ideas

Immortality

As of yet there is no Fountain of Youth, and considering the Holy Grail is more a myth than a genuine relic immortality is a far reach past sanity–or so the world likes to think. But we are not strictly discussing the immortality of life.

Death can grant the most rewarding immortality: a legacy.

There are legacies in all aspects of life–even those that carry the spark along on a smaller scale. They float around us every day: the bronze commemorative plaque on the park bench; the statue of the town founder in the center of the local shopping outlet; the entertaining franchise of films or books or music which passes its torch along to a worthy successor. All of them are children proud of their parental origins who have passed on to them their traits of brilliance and innovation to satisfy the world further.

No matter how large or small sunlight shines upon a mark. It may be a scorch in the soil or even a footprint on the beach. And should it be a crater in the strand of time the light will shine no brighter nor dimmer, as the lightest flick to a house of cards sets it fluttering down.

Legacies are timeless artifacts of contributions to our special swirling bowling ball: the ball morphs from the paintbrush strokes that splatter upon it; moving like a whirring dynamo the ball has little time to sort out the colors, and so it absorbs them all into a single shade of gorgeous indifference.

Change is welcome on our paint ball–one need only take their brush and dip it in a can and slather a smiley face on the green ocean. Forever the smiley face will swim along the colorful coast towards the next dripping brush and the next and the next.

Legacies are not so awful when compared to immortality.

Think daily,

A Southpaw

The Dumas Legacy

Most of the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is classic for its literary and real world references and allegories; and so it is no surprise the most suspenseful section of the novel imitate works from French author Alexandre Dumas–the master of the adventure novel, whose works range from the renowned The Three Musketeers to The Count of Monte Cristo.

A string of Structuralism and Semiotics follows through Chapters 34 to 40; constantly are Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer comparing the prison escape attempts of fictional characters to their methods of springing Jim from the Phelps’ shed. Tom proposes one tactic: “…when…[Jim]wants to send any little…message to let the world know…he can write it on the bottom of a tin plate…and throw it out of the window. The Iron Mask always done that…” (Twain. 243); this of course referencing The Man in the Iron Mask (1848-50) by Alexandre Dumas; and a later reference to the Chateau d’If in The Count Of Monte Cristo (1845), “…look at one of them prisoners in…the Castle Deef, in the harbor of Marseilles, that dug himself out…” (Twain. 246).

The boys are using their fantastical minds to seek out ways to free Jim; however, the ideas they produce are generally more time consuming than a simpler form of action, pointed out by Huck as they are digging a hole with case-knives, “[t]his ain’t no thirty-seven year job, this is a thirty-year job…”(Twain. 247). As with other children they are concerned with the undying glory and the shocked reactions gained from the captors–a classic trait of a couple of imaginative young boys hunting for recognition.

Adventures of the Dumas novels are paralleled nicely with the numerous imitating scenes–the flinging of the plate and the digging out of a hole with case-knives among others–and so contribute to the theme of young playfulness and naivety which pairs the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn next to such a book as The Three Musketeers, in which young protagonist D’Artagnan is a naive musketeer fighting alongside his experienced partners who drag him out of constant trouble.

Think daily,

A Southpaw

The Apple Falls Far From The Tree?

Pap Finn–the abusive father of Huckleberry Finn; not abusive in the sense of beatings, but rather a mentally insulting abuse: he was dealt a bad hand in life; his son was dealt a hand of triple aces; he wants to steal those triple aces out of his son’s hands and pass him a rotten deck. The same cards for each man. The same troubles for each man.

Huck’s cards, in this case, education and reading and writing, are to Pap a bunch of “…hifalut’n foolishness…” (Twain. 21). and all his son is accomplishing is “…puttin’ on frills…” (Twain. 22). He cannot stand to see his son best him–a universal reaction of fathers to their sons as their child grows beyond their mold to experience life personally.

Sons model themselves after their fathers. They are expected to see a role model in their parent, and when these expectations fall short what else does the father do than try to change himself in the eyes of his son; so the son can in turn turn over his own leaf and go out into society a responsible man, so says Pap Finn, “I’ll learn people to bring up a boy to put on airs…and let on to be better’n…his own father…” (Twain. 21).

