Do I contradict myself?

[Joseph Tracy]

Beautiful choice of poem.  Even the woodspurge  works like the muted horn.The end of this chapter is one of the stranger and more haunting passages in fiction. I can only say for myself it actually reminds me of a very lonely period of my life , partly in Chicago, and partly in San Francisco and Berkeley, wandering at night , alone or with a friend and often marked by  coincidences. I think the kind of metanoia OM is having is more common for  the young newly on their own but OM is older, financially comfortable  and brings a kind of stable self awareness into this awakening which makes it both more troubling and calls for more of an explanation within her . Experience has more powerful effects than evasive explanations. 

The posthorn is everywhere, but 3 or 4  of the evenings events have stronger internal affect: 1)failing as sensitive despite rational understanding that it is absurd(feeling the malign magic, is she seeking her own counter-magic) and returning to nefastis apt bldg( house of the profane)  at end of waste postal route. 2) encounter with I.A. character who makes case against love 3) encounter with Jesus Arabal of counter -CIA whose anarchist news comes via waste 4) helping the old alcoholic sailor send his sad letter and giving him comforting human touch.  







> On Jul 2, 2024, at 3:17 AM, Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Earlier -
> 
> The state of mind is unsustainable; if and when she later remembers, it
> won’t be with any Proustian longing to recapture it. But that may be
> because it’s firmly lodging itself, unforgettable.
> 
> 
> 
> It’s unsustainable, so how can it be unforgettable?
> 
> The memory of it, I guess.
> She’s not in the same place mentally afterwards - that’s what’s
> unsustainable.
> But the impressions remain.
> 
> 
> 
> The wind flapped loose, the wind was still,
> Shaken out dead from tree and hill:
> I had walked on at the wind's will,--
> I sat now, for the wind was still.
> 
> Between my knees my forehead was,--
> My lips, drawn in, said not Alas!
> My hair was over in the grass,
> My naked ears heard the day pass.
> 
> My eyes, wide open, had the run
> Of some ten weeds to fix upon;
> Among those few, out of the sun,
> The woodspurge flowered, three cups in one.
> 
> From perfect grief there need not be
> Wisdom or even memory:
> One thing then learnt remains to me,--
> The woodspurge has a cup of three.
> 
> (Dante Gabriel Rossetti)
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l