blackmarketbutter » Thomas Pynchon

Research of terms between pages 348-364 of Gravity’s Rainbow

colby — Sun, 30 May 2010 03:17:08 +0000

Herero Insignia

Klar: Clear | Entlüftung: Ventilation | Zündung: Ignition | Vorstufe: Initial stage | Haupstufe: Main stage

Hebephrenic Scizophrenia

A form of schizophrenia in which affective changes are prominent, delusions and hallucinations fleeting and fragmentary, behaviour irresponsible and unpredictable, and mannerisms common. The mood is shallow and inappropirate and often accompanied by giggling or self-satisfied, self-absorbed smiling, or by a lofty manner, grimaces, mannerisms, pranks, hypochondriacal complaints, and reiterated phrases. Thought is disorganized and speech rambling and incoherent. There is a tendency to remain solitary, and behaviour seems empty of purpose and feeling. This form of schizphrenia usually starts between the ages of 15 and 25 years and tends to have a poor prognosis because of the rapid development of “negative” symptoms, particularly flattening of affect and loss of volition.

In addition, disturbances of affect and volition, and thought disorder are usually prominent. Hallucinations and delusions may be present but are not usually prominent. Drive and determination are lost and goals abandoned, so that the patient’s behaviour becomes characteristically aimless and empty of purpose. A superficial and manneristic preoccupation with religion, philosophy, and other abstract themes may add to the listener’s difficulty in following the train of thought.

ICD-10 Classification of Mental and Behavioural Disorders, World Health Organization, Geneva, 1992.

Ululation

A long, wavering, high-pitched sound resembling the howl of a dog or wolf with a trilling quality. It is produced by emitting a high pitched loud voice accompanied with a rapid movement of the tongue and the uvula.

Uvular

Consonants articulated with the back of the tongue against or near the uvula, that is, further back in the mouth than velar consonants.

Plosive

A consonant sound produced by stopping the airflow in the vocal tract.

Apparatchik

An agent of the governmental or party “apparat” (apparatus) that held any position of bureaucratic or political responsibility. Members of the “apparat” were frequently transferred between different areas of responsibility, usually with little or no actual training for their new areas of responsibility. Thus, the term apparatchik, or “agent of the apparatus” was usually the best possible description of the person’s profession and occupation.

Weltschmerz

World-weariness

Heisenberg Situation

In physics, the formulation of quantum mechanics where the operators (observables and others) are time-dependent and the state vectors are time-independent. It stands in contrast to the Schrödinger picture in which operators are constant and the states evolve in time. The two pictures only differ by a time-dependent basis change.

Poetry has its limits

colby — Thu, 27 May 2010 04:29:43 +0000

poetry has its limits
edges of expression
edge of (understanding/subjectivity/existence)
wheres my fix?
theres my fix
post-existence addiction as some human condition
there is no solution as there is no problem

time spent
thinking poetry
magnetic absurdism
mean-
ingful
as sensation
and chance

Okay, but really, now that I have your attention: wait, I have to
tell you this in reverse. Or maybe beforehand and then with a final execution in the
end, for once you execute this, your attention will be so complete that you will not
even be able to take this in. Okay, well, basically: you will close your eyes, then type
your thoughts, alright maybe it’ll start out banal, or shit, but keep writing, it will flow
surprisingly well, and just let it go, the concentration kind of maintains itself in
someway its like the writing itself takes over your mind and even now you can see
the future keys light up like some invisible map of the keyboard and your confidence
in its execution and it man oh man it floats so well and can’t you see how nice it
would be if two people hooked up, closed their eyes and just typed at eachother and
would be hit by some kind of buzzer or just come out when they do and enter it so
that each sees it once their brain has been leeched for that moment that would be nice
that I could like imagine that it could all be so nice this technology this infinite
instantaneous Ginsberg howl Munch scream ah he sounds so nice Ginsberg he lays it
out like so nice i fucking love it and realising i love it i somehow realise (maybe
further, maybe remember) my love of Patti (no maybe it is further, this feels new I
guess, something true) then that takes me to how I want to make that zine, some
publication, and then that reminds me of our talent nights, or open mic nights, that
would be nice I want to do that. Hubert Selby Jr rants of infinity.
Ah I went and looked for Pynchon but Ginsbergs relentless “mulak!” gets the better of
me, its fucking good. I love it, its a screaming, moaning, expression of beauty of
crazy mad meaningful/less endless fun danger joy i want it all in my one my only one
to the sky and into some hole and out again and keep rolling it got me yeah it got me.
But yeah I came back to talk about this kind of expression, the freedom of it. But then
strangely simultaneously I was thinking about Pynchon expression, biographies as
presentations, histories, short thoughts, ideas, fucking anything as some kind
expression, even nice, reserved writing about what’s going on, just like the kind of
realism with drawing I was thinking just the careful examination of our world with
words is a fascinating exercise. Endless in itself. You could endlessly talk simply of
what has gone on around you, what you are seeing, feeling, thinking, its fucking fun
you could go on forever.

