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 Lew found himself surrounded by a luminosity new to him, not even observed in dreams, nor easily attributable to the smoke-inflected sun beginning to light Chicago.

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Oh man! I forgot this book has something to do with light! Or, at least, this chapter being that it's called "The Light Over the Ranges." And also there's that stuff about photography which we've seen a bit of with Merle but we'll see much more of in a later section. Here's a reminder of how the quality of the light, being the thing which allows vision to happen, changes perception.

Lew is having a mystical experience akin to Reverend Cherrycoke's transformation in Ludgate prison (unless it was the Tower of London, the big liar). But I can't easily attribute Lew's experience to ergot. Although it is the early 1890s so he's probably recently ingested some weird chemical, drug, or toxin that's warped his brain. Maybe just inhaling all the cow meat in the air can cause a guy to get a little wonky in the morning.

But does the cause even matter? Shouldn't a mystical experience be simply taken as a mystical experience even if the cause is something explicable? In a tangible world of science and understanding, does a mystical experience have to be completely unexplained in any way? What does the cause matter to the person having the experience? They're going to be transformed in some way whether or not somebody can say, "Oh, yeah, chemicals flooded your brain in that traumatic moment and lack of oxygen as you were bleeding out. It wasn't actually angels visiting you and declaring you're the most special and unique person ever." The brain breaking out of its furrow is a powerful thing. Seeing the world the same way every single day because everything in the brain is in the same working order and then suddenly the brain decides everything is absolutely different? That's fucking powerful. It's why so many people get religious and weird over hallucinogens.

Something happened to Lew's brain in this moment. Clarity. Revelation. Atonement. Whatever it was, he suddenly saw the world differently, "in a new light," as they say. Everything was about to change for him.

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 Passengers snorted, scratched, and read the newspaper, sometimes all at once, while others imagined that they could get back to some kind of vertical sleep.

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They're animals just like the horses. Maybe worse. Broken. Trained to stay in their furrow, allowed small pleasures like scratching and sleep and access to bureaucratically and politically curated news stories. The only delirium they know is that of the dreams that come when they sleep, and so they attempt, whenever possible, to slip back into slumber.

Maybe I'm being too cynical! Maybe these are all just actions that produce small and varied vocalizations that contribute to the morning overture. The trumpet-like snort. The washboard sounds of scratching. The occasional mutter or assent over something read. The snores of those managing the vertical sleep. It's like a cartoon and so it's way more upbeat an interpretation of the scene than my initial one.

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 The horses stepped along in their own time and space.

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The horses can't comprehend what they're a part of. They simply go the way they're asked to go, thinking whatever horses are capable of thinking about the chore. What does a tame horse think of the tasks it's asked to perform? And how rude is it that we say, after taming a horse, that we "broke" it? That's a terrible self-confession of the sin committed on the horse! "Oh, yeah, that horse? It used to be a perfectly good horse doing its own horse things and being all horsey. But then I broke the fuck out of it. Totally not a horse anymore. Like that lamp I knocked off the end table. Just doesn't do lamp stuff anymore. Never be the same. Just a wreck of its former self. I'm so proud! Of the terror I inflicted on the horse, of course, and not what I did to the lamp."

It's like that Douglas Coupland quote from Generation X (unless it isn't but I love this quote so read it):

"And then I felt sad because I realized that once people are broken in certain ways, they can't ever be fixed, and this is something nobody ever tells you when you are young and it never fails to surprise you as you grow older as you see the people in your life break one by one. You wonder when your turn is going to be, or if it's already happened."

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 Girl amanuenses in little Leghorn straw hats and striped shirtwaists with huge shoulders that took up more room in the car than angels' wings dreamed with contrary feelings of what awaited them on upper floors of brand-new steel-frame "skyscrapers."

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"amanuenses"
People employed to write or type what somebody else dictates.

