Re: CoL49 group reading ch3 - echo of “Low-Lands” / handoff

[Joseph Tracy]

> 
> The narrator seems to think it’s the Trystero which will choose how to
> appear to her, but doesn’t it really depend on how she chooses to see it?
Not necessarily,  Once you see someone and they become aware of your interest, that person or organization has their own agency and may well feel compelled to deal with you on their own terms, and those terms  may change depending on the level of threat, interest etc. 
Trystero is an alternate power base and communication system. While fictional , it has real historic parallels According to more than one source  on CIA history, the CIA was modeled on Germany’s secret police. Regardless it thrives on secrecy and that is not the way our republic was set up. The US constitution is not designed for global imperialism and spy networks. There is no provision for a clandestine spy agency run by the executive branch. That is a  more European model. And the communication system of accountability based on law  and maximum transparency diminishes as secrets and deception grows.  

 Example from some JFK notes - major Investigative journalist Dorothy Kilgallen inteviewed Jack Ruby, having done investigations of Mob, and exposing JFK affair with Marilyn Monroe( shortly before MM suicide? She(DK) had exposed a CIA Mafia plan to kill Castro .  Criticized Warren Commision with Ruby interview she had obtained from source , got involved with Mark Lane i( Military Intel) & Ron Petakand and  was found dead in bed in  highly suspicious circumstances in 1965. Her files on the JFK murder were taken.

> 
> 
> CoL49
> 
> They came in among earth-moving machines, a total absence of trees, the
> usual hieratic geometry, and eventually, shimmying for the sand roads, down
> in a helix to a sculptured body of water named Lake Inverarity.
> 
> 
> On May 26, 2024, at 2:18 AM, Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Quick note:
> 
> Low-Lands:
> They started down a long spiraling road into the dump.
> 
> Joseph mentioned a dawning awareness of “something awry” post-1963
> 
> Holding that up against the paragraph I was wondering about - particularly
> 
> “…as if a plunge toward dawn indefinite black hours long would indeed be
> necessary before The Tristero could be revealed in its terrible nakedness.
> Would its smile, then, be coy, and would it flirt away harmlessly
> backstage, say good night with a Bourbon Street bow and leave her in peace?
> Or would it instead, the dance ended, come back down the runway, its
> luminous stare locked to Oedipa’s, smile gone malign and pitiless; bend to
> her alone among the desolate rows of seats and begin to speak words she
> never wanted to hear?”
> 
> There are points of similarity.
> 
> The two choices are what intrigue me.
> 
> The narrator seems to think it’s the Trystero which will choose how to
> appear to her, but doesn’t it really depend on how she chooses to see it?
> 
> Either Oedipa will notice there’s a pattern and move on; after all, the
> world is full of such patterns - Norman Mailer has the characters in _The
> Naked and the Dead_ ruminate on how somebody’s making big money off World
> War Two, but he didn’t chase that idea for the rest of his career.
> 
> Or she will become obsessed as a personal mission with finding out more -
> as did Mae Brussel, (may she rest in peace) who started by reading the
> entire Warren Report, and couldn’t quit until she’d compiled a huge archive
> of shady goings on, which is still available
> https://maebrussellresearchlibrary.com
> 
> 
> I look forward to other Livingstonian insights.
> 
> Thank you and goodnight!
> --
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