This situation flips in the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

To the casual reader it is clear Pap Finn loathes his son’s good fortune and his carelessness towards all things homely–the uneducated backwoods lifestyle of Pap Finn. He does so because of one reason: the widow, a woman who “…put[s] in her shovel about…things[s]…ain’t none of her business.” (Twain. 21). She has taught Huck how to read and write; how to be civilized; and how to speak grammatically correct; and since these qualities were not easily afforded to Pap Finn he is bitter about his turn of the cards and so pursues a nasty path of guilting his son into giving him liquor money.

Apply the symbiotic father-eat-son relationship to the current world and the first and most prominent example is immigrant families: a son is granted an education of higher standing than his father; the father is outraged at his spread of knowledge and good fortune; and both men argue over their expanded stances on life–a moment forever repeating in history.

Such is the same between Huckleberry Finn and Pap Finn. Once the son receives education and traces the shape of his corner of the world he wants to do all he can to escape; even if that includes leaving his father a duller man, which is how it appears to the latter.

All is indicative of Structuralism and Semiotics.

Think daily,

A Southpaw

Familiarity In A Woman’s World

Intertwining the backwoods war of the Grangerfords and the Sheperdsons is the tale of a young woman poet and painter taken abruptly from her craft forever; she was Emmeline Grangerford and painted and sketched morose images of laboring women surrounded wholly by death–this is indicative of Gender Studies and Queer Theory.

This is how one of Emmeline’s paintings is described, “…a woman in a small dress…[and]…a large black scoop-shovel bonnet with a black veil…[and]…leaning pensive on a tombstone…under a weeping willow…” (Twain. 104). The present darkness parallels that of any painting by Goya–the grim atmosphere and the use of darker shades to convey hopelessness–and in paralleling Goya her painting is received with familiarity in technique by the reader.

In the early 1900s there was hardly familiarity in a woman’s world.

If a woman wished to be an artist she must then have published under a pseudonym, that, or found a company willing to cross a boundary in accepting her work. Notable exceptions are Mary Shelley and Virginia Woolf, among others; and of the two Shelley is renowned for the novel Frankenstein (1818) and its Gothic themes of death and rebirth, which were ideas still in foundation when she wrote the novel, and which many believed a woman to hardly be credited for.

Much neither changed nor improved up into the age of Emmeline Grangerford; and it is in this section that the reader must imagine the future of her works had she lived to publish them. Though they are connected aesthetically to works of Goya there is little in the book to suggest she had had much success in establishing her own artistic identity: “…[she] made poetry…when she was alive, and it didn’t seem right…there warn’t nobody to make some about her…” (Twain. 106).

Poor luck was unfortunately a taboo on women of the time. The closest they came to actual benefiting labor was in the household and, specifically, the kitchen; not until the beginnings of World War I in 1917 did they acquire a societal role.

Emmeline Grangerford is described as a prodigy, one that may have seen success later in her lifetime: “If [she] could make poetry like that before she was fourteen…ain’t no telling what she could a done by-and-by.” (Twain. 106). She is also symbolizes the struggling woman in the predominately male century of the 1900s.

Think daily,

A Southpaw

A Modernized Romeo and Juliet

In the sections prior to the meeting with the Duke and the Dauphin, specifically the conflict of Chapters 18 and 19, the story is taken to a backwoods war zone–the first family being the Grangerfords, and the second the Shepardsons; and who is stuck in the middle but poor Huckleberry Finn, who of course lands with the Grangerfords.

To start off there is a hint of the critical theory Structuralism and Semiotics in these chapters; it should be an obvious one–simply put, the American Civil War, which occurred several years before Mark Twain published his novel, but is nonetheless referenced covertly; as well a certain romantic tragedy penned by William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet.

