Finn Again

Can't you feel 'em circlin', honey

Can't you feel 'em swimmin' around

You got fins to the left, fins to the right

And you're the only bait in town

Varen is in the habit of naming all our plants in the garden (like Adam). He named a huckleberry after my dad. It was a cutting he took from the grounds of my family beach cabin at Hood Canal - the place was covered with huckleberry bushes. The property was sold shortly after his death, and as we drove away for the last time, Varen impulsively demanded that I pull over, and he ran back to get the scion.

He stuck it in a pot for a few years and then in the ground here in PT, and this spring it finally began to show a bit of new growth. New shoots are “scions” of the old, and I am the scion of my father. Even though Varen named the huckleberry bush “Vern”, it is really me.

He was talking about the huckleberry tonight, and said: “Instead of Huckleberry Finn we have Huckleberry Vern”.

“Finn”, is code for “runaway slave”. It’s from The Golden Bough, and it’s a trifle esoteric and I’ll just assume you already know more about it than I do if you’re reading my incredibly obscure blog, but the most recent popular example is the character Finn from Star Wars, The Force Awakens. James Joyce alludes to it in the title of Finnegans Wake, or “Finn Again”. A repeating archetype.

Oddly enough, a promo email from Class Comics arrived today, promoting the new Mako Finn #2 homoerotic comic now available. Mako has a fin on his dick, and he’s named after a shark, because somewhat like Aquaman, he is the protector of life in the oceans, and he has telepathic communication with sharks.

But the really odd sync is how I bought an old sailboat. A Ranger 20, and now there are apparently five Rangers in the very small town of Port Townsend, and I’ve been hearing about one with a shark’s mouth painted on the bow, and today I finally saw that boat, parked on the side of the road. The Shark Finn is circling… must be blood in the water.