Thinking Out Loud (Formerly titled: The Rainbow)

How many people out there think the end of Forrest's rainbow is actually the arc that comes out after a rain? In the following pic, I am the one, sitting in the back, with a quizzical look on her face because so many people are raising their hands.

So, there's been a lot of talk on Dal's blog about all the colors in TToTC. It's really good discussion.

Every day, I look more and more carefully at the way Forrest says things, as well as the words he uses.

Like on Jenny's blog the other day...

Forrest spoke about using an inert gas to meld a ferrous and non-ferrous metal together. There's interesting information there, but what got me was that he made a fire poker with the head of a cow. Know what that is? It's a cow poke. Notice the pic? He rammed that cow poke into his library wall. I sent him an email that said either he got too enthusiastic smashing a bug, or that cow busted his head through the wall because he liked him so much. The first pic is from Jenny's blog. The second is from the California magazine article by Taylor Clark, The Everlasting Forrest Fenn. I circled the cow's head twice in the second picture to make sure you wouldn't miss it.

Anyway, you need to listen to not only what Forrest says, but how he says it. He tells you that in the very first paragraph of TToTC. 

But, back to colors. I've listed them all, I think. There are a couple meanings that elude me. I think I've figured out who John Charles represents, but I don't get the olive jar meaning, unless he's talking about stacking. Stacking is a brand new theory, that I've actually thought of just this second. Like, when Forrest says "drawing," could he mean "draw in g," "draw w in g," or even "draw ng?" I'll have to look into that tomorrow after work. Hmmmm...

This guy's name is John Charles...whatever.

I've got other theories for the word "drawing," but I'm trying (but evidently failing) to keep on the topic of the rainbow. 

Okay, so if a butterfly is really a flutterby, could a rainbow be something else? Maybe not a rearranging of letters, like in that example, but something like Eric's marrying housekeepers because they kept the house after the divorce?

Or maybe the "end of the rainbow" is a clue in itself. The end of the rainbow is ever drawing nigh. The end is Everard wing nigh = Everard's left wing. The end of the rainbow is Eric's left wing. Man, I could give so many references to the left wing, and wings in general...too bad I don't know how to fit it all together yet. 

Another theory about the rainbow is that the colors of the rainbow combine to make the color gray. On page 75 of TToTC, Forrest quotes from a poem his friend wrote about his wife, and Forrest said he'd address them to his wife as well.

There are a few anthropomorphous colors in that poem. Courage wears crimson, knowledge wears a "dress of note," and fame wears gold. Patience, however, wears a gray gown as she stays at home and weaves the cloth the others who "do and dare" wear. The key is to figure out which one of these is Peggy. 

Courage wears a crimson coat.

I assumed at first that Peggy was the gray, patient one who was patient and stayed at home weaving. But now, I'm not so sure. Forrest never really says outright. Maybe Peggy is all three, combined. Maybe we should look for a picture in the book of Peggy wearing a particular dress. Maybe Eric represents knowledge, because he wrote knowledgeable books of "large note." The chapter "Ode to Peggy Jean" may provide some answers. 

When I googled "dress of note," this was one of the images that came up. I had to LOL. I can think of nothing more mortifying than wearing this in public:

By the way, this post is classic Mindy Thought Process, because none of this is from my notes and is literally coming from out of the blue, out of nowhere. What comes out of the blue, out of nowhere--isn't that referring to an idiom? Like a lightning bolt from out of the blue? Have you noticed how many references there are to things coming from out of the blue and out of nowhere in TToTC? Sooo, maybe there's something blue on the map, that has blazed the trail we're to follow (see lightning illustration on previous post)?

Is this a question mark? Maybe!

Well, this post didn't end up highlighting some of the colors I've found in TToTC and their possible meanings. But it did give me something to think about later, and maybe it gave you the key to figuring out the poem. 

Nothing is as it seems. I'll say that til I die. A canyon may not be a canyon. A blaze may not be something you find on a tree or a rock. The home of Brown may not refer to anything we'd normally think of as "brown." Just because it's straightforward doesn't mean it's conventional.

All we have to know is where to start.