Douglas Lanark (independent scholar)
As the children of Zwölfkinder could feel when drinking soda water with their head deep inside the fanged mouth of the drinking-fountain beast, the sparkling tiger gave them a thrilled sense of momentary danger parallel to pissing on the Eisenkröte at Putzi’s, the ultimate test of manhood. In all the five elements of Chinese Astrology the Tiger is the sign of initiation.
With its 12/10 binary system the Tiger is the third sign of the Chinese Zodiac but the first sign of their solar-lunar new year, the “TET.” 2010 is the Year of the Metal Tiger which begins on Sunday, February 14th at 10:51 CCT (Chinese Costal Time) – on Valentine’s Day!! In other zones this time converts to 3:51 MEZ, 2:51 GMT/UT in the Eastern Hemisphere. From Iceland throughout Europe and Asia as far as to New Zealand one may “kiss the Tiger!”
Sort of like Mucho Maas never having been in a war confronted by Krauts in Tiger tanks, this symbolic or actual initiation of kissing the tiger will be denied those living in the Western Hemisphere (tough luck – no kiss, no danger) as the time zone conversion from CCT corresponds to Saturday, February 13th at 23:51 BZT, 21:51 EST, 20:51 CST, 18:51 PST and for those of you in Alaska or Hawaii please calculate your Time Zone.
The new year’s first month from February 14th to March 15th is the month of the Earth Tiger, thus 2010 will be off to an extremely fast and tiger-typical start with a militant economy and an economic militancy – budget and funding-fighting!
We all know, recognize and can trace/track Pynchon’s love of dogs and pigs in all their five element variations (by the way, how many of you have saved all my Chinese New Year’s greetings with Marca’s artistic interpretation?), furthermore he pens many references to rats and buffalos; while tigers – as far as I’ve researched and can recall – are really lacking in all his works. The tiger which receives the most attention in his various novels is the King Tiger or Königstiger, the notorious German tank in WW II!
Being the Year of the Metal Tiger, 2010 is the year to either put a tiger in your tank or put a tank in your tiger, push down the gas pedal (Toyota or otherwise) and drive head-on with the quietest engine on the road to the ultimate test of manhood. Take a closer look at Marca’s drawing: a young tiger fearlessly leaping directly forward towards initiation. For those of you who have passed, survived and gathered experience from this test, it might well be a year on the strategic defensive, building cylindrical blocks to cripple the silent on-rolling King Tigers of fiendish insurgents whether European, Mexican, Uyghur or invisible trespassing forces.
It is the military; or the Tiger Boys of the Triad, Yakuza, street gangs and other criminal bands in transition from childhood to manhood expecting no loss along the way. A dead King Tiger may serve as a guard to the entrance of a cave or safe house, blown away rock or ceiling, keeping the enemy away: Die Wände haben Ohren, aber der Feind hört jetzt NICHT zu! Depending upon where you pull duty, will you, Like Gottfried, love the Königstiger as much as a horse without the guarantee of avoiding the rocket? Metal over flesh!
A Metal tank or not, the tiger is still an animal and as Padzhitnoff explains to the crew of the Inconvenience all animals have names in the part of Russia where he grew up, all except one that is. Unfortunately he gave no specific names. I have none myself, so each and every one of us is free to name our own tiger, like pilots and captains name their planes and ships. As many of you I once had a dog, named him NEO – way before that film Matrix.
Whether true or not, the Chinese consider the tiger, any tiger, as a possessing a special potency-enhancing substance in their ground bones and those who can afford it will pay anything to get a hold of this remedy thus supporting a poaching industry and placing the tiger as extremely threatened on the WWF’s endangered species list. If it’s not “Buck-the-Tiger” sex, than it is fashion that further threatens the natural habitat of the tiger, like Fleetwood Vibe wearing a broad-brim hat with a hatband of Siberian tiger skin. On the other hand if not for Siberia the tiger might already have been extinguished in nature.
On the Pynchon’s peaceful slapstick side we have that spud coxswain Tiger Youngblood engaging in a cucumber/watermelon-seed spit-fight with old Pappy Hod right outside the galley at the bottom of the ship. How much of a Tiger Youngblood is we never find out, but Pappy Hod does become old constantly holding Paola’s image as a prairie hare in the snow or a tiger in tall grass and sunlight.
If tigers do become extinct old geezers in parallel universes like Pappy Hod, Dixon and other surrealistic sentimentalists (including ourselves) can always put their daily instruments, tools and things away when night falls and frequent their local pub, The Tiger, seeking peers to nod and smile them into remembering … Perhaps someday there just might be such a tiger pub watering-hole in every town, sort of like a miniature adult Zwölfkinder. At every age we need our thrills . . .
Nature before profit — may we age in peace and dignity.
Collage/Art Work: Marca Merica, a/k/a Marca van Wassenaar