Under Draco, Above the Sha

Well I took a second to look at the placement of my bookmark in M&D today, only to find I’m much further along than I thought. Only about 200 pages left to go I guess…what is that, 4-5 days of reading? I guess I’ll be done with M&D by the end of next week at the latest. Crazy really, which gives me a week before Easter break to sit and stew on it. I think I’m going to take those 3-4 days to do a rough outline of the paper, before sort of breezing through Inherent Vice the next week, while I’m writing. I’m imagining that the posts might get a bit more bare-bones once they move toward outlining the paper, so…just a word of warning.

I’ve pretty much decided that I want to focus on notions of the “underground” in the whole oeuvre, with the emphasis being placed on GR and M&D (although I envision using Lot 49 and Vineland for their more social executions of the Underground). Don’t really have anything that even resembles a thesis right now, but I’m hoping one will appear during those outline days before Easter.

So with that in mind, I want to direct this post on recent instances of Underground significance in M&D, since after all these are essentially what are pushing me toward the paper topic. Something I’ve been struggling to understand is just exactly what Dixon’s relationship is with “the Tellurick.” In Chapter 48, at Harland’s Farm, Mr. McClean tells M. & D. about some “Iron deposits” they might meet, which are “underground mountain-ranges … burning down there for centuries, known to the Indians, perhaps us’d as well in connection with their mysterious Lead Mines in the Mountains. Right up your Street, Mr. Dixon.” (468) That, in conjunction with a comment in Ch. 51 about Ben Franklin and Dixon being understood as “magicians” because of their understanding and use of Magnetism. That, and the flying over Ley-Lines with Emerson’s school of Witches in Durham. The list goes one.

What complicates this image of Dixon as the Earth in the analogy “Mason : Dixon :: Sky : Earth (Astronomer : Surveyor, obv)” is that elsewhere in Chapter 51, when Mr. Shockey takes M. & D. out to the “remarkable Cave beneath the Earth” that even “the Indians…stay’d away from,” we are told that “the Cave oppresses [Dixon].” (496-7) Well, at first this confused me, because I figured Dix. Should be embracing this place. But after some thought, I’ve decided that it actually does make sense for Dixon to feel oppressed by this Cave of sub-earthly secrets, precisely because he is the one of the pair more in-tune with the Earth. M&D’s Field-Book submission from this episode asserts that the Cave is “the abodes of Death,” and Dixon’s primary apprehension stems from “trying to imagine what form of Life might be calling something as spacious as this Home.” (497) Eerie stuff.

Dixon’s anxiety is only reinforced when Captain Zhang shows up, and tells the pair about the Sha, or “Dragon…within, from which the Land-Scape ever takes it form.” (542) This must be the presence oppressing Dixon, and it makes sense that Zhang’s description of the Sha leads into a discussion of the unnaturalness of the tendency of American “political” borders to ignore Nature: “to form a Line upon the earth is to inflict upon the Dragon’s very Flesh, a sword-slash…How can it pass unanswer’d?” (542)

The thing is that once Dixon sort of makes sense in these contexts, what does it mean to say that Mason, after visiting the same Cave, is super-excited and going on and on about “‘Text.’” He says that “‘it is Text,–– and we are its readers and its Pages are the Days turning. Unscrolling, as a Pilgrim’s Itinerary map in ancient Days. And this is the Chapter call’d ‘The Subterrenean Cathedral, or, The Lesson Grasp’d.’” (497-8) Is it worth it to say that a “text” is made up of “Lines” upon a page, which are attempts to represent unnamable thought (making it an “unnatural” impulse, as all language)? I don’t know, that seems pretentiously pomo, especially in the light of what’s been side about M&D as a turn toward wonder and awe. I really just don’t know what to make of the “subtitle” of Mason’s proposed chapter, “The Lesson Grasp’d.” What lesson did he learn?

I did want to say that I’m finally beginning to understand the phrase “against the day,” which is exciting. As I’m seeing it, a “day” is a concept which, astronomically, incorporates both time and space – the Earth physically rotates on its axis, but it also marks the passage of a period of twenty-four hours (i.e., actions occur and immediately begin their move into the realm of “the past”). To move “against the day” would be to move East perpetually. It’s all pretty much spelt out at the beginning of Ch. 48, but hey, it felt good. The next move I guess is to see the day as a “text” and one could theoretically “read the text of the day” right to left (East to West) like a Kabbalic text. Insert tie-in to Tarot here (“‘We are Fools,’ proposes Dixon one night.” 478). Anyway.

So at this point, are you in support of having the Underground be the focus of my paper, or do you think there are more relevant, erudite things I could be investigating? I think that with what I’ve been told is to come in M&D, the Mittelwerke, the W.A.S.T.E. system, 24fps, and that’s just off the top of the ol’ Dome, I should have a lot to work with. I’ll try over the next few days to assemble a more complete list of entry-points, and then maybe you can remind me what I’m overlooking.

Until then.