asports and apports... why?

[Robin Landseadel]

Joseph Tracy:
asport - to carry away. Used mostly in legal language to describe acts
of larceny.
 
apport- used to refer to movement of object made to appear by occult
means.
 
What is Pynchon's intent in introducing what appears to be a
supernatural movement of objects into the story.

Robin: Good question. I’ll take “divine intervention for $500", Alex.
 
“You know what a miracle is. Not what Bakunin said. But
another world's intrusion into this one. Most of the time
we coexist peacefully, but when we do touch there's cataclysm. https://genius.com/6409084/Thomas-pynchon-the-crying-of-lot-49-chapter-5/You-know-what-a-miracle-is-not-what-bakunin-said-but-another-worlds-intrusion-into-this-one-most-of-the-time-we-coexist-peacefully-but-when-we-do-touch-theres-cataclysm”

CoL49 pg. 105

There’s a lot of deus ex machina moments in Pynchon. Locating Hicks in that zone
of fluctuating borders inside of what once was Hungary makes some of those
interventions seem a little less than divine by orthodox standards, thanks to a
well-deserved reputation for weirdness in Transylvania, but these interventions are
supernatural, nevertheless.

A favorite episode of divine intervention, Mason and Dixon, pgs. 309-310:
 
               “Should we be discussing this?”
 
               “Yes,— because all at once one has blunder’d
sheep-eyed upon yet one more bloody Mill,— a river
turn’d to a Race, the Works lit up in the dark like a great
hostelry full of ill-humor’d Elves. Any chances for a few
sentimental hours nipp’d, as ever in Glo’rshire, as soon
as they may arise. You, simple Geordie, inhabit a part of
England where ancient creatures may yet move in the
Dusk, and the animals fly, and the dead pop in now and
then for coffee and a chat. Upon my home soil, the
Ground for growing any such Wonders has been cruelly
poison’d, with the coming of the hydraulick Looms and
the appearance of new sorts of wealthy individual, the
late-come rulers upon whom as a younger person I spied,
silent, whilst holding savage feelings within. I was expell’d
from Paradise by Wolfe and his Regiment. One Penetration,
and no Withdrawal could ever have Meaning.
My home’s no more.”
 
               Does Dixon catch an incompletely suppress’d Lilt
of Insincerity? Something’s askew. “Thoo are in Exile, then... ?”
 
               “With London but the first Station. Then came the
Cape. Then St. Helena. Now,— these Provinces. You were
there, and are here. You must have seen it,— each time,
another step further....”
 
               “Away... ? Away from... ?”
 
               “Perhaps not away, Dixon. No. Perhaps toward. Hum.
Hadn’t considered that, hey, Optimism? Exercise yer
boobyish Casuistry ’pon that, why don’t ye? Toward what?”
 
               “I the Booby... ? I... ? When indeed,—” but how
much further up-field can he bring that, before a Brush
from one of Rebekah’s potent Wings? “Toward what,
then... ?” yet in the tone of a Fop to a Bedlamite,
concealing the demand, “Amuse me.”

M & D pgs. 309/310

And we, who always think
of happiness as rising feel the emotion
that almost overwhelms us
whenever a happy thing falls.

Rilke, Duino Elegy # 10

Big, big turning point for both Mason and Dixon as they turn towards each other,
bond closely in spite of obvious differences.

Another action of divine intervention, in this case offered by an apprentice witch whose
act of Black Magic has a biblical, downright Christian, result:
 
. . . May he be blind now to all but me. May the burning sun of love
shine in his eyes forever. May this, my own darkness, shelter him.
By all the holy names of God, by the Angels Melchidael, Yahoel,
Anafiel, and the great Metatron, I conjure you, and all who are
with you, to go and do my will.

The secret is in the concentrating. She inhibits everything else:
the moon, the wind in the junipers, the wild dogs out ranging in
the middle of the night. She fixes on Tchitcherine’s memory
and his wayward eyes, and lets it build, pacing her orgasm to
the incantation, so that by the end, naming the last Names of
Power, she’s screaming, coming, without help from her fingers,
which are raised to the sky. Later she breaks a piece of the
magic bread in half, and eats one part. The other is for Tchitcherine. . .
 
