"Dear Thomas,
I was encouraged to see your piece in support of Donald Barthelme. Or at least I think it was in support of him. You know how you never can tell with you. Anyway, I was pleased to discover that you thought he was/is underrated too. Hope all is well.

Love Anyways,
            Cold Bacon "

from:
An Open Letter to Thomas Pynchon

Good Evening Tyrone Slothrop

"These two-faced 'venus' in Mexico are interpreted like 'symbol of a double fruit or the principle of the duality, that represents one of the roots of the mesoamericanan religious philosophy, which comes attributed propiziatory character.' To me, 'propiziatory character' had it also the 'venus' with a single head, otherwise is not understood why they made them! If not, it is thinkable that those two-faced ones have had a 'greater propiziatory character.' [...] The characteristics of the two " venus " and of the mask have many characteristics in common with the wood sculpture of equatorial Africa. Sure, who worked the wood, did not work the stone, but the man always has been able to make all, in every direction. Independently from the doubts on the origin of the two two-faced sculptures (Fig.3 and Fig.4) , we must observ that they join two different cults (true or presumed): 1°) the feminine nude generally is considered connected to the cult of the fecundity, and 2°) the bifrontism, generally, is characterization of a God. "

"The shape of the heads reproduces the shape of the hair, enriched by ornamental patterns , traced with little lines as 'V' present also in the dorsal side. "

A two-faced V. . . . .

"In the name of fire prevention, Bush wants to allow the timber industry to log off more than 2.5 million acres of federal forest over the next ten years. He wants it done quickly and without any interference from pesky statutes such as the Endangered Species Act. Bush called his plan 'the Healthy Forests Initiative.' But it's nothing more than a giveaway to big timber, that comes at a high price to the taxpayer and forest ecosystems.

"Bush's stump speech was a craven bit of political opportunism, rivaled, perhaps, only by Bush's call to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil drilling as a way to help heal the nation after the attacks of September 11. That plan sputtered around for awhile, but didn't go anywhere. But count on it: this one will.

"Bush is exploiting a primal fear of fire that almost overwhelms the crippling anxiety about terrorists. In a one of the great masterstrokes of PR, Americans have been conditioned for the past 60 years that forest fires are bad...bad for forests. It's no accident that Smokey the Bear is the most popular icon in the history of advertising, far outdistancing Tony the Tiger or Capt. Crunch.

"But the forests of North America were born out of fires, not destroyed by them. After Native Americans settled across the continent following the Wisconsin glaciation, fires became an even more regular event, reshaping the ecology of the Ponderosa pine and spruce forests of the Interior West and the mighty Douglas-fir forests of the Pacific Coast.

"Forest fires became stigmatized only when forests began to be viewed as a commercial resource rather than an obstacle to settlement. Fire suppression became an obsession only after the big timber giants laid claim to the vast forests of the Pacific Northwest. Companies like Weyerhaeuser and Georgia-Pacific were loath to see their holdings go up in flames, so they arm-twisted Congress into pour millions of dollars into Forest Service fire-fighting programs. "

Jeffrey St. Clair, in Counterpunch.

"He woke to rain coming down in sheets, the smell of redwood trees in the rain through the open bus windows, tunnels of unbelievably tall straight red trees whose tops could not be seen pressing in to either side. Prairie had been watching them all the time and in a very quiet voice talking to them as they passed one by one. It seemed now and then as if she were responding to something she was hearing, and in rather a matter-of-fact tone of voice for a baby, too, as if this were a return for her to a world behind the world she had known all along."
Vineland p. 315

"Anyone catch the interview with actor Larry Hagman (I Dream of Jeanie,
Dallas) on Entertainment Tonight? Much of the interview related to his
drug use, including his LSD use. He spoke in glowing terms about his LSD
experience(s). He said at first it was like going through the "gates of
hell" and that his guide told him to just go with it and after he let go,
it was one of the most wonderful experiences he's ever had. He said he had
a 'white light' experience on LSD and how he no longer fears death. He
said there are multiple planes of existence and that the next one is based
on love."

-from the MAPS list today.

"No wonder the State panicked. How are they supposed to control a population that knows it'll never die?"
Vineland pp. 313-314

"The terrible war flower
has left her footprints-
countless petals of separation and death
in white and violet.
Very tenderly, the wound opens itself in the depths of
my heart.
Its color is the color of blood,
its nature the nature of separation. "

from:
The Beauty of Spring Blocks My Way by Thich Nhat Hanh

The nature of separation?

Drawing a Line . . . .