Jim re: trees

...In the olden days, I would have had to give a "no charting exception" on this one, since I ASKED the question, and there was something about the chart that captured random dorkiness. Unconcious dorkiness, if you will. But since Jim did such an excellent job displaying such a deep and varied dorkiness, I believe this to be worthy. :)

"Before I chart myself so deeply, I should also say that the tree will, I think anyway, meet Mike's needs well. The issue of mortality, immortality, coming of
age, changing, maturity, everything of a like liminality might be summed up in a nice swirly tree tattoo. The more I think of his plot, the more I think it might work, because there are other connotations, in addition to the powerful Celtic/Germanic ones, that will hit the audience on different levels such as the "gallows tree," the cross of Christ, any scaffold, wood for coffins, funeral
pyres, you name it. With war as a subject it can mean so many things (how is Ishmael saved in _Moby Dick_,on a coffin of wood, right?). I also like the
connection between grandparents and grandkids, the linking of them through symbol, shared metaphor, and the subtle and not so subtle ways that they are
connected, "rooted" I would be tempted to say, or if we are going the pun route, that shows that the g-kids are "leaves" that did not fall too far off the "tree."