The Grangerfords and the Sheperdsons are two feudal families killing off each member of the opposite clan, described by the Grangerford boy, Buck, as a feud, describing it to Huck–“…a feud is this way …man has a quarrel with another man, and kills him;…[the] other man’s brother kills him…and by-and-by everybody’s killed off…there ain’t no more feud…”(Twain. 110). In the case of allegorical references this feud in the backwoods reflects the durational nature of the Civil War between the North and the South; then there is also the secretive romance to consider.

Love springs between two members of either family–Sophia Grangerford and Harney Sheperdson–in a manner that is kept under wraps until Huck delivers a secret note to Miss Sophia; one can notice a similar approach to the taboo romance in Romeo and Juliet, as either family comes from separate lifestyles and are judgmental of outsiders to their customs. Countering the ending of the play, however, in the novel the lovers live through their escape; and a bewildered Huck is informed by a black servant of their travels: “…run off to git married to dat young Harney Sheperdson…so dey spec’.”( Twain. 116).

As far the reader is concerned the lovers break free of their authoritarian families, which is as well the summation of Romeo and Juliet, seeing as how those lovers escape from the strictness of the living world into the realm of the peaceful dead.

To touch lastly on the feudal relationship between the families, much can be said about its parallel patterning to the Civil War–the warring families are silhouettes of the armies of the North and the South, and Colonel Grangerford is an imitation of President Lincoln, seen by his description: “[He]…was very tall and slim…and…had the thinnest kind of lips[;]…his forehead was high…” (Twain. 108). Obviously the Grangerfords represent the North; the Sheperdsons the South.

Think daily,

A Southpaw

Is There An Afterlife?–A Post-Hole Digging (#1)

I don’t belong here, we gotta move on dear escape from this afterlife…

Afterlife-Avenged Sevenfold

Consider the end of your life…

Of course, that does not sound appealing, and there is no reason why it should; but perhaps a speculation is due once a year. Now, we are not here to discuss the end per say, but the arguable beginning; that stage of comfort, or discomfort, after death–the afterlife.

Is there one?

A question which has, for most of history, remained unanswered–for good or for bad. There are cultural references springing to your mind right now about this phase; most of them detailing its supposed inhabitants…spirits, more commonly known as ghosts…and then there are their rotten doppelgängers, the demons; but those are best left well alone.

In these outlets, the ghosts expressed are always separate–meaning no one interpretation can ever be the exact same as its prior. Consider Casper the Friendly Ghost, a white blur who speaks and acts out movements; he is not the same as the devouring spirit from Poltergeist, not even if comparing their both being ghosts. One chats, the other haunts. One appears, the other lurks…

I would like to tell you a story about the afterlife, to describe to you the vividness of these spirits and their baffling sense of wrong and right in a world in which they once lived and ate and slept…but, no evidence has presented itself.

Yes, no ghost has appeared to me, shadowy or solid, and it disappoints me for one reason–how can I ever know what is beyond this world without waiting for that eventual succumbing? How can I know if there is an actual afterlife?

I could listen to those who have seen it. I could watch videos of supposed sightings, and, like the mass, claim the kitchen cabinet creaked open by way of an otherworldly hand snapping out from its barrier and reaching so slightly for that brass handle.

But, also like the mass, I will come to forget those.

Somewhere out here, or perhaps out there, anywhere, is tangible evidence.

Somewhere out here, or perhaps out there, anywhere, is a true sighting.

Somewhere out here, or perhaps out there, anywhere, is an actual entity.

I want to believe–in an afterlife, as do so many others; but to do that I must cross this chasm of lousy falsities and satires to reach an honest telling of a story or a sighting near impossible to deny.

Already I believe there are ghosts, those are not too difficult to grasp once you’ve seen enough movies and read enough books…but the place from which they materialize is a tougher trial–one I hope has been completed by a lucky few who have seen a shred of the unnatural and the unbelievable.

Maybe they are real…maybe they have never been more than campfire stories, but I guarantee if they do exist, then they will remain hidden as long as we stand around waiting for a mystical sign in the sky, or our bedroom closet…they likely have far more creative ways of communication; and for an example of one simply watch Poltergeist.

Think daily,

A Southpaw