Structure of Cities of the Plain	Glass	6/3/2009
Yea, the sparrow hath found an house, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, even thine altars, O LORD of hosts, my King, and my God. (Psalm 84:3 KJV) To follow the thread of the leitmotifical, repeating cycles within Cities of the Plain, I would note the neat connection with the mud cones found in two separate, but similar, passages. Some excellent mirroring taking place between these, I think. The first is found on p. 145 when John Grady Cole and Billy Parham ride up to Bell Springs so JGC can show Billy the abandoned "old adobe" he plans to fix up so that he and Magdalena will have a nice, clean place in which to live after they get married: "The floor was of packed clay beaten and oiled and it was strewn with debris, old clothes and foodtins and curious small cones of mud that had formed from water percolating down through the mud roof and dripping through the latillas to stand about like the work of old-world termites." (my italics) The termite reference is interesting and I'll comment on that in a bit. The connecting passage falls on p. 280 where we find Billy and the dreamweaver nested in underneath the concrete highway overpass. Much like JGC studying the dilapidated old house 50 years earlier, we see Billy: "He sat pondering the forms of the concrete overhead. The nests of the swallows clung in the high corners like colonies of small mud hornos inverted there." A few thoughts I'd have on this are that termites are social insects and swallows are social birds. JGC is, in effect, hoping to build a nest for the family he hopes one day to love and raise in the old adobe. We all know how that turned out, but his heart was in the right place, his intentions good. Termite mounds amazingly complex structures. They contain tunnels, which nicely connects to the concrete structure where we find the homeless Billy in the Epilogue. Colonies. Getting along and working together. Sharing a couple of crackers. Decay and doomed enterprises. Shelter tubes. Swallows, mentioned in the Epilogue passage, are symbolically ripe as this bird is known for its long journeys and migrations, much like Billy and the many miles he's come in his 78 years. Swallows have a close relationship to humans and often build their nests under man-made objects. The two passages are set in springtime and the swallow has long been a symbol of spring or an early sign of summer's approach. I assume the "old adobe" passage from earlier in the book is takes place in the spring because JGC and Billy tend and mend the "new calves on the ground." John Grady's movements as he "passed on through" the old house in the sunlight somewhat prefigure the passage of trucks and their disappearing and reappearing shadows at the concrete structure 50 years later. A couple final notes. I found it interesting how McCarthy described the formation of the "curious small cones" at the old house as the water percolated down through the mud roof. A swallow would not build a nest in such a place as water is the enemy to their mud nests and water always wins. Last, the descriptions by McCarthy of those mud cones and the Interstate structure with its spiral curves very much put me in mind of the incredible painting The 'Little' Tower of Babel by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Concentric rings, spirals, mounds and cones. "curving away, clustered and rising without capital or pediment like the ruins of some older order standing in the dusk." (Cities 289) Peter

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