Psychic Invasion and Personality-Disorder-Mort

So, This is the post where I try to demonstrate that I was correct on my theory that what the Avada Kedavra curse is is radical psychic invasion, and that this is based in a wand being a unique channel - show that this was born out in the text of Deathly Hallows. (Oh, as a SIDE NOTE: before I forget, on wands and non-wand magic: I was wrong about apparition being non-wand magic - it appears from DH, unless I am wrong, and somebdoy can correct me if I am, that a witch or wizard cannot apparate without a wand in hand, hence Harry's command to Ron in Malfoy manner to "catch and go" as he tosses him a wand [DH474 ... dangerous thing about looking up text details is the temptation to get sucked in again, to just start reading and not stop :) ] ... but from what Voldy said in GOF, possession is non-wand magic (the one "power" left to him after he lost his body, and thus the use of his wand. I suspect that potions is similar to apparition, that it does not utilize the wand for a spell but is necessary for a wizard or witch to do the magic of potions making, but I don't know about brooms, although I would not be surprised to find the same being true. I still maintain a difference though, concerning the wand as symbol - that potions and apparation "rub Harry the wrong way" because of the very fact that, while requiring the presence of the symbolic element, the wand, they do not emphasize the symbolic element by employing it directly in a spell, a verbal recitation almost like creedal statements. A broom, though, as I said, is itself a symbolic element of the transcendant) Anyway, on the presence of psyche in magic: 1. Scarcrux Theory Proven Right DH 686: "On the night Lord voldemort tried to kill him, when Lily cast down her own life between them as a shield, the Killing Curse rebounded upon Lord Voldemort, and a fragment of Voldemort's soul was blasted apart from the whole, and latched itself onto the only living soul left in that collapsing building." Now, this was obviously a pretty decisive confirmation of the scar-as-horcrux theory (just as the fact that Harry was able to read Voldemort's thoughts that showed not the slightest inclination that the ring or the locket had ever even been sought, let alone acquired and destroyed, was a sure coffin nail to the "scar-o-scope" theory), but my interest here is with the implications for the psychic invasion quality of the AK. Basically, I believe the evidence is inconclusive but points in a certain direction, that of the AK as psychic invasion. I do not think it inappropriate that the evidence is inconclusive ... I would not expect a full scale exposition of the psychic-physics aspects ... otherwise this would be a textbook and not a story. But in fact I would even say that the evidence is decisively inconclusive, indicatinn possibly a concrete desire for the matter not to be able to be decided conclusively. The "rubrics" given are that the soul portion wnet looking for another soul to latch onto and found the only living soul left around, Harry (IE, this in and of itself would point simply to a portion torn through murder and then it seeking a home when the rest of Voldy's soul was no longer accessible through a body, which is the definition of a "living soul" - that it is animating a body and accesible to other souls through that body). So, why do I say I think the evidence points in the direction of the wand being a channel of individual psychic energy and the AK as psychic invasion by that route? Well, the first thing to note is what I think would be the reason for the author desiring that the matter not be able to be pinned down entirely ... this is VERY dark magic we are talking about, and there is something to Dumbledore's prohibition on books containing such dark magic as horcruxes - that even knowledge of details of such things taints the person somewhat. I think it is a mark of goodness on Dumbledore's part that he makes the guess the way he does, that he does not speak of, and maybe does not even allow himself to think out the ... but I think the lacunae leave a trace trail of the reality of the thing (or at least that is what I am trying to argue for) Here are the missing pieces I would suggest. First, we know that murder rends the soul, but we are not given anymore (again, that thing of a certain taint in having too much knowledge of evil things). I believe that is tears the soul because the soul is involved so intimately in it ... all murder is, I think, an assertion of one person's identity over another's to the point of the exclusion of the latter's from the world of the living, and I think the AK as a psychic invasion of the same effect through a wand-cast spell is a symbolization of this. Secondly, I don't think that soul portion had to go searching "blindly" for another soul to latch onto ... I think it had a "trace" to follow: the psychic path of the AK itself when cast, that led right to Harry. If it had had to go searching "blindly," what would have kept it from eventually dissipating? All the other soul portions in the Horcruxes disappear when the object is destroyed ... if the AK itself and the intended victim of the murder, and possibly also involving the intention in the soul already to create a Horcux from the murder, why did it seek another object and latch onto a soul, when the soul in the locket did not seek to attach to Ron or Harry when Ron stabbed the locket with the sword? 2. The Wand Thing DH 711 (Dumbledore's explanation of the wand in King's Cross): "I believe your wand imbibed some of the power and quality of Voldemort's wand that night, which is to say that it contained a little bit of voldermort himself. So your wand recognized him when he pursued you, recognized a man who was both kin and mortal enemy." "Imbibed some of the power and quality of Woldemort's wand" = "contained a little bit of Voldemort himself." I think any wand in general is always "familiar" with the particular psyche because it is always channeling the particular person's psychic energy ... but a person like Voldy, for whom the AK is as much a "signature shot" as the XP becomes for Harry - then the wand picking up "a bit of Voldy himself" is very characteristic if the wand is by nature a channel of specifically psychic energy and the AK is specifically psychic invasion. So, there you have it in a nutshell, the reasons I think my interpretation of "wand magic" as the channeling of psychic energy and the AK as specifically psychic invasion is the most consonant explanation of the meaning within the text in these areas. Personality-Disorder-Mort But the issue of Voldy's soul raises all kinds of questions, especially for those of us who read Voldy as anti-social personality disorder. For one ... no backstory on any dementors involved in any statement on any childhood history of voldy and how his soul got the way it was when he started ripping it up and making horcruxes. I still think this is a possibility and one that is consonanst with many other things in the texts, but now that it is a closed corpus it officially falls outside the realm of "interpretation of the text" (unless Rowling happens to write anymore "canon" on the matter, such as in the encyclopedia she has talked about) - it can only be, at least for present, a new imaginative creation of. Of course, I would note again that it can be very, I think, consonant with the text because the text does not preclude it ... the text simply does not go there. Well, the consonance is I think also coming from elements of places the text does go ... but what I am going to address here is another matter, which is the significance of the fact hat the text does not go there in particular. Is Voldy a APDo? Is he culpable for what he is doing? Or was he already "so far gone" from the effects of whatever nature or nurture was there in and acting upon him from an age before the age of reason, to the extent that, while what he does is evil, his culpability is lessened. I definitely think there is enough textual evidence to indict at least half the ministry of magic of serious moral flaws in the events since Harry was born, but what of Voldy himself? The text simply does not answer that question ... but it does show Harry trying one thing, suggesting remorse to Riddle. And that one particular thing relates morally culpable actions. But I do not think this proves the matter - I think it is still the case of the text not going there. What I do think it brings through very powerfully is the "predicament" of such things as personality disorders, and also their "murkiness." I have tried for a while now to pin down certain "definitions," or at least to see if they can be pinned down. And as a "layman" investigating, the best that I can come up with is that the scientific understanding of such psychological malady is that any of the definitions of specific disorders really connotes a combination of various factors including bio-chemical factors (psychiatry/nature), psychological behavior conditioning factors (nurture) and even the impact of volitional action. Beyond that it seems to me there is no "ironclad" litmus test to be able to say "you are x." Certain cases are drastic enough to say with clarity that a person is bi-polar etc. But things such as bi-polar are a spectrum of different mixtures of the factors I just talked about. In cases of full blown mania etc - yes, if the guy is trying to jump off the building not because he wants to die but because he thinks he can fly ... he's full blown manic state. But for many people with bi-polar etc, it is not this clear cut (I have a friend with some relatives who are definitley bi-polar, one legitimately diagnosed and hsopitalized once or twice for manic episode). In all of these though, as far as I understand it, it is always mixtures of factors in varying degrees - certain physiological condition certainly contirbute, but there is no blood test that can tell you, in and of itself without a trained psychatrist investigating the other factors, the psychological factors, "yep you'r ethis count is here and your that count is there and therefore you are technically, verifiably, quantifiably X personality disorder and not culpable for your actions." I believe that the cause and the cure mirror each other and go hand in hand. Is the source of Voldy's "malady" a purely "external" one such as physiological, bio-chemical factors (that is "external" to the volitional qualities of "spirit") that could be symbolized The murkiness of the cause is concommitant with the further question of the cure - how much culpability there is, how much culpable volition has entered into the matter, and therefore how much the answer is maybe medications to (in my experience, including talking to regular psychaitrists, IE those working the field of prescriving medications, and not just people with "an opoinion" on the matter, the answer is never just medication alone), and to what degree is something like exhortation to repent or "try some remorse" the answer. As I said these things vary ... it seems that sometimes the "external" factors such as nature and nurture have exercised such force on the person during formational years that very little volitional is left. but I think the thing with Harry and Voldemort is that while a person walks upon this earth the will still operates at least in some capacity, and in that situation in the great hall Harry has an obligation at least to make that appeal ... at least to suggest remorse on the chance, no matter how slim or "outside" the chance may seem or be, that the appeal will strike a chord with a person like Voldy. In the case of, say, personally disorders, as I was saying in dicussing the whole annulment thing, the impact of whatever mix of factors there are (nature, nature, habituation of choices) may have damaged the person to the point where they simply are not capable of giving themselves the way that is necessary for marriage, and this would thus provide a "deriment" to sacramental marriage. But the person still can use there will to get into counseling and to work with the St Mungo's staff of healers, as it were (whatever combination of psychiatrists, psychologists, pastors, spiritual directors, priests etc) ... and maybe at some point work back into the capability of making that gift of self in that way. That is how I read Harry's suggestion to Riddle that he try some remorse: "I don't even pretend to be able even to begin to understand what point you are at or how damaged you are [although that thing in the King's Cross chapter was pretty bad] ... but as long as you are still here in this world, why not at least take the last chance you have left and at least do what you can to cooperate with healing?" It doesn't answer the question "Is Voldy APDo to the levelof not being culpable?" - rather it symbolizes how murky the question is but also tries to at least give a little pointer in the direction of something that might at least possibly help, might at least hold some possibility of helping a person in a bad state to focus on getting help. There may not be much hope, it may be like Gandalf in the 3rd LotR movie: "hope? there never was much hope ... just a fool's hope" ... but it's what you got to go on. Somebody I was talking to once, discussing these kind of things, said there is an addage: "I'm not responsible for my addiction, but I am responsible for my recovery."

The Weight of Glory

In my "manifesto" on chiasm I proposed a 2-4-6 chiasm based on the famous first potions class statement of "bottling fame, brewing glory and stoppering death." At the end of this post I will include that original material in this one, basically that book 2 has "bottling fame" (Lockheart), and book 6 has "stoppering death" (as was basically proven right in DH, and again, my peevesish hat is off in deepest respect for those who nailed that one), but the center of that chiasm, the intepretive crux, is "brewing glory" in book 4 (the issue of Cedirc heroically turning down "the kind of glory Hufflepuff had not seen in centuries"). As I said, I'll copy and paste that whole section of that post in the end of this one, but for this part I wish to discuss/establish 2 things. The first is that Glory is not the same thing as Fame. Actually Lockheart demonstrates that best of all in book 2. What he has is fame, but for things he didn't actually do. Glory is a weighter concept. It is not just reknown, it is actual power. Seeking power in and of itself is not intrinsically a bad thing, depending on the power. Power is simply the ability to do certain things ... and if they are good things that you are in your right place to be doing, then you having that power is intrinsically a good thing (although it can, of course, become circumstantially bad). But to seek Glory/power for it's own sake can be even more dangerous than Lockheart's seeking fame in book 2 ... that is to say it is a larger game going on when we are speaking of not just fame, but of glory/power (in only one entity is power and fame, or rather name, the same thing - where the name is so powerful that those of the religion in which it was originally revealed do not even speak or write it anymore except in official editions of the Torah, not even in siddur editions [prayer book] of the Torah, YHWH ... and the "name above all other names in Christianity," Jesus Christ ... although many have tried for the power of the Name, like the "men of the name" born of the "sons of God" and the "daughters of men" in Genesis 6, or those who built the tower of Balel in Genesis 11, seeking "to make a name for themselves"). So point # 2 is: exactly how crucial does glory wind up being? Does book 7 reveal that glory was as crucial for the series as book 4 as in intepretive cruxt would seem to indicate that it should be? Dumbledore: "I was gifted, I was brilliant. I wanted to escape. I wanted to shine. I wanted glory." (DH 715). First, this is DD's explanation of his "great flaw" in larger wizard history, the way that he contributed to Grindewald becoming who he became (not "making" him become that, but how he was blinded to the path G was going down and thus did nothing to influence away from it, but if anything encouraged it at that time). These are some potentially very loaded issues with regard to Voldy, for DD really was capable of not only fame, but real glory, real heavy power. Following DD's work with G on the hallows G actually gets the wand. Then DD, because he is truly capable of that power and glory, gets the wand ... and if not for the little bit of "luck" with Draco being the one to win the wand from DD's hand and Harry unseating Draco as the master of the wand, it seems to me an open question whether or not DD would have been unable to accomplish the power of the wand dying with him. Is Voldy correct in thinking that, even after death, if his taking of the wand from the dead masters hand was against the wishes of the master in life, then the wand would recognize him as master? (this is his rebuttal to Harry's point that Snape was the master of the wand because of the agreeance he and DD had on the death). It seems unclear to me ... I am not sure Voldy is not correct on that one. In which case, DD's original seeking of glory led down a path that put the most pwerful wand in the world in the hand of WORST person in the world to let have it (if not for that little bit of "luck" with Draco). A dangerous game to play. Anyway, here is the section on the 2-4-6 fame-glory-death chiasm: The First Potions Class chiasm: Bottling Fame, Brewing Glory and Stoppering DeathThis is officially a 2-4-6 chiasm but I am putting it here in this final section because it comes from the first potions class with Snape (the famous quote from book 1, which many have noted is quoted 7 times in HBP ... another tidbit of support: in one of these chapters in GOF it notes that Harry got a bad mark in potions for forgetting a key ingredient ... a bezoar), which would place it at the beginning of the series, thus making it a neat bookend with the next and final chiasm I will note, which contains a hazarded prediction and, thus, concerns the closing of the series. So, what are our elements? Well, this one is officially going to support the "stoppered death" theory of HBP, on which so many people have commented that it is difficult for me to pull right out off the top of me head (or even from the sea of posts online, or maybe even figure out at all) whose it was originally (although, here I think Felicity gives the answer, a commentor named Cathy who was a co-moderator with John Granger on a class on Barnes and Noble University online in 2005, I think that is reading Felicity's post rightly ... but it is a bit late right now and I am feeling a bit like the "part of the ship" Jack Sparrow in the brig of the Flying Dutchman in Pirates of the Caribbean 3 ... "Wait! nobody move! ... I dropped me brain!" - not trusting my noggin right now ... good thing I have saved editing this essay for tomorrow lol). But here is the basic run-down. In book 2 Lockheart "bottles fame" in that he takes it by, shall we say, "bottling it away" from those who earned it - getting them to tell their stories to him and then obliviating their memories so they don't know it is complete bunk when they read his books about how he did the things, rather than them. Obviously the book 6 element is not yet confirmed but strongly suspected by all (including me ... I am happily bumping along on the bandwagon here in the Bronx), that one way or another Dumbledore was stoppering his own death all the way through HBP, either by the help of Snape or by elixir of life etc. So, that leaves book 4 with the middle term: brewing glory. Glory is a very central concern in GOF, especially after Harry has been chosen as a champion, and especially to the Hufflepuffs. The "Weighing of the Wands" chapter could almost be a precursor to the "long dark tea time of the soul" of book 5 (a title I have stolen unapologetically from Douglas Adams, that, in my usage here, employs the angst of the fiasco with Cho in Madame Puddyfoot's tea shop in book 5 as a symbol of the book being "the long dark night of the soul" of teenage, romantic coming-of-age emotions) ... "The next few days were some of Harry's worst at Hogwarts" (GOF 295), and the glory "brewed" by the tournament is a big part of that, especially with the house of Helga. "It was plain that the Hufflepuffs felt that Harry had stolen their champions glory; a feeling exacerbated by the fact that Hufflepuff house very rarely got any glory ... " (GOF 293 ... Glory mentioned twice in one sentence, and the end of the sentence connects this passage and chapter to the chiasm of seekers I noted above: "and that Cedric was one of the few who had ever given them any [glory], having beaten Gryffindor once at Quidditch." [meaning the match the previous year, the same one Katie Bell mentioned in the common room just the night before this scene]).

