Mariela's Second Paper Draft

A world in which there is no private self; a world in which everything is easily accessible, even our innermost thoughts. What kind of life would that be, and where does individuality and creativity fit in? This is the type of life Cayce is forced to live in after her world takes a “different direction”; she questions how this change came to be; was there something she had done or is this brought upon her by someone else’s actions. “She knows too much about the processes responsible for the way product is positioned, in the world, and sometimes she finds herself doubting that there is much else going on. But this is a mood, she tells herself, a bad one in its low-key way, dealt by soul-delay. Somewhere that lagging part of her is being wound in, and her job here is simply to walk, to be in London and let her body know that she is here (p.202).” Cayce has just travelled to London and is experiencing jetlag which she describes as soul-delay, however, there’s more to the notion of soul-delay than simple jet-lag. The fact that she states that “somewhere that part of her is being wound in, and her job here is to simply walk” is a metaphor to what is happening in her life. Cayce is describing herself almost like a puppet or a wound up toy, there have been changes in her life all brought upon by someone else, someone is guiding her steps in their desired direction, and Cayce is nothing but a tool, a messenger.
“Just now she wishes lives could be replaced as easily, but knows that that isn’t right. However odd things seem, mustn’t it be to exactly that extent of oddness that a life is one’s own, and no one else’s? Hers has never been without its share of oddness, but something in its recent texture seems to belong to someone else.” Here Cayce emphasizes how her life has changed; she has lost her “oddness”, individuality, to someone else and as result finds herself in a state of soul-delay. But who is this someone else; who is responsible for this change in her life? Her father; his disappearance seems to be the turning point of Cayce’s life. She now lives in a “fictional life”, a life full of mysteries and fears. Everything changed on the day her father disappeared. “The world had gone in such a different direction, in the instant of having seen that petal drop, that nothing really is the same now, and that her expectations of the parameters of how life should feel are simply that, expectations, and increasingly out of line the further she gets from that window in the SoHo Grand (pg. 203).” Cayce is struggling to cope with her father’s disappearance that all of her expectations in life have changed, and she uses the footage as a way to distract herself from the reality of not knowing where her father is. The moment that petal dropped Cayce lost part of who she was; it symbolizes the change in her life from being just another professional woman to a detective. She is trying to understand what happened to her father and find the creator of the footage. “Since there was no known reason for his having been in New York, that particular morning, there was no reason to assume that he would have been in the vicinity of the World Trade Center (pg.138).” Cayce if having trouble accepting her father’s death, she constantly searches for a way to recall any information he provided her with. When Dorothea drugs her the voice she hears is her dad saying “she has drugged you. Scream.”
However, the point of this all is that since the disappearance of her father, Cayce’s life has become the life of a detective and fight for survival, first she searches for her father, then the footage and while searching for the footage she gets robbed and followed around. Her life is no longer personal. Cayce has also lost the sense of home, she rarely speaks to her mom and if frequently flying from country to country.
"Cayce was followed, in Tokyo."
"By whom?"
"Two men, possibly Italian."
"Possibly?"
"I overheard them speaking Italian."
"Who were they?"
"We don't know." (p.182- conversation btw Boone and Bigend)
"She feels as though something huge has happened, is happening, but she can't define it. She knows that it's about meeting Stella, and hearing her story, and her sister's, but somehow she no longer is able to fit it to her life. Or rather she lives now in that story, her life left somewhere behind, like a room she's stepped out of. Not far away at all but she is no longer in (pg.303).” Yet another instance in which Cayce’s implies she is not living her own life she living someone else’s life, it’s almost as if she can go in and out of different worlds, different realms. At one point she is living the life Bigend wants her live by beginning to work with him in search of the creator of the footage despite the fact that she doesn’t want the same thing as him. She would present herself to him as a colleague who shares the same goal but later on go back to her world and live her life, a life in which she doesn’t intend to tell Bigend anyhting about the footage because her goal is to preserve the art work. In addition to Bigend, Cayce lives within the footage, the footage has become everything to her, and how it was created, by who and every detail possible about it. When the narator says “but somehow she no longer is able to fit it to her life” when Cayce is listening to Stella’s story, the narrator refers to the fact that Cayce has found the creator, her search has ended and soon she must return to her own life wherever that might take her. She needs to forget about the footage and start living again.
“Or rather she lives now in that story, her life left somewhere behind, like a room she's stepped out of. Not far away at all but she is no longer in” is a commentary on how Cayce has been stepping in and out of her life, at the moment she has left hers to become a part of Nora and Stella’s lives for she is so emotionally invested in the footage.

"There must always be room for coincidence, Win had maintained. When there's not, you're probably well into apophenia, each thing then perceived as part of an overarching pattern of conspiracy. And while comforting yourself with the symmetry of it all, he'd believed, you stood all too real a chance of missing the genuine threat, which was invariably less symmetrical, less perfect. But which he always, she knew, took for granted was there (p.304)."
Am trying to incorporate this quote in relation to Cayce’s father and Gibson’s use of details but am struggling on how to make that connection clear. Plus I also want to relate it to the simple post in which Cayce mentions the Russians on the forum and how that led to this whole novel taking place.

This is a very rough draft for am still struggling with staying away from summary but that is impart because I don’t have a clear thesis yet. Am just putting ideas down in paper.

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