Post by Jeff on May 26, 2021 13:07:50 GMT -5
(1) Encirclement, clew, connection. Needed for survival, living and dead. Needed to escape Laos: protective pepper circle, circling Air Rescue Team, cable jungle penetrator clew. Needed to survive cancer: O’ed to Peggy Jean encirclement. Surgeon Dr. Taylor Floyd = tailor = clew? Needed to be remembered after death: included autobiography in chest, jars / bells, otherwise what was the point. A memorial is just a thing without a connection.
(2) Treasure hunt. Hidden treasure chest and would-be grave. Forrest’s memorial, Forrest’s tomb. Hidden: need ball of string clew to thread a tract to find it. Find connection. We searchers not only connect to the treasure chest by following the clew that is the poem but also to Forrest. Hiding site is his tomb: as much searching for Forrest (remembrance / memorial of Forrest) as for treasure chest.
(3) Epilogue. Forrest laments that the only thing on the internet about his father is his place in “Hillcrest cemetery:” “row 4 of block 23.” Touched so many lives and that’s it. Now just some dead guy’s grave (Surviving Myself). French soldiers. Vietnam memorial. Forgetting, forgotten. Sad!
(4) Searched for his father on Google. Searched the web. Search = hunt. Web = woven, braid, ball of string, clew. Provides the connection. Google web search revealed the location of his father’s grave. Treasure hunt = search for Forrest’s would-be grave. Interesting…
(5) Forrest contemplated having his “bones rest forever” at the treasure chest site. In particular, “plotted” to die there. In context, plotted = schemed. But plot = burial site, plot = map, and plot = locate with coordinates. All intriguing in a treasure hunt context. The poem is a map. All the lines cross.
(6) Plotted schemed, burial site, map, locate with coordinates. Recall Epilogue: searched the web to find the coordinates of his father’s burial site: row 4, block 23. Treasure hunt = plotted by plotting plot on a plot? Perhaps.
(7) My War for Me: Forrest laments that “there was nothing left for us but the memory of 58,266 Americans whose names have been etched, chronologically by time of death, on that shiny black war memorial.” Vietnam War memorial, proxy graveyard. Names in orderly array, coordinates. Plotted.
(8) Weaker: Surviving Myself cemetery was “just a block north of [Forrest’s] house.” City blocks = orderly array, coordinates. With discussion of a graveyard. Plotted.
(9) Important Literature: Border’s clerk braids brought Forrest to the exact spot. Synecdoche ball of string clew connected Forrest to exact spot. Where? Bookstore. Rows of shelving, arrays = coordinates. Plotted.
(10) Forrest commented: “Read the clues in my poem over and over and study maps of the Rocky Mountains. Try to marry the two. The treasure is out there waiting for the person who can make all the lines cross in the right spot.” Marry = partnership, union, connection. Interesting. All the lines crossing = plotting. Interesting.
You can probably see where I’m going with this. Plotting = crossing lines = the letter X, Greek letter chi, asterisk. Archetypal pirate map. Simple. Kid stuff, perhaps not getting there, but kid stuff in the end. Not a riddle or cipher, not even really a puzzle. But at least it wouldn’t be as trite a solution as simply following a list of vague directions. Some redeeming quality.
Making the lines cross. Literal or figurative? Forrest could definitely have been speaking figuratively. Even if you wholeheartedly agree with me that Forrest intentionally developed the circle, clew, eye/I/1, X/chi, sun/star/asterisk motifs and symbols in TTOTC, it doesn’t mean (1) that it is related to the solution in any way or (2) that it is simply a figurative representation of what we’re doing in a treasure hunt.
If literal, how could this work? One possibility is that we create lines on a map by using the poem. Triangulate, if you will. Forrest’s comment in #10 suggests that is the case: the searcher makes it happen. Another possibility is that we look for an existing X/asterisk on a map (e.g. seeing the Bighorn Medicine Wheel on Google Earth). Searcher would simply discover it, a weaker form of making it happen. Favor former.
What about the blaze? This fits very well with the idea of an asterisk. Asterisk = etymologically star and star = imaginatively blaze. Forrest used a star (the sun), his mountain man wisdom, to find home in Looking for Lewis and Clark, looking for a southerly direction (conventionally downward on most maps). In an ironic twist, it's Forrest’s horse Lightning that guides him home: (1) horse’s name is evocative of blaze, (2) horse’s name invokes the wisdom of a "Eureka!" moment, and (3) horse’s head has a literal blaze on it. In another ironic twist, Forrest “very wisely” wadded the Forest Service map to make a blazing fire on his first night out camping. In parallel usage, star-like things (lines crossing! = asterisk!) is associated with localization. Blazes!
If (and that’s a capital IF) Forrest expects us to literally cross lines on a map, then how exactly does he expect us to do it? The mechanics of it. The literal million dollar question. I suspect it has something to do with the stated grand purpose of life Forrest articulates in My War for Me: “if I cannot enrich those with whom I interact each day and cause them to be better for my having passed their view, then I have wasted my turn.” Treasure hunt = enrich others. Good one, Forrest. I’s interacting = crossing lines? (Recall also: I touched them with my eyes and became part of it; inverted sky and eye imagery of Philadelphia caper.) Which I’s? People important to Forrest, his great banquet table of history. Peggy, for sure.
Thoughts? Something click? Or left a bad taste in your mouth? Anything else to incorporate?
(2) Treasure hunt. Hidden treasure chest and would-be grave. Forrest’s memorial, Forrest’s tomb. Hidden: need ball of string clew to thread a tract to find it. Find connection. We searchers not only connect to the treasure chest by following the clew that is the poem but also to Forrest. Hiding site is his tomb: as much searching for Forrest (remembrance / memorial of Forrest) as for treasure chest.
(3) Epilogue. Forrest laments that the only thing on the internet about his father is his place in “Hillcrest cemetery:” “row 4 of block 23.” Touched so many lives and that’s it. Now just some dead guy’s grave (Surviving Myself). French soldiers. Vietnam memorial. Forgetting, forgotten. Sad!
(4) Searched for his father on Google. Searched the web. Search = hunt. Web = woven, braid, ball of string, clew. Provides the connection. Google web search revealed the location of his father’s grave. Treasure hunt = search for Forrest’s would-be grave. Interesting…
(5) Forrest contemplated having his “bones rest forever” at the treasure chest site. In particular, “plotted” to die there. In context, plotted = schemed. But plot = burial site, plot = map, and plot = locate with coordinates. All intriguing in a treasure hunt context. The poem is a map. All the lines cross.
(6) Plotted schemed, burial site, map, locate with coordinates. Recall Epilogue: searched the web to find the coordinates of his father’s burial site: row 4, block 23. Treasure hunt = plotted by plotting plot on a plot? Perhaps.
(7) My War for Me: Forrest laments that “there was nothing left for us but the memory of 58,266 Americans whose names have been etched, chronologically by time of death, on that shiny black war memorial.” Vietnam War memorial, proxy graveyard. Names in orderly array, coordinates. Plotted.
(8) Weaker: Surviving Myself cemetery was “just a block north of [Forrest’s] house.” City blocks = orderly array, coordinates. With discussion of a graveyard. Plotted.
(9) Important Literature: Border’s clerk braids brought Forrest to the exact spot. Synecdoche ball of string clew connected Forrest to exact spot. Where? Bookstore. Rows of shelving, arrays = coordinates. Plotted.
(10) Forrest commented: “Read the clues in my poem over and over and study maps of the Rocky Mountains. Try to marry the two. The treasure is out there waiting for the person who can make all the lines cross in the right spot.” Marry = partnership, union, connection. Interesting. All the lines crossing = plotting. Interesting.
You can probably see where I’m going with this. Plotting = crossing lines = the letter X, Greek letter chi, asterisk. Archetypal pirate map. Simple. Kid stuff, perhaps not getting there, but kid stuff in the end. Not a riddle or cipher, not even really a puzzle. But at least it wouldn’t be as trite a solution as simply following a list of vague directions. Some redeeming quality.
Making the lines cross. Literal or figurative? Forrest could definitely have been speaking figuratively. Even if you wholeheartedly agree with me that Forrest intentionally developed the circle, clew, eye/I/1, X/chi, sun/star/asterisk motifs and symbols in TTOTC, it doesn’t mean (1) that it is related to the solution in any way or (2) that it is simply a figurative representation of what we’re doing in a treasure hunt.
If literal, how could this work? One possibility is that we create lines on a map by using the poem. Triangulate, if you will. Forrest’s comment in #10 suggests that is the case: the searcher makes it happen. Another possibility is that we look for an existing X/asterisk on a map (e.g. seeing the Bighorn Medicine Wheel on Google Earth). Searcher would simply discover it, a weaker form of making it happen. Favor former.
What about the blaze? This fits very well with the idea of an asterisk. Asterisk = etymologically star and star = imaginatively blaze. Forrest used a star (the sun), his mountain man wisdom, to find home in Looking for Lewis and Clark, looking for a southerly direction (conventionally downward on most maps). In an ironic twist, it's Forrest’s horse Lightning that guides him home: (1) horse’s name is evocative of blaze, (2) horse’s name invokes the wisdom of a "Eureka!" moment, and (3) horse’s head has a literal blaze on it. In another ironic twist, Forrest “very wisely” wadded the Forest Service map to make a blazing fire on his first night out camping. In parallel usage, star-like things (lines crossing! = asterisk!) is associated with localization. Blazes!
If (and that’s a capital IF) Forrest expects us to literally cross lines on a map, then how exactly does he expect us to do it? The mechanics of it. The literal million dollar question. I suspect it has something to do with the stated grand purpose of life Forrest articulates in My War for Me: “if I cannot enrich those with whom I interact each day and cause them to be better for my having passed their view, then I have wasted my turn.” Treasure hunt = enrich others. Good one, Forrest. I’s interacting = crossing lines? (Recall also: I touched them with my eyes and became part of it; inverted sky and eye imagery of Philadelphia caper.) Which I’s? People important to Forrest, his great banquet table of history. Peggy, for sure.
Thoughts? Something click? Or left a bad taste in your mouth? Anything else to incorporate?