Snape's Most Guarded Memory and Luck

So, I am "back in the saddle" for a bit here. Some hectic things in life here in the Bronx have made it difficult to get time to write - including pulling of a move. But also, when I can and can't write her at the security desk varies ... they have instituted a new position of a second person on night tour at the dispatch desk, but only 4 nights a week. When she is here, and thus 2 of us at the desk, I can't really write ... but her schedule is at variance with mine: I work the same 4 nights every week and she works 4 on-4 off. So this week the timing runs around to that my 4 nights on are exactly her 4 nights off so I will be sitting the desk by myself all 4 nights, so maybe I will get caught up on some of the things I want to say on Deathly Hallows (including some comments on other comments on the last few posts, so check back there and there is probably some follow up). This first one is pretty simple and doesn't even really require much text support (although I throw some things in to help out :) ) - the general plot revelations are prominent enough to stand on their own. It is that I think that the "Snape's worst Memory" chapter in OotP is intentionally misleading. I think Snape "front-loaded" the penseive with that memory to protect the ones he REALLY does not want Harry to see ... which are the ones we see in Deathly Hallows. It seems highly improbable that Snape would not put those later-revealed memories in the penseive, and I think that no matter what, Snape would be mad if Harry dived into his thoughts in the penseive ... and genuinely mad ... and genuinely does not want him to do so and genuinely tries to prevent it from happening. But I think that just on the odd chance that something comes up and Harry does go diving, especially as Snape has such a dim view of Harry's inheriting his father's arrogance, Snape protected the valuable memories with another that is "special" in a way I'll describe momentarily. In short, while I think Snape genuinely does not want Harry to go snooping and is genuinely angry, I don't think everything was exactly as it appeared. In a way he simultaneously protects the memories we find in DH, probably making sure that memory of the OWLs is a long one (and more on that in a mo') to give as much time as possible for Snape to return in the unfortunate event that Harry, well, that he does what he does, but he also sort of sets Harry up to "reap the rewards" of his arrogance if he does what he does. That memory is, I think, in Snape's mind, potentially a way of showing Harry "you think your father was so great? Here have a look at what he was really like, Potter!" Think about it ... was the section of the memory when they are actually in the test really something to be gaurded? And there is a pretty nice possible "cut-marker" there, when they leave the OWL and are outside for a time before to have shortened up the memory and made it less bulky for extraction if he had wanted. And the section before the actual attack on Snape? One question might be how those conversations between the marauder's was in Snape's memory if he was so intent on his test question (of course a possible answer is simply that this is, after all, magical revelation, and goes beyond the "normal scope of intentionality" - but I also think the answer I propose here is equally possible). I think teenage Snape was not as intent on his parchment as he seemed - that he was avidly listening to what he could over-hear of that conversation with loathing for the four-some, as well as glancing sidelong with loathing at Sirius' casual manner on the test (that same kicking back the chair on the back legs as he does in 3 12 Grimmauld Place when they are at each other as adults) ... and that, in addition to lengthening out the memory to give him more time to get back on the scene in the event the opportunity arises and Harry goes delving where he has no right, it also provides a chance to say "here, Potter, let me give you a REALLY full dose of whatyour father and his buddies were REALLY like! Just like you snooping around in my thoughts in the penseive." In short, Snape is a pretty crafty fellow and I think he sort of "booby-trapped" the pensieve in the event that Harry has opportunity to snoop and takes it (I'm not saying I think Harry is a snooping gossip etc, but you have to admit that that is the way Snape would see it given his history with James and Sirius and Harry's likeness to the former and affinity for the latter), in addition to giving himself some more time, in that event, to protect the really vital stuff. I'm not saying Snape had a good reason for ditching Harry 's lessons (and the following behavior in potions class is obviously a case of giving into vindictive attitude) ... but I also do think there is more at stake here than simply what we get the impression of when Dumbledore says "my word, Severus, that I shall never reveal the best of you?" (DH 679). If Harry had seen those memories he sees in DH, but back in book 5 before Voldy has become afraid of the connection, a lot could have been jeapordized ... both the mission AND Severus' life. He has put himself VERY much in harm's way and if Voldy gets access to those memories by them entering Harry's memory in the penseive ... well that is a fine thank you for risking so much to protect Harry (even given that fact that there is some variance in that motivation - that Snape's motivation is more to protect "Lily Potter's son" than to protect "Harry Potter" ... but as we see with Narcissa Malfoy, the desire to protect child is, even when "lopsided," by nature an intrinsically good desire and thus more open to working in concert with the "greater good" [when Narcissa helps Harry fake being dead, and thus undo Voldy, even though her question reveals that she is primarily interested in in Draco's well being ... that whole fingernails in the chest thing, RIGHT over the heart, is a VERY interesting characterization moment on Narcissa, which is one of the reason's I love Rowling's work so much - the way she draws her characters, here the converse to the slightest haughty disdain we see in the third sister's face when Harry mistakes her for Bellatrix at first glance early on]). But here is one final consideration ... as I discussed in another post, Occlumency never winds up working - at least as it is supposed to do (as Draco is able to do it in HBP) - and winds up, in the end, not being the answer. Harry himself learns his own path of shutting out those visions when he need sto concentrate, when he needs to be in the moment of his here and now ("Harry's scar burned in the silence, but he made a supreme effort to keep himself present, not to slip into Voldemort's mind." [DH 452]; "He was gliding around the high walls of the black fortress - No, he was Harry, tied up and wandless, in grave danger." [DH 453]) while at other times utilizing them. But even before this he winds up not only with the link operating full force, but fully possessed by Voldy, at the end of OotP ... and his love is powerful enough that voldy cannot bear it. And here in DH many many times the connection and the visions help them to progress in an informed way rather than quite so blindly. So, if snape had succeeded in teaching Harry proper occlumency, things might have been much different. We cannot, of course say that this was intentional wisdom on snape's part, but it was ... lucky. I once heard Jospeh Pearce speak on Tolkien and he addressed the question of why, if Tolkien was such a profound Christian writer, was there no "God" in Lord of the Rings. Pearce answered that while there is no "God" character in the LOTR (although we know there is in the Silmarillion), there IS a distinctly strong sense of providence. Now, I do not pretend that this element is present in Rowling's work in anywhere near as concrete a way as in Tolkien's. But I do think that there is some sense of a transcendant benevolence in the world, if one is willing to cooperate with it. In a lot of other works I would tend to say that luck is just luck, maybe even in some cases evidence of chaos theory - but not here in Rowling's work. Quite simply put she has spent too much time developing the theme ... most notedly in the "Felix Felicis" material in HBP. But even here, in DH, you can get a sense of the general tendency towards benevolence that luck has (towards what is truly good for a person, beyond just what a person wants, although when a person has a strong will for evil and uses something like felix felicis I think they can bend luck to their service, but it is more like an enslavement of luck rather than it's true nature) in how much voldy detests it: "I have been careless, and so have been thwarted by luck and chance, those wreckers of all but the best laid plans" (DH 7). In a way, at the very least, the "happy side of chaos theory" is that luck and chance are the great levelers of the uneven odds that people like Voldy build up for themselves. In a way they are, in a work like the Potter series, the objective world's mirror of free will in the subjective world of acting persons ... the refusal to be enslaved (and in the Christian world-view, God is not interested in slaves but in children ... of course the inter-play between free will and the fact that we need Grace to choose the good remains, as it it ever has been in our world, a mystery). I think that the fact that Snape's actions have a "lucky" outcome is a point in his favor, even if he has been quite the heel and much less than charitable at certain points. Structure Just a final note on structure in the series, in light of all the time I have spent on this site developing the concepts of ancient literature stucturing devices such as chiasm. It seems an apt place to do so here because I am tying together book 5 and book 7 material. there are a lot of common elements between the two books that maybe at some point I will try to catalog 9or as they say in fancy academic terms "compose a taxonomy of"). For here I just want to propose that while I still fully subscribe to chiasm as the primary meta-structure of the series (although, who knows, rowling may well heartily disagree with me on its primacy :) ), I think this is one of those structures that operates alongside/within it (like the books 3 and 7 connection of the shrieking shack, which I will here freely admit Red Hen nailed really nicely, and my Peevesish hat is off to RH in true admiration ... although it was more the pente-ulitimate and I must admit that I was quite happy that my theory of the GOF "graveyard lift" being repeated fit so nicely the death in the woods and then the elevation to a battle on a new plane or plateau, in the castle/great hall, with, interstingly, Narcissa's love of Draco acting a little bit like the phoenix song does in the GOF graveyard scene, not so much causing it, I guess, but definitely enabling it ... and then you have the nice use of our Rebudo character, Hagrid, as the "Paul Bearer" of sorts for the "taking it to the next level"). I do not think books 5 and 7 are the outer limits of a distinct chiasm, but I do think that with book 6 as a center point they form a distinctly discrete inclusio/ring-structure of the final 3 books, in the 4 book -3 book structure that I have described elswhere operating alongside the 7 element chiasm (4 cardinal virtues, 3 theological virtues etc and other numerological siginificances in 7 as the most magically powerful number). so there you have it ... some more of my rambling thoughs on DH in hopefully not too awefully rambling style. Merlin the Meandering

Potter-o-Pedia

Here is a news article about some Today show interview where Rowling says she does plan to pen an encyclopedia with all the stuff all of us are dying to know and to be able to argue about for years to come. :) There is some stuff about the "reprieve" and "sudden death" characters too. Only one thing ... the phrasing on this seems to be a lot on characters, like it may be officially an Encyclopedia just of individual characters ... which I would love and would eat up like crazy ... but I would also love an Encylopedia on the history of the wizarding world in general (I loved reading Quidditch Through the Ages ... great stuff) ... personally I would love to find out that whole deal Harry couldn't remember in the History of Magic OWL on the warlocks of Liechtenstein and the formation of the International confederation of wizards because I personally have known people connected with/in tension with an academic institution in Liechtenstein Austria. I know many might think it would not sell to well but I bet it would ... I bet that while people might at first aver from the concept, once they realize that in such a work you would step once more into Rowling's wonderful imagination and have the texture of that world painted for you again, I bet kids and adults alike would love it.

