The Pynchonian historian

with 'Against the Day'
pynchon fans finally have
a large new body of
Gravity'sRainbow-like prose

allowing much better triangulation
of what th' heck TRP is up to
and how

now
if we want to explore
any period of history
via the old pynchonoscope

we first ask

what intoxicants were available?

what subversive groups
plotted against what power elites?

what superstitions
lingered at the fringes?

what new scientific theories
mathematical metaphors
metaphysical speculations
were about to stir up controversy?

which old ones
were fading from fashion?

what was the general state
of language and literature?

then take the standard
comic ethnic stereotypes

and contrast them against
anachronistic human hipsters
(who enter poetic fugue states
at the drop of a hat)

and glimpses of real love

find fitting names
for streets and bars

camouflage
your painstaking researches
by alluding to the worst obscurities
in the most offhand way

.

Influence as a modality on the Tree of Life

choose some human branch
on the Tree of Life

and consider all the other
human branches
ever influenced by that branch

color them green where
that influence is positive

red where it's negative
(yellow mixed)

find whose influence is reddest
(rush limbaugh, rm scaife)

whose greenest
(jesus? john lennon?)




(can someone be a good influence
on some branches
but bad on others?

a good influence sometimes
but bad at other times?)

.

Inspiration on the Tree of Life

color green those moments
when an artist
finds true inspiration

yellow
where they substitute craft

red
where they sell out
their muse




notice how green
were the Sixties

how rarely green
are even the best poets
(with WB Yeats as best case)

how inspiration descends
in bursts
for hours or days

rarely weeks

.

Ego-balance on the Tree of Life

let panic be red
anxiety orange
ordinary existential alienation yellow
and inner peace green

notice which individuals
are normally green
which normally orange

notice life-shifts
between green and orange

notice individuals who
transmit
green or orange to their neighbors

notice media channels
that amplify those transmissions

notice paradoxical greens
(eg) in the heat of battle

(reds in the coolth of peace?)

.

The olfactory zodiac and smell-o-betical order

by exact analogy
with the yahoo zodiac

we can visualise elastic links
between the taste-and-smell
of every pair of chemical compounds

and allow the whole to 'relax'
into an optimal shape
with similar smells clustered

and then find an axis of rotation
that offers maximal separation (say)
between the basic tastebud categories
(sweet sour salt etc)

and then flatten the whole
along this axis
so that every chemical
has a precise sequential
angle of rotation

in 'smell-o-betical order'
on this olfactory zodiac




and we can then promote
the most-commonly-experienced chemicals
into the innermost orbits

and demote the least common
to the outermost orbits

and we can light these 'stars'
(eg) by toxicity
with most toxic shining reddest
most nutritious shining greenest
neutral yellow

.