Bells and Dancing with the Millennium

[Jeff]

Do you think bells have a place in the correct solution?

Have they played a role in any of your solutions?

Why do you think Fenn wrote about bells?

I was never sure how to apply bells to the poem.  Nkown and I were considering a location with a memorial belltower and we could squint, wave hands, and make out something imaginatively akin to "locate the belltower" as reversed writing in the poem.  Fenn invokes bells overtly in Dancing with the Millennium and a bunch of times in the scrapbooks.  His buddy Sloane liked bells quite a bit.

Bells serve as memorials in TTOTC.  In Dancing with the Millennium, Fenn tells us of his fascination with history and wonders how to create something for posterity; instead of frittering away his time watching “Dancing with the Stars” (p.137), he is creating things for future generations—the titular “millennium”—to discover.   The idea expressed is one of the major messages in TTOTC: although it is our fate to be forgotten, “what can one person do that might impact life a thousand years from now?” (p.135).  As the passage of time leads to the dead—their lives and lessons learned—being forgotten, sharing with others or forming partnerships with others, particularly if done in a durable manner, is the best way to be remembered after death, even though that outcome is not ensured.   Taking a cue from Edna St. Vincent Millay's poem Second Fig “Safe upon the solid rock the ugly houses stand: Come and see my shining palace built upon the sand!” (p.136) and answering his My War for Me question “but what about those of us who are not great men?” (p.102), Fenn creates bronze bells and jars—durable mementos that “won't rust or deteriorate in any way” (p.137)—and buries them in order to not be forgotten by “caus[ing] momentary excitement in some future millennium” (p.139).  Importantly, “each one is signed and dated or there would be no point” (p.137) and, as if the point of remembrance hasn’t been made, this idea is reinforced with the inclusion of his autobiography in some of the bronze jars he created and buried.

We may briefly ponder the irony of Fenn's disparagement of Dancing with the Stars given his use of the asterisk/sun/star symbol.  Additionally, we might ponder how its related to the gypsy camp in Gypsy Magic, with dancing women around a fire and Fenn joining eyes and becoming "part of it" (p. 43).

Dancing with the Millennium's “if you should ever think of me, a thousand years from now, please ring my bell so I will know” (p.137) recalls the Hemingway book For Whom the Bell Tolls, discussed in Important Literature.  That title derives from a John Donne sermon involving death knelling, a form of memorial.  It's certainly ironic that Fenn didn't care for the book, particularly as bells are an obvious surrogate for his hidden treasure chest (bronze, hidden, his memorial, contains his autobiography).  But the irony of his dislike for the book (ok, not the book per se, but the sermon from which its title is derived) doesn't stop there.  The meditation from which the title is derived shares some of the key messages in TTOTC: “no man is an island, entire of itself” and the associated verbiage relates to Fenn’s “each one is as important as the all, myself no less than any of them, and no more” (p.103); and “no man hath affliction enough that is not matured and ripened by it” is related to Fenn’s “only an experience can teach thoroughly and with a speed that is not always available in the classroom” (p.145).

For Whom the Bell Tolls

No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thine own
Or of thine friend's were.
Each man's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.                         —John Donne

Why horseshoes?  The example of horseshoe construction in Dancing with the Millennium—“for example, do you know how long a piece of iron is needed to make a horseshoe?” (p.135)—also relates to bells through sound imagery as “the pinging sound of his pounding hammer” (p.136) and, arguably, through a resemblance in their general contour.   The “pounding hammer” (p.136) of the horseshoe, the fact that “one must pound [bronze] with a sledgehammer,” and construction of the bells “clankers”—hammers—with “large copper nails taken from 17th century Spanish galleons” (p.137) further ties these objects into the same class.

Are bells subtly alluded to at the very beginning (first paragraphs!) and end of the book (last paragraph!)?  Given this discussion of bells, the phrases “one of my natural instincts is to embellish just a little” and “please don’t fret too much if some of the things I say don't appeal to you” (emphasis added) take on new meaning (p.4).  At the opposite end of the book, Fenn’s concluding paragraph begins with “the past will always be contradictory when told by one person at a time” (emphasis added), if we substitute the homophone “tolled” (p.147).  I find this last point particularly interesting given the major message of the necessity of others as found in both TTOTC and John Donne's sermon.