Expelliarmus: The side Beyond the Flip-Side in Deathly Hallows

So, now begins the task of unpacking Deathly Hallows. This task will not be done for many years ... in fact I predict it will never be done. Some would say that literary theorists are still simply arguing endlessly about the works of Homer and the Greeks (like Aeschylus, quoted in the inscription page of DH), I would say they are still unpacking the multi-valences and nuances. It will take years to unpack the rich character that was Severus Snape, his hatred for Sirius and James and the malice in his obvious hope that Sirius will receive the dementor's kiss in book 3 and its impact on the reading of his character as exposed in book7. Personally a favorite of mine is Molly Weasley ... Molly against Bellatrix in the Great Hall ... that's says it all - a great scene (and, inlight of my statements about the XP as a disarming spell here in contrast to the AK, check out my reply comment to Andrjez on the homecoming for some materail on Molly using a killing curse). And I would say that it will take a while even to get to the "real unpacking," or rather the "official" unpacking. Right now most of it is still going on online, and for a while it will be on that online level where when the term "canon" is used of Harry Potter, it means primarily the works and interviews, as distinct from "fanon" etc. Even though I have seen an occassional article in the academic realm, at least at the lower levels (interdisciplinary popular culture level of journals), it will be a while to get to the point where, on the academic level, the use of the term "canon" refers to the "canon of Western literature" and the inclusion of the (Although, I know personally fromt he fact that I put in for the assignment, although did not get it, that the works are being included in something like the revised edition of the 6 volume work of the Magill's companion to World Literature, that the books are already being counted among the standard works of "literature" at least at a certain level of the academic arena, although a lower tier of that arena as of yet - Magill's being a sort of expanded actual multi-volume version of the old "Cliff Notes," aimed at the same general target audience. I myself will also be trying to write two articles soon, one on a Derrida them in the works, and one on a Heidegger theme, to shop at least to lower inter-disciplinary journals. I frimly believe that in the following centuries these books will be studied regularly in the arena of academic literary studies ... but, of course, as with all things, there is much work for many people to do. ) As far as material predictions go, I maintain that it can be a very healthy and good mode of working out certain aspects of literary theory on symbolism etc, but I also do not hold that just because certain material prediction did not "come true" does not mean that the themes and literary elements they on which they were built are not valid. But again, now that we are out of the material prediction stage (IE now that we have a closed corpus) the methodology for examining those elements in the works will be different. So that brings me to this one of mine that I am writing on here, which for the present, in this context, I am going call "the side beyond the flipside." When I write about it eventually in hopes of publishing in the official academic arena it will involve talking Derrida's concept of "differance" in relation to a concept of "multi-valence"and "potentiality" and "possibility" etc. (in this arena you have things like Heidegger's definition of death, which, in English, translates into something like "the possible impossibility of all possibilities" ... and the German of that is too convoluted for me, at my redumentary level of German at present, to even begin to get into very heavily lol). But for here, at this preliminary stage, I prefer to stick to the more informal language of the "side beyond the flipside" as pertains to material elements (what I have called before the "psychic physics" of the "Potterverse" and its relation to material plot elements in Deathly Hallows) in the works, and particular, for this post, in DH. So, in terms of Deathly Hallows, what do I mean by the "flipside?" For to get to the "side beyond the flipside" we first have to know what the "flipside" is. It would be good to go to this post and read the section on the Expelliarmus disarming spell, because that is what I'm focussing on here, and also trying to make a case that I "got that right" (this is obviously not a material plot prediction but it is something I said I thought would be important and I am trying to make a case that it turned out to important). So, haveing read that you can guess I am in favor of the Expelliarmus spell and was probably a little put out at Lupin when he started tearing into Harry for using the XP rather than a heavier spell. Lupin eventually comes around to a real reason not to have used it in that situation, beceause the whole point was disguise and the XP has been known as sort of a trademark for Harry that gave him away. But I maintain that the initial impulse on Harry's part is seen to be correct, not only that I agree with it but that I think Rowling does. Stan Shunpike is young and probably under the imperius. Now, I LOVE Lupin ... seriously I do. It brok my heart when he and Tonks are listed among the dead whom Harry sees in the great hall. But I also do think there is a latent "live by the sword, die by the sword" motif between Lupin's original criticism of more passive means and his final fate ... beyond that I won't press that one particularly because he was a great character and so much more than a simple irony device (for one, after Lupin has the fall out with Harry over going with them versus satying with Tonks, Lupin genuinely takes those words to heart ... when he bursts in at Bill and Fleur's he is genuinely excited about being a father and having a family with Tonks - that is a really beautiful scene and a great character [Lupin] Rowling has created and paints ... Lupin's death was a true tragedy [not to mention Tonks'], I'm just saying there is a small message piccy-backed onto it ... but that is spoken as one who feels not like somebody who could look down their nose at Lupin and chide him, but by one who feels like a brother werewolf ... I would note the same type of irony with Snape: Voldy does not kill him with an AK, he sends the snake and snape bleeds to death from the wound ... remember what Lupin said "Sectum Sempra was always a specialty of Snape's ... it was all I could do to keep George on the broom afte rhe was injured, he was losing so much blood." [DH 73] ... but again, I love and miss Snape too, problems though he had, and I love Harry's comment on Slytherin "Albus Severus ... you were named for two headmasters of Hogwarts. One of them was a Slytherin and he was probably the bravest man I ever knew." [DH 758 ... this is a really nice ending turn-around from 2 points in the story, one is when DD tells Snape taht maybe they sort to soon because Snape is no coward like Karkaroff, and then in book 6 when Harry calls him a coward ... this is also possibly a nice little cacth credit gor John Granger, I'm not sure but I think it would connect up pretty well with his forecasts of Snape as the Green Lion, the Slytherin Gryffindor Androgyne]) I think I was proven right about the XP spell when we read "Harry heard the high voice shriek as he too yelled his best hope to the heavens, pointing Draco's wand" (DH 743) - The AK vs the XP, right there at the crucial moment, Harry's "best hope." But there is a flipside. For that XP spell that disarmed Dumbledore on top of the tower was what made the plan backfire, and had Voldemort killed Draco it would have made him the master of the Elder Wand. In that case, from a normal standpoint, it would have been better for the AK not only to go through as it did, but to accomplish what DD and Snape had intended, to cut off the power from passing (we don't know for sure if what Voldy says is true, that taking the wand after death, as long as it would have been against the master's wish in life, would do the trick though). That is the flipside - it would be possible for things to have turned out very badly precisely by the XP beat the AK, in this case on the tower by Draco winning the wand by XP before the AK could do what Snape and DD wanted it to do. But in the end it wound up actually giving Harry the one advantage in that last duel with Voldy - that was the side beyond the flipside. The 2 yetzers Everything has the possibility for both good and evil. Every coin always has tow sides. What I am saying is that I think that there is another side that transcends them. The title of the subsection uses a word from Hebrew - "yetzer." It means "helper." It is actually the word used in the deliberation before the creation of the woman in Genesis two, YHWH purposes to make for the Adam a "yetzer k'negdo" - a helper suit for him. In Jewish rabbinic Thought around the time of Christ, particularly in say St Paul where he says that if he does evil it is "sin" acting within him, there is an idea of the 2 "yetzers" - the 2 "helpers" - one to good and one to evil. St Paul's comments on sin acting in him are grounded in the belief in this concept of these 2 "impulses" or "helpers" that exist in the human person, one that encourages to do justice and one that encourages against it. These 2 are kind of the "flipside" of each other ... but I believe that St Paul sees a "side beyond the flipsides," Christ, just as Rowling has a side beyond the two flipsides of the XP - AK tension. Rowling's "side beyond the flipside" is the same as St Paul's (and notable that she uses a St Paul verse on resurrection verse on Harry's parents headstone) ... XP works in both Draco getting the wand, and thus Harry getting its masterhsip, and then in Harry defeating Voldy, but the key to it all, what opens up the side beyond those flipsides, is first, latently, Draco using XP rather than being willing to kill with AK, and then Harry, like Christ, willing laying down his life, even when attacked with a wand that is rightfully his. The Mechanics of Resurrection in Deathly Hallows: Particpation (Methexis) between "meaning" and physical mechanics and the mediatory role of Expelliarmus But this Reusrrection has a tight mechanics to it too ... it is not just that the symbolism/meaning is thrown in there and works through a Deus Ex Machina. The physical side working properly, Grace not violating nature but rather transcending it in a way that does not do it the violence of radical deconstruction (as I have said before, deconstruction is a part of it all, but if it is at the level of nature being abandoned it is an erroneous concept ... much of medieval theology was wrapped up in the statement that "Grace builds on nature," huiding it throught Scylla and Charybdis of, on the one side, this type of radical deconstructionism, and, on the other, a Pelagianism or Neo-Pelagianism in which Grace doesn't really need and fixing, maybe just a few minor repairs before Grace can build right on top of it without really doing much at all to it). I have spoken of this before but I am sure I have not done it justice, for, as with all truly profound thought in the Tradition, it is difficult to do it justice. In narrative I believe there has to be a "participation" between the "meaning" and the "mechanics" - a unity in them (even though, because differance is a true concept, there will also be a variance between them ... my project is to help as much as possible to help to see this differance as multi-valences, even when they exist more in the form of simple ambiguity and ambivalences, rather than radically "unifying" things to a point of denying differance, for when differance is denied it does not cease to exist but is merely then cloaked so that one side or the other can use it as a hidden, and deadly, weapon). Another way to say all this is that, as I read the works, the way the XP works in DH is not just the "side BEYOND the flipside"; it is alway WITHIN the flipside ... it is the "participation" when this structure is turned to the matter of Nature and Grace, physical and spiritual, muggle and magic. This is one of the things I was really impressed with in DH ... that the mechanical physical side tied out so well. Rowling I think worked very hard at this, and with a real respect for the "nature" side of the equation. Dudley and Draco: The Sins of the Fathers Redeemed in the Sons Obvioulsy the subtitle I just used plays on William Faulkner's famous line fomr Absalom Absalom: "The sins of the fathers are visited upon the sons." I bring this all in here because the first place I ever brought up this concept of "participation"/"methexis" is in this post on Draco and Dudley, and on the protection of muggle act ... the same respect of the muggle that Arthur, dumbledore and HArry fight for - the fact that "with great power comes great responsibility." wizard kind has an obligation to protect not only the wizard or witch from the muggle, but the muggle from themselves and the muggle from the wizard. This is the post in which I spoke of this matter long ago (nearly 2 years ago), noting particularly Dudley Dursely and Draco Malfoy standing on either side of Harry, the muggle and the wizard. I have spent a lot of time on this site recently talking about ancient literature stuctures such as chiasms, ring constructions and inclusios. In DH these 2 sons, muggle and wizard, are basically the ver important beginning and ending. It is very important that toward the beginning Dudley thanks Harry for saving his life and shakes his hand, and that That is one of the things I love so much in DH and in Rowling in general is her naturalness about it. Dudley is the same meat-head as ever - he does not make any melodramatic speeches that reveal some deep well of immense vocabularly and orational skills we know could never have come from the son of Vernon Dursely, but he does realize and express seomthing real and genuine in his own way. Draco does not "see the error of his ways" and all of a sudden become bosm buddies with Harry in a way that is a stretch for his nature (Percy Weasely's conversion flows from his childhood ... the sons and daughter of Arthur and Molly Weasely have always been valiant fighters for the truth and for familial love, even if they forget that fact for a bit), but in that epilogue chapter, in that curt nod that Draco gives Harry, we see, in his own unique way, that he is not Lucius concretely swearing allegiance to a dark lord - he is on the same side as Harry in general, trying to live at peace as best he can. It reminds me of one of those little things sage people say sometimes about tensions among peoples (and sometimes it is parroted by less sage people trying to sound more sage, usually somewhat less effectively but better to have it than not :) ) ... you're not obligated to like everyone but you are obligated to love everyone. Note at the end of this book the approach Ron and Harry take toward integration of muggle and wizard life - they both get muggle dirver's licenses (a nice throwback to book 2 and the Ford Anglia ... *man do I miss Fred*) - True to form (in other words consisetent with character, such that you don't wind up with this sort of Deus Ex Machina wherever turns out "super-rosey" in exactly the same over-done way), Harry, the one raised in the muggle house, does not mention any problem from when he did his, assumedly completely on muggle skill, but Ron, the wizard-raised, fudges a little bit with a confundus spell (harking back to book 6, when Hermione does the same for him in the keeper trials) But, there is a central son born very close to the middle of this 7th book: Ted Lupin. In fact Ted's Birth is announced at the outset of the final sequence of main plot points, the sequence that, after the sort of "wondering around middle days" (when Harry and Hermione are alone and kind of going about things aimlessly with not much of a clue where to go to find the Horcruxes, the days when, like with Frodo and Sam and Gollum with the ring in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, the locket weighs heavier and heavier), Ron Returns and destroys the locket and then they are captured , the sequence that ushers in the run of events that lead right up to the final battle etc. And Ted Lupin is central in 2 ways. First, his father is on the other end of the same spectrum as Lucius and Vernon. The pure muggle and the pure wizard are in danger of visiting their sins on their sons through they're assumption that their vices are really virtues - whereas remus risks alienating his son by assuming that things that are circumstantial illness will be visited upon his son as sins. And the second way that Ted Lupin is central is that he is a second Harry, or rather still distinctly Harry but with a second chance at what Harry lost. Like Harry, Ted lost his parents to the cause of fighting Voldemort, but unlike Harry he did not lose his godfather. And he has his godfather in a much better situation than Harry had Sirius for the limited time that he did. So, what Harry averts through the actions he takes is 3 sons - of the muggle, the wizard and the one who bears the wounds of the battle between the two - avoid having the "sins" of the fathers visited upon them. He does this through basically using the XP to defeat the AK 9and picking up on where it had already done what the AK did not do on top of the tower in HBP), rather than assuming that all must be done through killing, or assuming that the XP can ONLY be the flipside to the AK, the "weakness"opposite to the "strength" of the AK. The centrality of the Lupin family and Ted can be seen in that Lupin is the good character, the Order member, who succumbs to this misconception at the beginning of the book (when he chides Harry for using Expelliarmus against Stan Shunpike). In short, Harry does all of this by accepting the principle that there can be a side beyond all the dualistic "flipsides." Of course he learns all of this first by learning the humility of accepting the meeker of the two in the flipside - accepting his own death rather than seeking power (a nice close out from book 1 and Quirrel-Mort's binary/dualisticstatement of "there is only power and those too week to seek it"). That is one of the reasons why, after reading book 7, I think it is part of the intrinsic logic that Harry lived - Resurrection is the "side beyond" the "flipside" relationship of life and death. This in and of itself is not the "flipside" of Voldy but rather the "right side" of which Voldy can never be a "flipside" but only a perversion: Voldy is "death in life" and this is "life through death."

"Home Away from Home" in Deathly Hallows

"Where Your Treasure is, There Will Your Heart Be Also" In some of the comments on this post on blood imagery and Harry's turmoil in book 5 after Sirius dies and Dylan's "It's All Right Ma, I'm Only Bleeding" (which post I love refering to anyway, one of my favorites because I love that song so much) I made some comments/hints on a "homecoming structure" in book 7 (also linked to the title of the Dylan album containing that song, "Bringing It All Back Home"), and used the U2 song title "A Sort of Homecoming" because JRK2, aka Jo-2, aka Jo, and I share a love of U2 (and, Jo, since moving to NYC I have come around to a new appreciation of what I call the "prophet years" of U2, Achtung through Pop - as a friend put it analgously concerning the Old Testament: "If you're going to get anywhere you have to start with the Torah; And you have to arrive at the Wisdom Literature or you haven't gotten anywhere; But if you are going to take that human trip you have to go by way of the deconstruction of the kingdoms in the Prophets." everything up through Joshua Tree is Torah, Atomic Bomb is Wisdom Lit, and Achtung, Zooropa and Pop are the dark times of the prophets [Rattle and hum and All that You Can't Leave Behind are limbo/Sheol Albums for me ... like God part 2 {quoted it's quote of Bruce Cockburn recently here - "heard a singer on the radio late last night, said he's gonna kick the darkness till it bleeds daylight"}, like Van Demens land, like Elevation, Like Walk On, but the albums as a whole feel non-descript to me]) Why did Albus Dumbledore have the content of the Gospel verse inscribed on the tomb of his mother and sister near his home in Godric's Hollow? I think that the answer is the same as the reason that he knew that Harry would use the stone rightly where he himself did not ... because Harry knows where his home is and what the role ofhis "home" in this world is and how it connects to his true home. "Home is where the heart is." While Harry resides in this world and his loved ones, or some number of them, are in the next life, his treasure, his love, his heart, and therefore his home, are there also ... any home in this world is still a home, but also only a "home away from home." It is the same reason that the Catholic Church sometimes refers to this life as "the wayfaring state." Harry knows that the point is not to bring loved ones back with the stone and try to make them at home here again, obviously, but it is also not to try to alter their home, as Albus wanted to do, by simply sending them a message from this side to have them understand his sorrow. Sorrow like that is something you communicate in person and such things are done at home (even when you have to carry home around with you in a small beaded handbag). This requires a certain respect for death, and/or rather for the dead. For Harry, even when it was communicating only with the shades from Voldy's wand, it was still in the context of at least assuming immediate death was unavoidable whether he consented or not (IE he did not even have any choice in the graveyard to abscond if he wanted to, like he does in the end of DH, which of course he does not, and this peace about death of course irritates Voldemort to no end and so he visciously makes up the lie that Harry died fleeing like a coward). In Deathly Hallows, as he walks down from the castle to the woods, it is even more pronounced because he would have the opportunity to try to run if he wanted to (if he would have made it very far is another question, or how many others would have died in his absence). There is a lot here because it is a very deep, and indeed mystical, thing. Martin Heidegger refered to it as "Being towards Death" - the idea that the presence and knowledge of mortality is a key element in human "being." There is, however WAY too much to get into to be able to discuss that here. For here I simply wanted to note that it is centrally connected in Deathly Hallows to the issue of "home." Here, as Harry intentionally walks to his death distinctly planning not to defend himself, there is a very pointed statement about "home." "He wanted to be stopped, to be dragged back, to be sent home ... But he was home. Hogwarts was the first and best home he had known. He, Voldemort and Snape, the abandoned boys, had all found home here ..." (DH 697) Of course, one he forgot there is Hargid, but we find Hagrid in his home in a few minutes. But I think with the three listed one could do a pretty interesting examination of 3 approaches to "what home means." But I'm not going to do so here, which would take more space and work than I planned here. Here I just wanted to note how this worked out in the rest of the structure of the book, in the material plot ... of which a majority of the locals, at least the major sites (meaning not counting the myriad of campsites ... although that tent became very much a homeplace for the trio) od which can be fit into the "homecoming" setting framework: #4 Privet drive, The Burrow, #12 Grimmauld place. All of these places actually functioned as at least a "home away from home" in the story: the Trio at least lived and planned/worked there. Bill and Fleur's can be fit into this category by extension, since the Weasley's are like family to Harry, and he eventually becomes family, and even at the wedding he is disguised as a cousin. Then consider the variety of other homeplaces visited even just in passing: The Lovegood home (Luna's bedroom had my hopes up pretty high about my theory of a new school, with her paintings of Ron, Hermione, Harry, Ginny and Neville ... but either way, even disappointed on my plot prediction, the image was very moving, probably even moreso because the pictures weren't ... actually physically moveing, that is, because they were her own artistic handiwork rather than magic pictures); Malfoy Manner; Godric's Hollow (loved the Church scen there, and the respect of muggle religious bruial with Scripture, aptly chosen of course ...); even walking by Hagrid's hut on the final "Via Dolorosa" with his "cloud of witnesses." All in all, if you compare locations percentage-wise ... homeplaces (including Hogwarts, where that special mention is made of the "abandoned boys") far outweigh locations like the ministry, Gringott's and the muggle coffee-shop. And your heart beats so slow Through the rain and fallen snow Across the fields of mourningLight's in the distance Oh don't sorrow, no don't weep For tonight, at last I am coming home I am coming home

