IJ study archive

Mario and Millicent Kent (p. 126)

quote

Mario later said it was just like when there was a word on the tip of your tongue that try as you might you can’t remember until the exact second you stop trying, and in it pops, right into your head: it was when the three of them were walking together back up the hillside toward the tree-line’s lip, not trying to do anything but get back to Comm.-Ad. by the most direct route in the dark, that they stumbled upon the cinematic tripod, a dully glinting TL waffle-tipped Husky, in the middle of what wasn’t such a very tall or thick thicket at all.

Context

The coda, and the raw's only use of "cinematic": the tripod is real (a TL waffle-tipped Husky, confirming the exact spec Mario quizzed her on), findable only by not-looking — the wanting-as-obstacle koan (Lyle's shoulder-pull parable in narrative form, per the scene digest) attached to a piece of film equipment. It is found, named, and never explained. Carlisle separately logs the not-Hal "crackling and thrashing from some other thicket" (p. 123) as an unexplained third party in the thickets — recorded not adopted — which would give the camera-gear an unseen attendant.

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