Page 173
By Jack Joseph Smith
By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
As the argument continues, Michael says compromise keeps filling the hole back in, Dandy replies that he only arranges each moment to fit his own needs, and Michael finally drinks again and rides with them toward downtown and the coming sun.
The page ends in surrender rather than resolution, which fits the whole exchange. Michael sees the problem clearly enough to name it, but not clearly enough to stop following the same road for another round.
The narrator diagnoses O'Dandy's evasion of the cops as 'fear and not intelligence': if he 'went beyond them, by blowing them up or by not relating to them / at all,' they would be exposed as 'useless,' forcing the choice to 'exercise great self control' or 'fight them until the death.' He reads the police as 'figure heads. Stupid archtypes... demonstrat / ing the general ways of relating, that our system has physiologically forced upon us,' and predicts O'Dandy will 'always be inbetween, / and... always be driven, because your spirit was born with to much awareness, / that you refuse to follow.' O'Dandy deflects toward Murphy and getting laid, while the narrator presses the mystical 'journey through the earth. The decention... The / final search,' insisting 'After we experience / the earth, we will be able to see the sky.'