Rubeus Hagrid: Bat Out of Hell

WARNING: There may be some spoilers here (I have abandoned trying to do "spoiler-free" discussion - it could be done but is just too labor intensive ... and the book will be read soon enough ... just be warned to hold off reading till after you have finished the book ... and make no excuses about not reading the book - you need to read the book, if you're not ravenous for the book then my posts will not interest you at all :) and if you are, you will be done and reading them soon enough if you're interested :) Ok, I am just starting shift at night and things are not quiet enough around here yet to sit and write either of the post I talked about (but I have my book with me in which I scribbled notes in the margins and should be able to discuss the stuff but with "anti-spoiler" charms on the posts), but for right now I will just write a short one from the first chapters of the book. I love images. I love the borrowing and adaptation of images in interesting ways (can anybody who has finished book 7 say "the train station from Matrix 3 and the 'construct' program from Matrix 1" or "Davey Jones Locker from Pirates 3?"). And I especially love when an author like Rowling borrows an image that was originally cheesy or clunky or stereo-typical and turns it into something real (I cannot prove she was going for this image source in this scene, but it sure fits ... and even if not I think I could safely say "see, meatloaf ... this is what that image looks like when done well"). That first scene with Hagrid on the flying cycle quite simply "rocked" ... straight of that cheesy cover of Meat-Loaf's "Bat Outta Hell" cover ... only done with some real character, style and grit. The way Hagrid excitedly says earlier "that one's my idea" and Arthur Weasely nervously says something like "I'm not sure if that was a good idea Hagrid, only use it in extreme emergency" ... and then the way Hagrid slams the final button, dragon's breath, with his whole hand ... classic. And, after the slow and (purposefully) sickening opening, that scene was a very intense "drop in" to the roller coaster ride that is book 7. but more importantly ... Hargid's character. I heard recentlly that the guy who wrote Eragon somewhere presumptuously labeled himself the Tolkien of this generation ... What a first rate prat (I having read the prologue to Eragon before dropping the book out of danger of poisionous silly-sap, I have a hard time seeing him doing a Percy ... he simply does not seem to me to be made of the Weasley Weld). The Tolkien of our times is Rowling. Her chracterization and the way she works it in with plot and theme is just quite simply uber-rich ... it just has this amazingly substantial texture. Still riding high on the Dragon's Breath, Merlin PS Oh yeah, forgot on last post ... congrats to Granger - the closest on certain matters of Snape's emotional state and the things it impacts. Others were incorrect on his patronus form in places but VERY insightful in thinking to ask that question. John was right (at least early on, before we all hit the "11th hour panic mode" and started hypothesizing about the Machiavellian Prince motif ... but with that title, "Prince," I think it was right to wonder, that that experience of wondering if he might be a Machiavellian prince is part of the "meaning" of the works) about Snape's deeper/longer relationship with Lily and it playing a major role ... sound slike a lot of us maybe should have stuck with some of our original ideas. I originally guessed, upon hearing that Rowling has distinctly stated that Harry would not return as a teacher but that one student would (after I thus abandoned my theory that Harry would return as DADA teacher - but more later on how I think some of those predictions and those of others can be 'logical' and therefore "part of the text"), that it would be Neville doing Herbology, but then I went off in other directions at the last moment (but like I said, I think there is still something literary to the Role of Cho in the series that connects with DADA, especially in the Quidditch events of books 3-4-5, which I am still reading as chiastic in nature, just different in function in the series as a whole ... and if there is any doubt about the import of Quidditch and seekers ... RAB was a seeker and if that scen of saving Draco in the ROR was not a seeker image and a reprise of scouring the Map for him there in book 6, I don't know what would be ... and then there is the location of the stone in book 7 and then , how can the import of the seeker image be denied with that last catch "with the unerring skill of the Seeker" [DH 744, "Seeker" capitalized in text])

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Hallelujah Chorus

I just finished the book at 8:45 PM this evening (and Jo-2, amazingly great to hear your lovely voice again :) and Harpazo, sorry for not replying to your comment but I will ... it was a great comment, I just got caught up in getting the book and reading it and all and I had a trip last Saturday to retreive my car from a garage near Hazelton PA, that was 6 hours driving round-trip with 3 hours in the middle of visiting an old friend , on no sleep because of the time spent at the B&N opening [sorry, no Jim Dale for me ... will explain later] and then making it to page 80 or so [end of "Fallen Warrior" Chapter] before setting out driving at 5:30 am .. busy, busy, busy - but your comment was great H. and I want to revisit that them some) ... WOW!!!!! .... I think I started reading the series in spring of 2003, so a little over 4 years of an odyssey ... and ... WOW!!! That is all I can say at present ... my head is still reeling from it! I actually do have some things to say - 2 posts planned right now for a start - (more on that in a mo') - but wanting to be considerate of those who have not yet finished it: I know Pauli and Lissa did not get the book upon release because of a trip to Upstate NY and may still be up there and will not have read it yet, Nate and Julie's daughter Elizabeth had first dibs on their copy and today Nate emailed me and said she is 3/4 of way through, planning to finish today but Josh and Julie are maybe halfway through and Nate is only a couple chapters in and can only read when the others have gone to bed. So my posts will probably try to say some things without giving spoilers yet. But first, congrats to some like Felicity and others who nailed some major Horcrux material. Felicity made one big miss but some big hits and RH's Shrieking shack stuff from her essay in Granger's "Who Killed Albus Dumbledore?" book, while a little altered, still nailed some serious material material (the redundancy there is intentional). So, congrats to those who scored some decent prediction points. I'll say more on y take on material plot predictions and why, in the scope of what literature like this is and what discussion of it really is, I would not call even the "inaccurate" ones "wrong." I didn't really hit any though ... except one that was very important to me from recently, but it was not a "material plot prediction point" that can be as easily verified so I expect to have to do some pretty hard literary defense of it for some time to come .. but such is life - it will just make me do my homework a lot more thoroughly, which I need to do anyway :) On writing posts that have serious content discussion but without material spoilers ... I will just list my credential at doing so. I got an "Outstanding" for in the OWL in this bit of muggle magic ... ... My friend Dom came up once from the home theater in the place we were living after having just watched fightclub and said " I can't BELIEVE you did that ... you gave me the ENTIRE plot of fightclub without giving me the 'changeover'" (the revelation that Tyler [Brad Pitt] is Jack's [Ed Norton's] alter ego) ... I thought I might as well watch it because I already knew the whole plot, because you gave it to me, and you did give me the entire plot ... but without the changeover and it took me totally off guard" So, the two upcoming posts: 1. "The Side Beyond the Flipside" 2. "Home Away From Home" (this one is for you Jo ... flowing from that post I did way back whenever on "homecomings" in book 7 and U2's "A Sort of Homecoming")

Parting Shot

Well, We are inside the 24 hour mark here on the East Coast of the USA and this will be my last post before the release of book 7 on Friday night at midnight (and I probably will not post again until I have read book 7 once through and processed the main plot ... and even then probably just a brief little bit to say things like "WHOOOOAAAAAHHHHH!!!! .... guess I was WAAAAAYYYYY off on that one lol!" - and who knows, maybe I might even have occasion to say, "hey! ... wait! ... cool! ... I actually got one right!"). I will finish my re-read of book 5 tonight after I get back from writing this on my meal break. I have noticed a few extra things but right now they are all minor details that all connect to thematic and structural concerns the basics/general issues of which I feel I have sufficiently beaten to death in recent months (things like a book 5 instance of Harry being faster on the draw than Malfoy, a book 1-5 connection via the re-introduction, in the Prophet's news release of Voldy's return at the end of book 5, of the title "the boy who lived" etc etc) ... either that or they are text details I am cataloging for a piece I am trying to write for paper publishing after book 7 is out etc. So, I am officially doing a practice a guy I used to know did with tests ... he refused to study anymore within the hour before the test. He would drink a beer or listen to music or something to relax, to loosen up, to keep the mind from getting so bound up going over things that it was unable to operate smoothly in the test. So Today I am just kicking back and relaxing. Actually I had this started a day ago and am just now getting back to finish it owing to other stuff going on. But there is one thing I am going to add here which I actually already have penned but have not used - not so much a concrete prediction as concretely siding against somebody else's prediction on an area I feel central. Over on John Grangers HogPro site somebody commented strong agreement with some other online commentator's that the one person lined up for a dementor's kiss in book 7 is Voldy. I thoroughly disagree ... I think there is no place for the dementor's kiss in any resolution that is truly a healthy closure to the story. We had 1 DK and that was in book4, on Barty JR and I think it fulfilled its natural roll in the whole of the story ... to show what a sham and a travesty the "Ministry Method" is and the kind of tragedy to which it is most prone to contribute. So, here is what I managed to get out in draft form for a comment in response before I got distracted with other things, and also thought maybe I was doing it at least a little combatively and so I dropped it. I do think the issue is important, and I also think that what I managed to get out here is decently constructive ... I think I just stopped because I was having difficulty at that particular point closing it out and tightening it up without moving into more "debate mode" - which I just really didn't feel good about. So I will just leave it as is here in rough draft form (although I will edit just to prune off danglers and all) and people can make of it what they like. I may find out after tonight that I am wrong. I may read Deathly Hallows and find that Rowling has Voldy receive a Dementors Kiss, but I'll cross that bridge if it comes to me. Other than that, in the time before the release, I would simply encourage everyone to pick their favorite of the books and peruse it - not for the material plot points and last minute predictions, but for the parts they just sheerly enjoy. For me, my recommendation would probably be book 5 just because that is what I have read most recently - "I laughed, I cried ... I experienced childbirth." When Fred and George unleashed Mayhem and made the great escape I pumped the air with my fist and laughed like a little kid and Madeye's comment that the things that Uncle Vernon is not aware of could probably fill several books makes me guffaw; and I cried when Dumbledore added one last explanation he felt he owed Harry, on why he did not make him a prefect, because he felt Harry had enough weighing him down as it was, and Harry looks up to see a single tear roll down into the headmaster's silver beard, and Harry's and Luna's final conversation on the departed who wait behind the veil and how Harry finds the he does not mind Luna talking about Sirius, especially after her comments on her mother's unique personality contributing to her demise, reminds me that this is the first that I have gone through book 5 since my father died ... (OK, I am male ... so obviously I did not experience childbirth, but that is the old thing we used to say) ROUGH DRAFT OF RESPONSE TO PREDICTION OF A DEMENTOR'S KISS FOR VOLDY IN BOOK 7 I have to disagree strongly with the comments on Voldy and the dementor's kiss (DK). The primary reason for doing so is an argument from "need for closure." I am tempted to argue that the mention of how the DK would be the punishment fitting the crime would carry a tone of irony to it, that in a way Voldy would get what he wanted, on the technical level. It would be a shoddy argument at best, since this is not close enough to what Voldy meant by "immortality" even to warrant claiming it as full "irony" (closer is something like the way the Aladdin movie with Robin Williams as the voice of the Genie ends, with the villain with the Genie's powers he craves but also the Genies bonds, but most importantly part of the impact is his being aware of the irony). But rather than that my argument will be straight ahead from closure and definition. Voldy needs to be dead by the end of book 7 (some of my comments in a moment, on the nature of "justice" will relate - but let me be clear here in forecasting that what I say there is distinctly NOT a "retribution" model of Justice). In part this is due to the nature of the DK in relation to the nature of the Horcrux, and the mutual nature of both as regards the location of the "final resting place" of the soul in relation to this world (or however you want to think of it - this plane of this world - however you want to distinguish this side of the veil in the DOM from the other side of it, when the soul leaves "this world). In this regard I would make the argument that the DK resembles the Horcrux closely enough to say that in the logic of the images, as I read them and as I am arguing that Rowling writes them, the DK in no way could ever be considered a "good ending" (even on Barty Jr, I think it is technically entirely tragic and a concrete mark on exactly how bad and dangerous of a characters people like Fudge and Crouch Sr and their mentality are). Although one might argue that the connection between the two images, DK and HC, is what makes the DK the fitting conclusion for somebody practicing the HC, it is my hope that what I write below will more fully explicate why it is that I concretely disagree with this interpretation of both the matter in general and of the position that it is the interpretation put forward in the Harry Potter series. For here I will say that I do not believe the logic of the image is determined by "retribution for a subjective action" (what some would refer to as "poetic justice") but rather by the objective qualities of the image as natural or unnatural. If the HC is by nature objectively unnatural, and thus having it in the world is an objective evil, having more evils of the same kind objectively existing in the world will not help the matter one bit on the side of objective reality. I could not really in good conscious make any claim about the irreversability of the DK (unless somebody showed me something conclusive from text I have missed). And so it would not be justified for me to posit any concrete possibility of reversability (for one it would violate a predictional/interpretational practical theory I think to be pretty good one of not arguing from magic things you invent on your own and that have not been established in text, by relying on some concept of some magical means of reversing the DK). I think that it is reasonable from what is in text to allow the impression of irreversability (and I suspect that if Rowling had to define on that element of the potterverse she would define it as irreversable, at least as far as any possibility of getting a person's soul "reatteached" to their body ... but I also suspect that she has intentionally not addressed the matter and would prefer to leave it open in the text, open to the impression of irreversability but with the mechanics of the image still open-ended ... this is of course all witht the caviat that we do not have book 7 yet, and it is entirely possible that she will have some further clarification in that text on those matters, one way or the other), but I do not see that as being the same as a positive presence of conclusive irrversability in the actual image itself as presented in text. Like I said, it is entirely possible somebody could show me differently. But actuallly even the positive concrete presence of irrversability would not change what is at the core of what I am trying to say as far as "closure" (the irreversability issue would be pertinent if it were not irreversable and Voldy could come back as Lord regurgi-mort etc) and what I am saying here will relate to what I say on Dante below. The bottom line is that the the kiss is not the same as death. In fact, if it is irreversable that would be the area in which the greatest objective evil is present in the DK, that it does not allow the natural event of death, the passing of the soul through the veil, to occur. I believe that the thrust of the series to date has been that the world needs to be rid of Voldy ... completely rid of him (as is the case, actually, with all human beings in the Pottervers, but not this same type of need). Nick's talk at the end of Book 5 indicates that that is the natural path for all ... even a ghost is not totally "natural" and not to be sought moving on after a brave death, but the ghosts are more on an acceptable level and within the parameters of the system, whereas Voldy's way of doing things, of not only remaining present enough to speak and hold conversation but also to act and interact more concretely and powerfully, is the properly evil way, on the objective side, of sticking around forever. Nick is, as he says, neither here nor there (" I chose to remain behind. I sometimes wonder whether I oughtn't to have ... Well, that is neither here nor there ... In fact, I am neither here nor there" [OotP 861]). Voldy IS, in fact, HERE .... and there is a definitive need for closure in him clearly being sent THERE. From the tone of the works as I have read them thus far I find it difficult to believe that Voldy's soul remaining in this world forms any type of closure along the tones indicated by the works thus far ... as for the continued existence of the soul in the dementor being a symbol of hell (the proper eschatological category of hell, not meaning something more loose like "hellish" etc), I do not believe that that is within the parameters of these works and the specifics of my argument for that will be in the section below addressing the argument proposed from the comparison with Dante. The Bible As to an argument based in "fittingness" or "poetic justice," I would argue that the particular concept being implied here is not consonant with the Bible or with any other "element" in the Christian tradition on which Rowling might be drawing in building these works (including alchemy as a mystical/symbolist practice or literary field, at least in what I have read on it in John Granger's works). The Christian Tradition begins with the Bible and the Bible begins with the Old Testament. I am honestly not trying to be condescendingly pedantic in stating such an obvious fact ... I do so because I wanted to get out the general basic flow that my next comment is a concrete level of and make sure that it was clear that it is that general baisc thing that I am hooking the next details up with. When we speak of terms such as "justice" and "righteousness" these terms in Christian tradition begin with the dik- root in Greek in the New Testament. But even from a faith in Scripture as divine revelation, words like the dik- root did not simply pop out of nowhere, and much less did their usage in the New Testament. Our understanding of the meaning of this term are to be conditioned by the Hebrew word/s of the root TsDQ in the Old Testament (The specific path by which this happens is that in the authoritative Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures known as the Septuagint, generally accepted to have been done in the range of 300 BC/BCE, the Greek dik- root is that which is most often used to translate the TsDQ root in the Hebrew texts). The TsDQ root carries much less of an individual tone and, corrspondingly, much less of a subjective tone. It's tone is much more objective in the sense of "justice" being a thing being "right in the world" or as it should be, a right orderedness in the affair. We moderns tend to split the terms "justice" and "righteousness" out and have the former be the objective and the subjective. In truth what we really tend to do is, after unnaturally separating the two terms thus, we then tend to re-conflate them along the lines of modern individualism and improper subjectivism ... we tend to think of "justice" as merely the objective state of everybody getting the punishment their subjective sins "deserve" or the reward their subjective good actions "merit." This is next is a topic where I tread tenderly. I believe that a corrolary that exists to what I have described is that in the area of life and death, "retributive justice" becomes a concept that if one person causes another this pain, the the "just recompense" is that they themselves becaused this pain. Again, I realize many will disagree with me here, but as a student/scholar of Biblical Exegesis and a student of Christian theology I have completely left behind the belief that what is commonly thought of of as "retributive justice" has any real place in matters of this level and finality. In the death penalty for murder as the prime example, on the objective side, the ending of the life of the guilty person does not restore the life of the victim, and thus the element of "retribution" must be grounded in the subjective side of the matter, and I do not believe that subjectivity at that level is the proper domain of, nor even really within the power of (if the matter ever be exposed fully and accurately) human persons (some will argue that it is proper retribution because God has declared it so in the Bible ... which, as one who actually does read the Bible in the original languages, I have to say is a bit of an arrogant statement ... assuming to be able to declare authoritatively on what exactly God is saying and decreeing in the Bible with a level of concrete detail and certitude that the Magisterium of the Catholic Church, even on its most flamboyant days, does not claim ... an example of the type of questions to be answered are : in Genesis 9:6 why does the verb "will be poured out" not have any morphological form of the jussive ... IE what would be the justification for taking that imperfect tense to be jussive in meaning [as can happen] rather than simply imperfect as a descriptive, rather than a prescriptive meaning?) As an observer in life, in what I have read on the matter etc, it does not seem to me the proposed closure for relations of the victims is really provided, but this is by nature a properly subjective question and I also wish to maintain respect for personal experience and must admit that I personally have not undergone that particular trial of losing a loved one to violent crime. As for the Bible, I believe that the evidence that is generally suggested for such things, in particular the death penalty, rely on inaccurate readings of the Biblical texts and insufficient understandings of the categories of Biblical Revelation in general ... that is only my opinion but it is my opinion as a student/scholar working in this particular discipline. I really do think that there is a distinct tenor in the approach to the dementor issue by Rowling that the dementor situation is never a natural one the way death is, and never forms a part of any type of justice, poetic or otherwise, which is why I think she has a sage character like Dumbledore so opposed. I personally think she is making a statement against the death penalty (which, as does the dementor's kiss, radically cuts off the possibility of repentance)... if deadly force is necessary in the moment for protection, this is another matter (but even here, we heard Sirius in book 4 commend the real Madeye Moody for avoiding killing when it was possible, bringing them in alive if he could). As to the Dante argument [editorial note: when I wrote this it was in response to somebody saying they thought a DK for Voldy would be quite appropriate in the same way as the punishments in the circles of Dante's hell in the Inferno], Dante's work is one in which the elements present are representative of the afterlife in a way that is not present in Rowling's works. It is not the case that the Potter series does not touch on the afterlife at all ... as is evident in the end of book 5. But, and here is the rub, while the series does touch on the afterlife, the Dementors are distinctly not part of that element ... they are and always have been (at least as far as can be seen or demonstrated from text evidence) on this side of the veil. It might be different if there was no element in the series of "beyond this world" - of "the other side of the veil" - then maybe one could argue that the DK represents hell - but that is not the case in the works as they stand at present (at least until midnight of July 21, 2007). Concerning Dante, the proper realm of the work is the afterlife - not indefinite suspended animation in this world, as a dementor's kiss would seem to yield. In short, I am not sure hell is represented at all in the Potter series. We know that good souls like Sirius "go on" to an assumedly better place etc (at least that is the implication of Nick's talk), but we have nothing really about what happens to souls that die in a state of malice and evil. To me this fitting and is akin to the approach of the Catholic Church on the eternal destiny of particular human beings who have died. The Church will proclaim, after a rigorous investigation called the canonization process, that certain individuals have gone to heaven ... IE are saints, but will not proclaim in the same definitive way that any individual has gone to hell. This is not to say, as some do, that everyone is going to heaven - hell remains a very real possibility for human persons. The Church simply will not declare that any particular person who has died has gone there (the closest it gets is the obvious implication of canonization as a saint, that that person has not gone there). If one looks at he Christian Tradition, I would strongly argue that one does not find the core of the predominant teaching on the afterlife as the language of "crime and punishment" but as the language of "revelation" (as in the book of the New Testament that is generally thought to deal most directly with "last things" being named "Revelations"). The Afterlife is a unique finalization of this life, a revelation, as it were. Hell is radical, including eternal, disunity with God and neighbor, and is the natural end product of a life lived choosing such diunity and dischord in this present world. "Let the punishment fit the crime" does not, at least as it seems to me, fit the Christian Tradition if it is taken as a thing of "vindication" (it seems to me like such turns God not into a lover but into the proverbial "vindictive b***h" ... Christian Theology tends to come down on even Hell as the love of God ... hell is basically how God's eternal love feels to a soul that rejects it) . It can only fit if it is sort of "code" for a description that hell will probably take the shape of the sins of which it is composed, the whole will look like the parts of which it is composed. Of course, due consideration must be given to the fact that "the whole is more than the sum of its parts" and the need to avoid such things as some erroneous directions in which certain concepts like that of the "fundamental option" in Catholic thought have been taken (IE the "Fundamental Option" doctrine is, I believe, sound in and of itself, but I am just noting that this is the misinterpretation of it that one has to guard against - saying that the whole is only the sum of its parts). I guess that I would sum up this comment by saying that I would find a dementors kiss of Voldy to be a failure not only on the level of some of the image sources Rowling is drawing upon (like psychological remedies like talk therapy), but also on the literary level and the level of the Biblical/Christian Tradition (and not to mention that it seems to me to be somehwat inconsistent with what we know of dementors in text - they seem to be much more drawn to vibrant/passionate healthy souls like Harry and Sirius, or at least pudgy souls like Dudley, who, for as inordinately as his soul may be operating in regards to the body and bodily sustenance and all that, is at least more innocently still with a "strong pulse" so to speak ... but then this would be a place that many might disagree with me on, on the evidence of Barty Crouch Jr, whom the dementor swooped down on almost instictively in Dumbledore's office in GOF, but I read even Barty Jr's mania as more vivid and hot than something like Voldy's "high cold voice" version of "sanity" or "tact") but just my 0.02 worth .... after book 7 I could well have to be reconsidering my thoughts on this ... nothing to do but wait and then read :) Merlin the day-walking vamp "Gotta kick at the darkness 'til it bleeds daylight" (-Bruce Cockburn, from "Lovers in Dangerous Times")

