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.

In the Foothills of Mt. Doom

Last week I met some guy on a dog walk who casually mentioned the date of the eruption of Mt. St. Helens in conversation: May 18, 1980. A few days later I was driving down I-5 to Portland, on the way to look at a sailboat for sale in Oregon City. My companion was a used boat expert,  I invited him along to take a look at the Craigslist find. He was living in Portland in 1980, and vividly recalled the eruption and how he and his family were turned back at the Toutle River as they were driving home, and had to stay overnight in a hotel, the Riverview Inn, I believe.

The boat we went to check out was photographed in front of Mt. Hood, another dangerous volcanic cinder cone. This one is fairly infamous in popular fiction: Mt. Hood lodge played the Overlook Hotel in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining.

After 4 hours of driving we arrived in Oregon City. And then a few miles due east to rolling countryside and the trailer home of the seller. He was an elderly gent who walked with a cane, who’s most remarkable physical feature was his flowing white beard. This began to make a bit of sense when he told us that we were surrounded by Christmas tree farms. The hillsides were covered with orderly rows of little Noble and Douglas Firs.

The boat was sitting in a backyard of several acres, next to the pen full of llamas and alpacas. The owner mentioned how once llamas sold for $60,000 apiece, but now you can hardly give them away.

He also talked about the helicopter harvesting of the Xmas trees. How every year the helicopters would hover overhead all day long, while “little Mexicans” would lasso the bundles of trees and the helicopters would pick them up and drop them into trucks, and then on to global destinations - this was a big business. “Little” as in little elves.

The boat we came to inspect was a wreck. Hardly the “good condition” claimed on Craigslist. It was built in 1980, same year as the eruption. The gelcoat was a faded golden yellow, and it’s name was “Stardust”. A good name for Santa’s sleigh.

It was as if there was a terrible curse on the place. Santa’s castle was reduced to a double wide, his sleigh had been transformed into a derelict sailboat, his reindeer into llamas and his elves into migrant workers.

Today, I’m finishing The Book of the Dead, by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child, and the climax is set on the slopes of the volcano of Stromboli off the coast of Sicily. The monks called it the Doorway to Hell, in a rather literal translation of Sheol.

How Dianetics. And Lord of the Rings. And Star Wars.

This is the 777th post.

The Lord of the Dance

Google books Cruising World 1982, Pg. 144. Tanzer 10.5 is the Answer!

I ran across this odd 144 sailing sync back on 11/28/15 and I must have been in a highly suggestible mood because it’s stuck with me.

Tanzer: German for dancer. Dancer is the answer!

I’ve never been much of a dancer, though I eventually learned how to NOT dance like a straight guy (feet planted like a tree, arm and shoulder motions only) at the gay disco. I’ve tried two-stepping and line dancing at gay western dance bars, but lets just say I won’t be dancing with the stars anytime soon.

I got my hair cut today by Sean at 12:15. He was unusually animated and chatty about this and that. He began by talking about a friend he used to cut hair with, and how she would stand with arms extended and toes pointed out, like a ballet dancer (Sean demonstrates).

Next he goes on about his Friday evening with his girlfriend/roommate (?) who insisted he accompany her out to the Roadhouse for some dancing. However it turned out she didn’t do any dancing, but he did, and he had a good time. He left at closing but she remained and she later turned her ankle or something, but according to Sean, it wasn’t from dancing!

Next, Sean and I were reminiscing about gay Seattle in the 80’s, and he told me that he was once a go-go boy at Neighbors. “Speaker dancing?” I asked. He nodded.

As Sean was finishing up, a woman called out to Sean from the hall and said “We sold our sailboat!” and I had to ask, what kind of sailboat was it?

“A Tanzer 23”.

… Connecting some dots …

I am reminded that Shiva dances the world into being.

Nataraja (Tamil: "நடராசர்" or Kooththan கூத்தன், The Lord (or King) of Dance), is a depiction of the Hindu God Shiva as the cosmic dancer who performs his divine dance to destroy a weary universe and make preparations for the god Brahma to start the process of creation.

What about a dancing speaker?

The Immovable Race

Now I have come to teach you what is and what was and what will come to pass, that you may know the things which are not revealed and those which are revealed, and to teach you concerning the unwavering race of the perfect Man. Now, therefore, lift up your face, that you may receive the things that I shall teach you today, and may tell them to your fellow spirits who are from the unwavering race of the perfect Man." 

"And behold, now I shall go up to the perfect aeon. I have completed everything for you in your hearing. And I have said everything to you that you might write them down and give them secretly to your fellow spirits, for this is the mystery of the immovable race."
— The Apocryphon of John 

Homosexuality therefore undoes in the state every merit, every basis for merit, and destroys the state in its foundations. That is not all: the homosexual is a thoroughly mentally-ill man. He is soft, he is in every crucial regard a coward. I believe that he can be brave here or there in war; in the field of civil courage however they are the most cowardly men that there are. 

The homosexual is of course the most appropriate object for every kind of extortion, firstly because he is himself liable to arrest, but secondly also because he is a soft fellow and thirdly because he lacks will and nerve.
— Heinrich Himmler

2015 was the year of the race card. From the Ferguson riots to the Charleston shooting, from illegal aliens in the USA to the refugee invasion of Europe, from the rise of Donald Trump to the Oregon Standoff. Race, race race.

So it was a curious sync to find this speech transcript by Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler (Mr. Racial Purity himself) and this wild ecstatic religious text called the Apocryphon of John, or the secret gospel of John, which mentions “race” seven times, both on the same day.

Heinrich may have been the archetypal “Bad Nazi”, but he wasn’t stupid. He caught on that Christianity was some kind of secret homo sex cult long before the revelations of the past few decades. We can blame Constantine for turning a cult that was never meant for mass consumption into the official state religion, perhaps the biggest “oops” of the last 2000 years.

The Germans were obsessed with survival of their race, and Heinrich considered both Christianity and homosexuality direct threats to his beloved gene pool. Meanwhile, early Gnostic revelations talk about the “immovable race”, which is… drum roll please… homosexuals!!

I mean, which “race” is always present, in every race? Which race has been demonized, scandalized, euthanized and genocided, and STILL keeps coming back to life? Homosexuals are the zombies of the genetic pool, you can’t kill us. We are “immovable”, despite lacking both will and nerve.

Why this is so is a question probably best answered by communing with mushrooms, and I’m not saying it was aliens, but…