Hauntings

Hello all,

I hope you don't mind if I post on a old story, Pym. I know, that when we read it, I said that it was boring and that I didn't like it. But it haunts me.

I had this dream last night about roses and when I woke up I realized that I was thinking of Parker- the hybrid- the only surviver of the Pym story.

I've been thinking all day about this word - hybrid- not half breed, or mulatto or any of the other ugly terms for people of mixed races but hybrid.

So I asked my self what Poe was trying to convey by using that word in particular. Poe the racist that is, and I came away changing my mind about dear old Poe.

You see hybrid roses are the ones that we all know today. The old fashioned ones were puny and didn't smell very good. But today's hybrid roses smell wonderful and are strong. The old ones got root rot and died out.

Parker the hybrid survived. While Augustus got root rot.

So I guess I have changed my mind about this story after all. As boring as it was to read, it haunts me.