Of Love and War, of Quidditch and Seekers

"We can do you blood, love and rhetoric - consecutively or all together" -Richard Dreyfus as King of the Players in "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead" This is just a last little post while waiting "the big day" - Just some stuff I cam across in reading book 5 on the night shift. The thing that I was saying about Cho having her own 3-4-5 chiasm - it is actually a little more intricately detailed than I at first realized. In addition to the book 3 introduction of Cho as a driving force, with her whole own chapter in the form of "Gryffindor vs Ravenclaw" chapter in POA, there is a book 5 bookend to that ... a final match between Gryffindor and Ravenclaw in which Gryffindor wins and takes the cup. Only this time it is not Harry squaring off against Cho as seeker ... it is Ginny. In fact, Ginny plays what I think is a REALLY central symbolic role in this time in OotP when Harry is under Umbridge's ban. Bascially Ginny, in two matches, relives the central importance of the seeker image as it played out in books 4 and 3. In book 3, Harry loses to Cedric at the match where the dementors show up, meaning Gryffindor loses to HufflePuff. In Book 5 ... Ginny plays seeker against Hufflepuff in a match lost by 10 points ... but she "pulls a Krum" in the deal. She loses the game by catching the snitch, ... just like Krum did in the world cup in book 4 (like my brother Steve said, "losing the world to gain your soul") - the book where Cedric dies. Any doubts from the shippers about whether it is Ginny or Cho Harry is meant to be with, or whether the book 6 pairing of Harry and Ginny was an unexpected double-cross on Rowling's part? Ginny beats Cho as seeker in the final match in book 5, just as she wins the snitch to win Harry in book 6. So, in all of this Ginny is pretty central as Harry's love interest (meaning "love" as "courtly love" in a way that is larger than the mere emotional part). But some of it makes me wonder if Harry is going to make it out alive in book 7 to marry her and have those 7 kids I want to see them have. Why? Well, for one it would make a pretty neat 2-6 chiasm if he died in 7: Ginny introduced in book 2, they get together in 6 after Harry loses Cho to Cedric in 4 (and 5 really), but that is the closing of Ginny and Harry's chiastic life ... it would tie out neatly. But the other thing I wonder is if it is "written in the stars." Actually I mean a very specific text scene on that: the Astronomy OWL practical during which they witness Umbridge's attack (and failure thereof) on Hagrid from atop the same tower that Harry sees Dumbledore die on in HBP. Follow the text and the stars there. When Harry is distracted by the commotion below, what he is distracted FROM is filling in .... the position of venus - the "love planet." As far as I can see he never gets around to filling it in correctly on his exam chart. BUT he does, in the commotion, get around to mislabeling it ... as Mars - the red planet of the Roman god of war. I am not saying this is conclusive (obviously none of us are ... she has written it too well to guess it so systematically ... which is why we all love it so much ... except for whoever the dud is who thought getting a librarian to sneak pictures was a good idea or whatever happened, trying for a little Barty Jr fame and glory or something) ... and I am obviously pulling really hard for survival and marriage and kids and all - but just saying that when I read that bit last night it made me frown a bit because it does seem to be the type of thing Rowling could use as a hidden clue that Harry is destined for a bloody end with Mars, rather than a marital end with Venus. Also keep in mind that the whole time Hagrid is being attacked ... and I have said I am on the side that says he dies in book 7, which is, as John Granger often notes, slated to be the "Rubedo" stage of the 3-stage alchemical process (with Sirius Black dying in the black stage book, and Albus Dumbledore dying in the white stage book and so Rebeus Hagrid will probably die in the Red Stage book). So, the mislabeling is going on during an attack on a red character whom I think is slated to die this book, a character Harry has deep ties to etc ... not looking good, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed till Friday night (And on being "written in the stars" - I prefer to take Firenze's line on it - even the Centaur's misread the stars sometimes)

No Place Like NYC

I have a copy of Deathly Hallows on reserve at the Union Square Barnes and Noble for the release of Deathly Hallows Friday night ... Jim Dale is going to be at the Union Square Barnes and Noble ... apparently this one big event ... I'll try to get an autograph or a picture or something. Merlin in the Magical City

Linguistic Invasion 101 in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

So, this is a follow-up to my earlier statements on the Avada Kedavra Curse as "psychic invasion" drawn from tonight's midnight ramblings in OotP. In particular I have been reading the "Occulmency" chapter of Order of the Phoenix. Here is the background. There is, it seems to me, a good bit of confusion on exactly what Jacques Derrida was doing with "deconstructionist" literary theory (of which he is genarally accepted as the "father") up to his death in 2004. It is often mistakenly thought that Derrida was on a mission to deconstruct language and meaning, that he was an anarchist of sorts trying to bring about the anarchy. In reality his project was to show that language deconstructs itself in our world. His key concept was called "differance" - the fact that there is always a disjunction between the "object" and the language used to describe it, and that more often than not differance is used as a weapon for leverage and power (this is a concept also heavily developed by Roland Barthes in his shift from his "structuralist" phase to his "post-structuralist" phase, which is also an area developed, as noted often by Dr John Granger, by Jacques Lyotard). In and of himself I do not believe Derrida either advocates or disparages with regards to these human "projects." As far as "God Talk" (a central hot-topic of discussion in philosophy ever since Heidegger's exposition of what he called "onto-theology") I don't think Derrida or Heidegger ever went to saying theological discourse is impossible, simply saying that it must be recognized as something beyond "standard philosophy" (which deals primarily in human "phenomena," and thus the predominat strand of continental philosophy in the post-modern era is "phenomenology," of which Heidegger is a major figure and Edmund Husserl the "father" - and all of this is the basic philosophical background to somebody in the French post-modern and existentialist school like Derrida, who Rowling would have very likely had occasion to study in the course of her degree in classics and French at Exeter ... all of these thinkers would agree that often "God Talk" is taken in the vein of standard philosophy and thus utilized as leverage in and for political/cultural power ... although those such as Trasnscendental Thomists make a very good case the St thomas Aquinas himself never took philosophical discourse on God, or "natural theology," to this extreme which it has been taken to by the "scholastics"/"neo-scholastics"). Derrida and Heidegger simply "don't go there" when it comes to "God Talk" (even though Derrida was known to give talks with titles like "how not to talk about God" - but such a talk was given at a theological convention of Eastern Orthodox scholars focussing on what is known as "apophatic theology," the notion that there is more that we can't say about God than that we can say about God, what is often refered to as "negative theology" ... the East has always been bigger on apophatic theology and the West on the converse, cataphatic theology, what we can say about God). But Derrida's main point seems to be to me that, through the use of the "differance" that already naturally exists in human language already, language is most often used as a weapon. The question is not, it seems to me( contra a very common misconception about "deconstruction"), whether or not we should deconstruct ... Derrida's point is that the deconstruction happens anyway. This to me is really nothing more than saying, as the Church has said for 2000 years, that we humans inhabit a fallen world and come into that world with certain predelictions for agression against each other ... ie sin and original sin. The question is where to go from there. Most of Derrida's energy was spent in simply supporting the contention that deconstruction is indeed the norm, or rather the usual, in our world (since it seems to be a rather unpopular idea in most of the "standard" camps on both sides of all fences - cultural, political, religious etc. In the 80s and 90s Derrida was in tense argument with a prominent defender of trying to salvage Enlightenment rationalism, the German philosopher and sociologist named Jurgen Habermas, on particularly this point in regards to politics and political rationality ... the two of them actually started to dialogue more constructively in the wake of the radical events of September 11th, 2001 in New York City, up until Derrida's death in 2004 - Harbermas is still alive). It is somebody like the Czech thinker Miroslav Volf who then takes the step beyond "mere deconstructionism." And this is where the difference between Snape and Harry on occlumency comes in - how to deal with it. For I think Rowling really does go beyond Derrida's basics of deconstruction to the thought of somebody like Volf (I'm not saying I necessarily think she has read Volf, but that they come out at roughly the same place). For Volf the answer is radically more akin to Christian Tradition. The object is not to "mute" the attacks ... the object is for the attacks to be transformed. The attacks will always happen in this life, the object is for both attacker and victim (and we are both always both, often even in regards to ourselves ... cf my other comments in the stuff on the Expelliarmus spell in the post on Cho Chang, that really what Harry will be doing in undoing Voldy is allowing his original "auto-cide" to run its full course) to be transformed (I liked the 3rd Terminator movie for this reason ... the point never was to prevent "Judgment Day" but rather to survive it). The fact that legilmency is a weapon/attack motif is undeniable. On OotP 536 Snape berates Harry that in not cutting off access to these sensitive memories he is handing the dark lord valuable weapons (I'm not saying Snape is 100% wrong on the danger of wearing one's heart on one's sleeve, or that cunning is not a valuable tool, but Snape seems almost to take cunning as an ends rather than a short term means). On OotP 540 Hermione, whose account of things is often very insightful, spakes of legilimency as the mind being "attacked." The question is the path of "solving" this problem. For Dumbledore I think Occlumency seems a short term solution. For Snape I think it is more the ideal long-term solution. I think the path shown in the end of the book is more what Rowling is saying is best ... you cannot ultimately stop the invasive attack, but love can transform the situation - the attacker faces the ultimatum of either being transformed by love or leaving, under their own impulse, a situation which is unbearable for them. This ties out, I think, with the very beginning of our hero's story: the way the AK was beat in the only instance it was ever beat was not by any type of standard "defense" against invasion, but by a transformtion through self-scarificial love. This is a place where I think the "Harry way" (although maybe not the way he would "think" of ... but rather the way he inherited from his mother and father and will have taken 7 books to finally get the hang of, as DD notes in book 6 his slowness at getting the import of it) comes out on top over standard occlumency. In the end of book 5 Snape is proven right that Harry is completely vulnerable to Voldy's powers of invasion, but the situation is still resolved. Harry's stance of "come on in, buddy" is not intentional, and obviously not painless, and so he would probably not choose it, but it is the reality of the thing that Voldy is given an open door but NOT the license of determining Harry's disposition, making it one of fear rather than love. Harry's disposition remains one of love of Sirius and whether Voldy can hack staying there (and thus being transformed) is up to him ... and he leaves. In Volf's language (at least the little I have heard of him and looked into him), the invasion remains invasion, but the answer is love transforming both victim and invader. Obviously Voldy chooses not to be transformed, but by the end of the series he will have no choice ... either be transformed into a living and loving person (which it seems is beyond his capability at this point, considering how radically he has mutilated his human soul in making horcruxes and the like), or be transformed into a decidedly dead person. Harry's own transofrmation, at least as many have speculated, including myself, will involve the willingness to forgive Snape. But forgiveness never really has been, I would contend, the old addage of "forgive and forget," at least not in the ultimate sense we often take "forgetting" (actually the Greek word for "truth" used in New Testament passages such as "I am the Way, the Truth and the Life" literally means "not fogetting" - it is "altehia" - the "alpha privative" attached to the front of the name of the river of forgetfull bliss in Greek mythology, the river Lethe ... contra the quote used in the movie "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" - "blessed are the forgetful" - as is the point of that movie, that it is precisely the path of "fogetting" that is most damaging ... remember that in Patristic Trinitarian thought such as Augustine's psychological model of the Trinity, the human faculty that corresponds to the Father is "memoria" ... and we are all pulling very hard for our boy Neville to get his memory back in book 7). It is never returned to some idyllic state where the sin never happened - the sin is transformed - just like in CS Lewis' "The Great Divorce" the red lizard on the shade's shoulder, when the shade allows the glorious soul to kill it, does not disappear, but is rather then transformed into a brilliant white stallion on which the transformed shade rides off "further up and further in" to heaven. And both victim and agrressor can be transformed (I myself have often thought of this in terms of the symbolism of the Roman centurian in the Catholic Mass. If the priest, in saying the words of institution at the Mass, is the material agent bringing forth the Eucharistic, the most apt symbolic connection for the priest in the Gospel story of the crucixion is actually the centurion who pierces the side of Christ and thus the blood and water issue forth ... it is an agressive and violently invasive act intentioned directly for death, but transformed into bringing THE Life ... through the "invasive" words of institution spoken by the priest in the Mass). In the final analysis, the ultimate answer to the invasion of Voldemort and his AK is not some "advanced defensive magic" (as Ron and Hermione think Dumbledore will teach Harry in the private lessons in book 6) but rather that ancient alchemical discpline Dumbledore taught before becoming headmaster ... Transfiguration (and one could easily posit Dumbledore's emphasis on the love power in those lessons in HBP as a distinct adaptation in teaching methodolgy, directly in reaction to the failure of occlumency lessons in book 5 ... in short, I think it was not just that he realized that it was a mistake to have Snape teach Harry occulmency, but a realization that it would be an even bigger mistake to take occlumency itself as any type of definitve and final solution to the problem). And an interesting piece of "evidence" I just realized in flipping through GrandPre's chapter heading artwork for book 5 ... which method of handling "attacks" does Voldy prefer? Well, what does he conjure in the battle in the atrium of the ministry? ... a blocking device, a shield. Extras 1. Movie 5 showing the kiss This is just a shorty I came across tonight on the whole thing that I mentioned recently on showing the kiss with Cho versus not showing it (I think it originated in a set of comments back and forth between Nancy Brown and myself on here), that that kiss is NOT some ordinary "highschool hormone titilation, nothing more" ... On OotP 534, in Snape's first legilimency invasion of Harry's mind, it is only when Snape gets close to the memory of the kiss that Harry kicks in his defenses hardcore ... in fact, in light of the discussion of whether or not to show the kiss on screen in a movie, Harry's mental response to Snape might be the appropriate response to the movie makers and audience - "No ... you're not watching that, you're not watching, it's private ..." Obviously Rowling did not enforce any such stipulation on the movie makers, but the juggernaut that is Warner Brothers, whose chops she has had to bust before when they were trying to sue highschool fans for copyright infringement on fan site names containing "copyright protected" words, is a pretty big and powerful machine and she may not have much sway on that issue ... but I think one can at least say that is the statement of the story itself to those who would try to bend it to the whims of "money making titilation" - in this case, "money talks back." Such juggernaut's do not like to be told they are wrong, but, to quote Sammy Hagar's song "3 lock box" - "suckers walk and money talks." The usual guy who just filled in for me while I took meal break saw I was reading book 5 and said he read that the movie only grossed 70 million opening weekend - the lowest opening-weekend grossing to date of all the Harry Potter movies (and you would think with the book 7 release hype it would be the hottest) ... I'll have to check his facts, but if that is accurate ... money talks and suckers can walk. 2. References to Barty Crouch Jr and Imperius curse from GOF I noticed several prominent allusions, one clear and another I think to be there in the image, to Barty Jr's lessons on the Imperius curse in book 4, which I think is a tip off for the misguidedness of the occlumency lessons (the issue of teaching methodology is all over the place in these books). The first is that on 534 snape mentions Harry already showing aptitude at resisting the Imperius curse (that is the clear one). The second one, the image one, is that it is the same thing that signals Harry breaking the connection as it was when Barty Jr/Fake Moody was doing the Imperius on him in book 4 ... a pain in his knee resulting from falling and banging his knee on a desk (GOF) or desk leg (OotP). I have mentioned elsewhere along the line of the past couple of years that I think, in effect (although I did not put it this way then, but I am now), that Harry's knobby knees are almost as important to pay attention to as those green eyes of his. The knees actually come into play more, as I have mentioned elsewhere, here in book 5 ... when Harry has is head in Umbridge's fireplace there is distinct note made of the odd feeling of his head warm and fuzzily muffled in the fire and his knees painfully aching on the cold stone floor (personally I predict, at least until Friday night at midnight lol, that this will be how the scarcrux is removed without killing him, that only his head will go through the veil, with his knees planted firmly on the other side of the veil on the stone floor ... I predict that, as here in book 5, Voldy will lure Harry into the death veil room, thinking as he always has with his AK, that, while he can avoid death himself, it is also a weapon completely at his disposal - but his timing will be off and Harry will get rid of the scarcrux before he gets there - I still like Red Hen's old idea of Rowling using the literary device of a "spirit journey": Harry with his head through the veil and maybe Sirius or even also Quirrell on the other side acting as guide/s for the spirit journey - then, as per the DH cover art, a big showdown with Voldy and the death eaters around arena-style and then transportation to "another plane" for the finale, as per the end of GOF ... I could even see Voldy luring Harry to the death room but not knowing Harry has all the Horcruxes with him and then Harry realizing the best way to get rid of all the Horcruxes is just to chuck them through the veil [having brought them in that nice little leather pouch we see around his neck in the cover artwork] and then doing the on the knees spirit journey to get rid of the scarcrux before Voldy comes in, and maybe the veil arch being destroyed in the pyrotechniques of the Horcrux chucking session and scarcrux removal) To quote Bono on the importance of knees, "I don't know if I can make it, I'm not easy on my knees, Here's my heart, let you break it, I need some release ... we need love and peace" (from "Love and Peace Or Else" on the album "How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb")

