A Wine of Wizardry
Michael
Along with the original copy of the September 1907 issue of Cosmopolitan, Patty's research notes had a photocopy of the front page of the arts section of this issue of the San Francisco Examiner from September 8, 1907:
Also prominently featured in Patty's schoolwork are art books with full-color reproductions of some of Xavier Martínez's work.
Jocasta's decision to handwrite the contents of "A Wine of Wizardry" in Willard Park, near Patty and Steven Weed's Berkeley apartment, seems to be fortuitous. The poem itself is hypnotic, its surreal, mystical, visionary verse somewhere between cheap post-Decadent rococo-ism and truly transportive art. Between this poem and the other materials Jocasta found in Patty's workspace, I think a Research-15 roll is in order.
Leonard
>> SUCCESS by 6
Michael
Putting aside the sort-of-hilarious concept of dedicated a full page in a major metropolitan newspaper to hyping a single poem and the broad sentiments of the various commentators on that Examiner page, Jocasta spends some real time with the verse, feeling its array of images on a synesthetic level.
The Poet gazes into a goblet of red wine, guided in his fantastic visions, quite appropriately, by Fancy. The same name Patricia called herself in her dream: triple-named goddess Patricia-Tania-Fancy, living in an artist's studio, a revolutionary's squat, and a veiled and silken Decadent boudoir.
With this in mind, Jo sees something substantial, a definite pattern, even without any formal expertise in memetics, emerge from the text.
ruddy gloom
russet mosses a grotto
rosy-sparred
Red pyres
a crimson throat
garnet-crusted lamps
crafty gnomes with scarlet eyes
vermilion breast
the ruby-sanded beach
Jo's heartrate spikes. Sure, sure; the Poet is seeing every Weird landscape and alien chimera through a haze of red wine, which explains the thesaurus-like belaboring of the unity of the color scheme in the poem. But this repetition, this instillation in the reader of the theme of red, red, red... it's just got to be a meme. Bierce consulted with Sterling on this poem, Bierce stuck memetics into the New York Journal and got Leon Czolgosz to shoot McKinley... could he have stuck this in here as well? And if so, to what purpose? Without that expert skill in memetics, Jo can't figure out what the red theme is actually trying to convey or do to readers' brains. More germane to the current situation: what did obsession with this poem do to Patricia's mind and belief? She was obviously doing this obsessive study long before the SLA arrived to make her into Tania.
Leonard
"Should have paid more attention in literary theory classes, Joey," she mutters to herself, before tucking the magazine inside her jacket.
She's going to wait an hour or so in the apartment -- long enough to do another quick search for anything interesting, unusual, or, especially, evocative of this memetic shading, but not too long, because she knows the feds and cops won't stay away for long, even with Archie pulling the strings. She's also going to to look for a personal item -- something small and intimate that Patricia has likely handled recently, like a ring or a necklace or something similar -- for a possible psychometric read later.
After that, if nothing else happens, she's going to walk back to Golden Gate Park and stake out a quiet patch to meditate. Then she'll head back to somewhere near the dead drop where she can kip, and sleep until morning when she can check the dead drop again.
Michael
Patricia's actual interpretive notes on the various forms of art and poetry she was studying back in February around her kidnapping are maddeningly few and slim. Jocasta would expect to see notes for or half-finished typewritten research papers amongst all the primary sources, but other than a few hastily-scratched secondary source bibliographies on "The Crowd," there's not much. Her library books include a copy of the slim but photo-packed The Coppa Murals: A Pageant of Bohemian Life in San Francisco at the Turn of the Century by Warren Unna (1952), full of all the extant photographs taken of the wild bohemian art on the walls of the Italian cafe/restaurant that once sat on the present-day site of the Transamerica Pyramid before the earthquake (as well as the murals of the various Coppa's successors post-quake which never quite had the same legendary artsy cachet).
As far as personal items, a quick search seems to indicate that either law enforcement or family/Hearst's fiancé Mr. Steven Weed had removed much of Patricia's more personal, possibly embarrassing possessions but Jo is able to find, in one of the drawers near Patricia's work area, a folded-up page from a recent San Francisco Bay Guardian: published the week before her abduction, actually. Near the headline, a masculine hand has scrawled, "Happy now, Patty?" Jo would bet that that hand was Randolph Hearst's. Patricia kept this clipping, and the cops and family didn't find it as meaningful to the investigation/possibly embarrassing as the Weed/Hearst nuptials announcement with their address that led the SLA right to Patricia's door. But Jo knows what it's like to have a father with whom you have everything and nothing in common. Jo bets Patricia kept this surly note from her Dad as not a rebuke, but a sign that she could still get under his skin, in a major countercultural publication no less, and that the exigencies of the free market meant that he had to pay at least some attention to young people and minorities. Jo gets the sense from this page of the article that Randy Hearst is a pretty insecure dude, but that tracks given who his dad was. Anyway, it seems like a good object for Jo to hang onto for its Patricia vibes.
Leonard
Yeah, she'll grab that too and put it in her back pocket. She'll also make a note about the synchronicitous links to the Coppa, the Transamerica Pyramid, Hearst, etc. -- this all started from our first mission together, she thinks, but maybe it started a long time before that -- and put it in her drop spot.
Michael
(It's so hard for me to internalize and roleplay WASP familial brittleness)
(But a curt three-word note seemed to be the most believable option)
owned
Make it stand out
Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
Leonard
Slow news day
"Hmmm, what is the most pretentious, prolix way to call someone pretentious and prolix?" — P.F. Cook, September 6
What if this whole thing is just Patty trying to get her dad to put poems back on the front page.
Michael
(I just realized I can have this show up at Kearny Street while Marshall, Archie, and Mitch are meeting, Leonard, good stuff)