Scrapbook 164 Hoopla

I'm going to try and condense what I'm thinking about with this Scrapbook, but it's going to be hard. Last night, when I got home from work, I looked closer at the photos, and did some experimenting with a few areas of interest on my photo-editing program on my Mac. I did notice some similarities between a couple spots on the picture and shapes colored in on pictures in the book...

However, I have to concede they might be coincidence. When I tried several different methods to detect tampering, the only definite ones I could find were around the edges and some of the black shading in certain interior spots. To me, the "paring" of the picture was more sloppily done than what F usually would normally allow to pass. It wasn't nearly as "subtle" as things hidden in photos in the past. So, I have to wonder if this was F just playing around, knowing the attention the photos would get.

But, then again, he did ask a question at the end of the SB, and I've always believed that when F asks a question, it's important to try to answer it. He asked, "...what else does it know?"

I remember the several references in TTotC that tell you what knows--the trees know, the grass knows, etc. So, this piece of driftwood may also know a secret for us to discover.

I didn't spend a lot of time on it last night, but I found this interesting...

Or could even be from this page on TTotC (a page which specifically gives a hint to look at the trees) :

Which also looks like this on the driftwood (darker swan or duck shaped shadow):

And this looks like Camel Rock, a little:

And this little guy looks like he's losing his hat as he heads quickly downstream in his canoe:

Then there's this half shaded square in the dark part of this view (the black edge to the right also looks like an outline of a landscape):

Then there's this lion:

I've found a few more oddities, but I'll save those for later, because I want to talk about the words in this SB, too. I feel that the words and the photos are in cooperation with each other, so you can't examine one without the other. I'll try and concentrate on things people haven't already mentioned on hoD or CC. If it's already been mentioned by someone else, forgive me...I don't have time to read every single comment ever posted on the blogs.

First, the author of the poem says that he believes the only part the driftwood art plays is that of an "olden sailing ship." He confirms it with the definitive statement, "and nothing more." 

But as he turns the piece and looks at it from various angles, other possibilities occur to him. He considers whether it could be a "desperate soul," standing upon a sodden knoll, wet from tears or rain, searching for his missing "Candy Ann." He said she lately had departed a distant port, and that "no one was there to pay her toll." 

This just oozes mythology. The rivers Styx, Acheron, Lethe, and Cocytus all converge at the center of the underworld on a great marsh (sodden knoll?). The river Styx was said to be the boundary between the underworld and Earth. The ferryman, Charon, required a toll from the newly dead (departed) to cross the river to gain entrance into the underworld. If the soul did not pay the toll, they could not cross the river. It was up to the relatives of the deceased (departed) to place a toll in the mouth of the corpse. So, Candy Ann died alone, without family to place the toll for Charon in her mouth. 

So, the question is, was the "desperate soul" already dead and waiting for Candy Ann, who couldn't pay the toll and was therefore stuck on the wrong side of the river? 

Much of the rest of the poem has already been talked about on the blogs, but the last stanza wraps everything up by the author realizing that the driftwood plays many different parts, depending on the "wanderings" of his mind. It revealed a new and wondrously different secret every time he looked at it, and that's just the way it was. He couldn't control his imagination, which took him on new journeys  at every turn.

Then the poem of a different font begins, and some words/phrases stand out. There are two uses of the word "bare." Another interesting word is "vestige," which means "mark." There are the words "paragon" and "pare." 

"Paragon" means "a person or thing regarded as a perfect example of a particular quality." In this case, it is a "paragon of expression." However, the etymology of "paragon" originally came from the Italian word paragone, which meant "touchstone to test gold." And that word came from paragonare, which meant "to test on a touchstone, compare," which came from the Greek word parakonan, which meant "to sharpen, whet," which comes from "para"--"on the side" and "akone"--"to be sharp, pointed."

There's the phrase, "...the forces of oceanic turbulence combined..." meaning "more than one oceanic force." Maybe that's a gentle push to Google what those forces might be? 

Is any of this useful? That, I cannot say, because I'm focusing on something else.