ScarCrux Theory

OK, especially in the mounting excitement of the book 7 release on the 21st of thsi mont there is lots of hot speculations and last minute argumentation going on. Probably the single biggest debated topic (other than maybe Snape, but there are numerous sub-topics in those debates), is whether or not Harry's Scar is a Horcrux. some are quite opposed to the idea, some quite enamored of it. I fall in the latter camp but I have heard a few good arguments here and there of things that might preclude the scar as a Horcrux (have also heard a number to me that really don't seem to hold water, and even the better ones that I have heard aren't conclusive on it being positively precluded, but some of them are pretty decent). So, during some of these "long nights at the wall" on security, when usual study does not stave drowsiness, I sometimes pop OotP out of my bag and read some for a "Fred and George Fix," which usually wakes me up with laughing (the most recent of these is the book 5 instance where they consider using a skiving snack to avaoid Quidditch practice in the rain/storm, but figure Angelina would know what they wer eup to because they had just tried to sell her puking pastils the day before, and they mention the possibility of their new "Fever Fudge" but they haven't figured out how to get rid of the accompanying boils, which, in repsonse to Ron's statement that he sees no boils, they say are in places they usually don't display for the public but which make it a pain sitting on a broom ... that and them taking it in turns to get Zacharias Smith behind his back at the first DA meeting so that every time he opens his mout, before he can get the Expelliarmus spell out, his own wand flies out of his hand ... and last night it was Fed and George in the Hog's Head asking Smith if he wanted his ears cleaned, or any other body part, thay are not particular about where they stick the long "lethal-looking" metal rod George just pulled out of a Zonko's bag ... man I sure hope I am wrong about those two biting it in book 7, I'll really miss them, and our friend Nate told me recently in an email that Fred and George are the faves of his son Elijah). But tonight, I read at the meeting where Hermione introduces the fake galleons, and Harry notes that what they remind him of are the death eaters' dark marks ... on he doesn't call them "marks" - he calls them "scars." So I thought that in combination with noting this occurance of the word scar here, I would recount here my comments from one of the recent posts, on qualities of the dark mark and the use in light of psychic connections (all in light of the fact that a Horcurx is a portion of soul, of a psyche). All of this should be chalked up to trying to provide text support for the reasonableness of the possibility that the scar is a horcrux. Here is the contents of that comment on the graveyard use of the dark-marks on the arms of death eaters: This fits under the connection I made between alchemy and psychology as "sciences of the soul," which is really the best place for this comment because it involves possible soul imagery that, if I am right about the presence of it, possibly connect with the Horcuxes thing, which we all know book 7 will be all about as (as I think Red Hen put it) "Raiders of the Lost Horcruxes.This observation involves Voldy and wandless magic. We know he has a penchant for wandless magic (which I have argued in places is connected to the wand as representative of symbolism and the transcendent in magic) ... the one power remaining to Voldy when he was only vapor and unable to hold a wand was possession, and he notes this very clearly in the Death Eaters chapter (GOF 653, where he specifically notes it as the "only one power" that remained to him). Red Hen and Swythyv were working on a theory of the possible role of possession in the process of making Horcruxes, or at least as Voldy does the deal or had to piece together how to do the deal (note, on GOF 653 Voldy refers to the Horcruxes as his "experiments" - that in the "testing" of being bodyless he discovered that one or more of his "experiments" had worked, since he was not dead and should be) and I think RH and Swv are on a solid path on that (Granger had a post somehwere on the HogPro blog with links to the their stuff). Possession is obviously both a psychic thing and wandless magic. There is another thing though that I picked up in the end of the "Flesh, Blood and Bone" chapter and I will drop that one in a second, as a finale to this comment, but for the present I wanted to give a little bit of context. Lots of speculation has gone on about the relation between the Avada Kedavra curse and Horcruxes. I myself and working on an essay for shopping for paper publication that focusses on the origins of the AK terms and some of Derrida's concepts of language and deconstruction. Where this connects for me with the AK and possession is that my theory of the AK is "possession based" involving the wand as a channel for a form of concentrated momentary psychic possession that is really a violent "psychic invasion" (the "possession" concentrated to such a level that the psychic "presence" of the caster obliterates the presence/existence of the victim, it exerts the caster's presence in the victim's body so forecfully that it excludes the victim's right to presence in their physical body to the level that it shatters the bond between the victim's soul and body ... and that is why, I think, "Moody" says none of the 4th year class would be able to kill him with the AK, they are not yet skilled enough to be able to muster enough of themselves into the curse to do the trick). This is based in theories I have spoken of before on the wand being, in general, a concentrated conduit of the psychic energy of a magically gifted person (a conduit that it takes some time to learn how to direct towards different particular ends, like summoning object, banishing objects, levitating objects etc, which is the whole point of magical education). The AK is, I think, basically this basic psychic tenet of magic taken to a radical and violent extreme of concentration against another person. I suspect that, in the normal run of things, the only way to defend against it is to be willing to kill the invading psyche ... the only way to combat the murder is to commit at least "killing in self defense" (and I think that probably nobody but Voldy and Dumbledore really realizes this, end even if the white-hat wizards did realize, the level of concentration and prediction and intention necesary to pull off such a "blocking kill through killing" defense is so high that it is basically, as I thnk the AK itself is, the psychic/psychological state of full blown mania ... making the AK curse [effectively at least] "inblockable"). But notice I qualified that with "in the normal run of things" ... for there is another option. The only option I can see to "this kill or be killed" line of defense is that of radical self-giving to the level of complete abandonment of self ... love (I take some of this from the Swiss Catholic theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar - VonB spoke of the love of God as "reckless self-giving" like "reckless abandonment." VonB's Christology is based on the cross, and particularly the ultimate suffering on the cross, as what happens when this kind of self-giving love meets a soul that rejects it ... which is really an inverse of what I am saying is the image of the AK curse ... in short, this is all about the answer to one of the classical paradox-conundrums: what happens when an unstoppable force [the self-giving love of God] meets an immovabel object [a soul that rejects that love]? the answer is the crucifixion). This is basically how Lily defended Harry, and it forged a psychic connection Harry's skin to do it. The image I found in the Flesh Blood and Bone is that when Voldy calls the DE's using WT's dark mark, he does not do it, as they have it in the movie, with his wand, but with his finger, a part of his body being animated by his soul (and very wandless magic) ... but also note that he does a verfication on the mark first, noting that it has been growing stronger ... he did not know this yet, he has to verify the psychic connection working, that his getting stronger in soul strength all year has indeed caused the marks to burn again. I think this "experimentation verification" of the dark mark working bears a strong resemblence to the experiment verification of the horcruxes working that happened when Voldy was not killed on the night he attacked baby Harry. I'm not saying I think the dark marks are actual horcruxes or anything crazy like that, but they do have a psychic connection to Voldy like Harry's scar and the horcruxes ... there is something there

