Line 8	white Marbled ice. An old postcard of the Pantheon, its rectangle burned into the pages of the book I found it in [in a foreign used-book store, in a city of ancient, eroding marble] read: "Fear of Absolutes is hardly limited to black. I've seen chilling leaps of whitecaps, far out, on a midnight sea; and Chinese mourners, in a windy black-and-white documentary, wearing stark, flapping clothes the color of chalk." This idea of whiteness seems solidly imbedded in American culture. The last entry in the journal of Edgar Allan Poe's doomed explorer, Arthur Gordon Pym, reads:     March 22. The darkness had materially increased, relieved only by the glare of the water thrown back from the white curtain before us. Many gigantic and pallidly white birds flew continuously now from beyond the veil, and their scream was the eternal Tekeli-li! as they retreated from our vision. Hereupon Nu-Nu stirred in the bottom of the boat; but upon touching him, we found his spirit departed. And now we rushed into the embraces of the cataract, where a chasm threw itself open to receive us. But there arose in our pathway a shrouded human figure, very far larger in its proportions than any dweller among men. And the hue of the skin of the figure was of the perfect whiteness of the snow.   A masked lake? "Yet for all these accumulated associations, with whatever is sweet, and honorable, and sublime, there yet lurks an elusive something in the innermost idea of this hue, which strikes more panic to the soul than that redness which affrights in blood." --So Herman Melville, with a deadly pallor, contemplating the ream of pages he had yet to fill before his sea could roll on over whale and Pequod, and the crisp gray fin of a colophon appear.
	Line 14	regolith Moon-soil; the soft, fine, ashlike gray dust covering much of the lunar surface, which may also include larger rock-fragments, ejecta, and (according to Murray, Malin, Greeley, Earthlike Planets) "glass from imapct melt."
	Line 22	AM VIVID....LOOK BARN This ghostly anagram (and the others in lines 742, 746, 756, and 843) should be read aloud in a booming Cambridge-and-Petersburg accent.
	Line 28	QUARTZ HIVING DAMP. FLOW BACK, SEX JOY! Apparently supplied by an invisible tourguide, this pangram--like THE QUICK BROWN FOX JUMPED OVER THE LAZY DOG--is a near anagram of the alphabet, containing all 26 letters with as few repetitions as possible.
	Line 30	Its bent N pointed toward me; W A W is two Vs (see line 843), and the compass notation for West. The pointer seems to be broken, or seized in ice: look in vain for the wind.
	Line 37	Liquid Crystal A liquid crystal display, or LCD. Viscous crystals (dark honey, over ice, with lemon, is a favorite drink of mine): often birefringent, easily polarized. The powdery snow outside shone briefly with diffraction halos as a light was switched on; off.
	Line 71	another continent The curtain opens on an iron winter. Either this is a vision of Russia, or the narrator has taken an extremely long walk.
	Line 78	Yellow Delicious Not just an apple from an old Dutch still life (pear, flies): this particular strain originated as a genetic sport--by chance mutation.
	Line 84	The complex genitalia of the blues "The extremely complex genitalia of the blues," appears in Chapter 3 of Brian Boyd's biography Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years--"Blues" being a nickname for a subfamily of North American butterfly. For a closer look at the "two ambered hooks" of the male Lycædes butterfly's "sculptured sex," see also Vladimir Nabokov's English poem "A Discovery," 1945.
	Line 93	ghostly snow Especially ghostly, since Moscow summers are not cold; snow is a feature of the vision--a common metaphor's literal-minded extension. The narrator knows nothing about Russia.
	Line 94	Three died (August, 1991). The statement issued on August 19, 1991 by the State Committee for the State of Emergency in the U.S.S.R. included the following passages:     Compatriots, citizens of the Soviet Union, we are addressing you at the grave, critical hour for the destinies of the Motherland and our peoples. A mortal danger has come to loom large over our great Motherland. The policy reforms, launched at Mikhail S. Gorbachev's initiative and designed as a means to insure the country's dynamic development and the democratization of social life, have entered for several reasons a blind alley. Lack of faith, apathy and despair have replaced the original enthusiasm and hopes. Authorities at all levels have lost the population's trust. Politicking has replaced in public life concern for the faith of the Motherland and the citizen. Malicious outrage against all state institutes is being imposed. The country has in fact become ungovernable. Never before in national history has the propaganda of sex and violence assumed such a scale, threatening the health and lives of future generations. Millions of people are demanding measures against the octopus of crime and glaring immorality. We intend to restore law and order straight away, end bloodshed, declare war without mercy to the criminal world, eradicate shameful phenomena discrediting our society and degrading Soviet citizens. We shall clean the streets of our cities from criminal elements and put an end to the arbitrariness of the squanderers of the national wealth. We are calling upon the workers, peasants, working intelligentsia, all Soviet people to restore, within the briefest period of time, labor discipline and order, and raise the level of production in order to march ahead. Our life and the future of our children and grandchildren, the fate of the Motherland depend on this. We are a peace-loving country and shall undeviatingly honor all our commitments. We have no claims to make against anybody. We want to live in peace and friendship with all. But we firmly declare that no one will ever be allowed to encroach upon our sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity. All attempts to talk the language of diktat to our country, no matter where they may come from, will be resolutely suppressed... We call on all true patriots, people of good will, to put an end to the present time of uncertainty. We call on all citizens of the Soviet Union to grow aware of their duty before the country and render all possible assistance to the State Committee for the State of Emergency in the U.S.S.R. and efforts to pull the country out of crisis.   The initial response to the coup by then-U.S.-president George Herbert Walker Bush was to enunciate his "gut instinct" that Gennadi I. Yanayev (State Committee for the State of Emergency in the U.S.S.R. member and selfappointed "acting president" of the U.S.S.R.) had "a certain commitment to reform." Mikhail Gorbachev, held incommunicado at his Crimean dacha, was said to be "undergoing treatment...very tired after these many years! ...As soon as he feels better, [Gorbachev] will again take up his office." Tuesday, August 20, 1991: hundreds of thousands of Russians ignored a military curfew to demonstrate in favor of a defiant Boris Yeltsin ("You can erect a throne of bayonets, but you cannot sit on it for long"), and against the reactionary coup of August 19. Impromptu barricades included bathtubs, sheet metal, logs, desks, and at least one kitchen sink. Before dawn on August 21, tanks and armored personnel carriers came up against large crowds of unyielding citizens--some armed with Molotov cocktails. Three civilians were killed in the confrontation, but the military of the Soviet Union withdrew from the area. This exchange took place before the Supreme Soviet of the Russian Republic on August 23, 1991, shortly after the coup failed:     Yeltsin:   "Now, for a bit of relaxation, let me sign a decree banning the activity of the Russian Communist Party."   Gorbachev:   "Boris Nikolayevich... I think you'll be--I don't know what you're signing there."   Yeltsin:   "There, it's been signed!"
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