TITANIC REENACTMENT

the iceberg that sank the titanic

A few days ago I heard somebody talking about the Titanic and the new ship that left southern England a few days ago to follow the Titanic route across the North Sea. It sounds like something I would never do. A reenactment of a disaster that took out almost everybody concerned doesn't strike me as a good time. Even if the present voyage does not hit an iceberg, it's too long a meditation for me of dwelling on a ship at the bottom of the sea, the "unsinkable." I wonder if the event with the iceberg would have happened had the ship been believed vulnerable. Evidently. The new finding is that sun and moon were especially close to earth, causing a big tide that broke icebergs loose and set them adrift into shipping lanes where they otherwise would not be lurking. An account was told of a survivor who was taken to a baseball game in NY. Whoever the survivor was, the roar of the whole stadium shouting when a home run was hit was too reminiscent of the screaming of the thousand or more people in the ice water of the North Sea that is so cold it's lethal after a very short time. When everyone stopped screaming after a few minutes, the silence was overwhelming. The dark night with no lights and it cold, cold, Arctic Circle cold. Some of the survivors in boats were wet too.


I stepped through the front door at Justin and Crystal's house and a young Latin girl had just finished her song and the audience was cheering. I heard what the survivors of that long dark night heard from all the people in the ice water screaming their minute or two of agony. It was an eerie feeling to hear that sound so soon after hearing about it. A shiver ran over my flesh. I read Walter Lord's book in high school. My reading comprehension then was rather dim. I've heard Ernest Stoneman sing his song about the Titanic. I saw the mega-film, Titanic, twice. It was an excellent 4-star film I wanted to give 5 stars to at netflix, but it lacked that certain something that makes a thing fine art. I'd almost like to see the new 3D version, but paying whatever it costs, then 3 hours and 15 minutes is awfully long. Nonetheless, I've seen Andrei Tarkovsky's ANDREI RUBLEV, 4 hours of b&w. It seemed like less than two hours, and not because it was exciting. It was 4 hours of Russian brooding magnified by the depression of the Soviet period. I can't think of a time I would want to drive 45 minutes one way  to Galax or Elkin to see a movie for probably $10 that amounts to a 6 hour experience of something already seen. When I think of 3D, I think of the man whose head hit the propeller in his long fall and set him spinning, end over end. That is stuck in my mind 3D enough.


I would like to see Cameron's dive into the Mariana Trench in the Pacific. A documentary of the experience is being put together, probably fast as it can be done to reverse the cash flow. Cameron turned me off when I heard him on something like the Diane Rhem show telling how he would run away with the Academy Awards over his then new movie, Avatar, maybe. I know this is a vulgar time and I'm not one to point the finger at the vulgar, anyway, but Cameron grossed me out in that round of radio interview shows. He never heard anything of good old country humility. It's evidently not in his genes or anywhere else. I thought I'd heard arrogant people speak, before, but he won the award. It was like a man told me, "When you go into prison, you think you know how to fight. First thing you learn is you don't know how to fight." Maybe in Cameron's business egoism is essential. I laugh at myself for holding overwhelming ego against him. I recall Jr Maxwell not liking the Stanley Brothers because he found Carter Stanley arrogant. He said Carter was mean, too. I don't doubt it. But I love his singing so much, I'm glad I didn't know his personal life. Like when I listen to Prince, I don't listen to his persona and what other people think of him. I listen to his music. With Cameron, I feel like I'd do well to pay more attention to the art form instead of the artist. Titanic really was an incredible film. I would like to see it again, even without 3D.


This morning at 3:09 and :10 I felt grinding plates down deep in the earth's crust. My bed has no springs, so I feel on the bed what the floor feels. These light tremors in the night I've felt the whole time I've been in the mountains. In the last few years they feel a bit stronger than before. It made me wonder if we might have a slight earthquake somewhere within maybe a 500 mile radius. The tremors have been so faint in the past that there was even a question when I felt them if I was, indeed, feeling something outside my body. It was so subtle I questioned it coming from outside. By now, the tremors are such that they wake me up. Not with a jolt. I am suddenly conscious of this tremor and lie there feeling it, not wanting to move. It was so subtle a feeling I wanted to give my senses to it and experience this geologic event that may be .001 on the earthquake scale. I listened this morning for clattering glasses or a picture falling off the wall, but there were no sounds inside the house as a consequence. It was too light to rattle the house, but it was stronger than these trembles have ever been. It lasted about two minutes. I wonder if it would put ripples in a glass of water. My guess would be imperceptibly. A microscope might see a light disturbance on the water, like it would register footsteps on the floor.


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