I dreamt of a City to the West of here," Dixon tries to recall, scrying in his Coffee-Mug, the wind blowing Wood-smoke in his eyes, "at some great Confluence of Rivers, or upon a Harbor in some inland Sea,- a large City,- busy, prospering, sacred." "A Sylvan Philadelphia. . . ." "Well . . . well yes, now tha put it thah' way,- " "I hope you are prepar'd for the possibility, that waking Philadelphia is as sacred as anything over here will ever get, Dixon,- observe you not, as we move West, more and more of those Forces, which Cities upon Coasts have learn'd to push away, and leave to Back Inhabitants,- the Lightning, the Winter, an Indifference to Pain, not to mention Fire, Blood, and so forth, all measur'd upon a Scale far from Philadelphian,- whereunto we, and our Royal Commission, and our battery of costly Instruments, are but Fleas in the Flea Circus. We trespass, each day ever more deeply, into a world of less restraint in ev'rything,- no law, no convergence upon any idea of how life is to be,- an Interior that grows meanwhile ever more forested, more savage and perilous, until,- perhaps at the very Longitude of your 'City,'- we must reach at last an Anti-City,- some concentration of Fate,- some final condition of Abandonment,- wherein all are unredeemably alone and at Hazard as deep as their souls may bear,- lost Creatures that make the very Seneca seem Christian and merciful.
( Thomas Pynchon )
[ Mason & Dixon ]
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