and how he dealt with
> coke freaks (basically by not internalizing their speeded-up mindset) - one
> of the things he said was, ?Every time there?s a significant change in my
> life, it?s preceded by a bump on the head.? (Or was it, ?Every time I get a
> bump on the head, there?s a significant change in my life??)
>
> I?ve never heard either version of this theory anywhere else, but it seems
> semi-valid, or at least worthy of consideration.
>
> Dennis receives such a thump from a stack of snow tires which falls on him
> whilst he?s trying to follow Nerissa thru the dump. Knocks him out.
>
> He awakens to her ?cool fingers on his forehead and a coaxing voice: ?Wake
> up, Anglo. Open your eyes. You?re all right.? He opened his eyes and saw
> her, the girl, her face, floating wide-eyed and anxious over him, and the
> stars caught in her hair.?
>
> So presumably it?s not the wine - or, not only the wine -
>
> And she?s got a legitimate place in a community, she?s known, tolerated,
> most likely also protected, cherished, and loved - they?re already being
> watched (but not interfered with)
>
> ?On top of the pinnacle of bank run stood a human figure, watching them.
> Other shapes hovered and flitted in the darkness; from somewhere came the
> sound of guitar music, and singing, and a fight in progress.?
>
> Not only that, Gypsy Nerissa has a gypsy woman of her own who told her
> fortune:
>
> ?The old woman with the eye patch who is called Violetta read my fortune
> many years ago,? Nerissa said. ?She told me a tall Anglo would be my
> husband and he would have bright hair and strong arms and??
>
>
> On the way to her place - reached via a tunnel commencing with a backless
> GE refrigerator thru which Flange overcomes his dubiety to fit his
> portliness - she explains some of the social facts of the dump.
>
> The gypsies had found tunnels ready-made by a would-be terrorist group in
> the 1930s called the Sons of the Red Apocalypse. Fortunately for all
> concerned, even - maybe especially - the SotRA members themselves, ?the
> feds? had ?rounded them all up?
> leaving their infrastructure for the gypsies to adapt for their own needs
> and purposes.
>
>
> - this all speaks to 3 recurring Pynchon themes:
>
> The Preterite and their place in the world
>
> The contrast between revolutionary violence and the efforts of people to
> live their lives
>
> And (this shows up in BE, and CoL49 the most) the idea of Waste and trash
> heaps
>
>
> Nerissa is cognizant of the history and the current workings of her
> community, in which she has secured, one might say, an enviable place:
>
> ?They reached a dead end finally, with a small door set in the gravelly
> soil. She opened it and they entered. She lit candles, whose flames
> revealed a room hung with arrases and paintings, an immense double bed with
> silk sheets, an armoire, a table, a refrigerator. Flange had all kinds of
> questions. She told him about the air supply, and the drainage and the
> plumbing and the power line that had been run in without Long Island
> Lighting?s ever suspecting; about the truck which Bolingbroke used in the
> daytime and which they drove out at night to steal food and supplies; about
> Bolingbroke?s half-superstitious fear of them and his reluctance to inform
> anyone in authority about all this lest he be accused of alcoholism or
> worse and lose his job.?
>
>
> ------------------------------
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>
> End of Pynchon-l Digest, Vol 73, Issue 8
> ****************************************
>