"Leghorn straw hats"

"contrary feelings of what awaited them"
I imagine those contrary feelings are steeped in the sexist culture and sexist work environment and sexist society and all its expectations and implications. The girl's contrary feelings probably stem from her work place being her main public locality to meet a potential husband (other than church) and so she perhaps dreams of meeting a genuinely good guy at work but knowing that mostly she's just going to get advances and sexual innuendo from cads and misogynists. Or maybe I'm thinking about this in too sexist a way, being programmed to think of everything in the past as even more sexist than the sexism pervading culture today! Maybe their contrary feelings are simply "work is boring" but "looking out of the windows of a modern skyscraper is exciting." Or maybe the contrary feelings were "working way up in the sky is terrifying" and "but I need this job to feed my starving kids!" I don't know! Just like a lot of Pynchon's writing, it leaves certain things vague so that the reader can fill in the negative spaces.

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 A rolled umbrella dented a bowler hat, words were exchanged.

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Fucking umbrella wielders. Back in college, for an assignment to write an argumentative essay, I wrote about how terrible umbrellas and their wielders were. The professor actually thanked me for writing a humorous essay because everybody always took writing essays as an exercise in serious business.

Just to clarify for the horrible people who carry their umbrellas everywhere: I'm not against the use of umbrellas. Just like I'm not against dogs. But, in general, umbrella wielders and dog owners are unbearable people.

Just to clarify: I'm being hyperbolic and facetious. If you love poking people in the eye with your umbrella while diverting water from your head to the shoulders of those around you, or you love letting your dog run around off-leash while constantly screaming at frightened people, "Don't worry! He doesn't bite! He's friendly!" then don't let me dissuade you! Go for it! Be the best jerk you can be!

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 Men went on grooming mustaches with gray-gloved fingers.

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Chicago rapid transit in the 1890s was just like being on Portland rapid transit in 2021.

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 Despite the sorry history of rapid transit in the city, the corporate neglect and high likelihood of collision, injury, and death, the weekday-morning overture blared along as usual.

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"corporate neglect"
Can you even use the term "neglect" when corporations pay for studies to determine which would cost them more, improving the safety of their product or paying off civil suits to those harmed by them? That's not even "willful neglect." That's just capitalism.

"the weekday-morning overture blared along as usual"
There's no medley of numbers from a play about weekday mornings happening here. At least I don't think there is. Sometimes Pynchon pulls weird shit like that and suddenly a Pavlovian researcher is involved in an intricate dance number with a bunch of mice and rats. But here it's just a metaphor for all the daily, mundane things the riders of the city's rapid transit are involved in on their way to work or school. Daily rituals that consume their attention even though simply riding the rapid transit is a dangerous affair. Perhaps more-so consumed by their activities as a form of denial of death's all-too-possible possibility. So Pynchon is simply comparing this cacophonic group of disparate activities to the mixing and combining of musical numbers of a staged production.

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 One mild and ordinary work-morning in Chicago, Lew happened to find himself on a public conveyance, head and eyes inclined nowhere in particular, when he entered, all too briefly, a condition he had no memory of having sought, which he later came to think of as grace.

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Here, Lew has a moment quite similar to a moment in Methodist founder John Wesley's life:

"In the evening I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate Street, where one was reading Luther's Preface to the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation, and an assurance was given me that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death."

It's a moment that may possibly have turned Wesley's mind away from the stricture of predestination, supported by his Methodist co-founder George Whitefield. Wesley chose to believe, as Drave seemed to be telling Lew earlier, God's grace is freely given. And not just to an elect few as Whitefield's predestination suggested. It's interesting in Lew's case that he wasn't seeking this moment because it seems to me most people who suddenly feel saved by Christ are those most desirous of the knowledge of their salvation. But Lew comes to it accidentally, probably because it's not a religious state of grace. It's simply a moment of clarity, as they say in the twelve steps. Perhaps even a moment of enlightenment.

This is the moment Drave suggested would come to Lew, whether he worked toward it or not. Drave even seemed to suggest working toward it was a waste of time, or busy work, because if it were to happen, it were to happen, to be tautological about it.