On buckets, eagles, impatience, and...

[Artiste]

Thanks Front-Ranger!

You sau that he was: half-tumescent !

What is that? Please detail...

hugs!

And Happy Thanksgiving!

[Front-Ranger]

There are two meanings of tumescent that applied to Ennis at this time:

1. swelling; slightly tumid. 
2. exhibiting or affected with many ideas or emotions; teeming. 


Little Ennis was still half-swollen, big Ennis was teeming.

[Brown Eyes]

Actually, you'll notice if you look carefully that everytime Jack appears on the mountain, there is some kind of bucket or pot near him. And Ennis seems to be more closely related to the coffeepot. But at certain crucial parts of the story/film, the symbols stand for the other person. Just the same as the animal symbols cross over. Altho Ennis's animal is definitely four-footed, at one point Jack is described as trembling "like a run-out horse." And tho Jack is definitely a winged animal such as the eagle whose feather he wears in his hatband, Ennis is described as lying "spread-eagled" on the bed. So it can be confusing, but also incredibly poignant that, as their stories become enmeshed, so do their symbolic references, and they entertwine like the acoustic and the slide guitars in the musical accompaniments.

Hey Lee!  These are great observations!  And, I very much agree about the birds/ feathers/ wind-instruments being associated with Jack.  That makes a lot of sense to me.  Also, I do agree that sometimes symbols gets mixed up or swapped around between the two characters.  The "spread-eagled" phrase is definitely an interesting detail to note from the story... maybe Ennis can be interpreted as being in this position as a direct result of being in Jack's presence.  I don't know... maybe it's a stretch... but it does seem to make some sense.

[Brown Eyes]

Bumping because buckets and coffeepots are once again hot topics!

[Front-Ranger]

People sometimes refer to their "bucket list" and there was a movie on the subject. I wonder how the expression came to be...

[serious crayons]

Well, as you may know, a "bucket list" is your list of things to do before you kick the bucket. As for the latter phrase, here's Wikipedia:

Origin theories

A common theory is that the idiom comes from a method of suicide in the Middle Ages.[3] A noose is tied around the neck while standing on an overturned bucket. When the pail is kicked away, the victim is hanged.

Another theory relates to the alternate definition of a bucket as a beam or yoke that can be used to hang or carry things on.[1][4] The "bucket" may refer to the beam on which slaughtered pigs are suspended. The animals may struggle on the bucket, hence the expression.[1] The word "bucket" still can be used today to refer to such a beam in the Norfolk dialect.[5] It is thought that this definition came from the French word trébuchet or buque, meaning balance.[1][4] William Shakespeare used the word in this sense in his play Henry IV Part II where he says:[1]

    Swifter then he that gibbets on the Brewers Bucket.
    —William Shakespeare , Henry IV Part II

A third theory suggests that the origin of the phrase comes from the Catholic custom of holy-water buckets:[6]

    After death, when a body had been laid out ... and ... the holy-water bucket was brought from the church and put at the feet of the corpse. When friend came to pray... they would sprinkle the body with holy water ... it is easy to see how such a saying as "kicking the bucket " came about. Many other explanations of this saying have been given by persons who are unacquainted with Catholic custom
    —The Right Reverend Abbot Horne , Relics of Popery

A fourth suggests that the phrase comes from a children's game. The person who kicks the bucket loses the game.[7]

I'm not sure how they got from there to "bucket list." That may have originated with the movie.

[Front-Ranger]

That's interesting, Friend! Lately I've been reading a book named The Lore of the Bard by Arthur Rowan, which discusses the Celtic ideas of life, and it says that life includes three cauldrons. "The cauldron is a ubiquitous theme in Celtic myth" he writes. It is an "archtypical symbol of a container used for transformation." The three cauldrons are filled with lore,  craft, and passion.

The cauldron of passion encompasses joy and sorrow, and everything in between. This is what makes us human and makes life worth living. The cauldron of craft contains purpose and the application of skills. The Lore cauldron contains understanding and knowlege.

When people are born, their cauldron of passion is full, but the other two are empty. Over time, craft and lore are filled up, but the passion cauldron is emptied. The role of the Bard is to refill the passion cauldron and rebalance all of the cauldrons. This is done primarily through music.

[Front-Ranger]

I wasn't sure where to put this thought, in the Bucket thread or the Laundry Room thread, because it has to do with the power of liquidity. But I finally decided to put it here.

Michael Silverblatt, in his interview with Annie Proulx, talked about the differences between his reactions to the story and the movie, saying, "...there was kind of a movie-sadness sauce that somehow got ladled over the material, whereas the story is written in somewhat of the stoic way of these men." Because of her writing style his "emotions just leaked out through me unawares. It came as a real startlement to me." (I think his Ennis-like way of articulating this really must have endeared him to AP.)

Annie responded that she had hoped it would work this way so that "for the reader what's inside is necessary to complete the story and fill it out and put the meaning in it." Liquidity not only worked on the characters but also on the readers of the story.

Just a small note to commemorate the 14th anniversary of the publishing of this story that has changed so many lives.

[Marge_Innavera]

"Startlement", that's an interesting word.  I'll have to add that to "wonderment", learned years ago from a supervisor.  (e.g., "isn't that a wonderment? ! ")   

[Front-Ranger]

I just now noticed another instance of the coffeepot occurring. It's when Ennis returns to his home after the long-awaited reunion with Jack and Alma says that he looks "all perky." No, wait, I think she says that at Thanksgiving. It's been too long since I've seen the movie!

Maybe instead of vessel=character, it's bucket=relationship, coffee pot=love, or something of that nature.

When Ennis is standing in the stream, watching Jack ride up the mountain, is he washing a coffee pot or a bucket? Either way, this action seems very significant.

When Ennis goes shivering into the tent, he knocks over a bucket, which falls clanging to the ground, as if some kind of relationship equilibrium is being upset.

The next morning, the coffee pot and bucket are side by side, as they are again in the dozy embrace, right? The two are together.

When Alma storms off to work, signaling trouble in their marriage, Ennis kicks over a bucket full of ashes, I gather representing the ashes of their marriage.

And, yes, when Ennis loses his grip on the bucket and lets it float downstream, I think it's about him losing his hold on the relationship.