Cho Chang as 7th DADA prof after book 7 and Expelliarmus

Ok, so since I did my big manifesto and all that I am just throwing up minor posts of tidbits etc (although this post will be of a bit substantial size since it will combine two such tidbits), and I was going to throw this in a comment at the end of the big manifesto with the comment # 21 predictions but thought I would throw it up here just in case anybody is more likely to stumble across it here etc. The material details of my pertinent comment 21 prediction: Rowling said somewhere along the line in an interview that Harry would not be returning as a teacher to Hogwarts (I speak to that at length in the manifesto, that I think he has been and will be involved in the founding of a new DADA focussed school instead), but that one of Harry's fellow students will be returning to Hogwarts as a teacher. My prediction thus far has been that this will be Cho Chang as the 7th and final DADA teacher for the series - that there will be no official staff appointment to the DADA post for the 7th and final year of Harry's class and that the class will be being taught round robin/ad hoc by the whole staff (although I think this prediction could also work even if there is a 7th year DADA teacher, with Cho as 8th and final DADA teacher, and the numerological aspects could still work ... there is much in the Christian Tradition of eschatology, particularly in St Augustine, who is often covered in Medieval/Classical Studies, on the 7th day as the culmination of the first, natural creation, then superceded , especially in the East Sunday is often refered to as the 8th day, the "ogdoad," that mirrors the first day of creation being called in the Septuagint of Genesis 1 not the "first" [protos] day, but the "one" [mia] day and following Jeiwsh tradition of circumcision on the 8th day etc). My reasons for making this prediction, if any wish to read further, are in the material in and attached to the big manifesto post (please note, just so you know what you are getting into ... my method of argumentation for such things - I'm not saying " this is the way it has to be" - I'm saying that if I take a guess, this is my guess based on how I read what I see as the narrative and imagery logic). The last bit of this prediction is that the uniqueness of Cho as the final DADA teacher at Hogwarts, and what has contributed to that uniqueness and its relation to Harry and central themes, is that her Patronus will change - it will become the shade of Cedric that emerged from Voldy's wand in the graveyard. (As further support for this Cedric Patronus as a possible culmination of a specific progression in the works: it seems to be a general rule that a patronus always takes an animal form - Cho's Patronus is a swan and Hermione's is an otter [OotP 606-607]. But In two cases at least, and two very important cases, we have a Patronus that takes not just a particular animal, but a particular individual animal that is either the animagus form or an animal another human transforms into even if not by choice - meaning Harry's stag that is his father's animagus form, and Tonks' Patronus changing to become Lupin's werewolf form. Tonks' is especialy important as evidence that Patronus forms can change. I believe that Cho will have to lose the sort of tone of distancing herself from Harry that she has in HBP and that part of this will be coming to grips with Cedric's death and what it was that she was looking to Harry for in OotP that went south after Marietta's acne outbreak from ratting on the DA, and that this progression/closure will transform her Patronus into the first individual human Patronus as a culmination to the Patronus progression in the works as symbolic of DADA. I have also noted that the role of the shades that emerge from Voldy's wand in the graveyard, of which Cedric is the first [last to be murdered, "the first shall be last and the last shall be first"?], as that of the "Communion of the Saints" and here I would note, as is noted below under some other linguistic considerations provided in part by John Granger, that the word used to conjure a patronus is the verb lifted from the Creed's "I look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come" - "Expecto") Now, I have to look up the Rowling Quote on the student returning as a teacher, to see Rowling's exact words on it ... one of "Harry's year" or one of "Harry's fellow students." I just looked Cho up on the HP Lexicon and one possible problem, if the wording is the former, is that Cho is a year above Harry (HPL lists PA chapter 13 on Cho as a year above Harry). But I'm sticking with this one ... there are a lot of details to keep straight in writing such a series, let alone giving interviews etc. and it is possible for even as meticulous of an author as Rolwing, in the hustle and bustle, to mis-state the forecast of a student returning by saying "one fror Harry's year" rather than "one of Harry's fellow students" (in one interview online with kids early on she was asked what position James Potter played and she said he was a chaser, which she then apologized for later because it is obvious in bok 5 he was a seeker). I think Cho is definitely in that class with "Harry's fellow students" as a group more than Fred and George and Lee Jordan and Angelina Jolie, as students who are "older" - the next rank up. I think the prediction is possible even if the interview quote uses the specific words "one of the students in Harry's year." Of course, July 21st is only weeks away and I could be eating my words then ... but for now I am sticking with this prediction. So, this is something that popped up for me in reading the "HogsHead" chapter of OotP. When some are giving a defense of Harry against skeptics like Zachariah Smith, it is Cho who chimes in with "all the tasks he had to get through in the Triwizard Tournament last year - getting past dragons and merpeople and acromantulas and things" (OotP 342). I have a serious question about how she knew about the big eight-legger in the maze in book 4, but even if that can be answered, I will note an importance to this passage. The question, though, of how indeed she knew about the spider in the maze is a real one. The only possibility (outside of the possibilty that it might be just one of the things that is bound to fall between the cracks in a series of this much detail) is if the stands in which she was sitting were high enough to look down in, which they probably were, to a certain degree (depending on how high the hedges were ... I do not have my copy of GOF here at work with me, but I think the height was either 12 or 20 feet, which is pretty high and hard to see down in on, although the Quidditch stands seem to be pretty high up in order to get a good perspective on the pitch for matches). The text details are a bit fuzzy on this part of the story. If the crowd could see down into the maze to see the spider they should have probably been able to see down into the center to see Harry and Cedric touch the cup together and disappear, but the reaction upon Harry's return with Cedric's body and the subsequent descriptions of the scene of confusion on his disappearance and return seem to indicate that what was in the maze was not very visible (but, of course, this seems to be sort of a let down for that audience, sitting up in the stands and waiting without getting to see any action). This is all not to mention that all the descriptions in the maze fit more of a scene of being cut off visually from the crowd and stands. and of course, if the action was visible from the top, then the stands would be visible from the ground inside the maza and the "point me" or "four points" spell would not be as necessary to gain bearing and direction within the maze. So if it was not as visible, how did Cho know about the spider. She never got to talk to Cedric again and Harry has not talked to her about it in text. But, even if there is an explanation and this "anomoly" is not distinctly a textual tip-off, Cho still acts as a delivery device for a distinct and succinct statement of the triwizard tournament as characterized by 3 particular elements. I have already stated a number of times how I think the tournament functions as a symbol, as a miniature of the whole series as a battle against Voldy and his followers and their drak arts, which thus makes Cho as a delivery person for a concise overview of the trounament very possibly quite central to the core issue of DADA in general and the DADA post at hogwarts. Expelliaramus (XP - please don't sue me Mr BG lol) Now, here is another interesting thing that is related to chiasm and I was going to have it in a separate small post, but I just decided to put it here because in all that poking around on the HP Lexicon I came across an interesting fact ... Cho has difficulty with the disarming spell, Expelliarmus (OP 394 - but the HP lexicon notes that it may just be, as she says there, that she is nervous because Harry is there, which is what she says, but it is also obviously the truth because Harry confirms it by telling her that he had been watching her from over further and saw her perfom the XP well when she was not aware of his attention, but, as I will say with the XP in general, I am not looking for strict material "causality" but rather literary conjunction ... but even on the level of material causality it is notable that emotions affect Cho's performance of the XP in this way, particualrly romantic/courtly love emotions - just as they affect Tonks' powers in HBP ... If I had to gues at a possible book 7 DADA teacher prior to Cho, it would be Tonks ... but then, on the level of mechanical plot, why not her as the lasting DADA teacher unless she dies, and I simply haven't the heart to go there in the electrically tense anticipation this close to the release of the book that will answer all such questions of who lives and who dies). Expelliarmus, I am going to say, is the single most intriguing thing to me in the Potterverse right now ... it is simply loaded. Before I go further though I have to establish the importance of Expelliarmus as evidenced in text. First, a 2-4-6 "dueling chiasm." It is in the dueling club in Book 2 that we first see the disarming spell, and who introduces it? None other than Severus Snape. This all by itself should be a huge in text tip off if we are reading the books the way a literary text should be read. No, Snape, of course, did not invent the spell. But such a detail matters only for a materialist read (actually maybe more of a result of the current pre-book-7 online scramble of preoccupation to "nail down" text details about Snape and get the right prediction about him in the next 3 weeks, whether he has always been a white hat or a black hat etc). It is NOT that it would NOT be significant if he did invent it, but it would be important in different ways than it is at present. If he invented it it would actually be important in exactly the opposite direction as it is important here (and I don't mean "opposite" as any type of negative term - simply that the flow of meaning would run in the other direction, both directions being viable in literature, but distinctly different): the character of the spell would then tell us something about Snape's character, as opposed to, as it is here, Snape's character telling us something, via the in-text conjunction, about the importance of the spell as a literary symbol and device. The question when examining a thing like this in literature is not the material question of who invented it, because ultimately ... Rowling invented it. It is the question of with whom she introduced it, or at least who is in close conjunction with the introduction (and the actual material agent of introduction is about as close as you can get on this level). This type of "conjunction investigation" has been used by others in the realm of tracking material clues for what the Horcruxes might be ... Felicity did a pretty cool and innovative job of tracking the conjunctions in her essays on the Riddle Merit Badge as the transfigured Hufflepuff cup and the Aunt Muriel's Goblin made Tierra as two of the Horcruxes. If I remember correctly she did a really good job of picking up on Peeves' presence in the trophy room at certain times as a clue to the former, from detail drops from when Harry is using the map ... which is actually at least intuitively a very good catch ... Peeves is a Poltergeist and, as an image/character, he is by nature connected with and drawn to things that are "out of order" (he is not "normal" like a ghost, in the potterverse a "psychic trace" of a particularly departed person, but rather either another type of spirit or psyche or the localization of particularly disrupted psychic/psychological phenomena ... theories on real world poltergeist phenomena range from distinct non-human spirits to human subconscious "psycho-kinesis" ... although, in my book, to posit the latter without some theory or eveidence of a possible explenation of a physiological medium for such, you might as well be positing spiritual causality ... but that is another debate for another day and probably another venue) The books 4 and 6 instances are where it gets really interesting. I'll list book 6 first because that is the one I will focus on less, even though it is very telling. Draco disarms Dumbledore with the XP on top of the tower. This is pretty tight positioning of characters in relation to meaning elements. Snape introduced the disarming spell in book 2 in a dueling club event where Harry and Malfoy face each other for the first time (and it is the revelation of Harry being a parslemouth to boot). Now Harry is frozen watching Malfoy use the XP to disarm Dumbledore as the set up for Snape unleashing the AK on him. And Dumbledore is pretty sharp on Draco's behavior on the tower. Some of Draco's meandering by disarming Dumbledore first before "getting ready to kill him" may be attributable to nerves and novice precautiousness, making sure to disarm so that no possible defense is possible. A quick veteran like Snape probably could have surveyed the scene in an instant and noted Dumbledore's pre-occupation with freezing Harry and known that the same window for an XP was a window for an AK, but that is Snape, not nervous 16 yr old Draco. But I still think it shows a clarity to Dumbledore's read of Draco's character as not a murderer that he was, in general, more inclined to use the XP instead of the AK upon coming out onto the rooftop. So, now we have the book 4 instance ... the graveyard fight with Voldy at the end of GOF. For, the tower-top in HBP is only really a recurrence of, or the second time, the AK curse and the XP spell have shared the stage together, in interaction with each other. The first time is when they lock horns through Harry and Voldy's wands in the graveyard. I'll just state it bluntly that I think it is VERY intentional on Rowling's part that the spell that locks against the AK is the XP spell. And this is an odd one that should jump off the page. Harry is no dummy and it is pretty obvious that all Voldy's language of "manners" and something less threatening like a duel along the lines of the "dueling club" is dripping with sarcastic mockery of Dumbledore's emphasis on manners (which is distinctly mentioned by DD himself on the tower top - "a game/joke? No Amicus, this is manners") ... so why is Harry thinking back to the dueling club and lamenting that he only ever learned one "dueling specific" spell, the disarming spell "Expelliarmus"? Obviously this situation is a lot more along the lines of life threatening things he has faced recently, like dragons and merpeople and 10 foot long skrewts and HUGE spiders the size of Aragog, and he just spent weeks and weeks learning plenty of spells like Impedimenta and the stunning spell etc for those tasks. So why get all myopic on the XP as the only "dueling spell" he has ever learned (and, indeed the one he goes with when he comes out from behind the tombstone to face Voldy)? One almost wants to ask Harry, "Boy, why are you thinking about dueling clubs? This guy is out to end your life here, and as far as he is concerned the more suffering he can inflict on you along the way, the better." It puts me personally in the mind of some lyrics from the Talking Heads song "Life During Wartime" that I used in one of the comments after my manifesto, the one on Dobby and Hargid, the skies and the depths: "This ain't no nightclub, no CBGB's, this ain't no fooling around, this aint no disco, no lovey-dovey, I aint got time for that now" (my apologies to David Byrne and Co if I fudged that around a little ... it's off the top of me head at the mo ... my personal faves in the "Life During Wartime" lyrics are from my own more recent history: "Why go to college? Why stay in night school?" and "I got some groceries, some peanut butter, to last a couple of days" - and those who have known me for a while will smile at the lines "I got 3 passports, a couple of visas, don't even know my real name .... I changed my hairstyle so many times now, don't even know what I look like" ... or for us grads and the potter characters "we dress like students, we dress like house-elves [sorry, housewives - from John Granger], or in a suit and a tie [thank you Mr Crouch]" ... right now it is, "I sleep in the daytime and I work in the nighttime, I might not ever get home" and on Thursday night when I drive back to PA for a week to do some wirk there it will probably be the various Merlins talking to each other tooling down I-80 at 3 in the morning "Don't get exhausted, I'll do some driving, you ought to get you some sleep"). Of course, to say this to Harry at that time would be just a little unfair - it is pretty stinking obvious he knows exactly how dire the situation is - he has just felt it, as I noted in another post/comment, "like fire in his bones" (the cruciatus curse). What this is is a textual tip-off from Rowling. It is like the record scratching in the movie score music that makes you go "hunh?" and sit up and pay attention. The point is that, like Harry, we go "XP against AK? ... you have got to be kidding me!" but Rowling's point is "No! this is how it works ... keep in mind that the only thing that EVER stopped an AK in the history of everything was a mother laying down her life and dying to protect her son." This is pretty much exactly the point of Harry's retort on OotP 392 when Zacharias Smith complains that XP doesn't seem like it will do much good against Voldy, "I've used it against him ... it saved my life last June." So, having laid that all down, here is the stuff that those of us working in languages find really crucial and go "WOW! fascinating! ... holy cow!" while the rest of the crowd rolls eyes and says "here we go again ..." lol. I have noted before the sort of "artistic license" Rowling has with Latin and French in the names of spells. In Latin "Evanesco" (which is playing more of a role than I originally thought ... I originally just noted Snape vanishing Harry's potion sadistically in OotP, but I am pretty sure, although the name is not spoken in text in Minerva's class, that this is the vanishing spell McGonnegal is focusing on to prep the 5th years for Transfiguration O.W.L.s ... could it be that Harry can just vanish a Horcrux with as much ease as he stabbed a diary with a basilisk fang?) is an intransitive verb in Latin - literally this form would mean "I vanish" and not the transitive meaning of making something else vanish. But the imperative form is not going to sound as catchy on page, so there is some license and leeway here. In general I think brevity is prefered, especially the punch of the 1st person singular long "o" ending (which is why I think she wnet with "evensco" rather the imperative "evenesca" or "evenesce") ... so why a longer spell like "Expelliarmus" (have you ever noticed how hard that is to say without slipping in a connecting vowel before the "mus" - as is indeed the case with first person, plural, present tense verb forms to have the connecting vowel before the conjugated ending ... which, as will be explained in a moment, would be an "e" for this verb, since it is a second conjugation verb in Latin, at least in the indicative mood). So, my take is that since Rowling has not stuck with the brevity rule for forming the spell specifics here, what she has done is important to pay attention to because being "out of the ordinary" it is much more likely to be consciously chosen with very specific nuances behind it. But before all that, there is the semantic range of this verb in the Christian tradition ... and it is a big range, and only broadened out in VERY telling ways particularly by other elements in book 5, and even thematic elements from book 4. This is the "exorcism" verb. It can mean to "drive out" or "expel" ... as in traditional exorcisms. It can also mean to "banish" or "disown" - which is precisely how Barty Crouch Sr contributed to the tragedy of his son (note that I said "contributed to," not "caused" - I find I always have to C my A on these matters lol). It can ALSO mean to "reject" - it is almost the opposite pair of the verbs "Credo" (the standard Creed from Nice/Constantinople in the standard Wstern Latin Translation: "Credo in unum Deum") and "Expecto" of "Expecto Patronum" (Granger was the first, to the best of my knowledge, to note that this is the verb used in the Creed for "I look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come"). The use of this very verb itself is almost a credal statement by those who use it, a statement of rejection that is the flip side of the affirmations contained in the "Expecto" verb. As far as what is being rejected, there is a presence in the word "ExpelLIARmus" that I wll try to describe what I think are the sources of, even though I find it difficult because it is not technically "following the specific rules" of Latin, but rather can merely be suggested and picked up on loosely through knowledge of a memorization device in learning Latin. The end interest is, I believe, not anything connoted or denoted positively by the Latin source, but rather simply the availability of the presence of the word "Liar." The device is called "We Fear a Liar" and it is the common device (which I would find it HIGHLY difficult to believe Rowling has no knowledge of whatsoever) for memorizing the changes of the connecting vowels of the four primary verb conjugation types when the verb is put into the subjunctive mood (every verb is only of one of the four conjugations, which is why it is important in translation to know your vocab, to know what conjugation a verb is, by knowing its principle parts, and so what the vowels mean as far as translating it as indicative or subjunctive mood). In first conjugation verbs the "a" changes to "e" ("we"), in the second conjugation verbs the "e" changes to "ea" ("fear"), in third conjugation verbs the "i" (which is often "invisible" in regular third conjucation verbs, but sometimes will be visible in the what are often refered to as the "third i-o" verbs, such as, say, "accio") changes to an "a" ("a") and in fourth conjugation the vowel goes to the "ia" ("liar") diphthong. Like I said, this use is not following the technical rules, since "expello/expellere" is a second conjugation verb and the subjunctive vowel/diphtong would be "ea," not "ia." But I think that the adaptation of this device to get the word "liar" in the spell, in combination with the semantic domain of the verb, makes this spell a nice little twist on Voldy's attachment to the fear with which he has infected the wizarding world: instead of "we fear a liar" it is "we reject a liar" - as in "we reject the father of lies." When you combine this all with the "-mus" ending, which is the standard first person plural ending, you get an emphasis on communal solidarity in rejecting the liar. (This sort of thing is sort of like some "loose" but very good recipes in cooking, when handled by a chef with a "feel" for things, or maybe rather the way Snape handles potions as opposed to Libatious Borage's laboriously boring and meticulously rigid instructions - it's not something you can describe like you can a math formula, it's more tossing ingredients together according to a "feel" that comes out with a spell that comes out with a cool sound and a bunch of "flavor-hint" nuances of meaning ... you know, how Slughorn notes that Harry added the just a hint of a little bit of pepperment, which would tend to counteract some of the negative side effects, which Harry of course got from Snape's book -Rowling is somebody who likes to play with language and "tweak" little things here and there to get what she wants in it, just the way Felix Felicis is about the same thing that Felix the cartoon cat started off as, a way to "tweak" the circumstances [in Felix the cat's situation they used him for getting a visual read on lighting conditions for live television to tweak the settings, but you know, cats also always supposedly land on their feet, just like Felix Felicis helps you get your feet under you and things "righted" for what you want to accomplish by tweaking the situation) Aside: In regards to the "exorcism" quality of the XP, if one has trouble accepting this reading, recall that the material on the XP has become focussed on Voldy and one of the key powers of the dark lord (one that some such as Red Hen and Swythiv have suggested as a prowess closlely linked to the ability to make Horcruxes) is one that is highly modeled on a distinct literary genre (that is in turn based in an ecclesial/religous tradition) that can be found even in recent film history: from the cult classic "the exorcist" to the recent "The Exorcism of Emily Rose" (in which the importance of getting a demon's name so that an exorcist may call on it with authority to leave the person, also plays an important role, just like Voldy's name plays an important role in the Harry Potter series ... and in Emily Rose they did that scene REALLY effectively - very chilling to hear the demon list the 6 names in 6 languages, especially to hear the counting to 6 in the 6 languages, particularly German in light of the WWII Holacaust, which Rowling has repreatedly either made note of herself or concurred with others making not ... that scene in Emily rose downright gave me chillsm, the counting to 6 in German) - that of "possession." On the side of some of the other meanings of the verb - the import of these themes especially in book 5 can be seen in Harry's obvious pre-occupation with Umbridge using the spell on him figuratively. He is constantly in danger in book 5, even before the school year begins (with the Ministry trial) of being expelled from Hogwarts. End Aside But I think the "r" in and of itself has a special meaning in the spell too, and one that is highly significant for the meaning of the spell as a symbol. "R" is the standard "morpheme" letter of the passive voice in Latin. I do not think it would be at all accurate to follow a literalist rendering here and interpret the meaning passively as "we are rejected" (such literalist renderings are not how literature works) ... but rather, "we reject by 'passive' means." I know I am going to be umpopular in some camps for saying this, but, while I do not think Rowling could be classified as a radical "dove" of the "peace-nick" variety, I think she can even less so be placed in the "hawk" camp (for the unfamiliar, the terms "dove" and "hawk" are "pidgeon-hole" designations standard in informal discussion in the United States and in some places in Europe, especially online, of one's disposition toward foreign policy esepcailly in the arena of the use of military force ... but I think this type of classification falls under the heading of what I have spoken of before as "false binary thinking"). Rowling spent years working for Amnesty International - I can't see her being a "hawk" and so I feel justified in making these comments. If you look at Dumbledore's pronounced statements on alliance with the dementors and something like the dementor's kiss as a "safeguard" or a "punishment" (which I think is very analagous to the death penalty) and his approach to DADA (as I have said, contra that of somebody like Karkaroff), or at the negative portrayal of Barty Sr for authorizing and advocating the use of unforgivable curses and death in combatting death eaters, or Sirious' praise of Moody in saying something along the lines of "say what you like about Moody, but he never killed unless he had to, always brought the person in alive if he could" ... it all adds up to a preference for as peacefull and as not violent/violative means and ends as possible. Agree or disagree with Rowling as you like, but the evidence for where she stands seems pretty clear to me. The one place that somebody might offer as a counter-argument is the fact that Dumbledore has pretty much confirmed, in no uncertain terms, for Harry that Harry will indeed have to kill Voldemort in order to end this thing - and this is where I think we get into some serious theme content. Rowling has said that Dumbledore's read is "never far off/wide of the mark" (basic jist), but this is not the same as saying that he is dead on on everything in every detail and nuance of detail. I think it will be true that Harry must concretely, and with full intention, patrake in the central actions that undo Voldemort and ratify his death, but therein, in my used of the word "ratify," is the crux of what I have to say here. Technically, without the protection of the Horcruxes, Voldy's use of the AK against baby Harry was, although maybe not full and intentional "suicide," what I would call "auto-cide." It was his own AK that should have killed him according to the natural order of things, aside from the unnatural protection of the Horcruxes. In effect, I see Harry's necessary actions, even on Dumbledore's read, as not necessarily necessitating him actively killing Voldy ... the parameters of concrete involvement in the final demise of Voldy could be simpy concretely and distinctively, clearly, allowing him to die from something, possibly of his own doing. I would not, myself, even be surprised if this plays out in a very concrete way ... I am personally thinking, since Voldy is already "under the curse" (to use Biblical language) of his orginal AK, that it might be another spell or bit of magic that "finalizes the deal" begun by the Godric's Hollow AK. I have said before that I personally really like the idea of it being Sectum Sempra and Snape (and Harry along with him, in whatever way he is concretely able to help) refusing the aid he gave to Draco, the healing incantation that is like a song in HBP "Sectum Sempra" chapter. Thus Voldy would be forced, without the aid of his now destroyed Horcruxes, finally to die by bleeding to death (what he has been doing to Harry and everyone else for 14 or 15 years), "giving back" (into the ground, the Hufflepuff element of the fallen Cedric) the blood he took from Harry. Much of this, on the level of the deeper meaning, dovetails with my reading of the "physics" of the AK as "psychic invasion." If the AK is psychic invasion then it would seem that, by normal logic, the only way to stop an AK would be being willing to kill in retrun, to strike down the invading psyche (and nobody in general having discovered this yet, or at least not making it common knowledge, the curse is generally thought to be unstoppable, and maybe unstopable on the practical level since, thematically, the "only way to stop an AK" would invovle having the very same will to kill and applying it against the psychic invasion, the invasion by the other person in which what they invade with is their own psyche/person. and further on the practical level it would require a very high level of prowess to focus one's own "anti-AK AK" on the specific point of invasion, making the AK virtually unstopable). But if the XP is by its very nature, on the symbolic level as evidenced in the literary sourcework, a communal credal rejection of the offending person ... I'm not saying it necessarily would stop the AK in any other situation than that one with the wand cores conflicting, but I think there is at least something to seeing a symbolic connection between the XP and the AK onthe level of the meaning. Beyond this, on the level of the established natural realm in the Potterverse it is has been en-fleshed in the first 6 books, the only thing that has stopped an AK has been the radical soelf giving love of the mother ... not trying to kill the invading psyche but surrending her own to death out of love for her son. (Go back to thinking abut what I said about Cho having trouble with performing the XP when Harry is right there, but think about it along the lines of the XP as the best response to the psychic invasion of the AK. Maybe Cho has trouble with the XP when Harry is near simply because of how she feels about him at that time ... she simply doesn't want to expell, or exorcize, or in any other way reject his personal, psychic presence at that time ... she rather wants it to continue. I know, a silly romantic notion, but such are the things of which love and reality are made.) Expelliarmus is thus basically a communal spell of exorcism, with morphological traces of basic pacifism (the "r" as a trace of the Latin morpheme of the passive voice") by way of a communal credal statement of rejection of the violence-peddling liar, symbolized in a spell that is not killing but simply disarming. That is my read of the thing. As a little final teaser on Expelliarmus and maybe Snape (as per discussions all over the net on the connection between Snape and spiders and the spider in the maze of task 3) .... how did Harry get the spider to drop him (albeit 12 feet onto an already wounded leg)? ... you guessed it - Expelliarmus. The End So, there you have my stuff on the importance Cho: she was one of the best at producing a patronus, she began with trouble with a VERY key DADA spell and needs to go through a transformation on it, the same transformation we the reader need to go through ... and whether or not there is a natural explanation of not for her knowing about that Acromantula in the maze, she IS the delivery person for a succinct synopsis of the Triwizard tourney in book 4, which is pretty much a symbol of the series as a whole. As a final parting shot on the deal: Cho is a seeker and Quidditch seekers are the best at DADA. The textual warrant for saying so? "Voldemort raised his wand, but this time Harry was ready; with reflexes born of his Quidditch training, he flung himself sideways onto the ground, he rolled behind the marble headstone of Voldemort's father, and he heard it crack as the curse missed him" (GOF 662 .... and how is that for a five line sentence? lol :) ) As with all of these predictions, I am not going to be heart-broken if I am wrong, or, more importantly, I am not going to think less, or differently in any way, about book 7 on these grounds. Based on what I have read in books 1-6 and the narrative and literary logic I think I see there, these are my pics for where I think the stroy is headed, or rather what I think would make the most fitting end based on books 1-6. Rowling is free to introduce new elements in book 7 that alter or evolve the parameters of those books. I am simply saying that based on those books only (1-6) I believe that these elements and plot would make the most sense ... but I have no doubt that when I get and read book 7 it will be Rowling's story as she sees best fit for it to be - and that I wlll thoroughly enjoy it. Anyway, fortunately there is now less than a month to wait before all the waiting is over and the questions answered ... or at least till we have all the necessary evidence, or at least all the evidence we are going to get :)

