TAMARA FOR DUMMIES CH VI or Tamara mellows towards Mr. Twain (somewhat)

Dedicated to my Jr. High English teacher who may have detected a nascent talent for smart-aleckiness in me when she gave me an A+ on an writing assignment on irony.  (It's terrible to flash and burn so young...)

As of 8:03 a.m. today (OK, OK, starting from 1:07 a.m. yesterday) I have felt a tad bit more mellow towards one Mr. Twain.  And this mellowing is probably just as well, as my previously sour attitude towards him and life in general has only spread disaster faster to two most beloved friends who are incidentally also my only two fans! 

[Remember: See urgent bulletin update to TAMARA FOR DUMMIES Ch V...but do not read that chapter itself!  You have been warned!...]

[Tip: Pic Attached @ top of blog is not of either of friends....]

For in Mr. Twain's Chapter V of "The Innocents Abroad", he does help me to, hopefully, grow in wisdom.  Like one awesome Helen Fielding and like me, Mr. Twain does love the melodramatic.  But when it comes down to it, he has his head on straight enough as to recognize and appreciate the sane and the beautiful in life.  During their first 10 days of his journey towards all of Europe and the Holy Land,  Mr. Twain lays down some rather histrionic and depictive musings RE horrible weather and related seasickness of fellow passengers (but no illness of his own...that showoff!) but then slyly inserts the following wiseguy comment:

"...but for the most part we had balmy summer weather and nights that were even finer than the days..."

How is that for making me feel quite loathsome for enjoying his previously sour rantings!  (Although by the end of the paragraph Mr. Twain refers to himself as a "Joshua' which I believe is his attempt to make  himself seem more saintly and godly...conceited fellow that he is!)

[OK, I Remember, I Remember: ...Be mellow towards Mr. Twain...be mellow towards Mr. Twain....]

And then Mr. Sly-Guy starts a written sketch of the nautilus, a strangely ugly sea creature, which he may have been describing in order to tell us more than what meets-the-surface.

[Technical Stuff:  For reasons of " pompous purity" in gathering my blogly thoughts together, I have intentionally avoided synopses and interpretations from scholarly or other sorts on said "Innocents Abroad" as I do not want to be swayed in what I think, ponder or interpret until after "TAMARA FOR DUMMIES" has been completed.  At that point I will have plenty of time (Lord Willing!) to feel stupid, yes dumb, for any/all of my musings which are off base.  In the meanwhile, ignorance is bliss...]

Back to Twain:

"The nautilus is nothing but a transparent web of jelly that spreads itself to catch the wind, and has fleshy-looking strings a foot or two long dangling from it to keep it steady in the water. It is an accomplished sailor and has good sailor judgment. It reefs its sail when a storm threatens or the wind blows pretty hard, and furls it entirely and goes down when a gale blows. Ordinarily it keeps its sail wet and in good sailing order by turning over and dipping it in the water for a moment..."

Wow!  This seemingly unintelligent stringy blob-of-jelly creature was given a gift from God for weathering storms!  Now, is knowing how to weather storms not a valuable thing?  If storms threaten or winds blow, reef your sail!  If gales blow, furl your sail entirely and go down beneath the surface!  Keep your sail wet and in good sailing order by turning over and dipping it in "The Water" for a moment (spiritual connotation intended)...

[Technical Stuff:  OK, if you know not what reefing your sail, furling your sail, etc. mean...look them up!  I had to...If I have to wade through nautical terms, so do you!]

Nextly, it does cross my mind, RE his Ch IV discouragements against my blogging that Mr. Twain was may-hap (may-hap is a cool word, is it not?...but what does it mean?) was may-hap being a slight bit kind in prodding me to fortify myself against giving in to potential discouragements...(such as in only having two fans).  If he hadn't, perhaps I would even now have quit my blogging, and wouldn't you be sad?  (Helloooo...are you out there?)

Next nextly, I somewhat mellow toward Mr. Twain, as I aspire to learn more on how to use the pen to poignantly describe the beauty of God's world around me...a gift I do not have but perhaps could learn by eavesdropping on "Kings of the Pen" such as Twain...(OK, Mr. Twain, please don't let THAT go to your head....)  He is not among the best depictors of scenery like, say, John Wagner author of Maxine is, but he does have much more adeptness and experience than I...

"The island in sight was Flores. It seemed only a mountain of mud standing up out of the dull mists of the sea. But as we bore down upon it the sun came out and made it a beautiful picture--a mass of green farms and meadows that swelled up to a height of fifteen hundred feet and mingled its upper outlines with the clouds. It was ribbed with sharp, steep ridges and cloven with narrow canyons, and here and there on the heights, rocky upheavals shaped themselves into mimic battlements and castles; and out of rifted clouds came broad shafts of sunlight, that painted summit, and slope and glen, with bands of fire, and left belts of somber shade between. It was the aurora borealis of the frozen pole exiled to a summer land!"

But, before I am in danger of being in the way of far to kind to Mr. Twain, let me [Remember:] you by pointing out Mr. Twain's fascination w/ the macabre...

"We skirted around two-thirds of the island, four miles from shore, and all the opera glasses in the ship were called into requisition to settle disputes as to whether mossy spots on the uplands were groves of trees or groves of weeds, or whether the white villages down by the sea were really villages or only the clustering tombstones of cemeteries. "

And by making mention of the fact, that by way or being coddled by his mama when but a boy, or by way of too much testosterone, I do not know, but Mr. Twain, like all of the adult boys of the male species whom I know, likes his toys...

"We landed under the walls of a little fort, armed with batteries of twelve-and-thirty-two-pounders, which Horta considered a most formidable institution, but if we were ever to get after it with one of our turreted monitors, they would have to move it out in the country if they wanted it where they could go and find it again when they needed it. "

Yuk!  Boys and their Toys usually involve weapons or killing or explosions....

Well, I digress.  Let me wrap up my musings on Twain's Ch V by tipping my hat (oops..wrong blog) to God and His nautilus.  If a sculptor, such as my dear Poppy, were to create an abstract sculpture of me after the end of my 110 years on earth (Poppy will be 141 by that time), I dream that an apt depiction would look something like the nautilus' post-life sculpture.  It is amazingly beautiful and I think it is in mind of how the layered years of a persons life should hopefully spiral and shape in him into growing in breadth of understanding, of love and of wisdom...