As both horseshoes and the stylized contour of bells resemble the Greek letter omega, we can next consider the two omegas found above the Colophon.  First recall that the Epilogue (and book) concludes with "then there will be no past" (p.147).  No past, no end.  There may be no end if we are remembered, memorialized.  As the Greek letter omega, the last in its alphabet, is commonly used to refer to an end or the last of something, two omegas could be read as "the end to the end."  Fenn's Dancing with the Millennium bells, linked to omega through the horseshoe and their stylized bell contour, support this idea as bells serve a memorial purpose.  Just like his hidden treasure chest and associated treasure hunt.

Something else to ponder: is this all also related to the clew of Gold and More?

[Jenny]

I don't think the bells played a roll in the solution...just my opinion though..... my thoughts were that Forrest buried them just as another way to leave 'something'....

[goldhunter]

My opinion is bells did not.

Horseshoes? I believe there was a Horseshoe Lake VERY near.

Just my opinion.

[Jeff]

Hi Jenny and goldhunter, I agree it seems that bells are not involved directly in the solution.

His use of bells in TTOTC is then more as a surrogate for the hidden treasure chest.  As Jenny said, something else left behind.  It is curious that their bronze-ness and memorial-ness are so emphasized, making them seem like a perfect vehicle to reveal some information about the treasure chest.  That could be proximity to Horseshoe Lake, goldhunter said.  I would suggest the not very insightful or useful notion that perhaps it's on public land ("land owned by the American people").  However, unlike what Jack has told us about the treasure chest, the bells are buried--so clearly it's not a one-to-one relationship.

It's so contrived--what's it about?  That someone showed Fenn how to make a horseshoe and then later in the chapter that Fenn show someone how to making a screw on lid for his jars.  Taking these items as other ways to talk about the treasure chest without directly talking about the treasure chest, we can recall how his "museum friend" showed him the history of that "Romanesque Lock Box" (capitalized latter words is odd; also that it held a "Book of Days" is odd because that's not a thing, although that term is evocative of a calendar or a memoir/autobiography, both of which can be described as a book of days in an imaginative way--hold onto that thought).

If the purpose of the horseshoe was another bell-like thing (pinging with a hammer repeatedly, as a bell rings; made of metal; conveyed construction secrets [albeit, that was for his jars, not bell]; historical association--7th Cavalry and Spanish galleon) and if the point of that was to emphasize the omega-like shape of a horseshoe and stylized contour of a generic bell (but not Fenn's pictured bells) and if that relates to the double omega above the colophon and if the double colophon then means "the end of the end," then...well that's a lot of "ifs".  But the buried bells do serve an "end to the end" function ("if you should ever think of me, a thousand years from now, please ring my bell so I will know"), so it isn't inconceivable, but still a bit of a stretch.

Anyhow, if all those ifs are valid, then could the ball of string be related to bells and horseshoe?  And, if so, does this possible connection help us with a solution?

The mysteriously lost ball of string from Gold and More is described as collected strings tied together end to end ("tie one end of the new piece of string onto the end of the last one").  As omega is an age old symbol for "end," this cues omega omega, for me at least.  Because this is rigorous mathematics (kidding), by the transitive relation, given the discussion above, ball of string = omega omega and bells/horseshoes = omega omega, then ball of string = bells/horseshoes.  We do have missing ball of string--one of his early in life hobbies--and missing bells--one of his late in life hobbies.  So there's that.  And it sure is curious that part of his hobby goes missing again--the stuff in the hidden treasure chest.

Why?  Again, it seems so contrived on his part.  However, it most likely is entirely contrived on my part.  It could be artfulness on his part and have no relation to the solution to the treasure hunt.  It just seems like it would be squandered opportunity in such a little book with very small snapshots of his very long life.

I asked you to hold on to the thought of the not-a-thing "Book of Days."  Recall that Fenn brings up the postman when discussing his mom's reaction to the missing ball of string.  If treasure chest-ness = ball of string-ness in a conceptual sort of way, then might the reason Fenn invoked the postman and the not-a-thing "Book of Days" was to draw attention to the treasure hunt importance of the postmarks--which are dated/calendar things--found near the beginning of many of the chapters--which are memoir/autobiography things?