Chapter 1: Section 7: Page 64: Line 156 (1138)

 Roswell lit a ruby darkroom lamp.

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"lit"
First and foremost, the beginning of the process. The creation of the light needed in the dark, a light that somehow retains darkness. But second and hindmost, the journey has begun; they have lit out for the territories.

Once again, a short sentence. Perhaps because Merle's learning something new, we're taking it nice and slow. Or, as I mentioned in the previous post, Pynchon's continuing the slow as corn growing metaphor.

"darkroom"
According to Merriam-Webster, the first use of darkroom was in 1841, just thirty-six years prior to this scene. More words coined in 1841: "self-care", "hanky-panky", and, just because it's interesting to me as I'm currently reading Danielewski's Tom's Crossing, "clop-clop".
    The darkroom probably has deep and symbolic meanings in the context of this book which begins with the Monk quote, "It's always night, or we wouldn't need light." Perhaps the darkroom is the antithesis of the quote, even. The idea that it's always light or we wouldn't need a darkroom. We couldn't process photographs, caused by light, without shutting out that same light but seeking to obliterate now instead of create.

Chapter 1: Section 7: Page 59: Line 55 (1037)

 Some were inventors with light-engines that could run a bicycle all day but at nightfall stopped abruptly, causing the bike to fall over with you on it, if you weren't careful.

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"Some"
Pynchon can get pretty confusing with referrants at times due to his narrative's loose connection to any one time, place, or perspective. This "some" is simpler than most because it's either referring to the scientific enthusiasts who merely came to the city for the experiment or the ones who were locked up in the insane asylum. This should be an important distinction and maybe subject to your distrust of authority figures and how petty they can be when challenged on any of their beliefs. Did they throw a guy in a mental institution because he invented a self-propelled bike that shut off at night? If the bike didn't also have pedals to continue being used in a regular manner as soon as the engine stopped, I'd have thrown him in an asylum as well.

"light-engines"
I desperately want to read this as some grand science fiction space engine but I'm sure it just means "solar-powered."

"at nightfall stopped abruptly, causing the bike to fall over with you on it, if you weren't careful"
This just sounds like a conservative trying to scaremonger the pubic away from solar-powered engines. "Oh, it works perfectly fine during the day, does it? But what about . . . NIGHT TIME! Have you thought of that? A child not realizing night was super slowly coming on the way night always comes on could be killed when the bike abruptly shuts off! Would you have that on your conscious? No? Then stick with the coal burning steam versions that only occasionally blow up in their inventor's faces, killing them!"

Looking at the sentence less literally, we can read in it one of Pynchon's themes of the book. The book began with the Thelonious Monk quote, "It's always night, or we wouldn't need light," suggesting, perhaps, that without purposeful intervention, things would be dark, bleak, despairing. Our bikes will fall over if we aren't careful. The light sustains us, shows us the way, allows us to proceed in a forward manner towards the future. This can also be more metaphor than literal in the sense of light, or illumination, being seen as knowledge. Without the constant influx of scientific knowledge, we will eventually crash (if we aren't careful!).

The Epigraph

 It is always night or we wouldn't need light.

            —Thelonious Monk

* * * * * * * * * *

I'm not even into the meat of the book and it's trying to overpower me with the assumption of things I should know about! Am I going to have to learn jazz to understand it?! I mean, sure, it's a hefty book at over 1000 pages but I still didn't expect to be nearly pinned just after the table of contents! How much should I know about this guy Thelonious Monk?! And why would Pynchon choose a quote by him that boldly proclaims, "There is no day! It's all night, baby!" What am I up against then?!

Thelonious Monk (whose middle name is Sphere (Thomas Pynchon's middle name is Ruggles. Why does everybody else seem to have a cool middle name while mine is basically just Dave or Sally? (I mean, you'd expect somebody named Thelonious Monk to have a pretty cool middle name. But why would Pynchon get Ruggles?! It's not like he's Australian))) is, according to the Internet, an American jazz pianist. I point out that this is information from the Internet because I would have probably just said, "He's some jazz guy." Then everybody who loves jazz would have thrown Internet tomatoes at me and I'd become the disgrace of Buchser Junior High School.

I should probably be more careful about my identity since I'm on the Internet and I've just insulted jazz by not being into it enough. But just calling my junior high school a "junior high school" actually centers me in a quite specific time and place since before that, it was a high school, and after that, it was a middle school. So now people can already pinpoint my age and location if they wanted to throw actual tomatoes at me. Although, it's quite possible I've moved since then! Ha ha! Just try to find me, jerkos!

No, no. Please don't! I apologize!

Anyway, I'm not going to write a book report on Thelonious Monk. Either you know who he is or you can go read Wikipedia. I should probably, at least, read Wikipedia. He might be important to the rest of this novel! And anyway, what good is reading a Pynchon novel if I don't learn more about the stuff he seems to know everything about? Who is this guy? Is he a computer? I bet he's actually a computer!

As for the quote, it's pretty profound, isn't it? I mean, it's always night! Always! Everywhere! And the only reason we can see anything is by producing light. Sometimes we produce light by just sitting still on the face of the Earth and waiting for it to rotate around so the sun gives us some of that precious light. But it's still night if you were to take away the sun! That's a pretty cool way of looking at reality. Sometimes you need somebody like a comedian or an American jazz pianist to come along and sweep your legs so that your entire world view changes from staring at the acting tough scared kid in front of you being screamed at by his lunatic coach to the rafters of the gym where the tournament is being held. Then after you catch your breath (literally in the analogy and figuratively in the reality), you would probably wind up saying something like, "Whoa! I never noticed that before!" And sometimes, you can't ever go back to thinking like you did before!

As for now knowing that everything is always night, you'll probably forget that one. It feels less like a startling revelation and more like when your nerdy friend who probably has Asperger's says, "You mean today," when you find yourself up past midnight playing Dungeons & Dragons and you casually mention what time you have to work tomorrow.

So I decided to read Monk's Wikipedia page and this description of Monk struck me as something maybe Pynchon felt (or feels?) a bit close to:

"Monk was highly regarded by his peers and by some critics, but his records remained poor sellers and his music was still regarded as too "difficult" for more mainstream acceptance."

I wonder if Monk's music also had an inordinate number of references to boners?

Every section of Monk's Wikipedia page seems to end in a confrontation with police. I can't imagine the kind of person who reads that and thinks the police were just doing their job. How are we living with people who still don't understand not just systemic bias and systemic racism but actual boots on the ground racism?! The cops weren't just content to hassle, arrest, and, at times, beat him. They also tried to end his career by taking his New York City Cabaret Card which allowed him to play public venues where alcohol was served. And who except drunk and buzzed people enjoy jazz?!

Oh crap! Here come those Internet tomatoes!

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Postscript: Upon actually thinking about the quote instead of rambling like a drunk toddler, I've decided the quote means that we have to fight. We need light so that we don't succumb to the darkness and despair of the worst people in the world. The light that staves off the night is kindness and knowledge and art and respect and humanity and empathy and compassion. The night is ignorance and fascism and imperialism and oppression and propaganda and bullies. We need the light to rise above chaos and greed and selfishness. If Thelonius Monk and Pynchon (and me!) are the light, people like Ayn Rand and Donald Trump are the night.