Professor Hungerford on the American Novel and Pynchon

colby — Sat, 01 May 2010 04:11:17 +0000

Obliviophile

colby — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 09:17:46 +0000

Desire for destruction
Nietzsches will seems too distant, too tangible, he talks as if we could mould clouds like playdough
My will, my desire, my thoughts I can’t abstract them into golden units strong enough to be talked of unless we perform some total abstraction, some oblivion. But there, there is my destruction, It is obliteration, crushed into my elements by some instigator mistaken for Creator. To be fucked senseless, sexlessly, just obtrusely, bluntly like the feel of some shoe on my verwandelt back. I want my fluid being spread thin, then thick other places – the mark of some squish on her shoes or even between her toes, disgust is welcome just as pleasure.
Or some Pynchonian rocket, the thrill of thrust is worn, movement turned still by uniformity
Now I ascend thrustless, just kind of float by in some theoretical existence I can’t see
Caught in this consistent antigravity despite the sureness of my descent and my written destruction
I can’t shake my confidence in some neverending ascent, some heaven I guess
A gamblers fallacy heaven so transparent so false so made of sound and fury but thats exactly why its there thats what it is
Some impossibility to live for not in defiance of our destruction but because of it, for it. Sounds too nice and romantic but really i mean it if that can be taken beyond that
But then these are the philosophical highs that are counterpointed at every angle by this inevitable destruction
This tantilizing surety of our dissolution
Hyperventilating thinking of this dissolution I feel I’m coming into being with it
The dissolution seems less a part of me as much as I am becoming a part of it
The great falling apart
Lets not tease ourselves and pretend its all for the journey, the existence itself
No, no, to me its the birth its the existence and its the death
And each instant as an expression of this trifecta
So in that we kid ourselves but then keep looking more cracks come up
The peripherals twinkle with this knowledge like some devils grin
Stop-motion cartoons slipped through that time
That gold, that paint you stole from the museum that screen those crystals and all that silicon and electricity
Where’d it steal in from – some invisible space that knows only interference matrices
There’s a crack in the sky-blue, some kind of multi-coloured white silver that makes a web in some crazy wind
In these spaces I’ve felt an affinity for
Some nervous twin I don’t carry don’t follow, something in-between? Steps rhyme some times so well we can’t tell
The dissonance of fear can turn to a lovely medley
As medleys can to some hell song some muses death call
Some animatronic sadness dictated by genetic software
Pataphysical psyche
Driving, just driving, deep down Salesman driving
Ambivilence, deep, down ambivilence
Its driven you, determined you, in some ways
Half-something, american, boy-girl, unfeeling-romantic
The void is sought in some way to dispel its novelty

Pynchon on integration

colby — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 12:05:43 +0000

The young stastician is devoted to number and to method, not table-rapping or wishful thinking. But in the domain of zero to one, not-something to something, Pointsman can only possess the zero and the one. He cannot, like Mexico, survive anyplace in between. Like his master I. P. Pavlov before him, he imagines the cortex of the brain as a mosaic of tiny on/off elements. Some are always in bright excitation, others darkly inhibited. The contours, bright and dark, keep changing. But each point is allowed only the two states: waking or sleep. One or zero. “Summation,” “transition,” “irradiation, “concentration,” “reciprocal induction” – all Pavlovian brain-mechanics – assumes the presence of these bi-stable points. But to Mexico belongs the domain between zero and one – the probabilities.

-Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow

Leave your war awhile

colby — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 07:59:21 +0000

Come then. Leave your war awhile, paper or iron war, petrol or flesh, come in with your love, your fear of losing, your exhaustion with it. All day it’s been at you, coercing, jiving, claiming your belief in so much that isn’t true. Is that who you are, that vaguelly criminal face on your ID card, its soul snatched by the government camera as the guillotine shutter fell or maybe just left behind with your heart, at the stage Door Canteen, where they’re counting the nights take…

Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow