I recently borrowed a children’s book from my wife to use with my students. Today when I was putting it back, one of the other titles on her bookshelf caught my eye:
Lamb, Tales from Shakespeare. It’s a “cover,” or modified retelling, of another author’s work, simplified and somewhat bowdlerized so as to be suitable for the young children of a more educated generation than our own. Many important plays have been omitted entirely, including all of the histories and Julius Caesar (whence that “beware the ides” line we’ve gotten so much mileage out of). Note also the use of the word tale, subject of many tale/tail puns in the sync stream. The plural form made me think of the expression “Heads I win, tails you lose.” The tales you lose when all you’ve got is a modified Book of the Lamb.
I’m writing this in a cafe, and just after I’d written the above paragraph, with its “beware the ides” reference, a man walked in wearing a T-shirt so synchy that I just had to snap a surreptitious photo:
It says “Just stopped by to take some food” and has a picture of a bear raiding a refrigerator. Bill has associated the image of someone stealing from a refrigerator with “beware the Ides of March.” There are many folktales about how the bear used to have a long tail but lost it.
This bear’s tale is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.
A lamb’s tail is also a stub, interestingly enough.
Note added: The book I was returning when I saw Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare was, as it happens, a tale about a bear and a turtle.
The turtle is yet another animal notable for not having much of a tail. In fact, in Chinese, 龜笑鱉無尾 -- loosely, "The tortoise laughs at the turtle for having no tail" -- is a saying equivalent to the pot calling the kettle black.
Second note added: I found a better image of that T-shirt online. It just looks blue in the photo I took, but as you can see it's actually blue-green.
The fridge appears to be stocked mainly with watermelon, which is a pumpkin-adjacent fruit. See, for example, "Cucurbits from an alien land," which also mentions bears. In Chinese, pumpkin is 南瓜 ("southern cucurbit"), and watermelon is 西瓜 ("western cucurbit"). If, as we've been assuming, the pumpkins represent something stolen from the west, changing them to watermelons makes sense.
Yet another note added: When I went to Amazon to get an image of the cover of Bear and Turtle and the Great Lake Race, it suggested this as a related product:
How completely random is that? Apparently it's the last in a six-book series where it doesn't exactly fit in:
1. Yoga at the Zoo2. Mindfulness at the Park3. Yoga at the Museum4. Halloween Yoga5. Yoga at the Aquarium6. In Search of the Holy Grail
Here's the table of contents:
The eighth chapter, "Visit from Hermes the Owl," caught my eye.
Don't tell me I'm going to have to read this ridiculous book about a yoga-loving mouse helping farm animals find the Holy Grail.
11 comments:
Apparently there's a Hermes the Owl in Harry Potter as well.
https://harry-potter-compendium.fandom.com/wiki/Hermes
That 6th title in the series about the Holy Grail is so hilariously out of place. That was pretty funny.
The fact that the modified book of the "Lamb" is William Shakespeare is pretty good, I think. Shakespeare has come up in relation to the Rose Stone, specifically with the analogy of the Stone as a Spear (e.g., Brittany Spears), and Shakespeare means "One who brandishes a Spear".
When I looked at the book image, the first book that actually jumped out at me was the Harriet Tubman book. When I saw the name, my mind did that weird thing where I saw the name as Harriet Tub Man. As in, a Man associated with a Tub. I mean, I saw it instantly.
Tubs have been a symbol representing Baptism (e.g., Pigeon Needs a Bath, by one of your favorite authors), and so I saw Tub Man as representing this in multiple ways - a Man who is in the Tub getting baptized, but also offering a Tub.
The fact that it is "Harriet", make the link stronger, being a version of the name Harry. But, the subtitle makes it super compelling, as we have a reference to a Railroad. Here is the subtitle:
"Conductor on the Underground Railroad".
The Underground Railroad was obviously the network that worked to free Slaves in the "South" and bring them "North". This is a pretty dang good analogy for the different kind of Rail Road we have been bringing up - Lehi's path with the rod next to it that leads people to the Tree of Life.
I have associated the Being represented by Harriet/ Harry the Tub Man with the Holy Ghost, and so it makes sense that we have the use of "Conductor" here in describing their role on the Rail Road. Conductor means "Guide, Lead, Carrier" - i.e., one who conducts or brings people to a place.
To top it off, the book is written by Petry. Another form of the name Peter, which also would reference a Stone, which in my story is central to the Tub Man's ability to create said Rail Road.
And, of course, sitting between the Tub Man book and the modified Book of the Lamb are two Penguin-published books.
The Lamb book is itself published by Penguin.
Getting to that bear raiding the fridge, and drinking the milk/ eating the watermelon certainly also seems spot on.
Maeglin/ Maglin - who I associated with the Megalodon and your class experience with Maglodan - means "like a bear", or as I referenced in an earlier comment, literally "Honey-Eater". I had independently associated you with the Being raiding the Fridge, and with Maeglin (meaning those two associations were not dependent on each other or lead from the other), and in this shirt we see them together. That is going to catch my attention, for sure.
The Watermelon is interesting. I was curious about the "Melon" association for reasons I'll get to in a second, and so looked up both Watermelon and Melon. Watermelon pretty much confirms it is named that because it is a melon with high water content, and then refers the reader to Melon for more information on that word.
It turns out that Melon is directly association with Pumpkin:
"late 14c., meloun, "herbaceous, succulent trailing annual plant," or its sweet, edible fruit, from Old French melon (13c.) and directly from Medieval Latin melonem (nominative melo), from Latin melopeponem, a kind of pumpkin, from Greek mēlopepon "gourd-apple" (name for several kinds of gourds bearing sweet fruit), from mēlon "apple" (see malic) + pepon, a kind of gourd, which is probably a noun use of pepon "ripe" (see pumpkin)."
That is a pretty strong tie.
The fact that it is a Melon in the Fridge further ties to Stones, and specifically the Rose Stone, which is the other reason I alluded to above I found the Melon symbolism interesting. More on that in a follow up.
I captured words in early 2021 which I believe reference the Stone Couriers receiving the Rose Stone at Williams Peak in Idaho as they prepare to take it to France. In the dialogue, in first seeing and handling the stone, they compare it to another Melon - this time a Cantaloupe:
"Going to have the experience of Joseph Smith
We need to write all of this down
[A comment followed that whatever it is that they were talking about being the size of a cantaloupe, but I didn't catch all of the words]
A stone to come. Soon. Be ready, and have fun."
This comparison between a Melon and the Stone seemed relevant given what we see in the refrigerator.
As a tangent, the meaning for Cantaloupe in French seems to refer to "the place where wolves gathered" from the word literally "the singing wolf". Another tie potentially to the wolves assault on Eressea and their "just stopping by to take some food".
One of my pet theories is that the Big Bad Wolf of the fairy tales — which is solitary, can climb, huffs and puffs, and is big enough to swallow people whole — was originally a superstitiously indirect way of referring to a bear (mentioning bears directly having been taboo in much of ancient Europe).
By the way, I woke up around 4:30am my time with something on my mind and still kind of half sleeping, but I didn't know what had woken me up. I thought to check your blog and saw this post and sort of read it, but I was tired and went back to sleep.
I had a number of little dreams that followed, mostly in kind of a half-awake state. Then it transitioned into the feeling of some other Being in my mind who was creating these amazing word games, puns, etc. They were amazing, and I was just listening to it thinking whoever was doing this was some kind of lyrical genius. It was done in such as way that it felt like someone singing or freestyling these word games. I was going to write some of them down when I completely woke up, but when I did wake up, they all kind of slipped away, which was a bummer.
Later this morning, this made me think more of Maglor, since my hypothesis is that he is directly involved in some way. Maglor was known as arguably the greatest Elvish poet/ minstrel in history (it is a close run-off between him and our other friend Dairon, apparently). Given that, it seems at least worth consideration that he was the one jamming on these word games.
This also made me think of the Rumpelstiltskin analogy of turning straw into gold. Maglor's mother-name was Macalaure. Laure still means "gold" but it more emphasizes the poetic or metaphoric use of Gold. Meaning, something more like "Light, Sunlight", per the descriptions on Eldamo. And Light itself has been compared with other things, like stories, songs, poems, etc.
In a way, this was what was going on in my weird dream-state. Someone was 'spinning' ordinary, common words in such a way as to make them magical and entertaining. I wish I had captured at least a few examples, but all I kept was the experience and the general sense of amazement at the skill of whoever was doing this.
It’s probably just as well that you forgot. Amazing dream wordplay has a way of looking less amazing in the cold light of day.
https://narrowdesert.blogspot.com/2020/04/deep-orange.html
Ha, just noticed that old post includes pumpkins, cantaloupes, and amber.
Speaking of wolves and gilded cups, did you notice Chapters 14 and 15 of that Holy Grail book? I think I really am going to have to read the damn thing.
Yeah, I noticed chapters 14 and 15. Also followed by a reference to Mr. Opus, reuniting with him. In writing on Mr. Holland's Opus, I had linked Opus with the Rose Stone via the the Magnum Opus' original reference to the Philosopher's Stone (another Harry Potter reference, also).
I say go for it. I'm sure "Yoga and Mindfulness on the Farm", Chapter 11, will be riveting.
On the forgetting the phrases, yes, could have been just gibberish, but I have a feeling it wasn't.
I did write down one phrase in between some of the dream sequences that seems to be a precursor to the jam session that ultimately followed. At the time, I didn't interpret the phrase as a word game, but in looking at it again just a few minutes ago, it clearly seems to be.
The phrase was:
"Prince Warner you are the Red Book".
When I wrote it down, I understood Warner to be the name of the Prince. I later looked it up, and noted that Warner means "guard, protection, shelter" from German.
When I looked at the phrase again, though, I suddenly saw Warner differently. Warn-er, as in someone who warns - that is their job or title. It made complete sense, in particular with connection with the Red Book and characters around that. I even thought of that dream with you and me sitting in that Chinese restaurant, and I spent most of the time telling you something bad was going to happen if you stayed, and that you should leave. That is pretty much the definition of "warn".
I then looked up "Prince" in the various LDS scriptures, because it seemed worth looking up in relation to this other meaning of Warner and the Red Book.
Interestingly, Prince in the D&C is used to describe one person: Michael. I hadn't realized that, but that is what the search results gave me. There is one reference in D&C 127 to Satan as "the prince of this world", but all other references in the D&C with Prince referring to a specific person are to Michael (there are 4 such references).
GIven that Michael is the Being I have tied to the Rose Stone (the Red Book of my story), this seemed relevant.
But the Prince reference may be a play on words the other way as well, in that it is the Prince who is warned. So we have a Prince who Warns, but also One Who Warns a Prince(s). This seemed pretty relevant to that character's story also.
Anyway, so I don't know - keeping with the theme, it felt like this other stuff had meaning also. I just didn't bring any of it back through.
Before the word games, one of my dreams involved being in a basketball court trying to jump high enough to touch this beam on the ceiling (the beam stood over this stage... it was basically an LDS cultural hall). I couldn't do it, but still thought I was doing well. A man walked by, and told me he'd give me some pointers. He then proceeded to jump up and touch the beam. He taught me how he did it (which I don't remember), and then I proceeded to touch the beam as well. I found that I could hang on to the beam, and that leading up above the stage, the ceiling went even higher. I could keep climbing if I wanted to, but I had the thought that if I kept going up, I wouldn't be able to come back down, so I just dropped back down to the floor.
The word game jam session followed at some point, so I partially wonder whether the man giving the jumping lessons has anything to do with Maglor.
The opening to the D&C it sets the stage for the last days to be involving "the voice of warning":
"And the voice of warning shall be unto all people, by the mouths of my disciples, whom I have chosen in these last days".
It later states that as part of this that "the fulness of my gospel might be proclaimed by the weak and the simple unto the ends of the world, and before kings and rulers."
Seems like a tie to this idea of one who warns princes. Additionally, it ties to Thomas Marsh and the "Twelve" who were later given the same charge to raise a warning voice in D&C 112.
Also, going back to your post specifically, I forgot to call out the Turtle has shown up before in your syncs and dreams in the form of the box turtle. Michaelangelo (Michael the Messenger/ Angell) of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was also specifically said to be a box turtle. So it was interesting to see the Bear and the Turtle facing each other in some kind of "Great Lake Race". Lake can mean "Sea", so we have something the Great Sea, it looks like. Involving a frozen land, no less. Because nothing says a race in winter like a bear and a turtle.
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