The Turtle Says Hello

I’m KrakenZilla (stupid name, I know. It’s a sorta-long story that isn’t very interesting at all). Sometimes I get bored. In fact, I tend to be bored for long stretches of time, then content for a while between bursts of being completely overwhelmed, then bored again. All of these periods of time can churn out things of little, great, or no interest to people in general, depending on who said people are. I’ll try to keep things of the more generally interesting sort in this blog. Expect random stuff at least every month, but no promises. I created this blog for pretty much completely selfish reasons, because having a bunch of ideas locked up in my head or sitting there in dozens of Rich Text Documents on my computer gathering some sort of metaphorical dust annoys me. Who knows? Maybe one of these days I’ll write something that interests you.

Speaking of gathering metaphorical dust, I’ve been trying to think of something that would work as a good first entry for ages while this blog sat here patiently. Today I finally recalled an old incident that says a bit about my mad scientist-esque (or so I tell myself) creativity, and my chronic cluelessness concerning things everyone else seems to understand perfectly. It concerns creating what could easily pass as a legitimate piece of mythology.

I write poetry when I am pressed to do so, and can even be good at it sometimes. The problem I have is with poems that seem to symbolize something but do a terrible job at explaining what it is unless you achieve some sort of higher state of mind through either years of meditation on a large Asian mountain or a few mintues of meditation on heavy drugs. My bigger problem is with people who DO somehow understand the message the poem is allegedly trying to convey, and then expect me to know it as well.

Take, for example, a question I had in a Literature textbook long ago. First, there was the poem:

“Sweater
[by] Alberto Forcada
Grandmother,
I’m cold;
can you knit me
some wrinkles?”

Oh, wait. With really short poems like that in the textbook, they also included the Spanish version, because most of the poems were originally written that way.

“Sueter
[by] Alberto Forcada
Abuela,
tengo frio;
tejeme a mi tambien,
unas arrugas”

Be aware, if that makes sense to you, you do not belong on the internet with us mortals. Anyway, on the next page were several questions about this poem and a few other ones that we had to answer for homework. Here is a sample of a few:

Texbook: Who is speaking in “Sweater”?

Me: A granddaughter.

T: What does the speaker of “Sweater” ask grandmother to do?

Me: Make her a sweater, apparently.

Right, easy enough. Unfortunately, the textbook writers and their higher levels of thinking were not through with me yet, as the questions on the short poem returned later on the page.

T: What does the speaker of “Sweater” compare the sweater to? Do you think he would have used this comparison if the poem had been addressed to his sister?

Me (after puzzling it over a couple times): The sweater is compared to wrinkles. The sister would not make a difference.

T: Would you have known what “Sweater” was about without having read the title? Explain why or why not.

Me (angry at the textbook for being stupid): No. The poem is short and makes no sense. I can’t even understand it with the title.

But with the final question I saw an opportunity for revenge on the evil textbook of high standards:

“In your Quickwrite you took notes on an object that symbolizes something important to you. In a paragraph or a poem, describe the object, and tell what you remember when you see it, taste it, smell it, or feel it.”

Thus, I chose a random object in my room and a random idea for it to symbolize. In two minutes, this was on my paper:

“I have a wooden turtle (pictured here) that represents freedom. Its relaxed but determined pose shows that its determination to be free while not being enslaved to any kind of anxiety. Its dusty flesh symbolizes how the concept of freedom has been around for a long time. Placing my tongue on its glorious shell and fins reveals a rough, tasteless surface, just as too much freedom has its dark side.”

Topped off with a haiku:

“Turtle, O, Turtle
As dusty as time itself
Swim on forever”

From this has stemmed a whole new fun thing in my life – Treating “The Turtle” (symbolizing freedom) as some sort of fake God-type-thing in subtle ways in public, such as hinting at it whenever freedom is being threatened. One such example is when I had to create a huge PowerPoint presentation under a huge set of stupid and very restrictive writing rules, and I included one hidden letter per slide that, once they were all put together, spelled out “THE TURTLE IS APALLED”.

I credit some of this idea to Stephen King, because in his book It he makes frequent mentions of a weird God-like Turtle. It represents everything good, created the universe because it had a bellyache, died when it threw up in its shell, and made everyone very sad about its death. If you’ve read the book, think of my Turtle as the resurrection of Stephen King’s. You can be happy now, knowing that it isn’t dead after all.

In retrospect, I also think that textbook question also was a good setup for a Your Mom joke.

~ by krakenzilla on May 20, 2008.