Bad Reviews on Potter and Order of Phoenix Movie

I only ever read the paper when I am working here at the security desk ... one of the gaurds or car drivers has usually left one, but I am usually a few days behind even when I do read it ... and since this is the first night I am in since last Wednesday night/Thursday morning, this comes from Fridays edition of the New York Post. Apparently the Tokyo premier of the Order of the Phoenix movie left some, including a London critic, rather unimpressed. I guess attendance was not exactly great either. Not surprising though. I'll just reiterate my previous statements ... if they want to pull the movie franchise out of the water before the flush handle gets hit (love that image ... just re-watched "The Mask" yesterday for some light hearted relief) they need to go with the horror/thriller/epic directors, and ones with a bigger name behind them to be able to throw some weight around to get the thing done their way - Shymalan on movie 6 and Gore Verbinski on movie 7. In other reviews though, I am very happy to report that even the NY post reviewer likes Ratatouille, which I am greatly looking forward to seeing with our friend's Nate and Julies kids if I can when I am back in Grove City for a week to work on another friends attic. Even better in Lou Lumenick's NY Post review is honesty. RT comes from Brad Bird, who did The Incredibles, and that film, from what I heard, got some scathing reviews of being "fascist," from some, for lack of better words, preoccupied or obsessed people. Lumenick, though, gives both films the same review of "I had my doubts going in but I loved the film when I saw it" - so that is cool and heightens My own recently viewed: Shrek 3 - really good, maybe a bit harder to follow than the other 2, for a younger audience especially, but I really liked it (not enough music though ... that's the one criticism - needed a really good song drop in like Funktytown in the last one or the Smashmouth song in the first one, both those movies did a good job of engendering the "need to get that soundtrack" impulse) Ocean's 13 - fun but disappointing. I mean, any movie where you have Al Pacino dropping his voice and saying "I know people ... who really know how to hurt people" ... it's worth seeing for the Pacino performance - but ebyond that, it didn't have the strong theme or the caper punch. 11 had both: the heist is the mechanical vehicle for the really important thing for Ocean, which is the love theme, but the heist also has that good caper reveal in the end where it is actually the action you already "saw" and thought you knew what was going on that you then find out what really happened. That was the weaker part of 12 was that, while I liked the themes they broadened out to (broadening out from romantic love to the role fo familial identity and discovery of one's own identity in romantic love), it came at the cost of the mechanical plot pay off in that the caper reveal at the end is sort of a desu ex machina - the whole thing was actually circumvented before any of the key action of the majority of the film. But 13 really didn't have either aspect. You know from the beginning they are getting back at Pacino for hurting Reuben (heck, you know that from the trailer), unlike the other 2 where you discover the real thematic motivation at the end, and there really isn't a good physical caper payload like the other 2. You know it is pretty mechanical when I can guess before hand what is supposed to be one of the plot surprises: In 12 there is a government agent who turns out to be Linus' (Matt Damon's) mom, and Linus is always worried about his super-caper dad being told of his perfomrances or anything that smacks of his dad having t pull him out of a bind, and so when a male FBI agent shows up in 13 who fits the age range, busting Ocean's crew int he casino ... even I know it is going to be Linus' dad, and I never guess those things (I find I enjoy a movie more if I am not trying to figure those things out along the way but simply taking in the movie etc). If you liked the first 2 movies and like Pacino, Pitt and Clooney together, 13 will be fun, if not, you're not missing much at all if you don't see it. (Disclaimer: this was the poorest recording quality of the 3 "Canal Street" versions I recently got - this, Shrek 3, which was decent quality, and Pirates 3 which was decent quality, but I already saw it twice in the theater). Fracture: I liked it. Nothing to write home about but I liked it. Typical Anthony Hopkins spooky stuff and Gosling Jr is pretty good in it. Plot twist was not as easy to figure out as Ocean's 13, I couldn't figure out the exact detail but I knew the basic device, but then I am into the object/s involved so I may have noticed certain things. Live Free or Die Hard: I loved it. As I suspected, from the cinematics of the previews, they were going for certain aspects and feels of the FPS games and I think they pulled it off. Even moreso I liked the use of post-modern theming without desparing - actaully has cut back some against other 90s and early 2000s movies where the FBI is the decrepit and bumbling agency superceded by the more secret intel agencies, in that in this one the "super-secret" agencies are the ones who screw up and the FBI guy is the one who is reliable and McClane can work with (same guy plays the FBI guy here as plays ferenscics cop in Fracture, Cliff Curtis, I think he has been around a little while but is just coming into some more prominent supporting roles, I like him). If you see it, tell me what you think, but I think the movie even has a quasi-slam on the banally superfluously snyde attitude of Seinfeld ... "that's what makes you that guy." I really like the "re-issue" movies from the 80s movies that have come out in the early to mid 2000s, the way they have taken what were originally simply good fun action/thriller stuff and worked in deeper thematics. The 3rd Terminator was that way (from doom and gloom relief in the 80s to a deeper theme of no unrealistically trying to stop judgement day, but to trying to survive it and remain human by picking up the pieces and rebuilding afterwards), and now this one from the Die Hard trilogy. I loved Die Hard With a Venegeance (#3 - even recently went back and watched it this past semester) for the chemsitry between Willis and Jackson, but this has distinctly added deeper PoMo themes. Classic line: McClane's daughter says to the sidekick kid something like, "take a moment and reach way down, because you're going to need to find a bigger set of ... to get through this" and the kid replies "I know that tone ... I'm just not used to hearing it from somebody with hair" (meaning baldy bruce as her dad). Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. What can I say ... Keith Richards (as Captain Teague, keeper of the "Pirate Codex") says to Johnny Depp/Sparrow "It's never been about living forever, Jackie ... it's about learning to live with yourself - forever" - Davy Jones, in one momentary glimpse of his former true manhood, bellowing "into the abyss!" as he takes the Dutchman into the charybdis to duke it out with the pearl with Barbosa at the helm, a wedding in a maelstrom and the ending blew even me away, and I was already expecting to love the movie. Whatever the reviewers say - I say they just can't handle it. I am trying, amidst many other things, to get a publishable essay done up on the movie using Heidegger and Tom Waits' "Hoist That Rag" (which I consider to be the best song of Waits' career, which is saying a lot coming from me ... i love Waits) as an interpretive counterpart to the opening AWE song "Hoist the Colors" So I'll just end with the first verse of the movie song: The King and his men, stole the queen from her bed And bound her in her bones The seas be ours and by the powers Where we will we'll roam Yo Ho, All hands Hoist the Colors high Heave Ho, Thieves and Beggars Ever Shall we die (Note: if you find lyrics listed anywhere you will find, "Yo Ho, haul together" but "all hands" is what they sing in the movie ... and what they sing in the movie as the last line has several variations: the gallows pirates sing "Never shall we die" and Sao Feng's leuitenant sings "Never Say We die" - the "never" is the "right" lyric, but I think the writers intended you to wonder if it is "ever" so that is why I put it like that ... part of the irony is precisely that they are singing "never" when the more fitting word at the gallows is "ever" ... I think it is conscioulsly intentional)