Beyond being a binding love spell—a wiccan no-no—the unintended consequences
include Tchitcherine being blind to Enzian, half-brother and bitter enemy. Tchitcherine
gets food and cigarettes from Enzian while Enzian and his crew intone mba-kayere—
"I am passed over”—and they are passed over as the Schwarzkommando and the
00001 rocket roll away . . .

. . . This is magic. Sure—but not necessarily fantasy. Certainly not
the first time a man has passed his brother by, at the edge of the
evening, often forever, without knowing it . . .
 
GR pgs. 733/734

This passage rhymes with:
 
“Supernatural, perhaps. Baloney…perhaps not.”
 
JT: The first instance marks a turning point for Hicks, an outer
manifestation of an inner change of direction, away from hired thug for
plutocracy, away from 'might makes right and pays the bills', away from
trusting the untrustworthy. He is less sure of what he is turning
toward, observes and is offered many options, keeps dancing away from
the "power brokers" toward others also moving towqrd the zone.
 
R: “Toto, I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas any more. . . .”
 
JT: larceny as major theme- stealing the human right to bargain for
fair pay, stealing through false promises( stock market, romance,
protection rackets, radioactive cheese, imperialism( british, american
and axis), jewel theft, ....

R: The #1 jewel thief in the novel, Porfirio del Vasto, runs a side hustle selling used
gyrocopters. Wife (still?) Glow uses one to asport Daphne from a hungry swarm of
Nazi youth.
 
JT: the idea of away- away from imperialism, away from bolshevist
violence, away from criminal warlords, but where to? Once again we are
in the zone between.
 
    the idea of angelic guidance of the heart, of consequntial choices

R: This conjures the occult representation of the Holy Guardian Angel, that spiritual essence
of the higher self—one is supposed to contact one's HGA via various head-spinning rituals and
incantations. It's a Catholic concept that B.O.T.A. and Golden Dawn devotees embrace. I have 
good reason to suspect that the T.W.I.T.s perform very similar rituals.

JT:  the idea that some people will move deeper into systems of violence
and the rewards offered there,  and some will  seek another path of
conscience or human vulnerbility and love,  juxtaposition of meaning:
instead of being a hired sap as in a truncheon-like tool of violence,   
being a sap for compassion, more like the sap in a tree or plant that
moves life-giving light through the whole.
 
asports- Hicks's sap, disappeared agreement of no out of town tickets
and no matrimonials, Stuffy to U13, Hicks to Stupendica and prewar
Europe,  Ace from employee of Airmont hired to hunt to hunted object of
vengeance. objects in Budapest including bullets.

R: I like to find the halfway point in Pynchon’s novels, there usually is something on offer
dead-center, Shadow Ticket is no exception. This is where we find Stuffy and the U-13,
underwater alongside the Stupendica:

“You seem to have friends aboard.” Handing Hicks a pair of
earphones, “OK if we listen too?”

“Hicksie, that you? It’s me, Stuffy. Stuffy Keegan.”

“Long time, Stuffy. Don’t sound like you.”

“You neither, come to think of it. Case you’re wondering,
that’s me, I should say us, in the U-13, off your starboard
quarter. Funny running into each other again out on the
high seas like this, ain’t it.”
ST pg. 147

The center of Against the Day:

“In France,” said Denis, “they speak of He Who Must Come.
He is not the Messiah. He is not Christ or Napoleon returned.
He was not General Boulanger. He is unnameable.
Nevertheless one would have to be uncommonly isolated,
either mentally or physically, not to feel His approach.
AtD pg. 542

JT: always there is a powerful element of the supernatural in Pynchon's
work. It seems to me that he refuses to reject this aspect of experience.

R: Well, as Friend Tom said on December 21, 2006:

I don't count things on The Simpsons so I can't help the
person who asked. I only mention the show because it
is actually a Christian-friendly message, and Mr. Pynchon
knew it full well when he made his appearance in 2004.
Everyone would agree that he's pretty smart, yes? Do any
of you doubt for a nanosecond that he failed to understand
the Christian interpretation of the show on which his
bagged head appeared? Not a chance.

December 21, 2006 happened to be the winter solstice FWIW.