another crack at Jack

-Despite this post's strange life--posted at The Sync Whole, and then removed by its author--this evening's family outing is prompting me to again reconsider posting it. Recently, I told some of my best friends in the world that I was done with Jupiter. Well, apparently, he is not done with me. I guess I will be writing about Megamind tomorrow. Although on the surface, this post may look like a desire on my part to have my way with a blunt object at the orthodoxy of The Sync Whole, it actually seeks to understand the nature of Father and how and why he can become a monster.

you don't know Jack

23

In The Playground

(In this chapter of The Shining, Jack's crackup/healing begins in earnest as he trims the rabbit shaped hedge near The Overlook Hotel playground. After trimming and joking about giving the Rabbit a haircut, he steps back to appraise his work and while his back is turned, all the hedge animals begin moving toward him.)

Let's talk divorce.

As I look back at my work this past year, it appears that I've been advancing a philosophy at The Sync Whole. This isn't something that I set out to do. While following my flow I'm continually reminded how the NOW speaks to my previous explorations and adds more layers to these models--yet I think the culmination of this work yields wholeness, so I continue. . .

As a reminder, this past March, I looked at a number that I called the "architecture of the universe"--432. I had seen this number highlighted before, yet thought its playfulness hadn't been completely explored. One could view this exercise as a scientific dissection of a whole thing: ⊙, yet the aim was the opposite--to make the parts conscious of their entirety, to make them whole.

By my reckoning, The Whole (⊙) is born of 2 Parents, comprised of 3 Kingdoms, and exists as 4 elementary states of matter. When I say "Whole", it's a loaded word for it's a symbolic pointer, pointing to everything (wholeness), and nothing (an empty hole)--it represents being and nonbeing. It's me and you knowing that we are everything, and it's me knowing that I am you also knowing that what we truly are is emptiness.

The focus of this post will be the 2 Parents. MoM & PoP. Right Brain/Left Brain. Religion/Science intuition/logic. Mystery/History. We are the children of divorce. Our healing requires the illusion of their separateness to fade.

That said, it might be interesting to talk about some of the symbolic pointers that are used at The Sync Whole. Let's say you just stumbled upon that blog, your first impression might be that they are some weirdo Jupiter cult. jUPiter, it turns out, might mean something a little different to all of us.

Jupiter |ˈjoōpitər|

1 Roman Mythology the chief god of the Roman state religion, originally a sky god associated with thunder and lightning. His wife was Juno. Also called Jove . Greek equivalent Zeus . [ORIGIN: Latin, fromJovis pater, literally ‘Father Jove.’ ]2 Astronomy the largest planet in the solar system, a gas giant that is the fifth in order from the sun and one of the brightest objects in the night sky.

Keep in mind that all possibilities are valid at The Sync Whole, and obvious associations tend to ring as truth. Thus, the cheerful and friendly quality of "jovial" is ascribed upon Jove/Jupiter.

jovial |ˈjōvēəl|adjectivecheerful and friendlyORIGIN late 16th cent.: from French, from late Latin jovialis ‘of Jupiter’ (see Jove ), with reference to the supposed influence of the planet Jupiter on those born under it.Jove |jōv|another name for Jupiter .PHRASESby Jove dated an exclamation indicating surprise or used for emphasis.ORIGIN from Latin Jov-, stem of Old Latin Jovis, replaced later by Jupiter. The exclamation by Jove dates from the late 16th cent.

Why Jupiter? Answering that question is like trying to understand just what it is we've been doing for the last four or five years. . .

ok, 911 2001 happens. 2003 Iraq war begins using the events of Sept. 11 as a springboard. 2005/2006 citizenry begin to question WTF happened, and when it began (V for Vendetta). Enter Conspiracy. . .

The events of 2001 led some of us through the plots of conspiracy to a general understanding of reality as dreamlike and devoid of a definitive answer. A mystery. (Mrs. Story) Although Fukuyama declared the end of His Story twelve years earlier upon the fall of the Berlin Wall on the resonate date of 9/11/89 (Nov. 9 1989--they put the day before the month in Europe), 2001 signaled both the end of something as well as the beginning. The film 2001 also shed some light upon the dreamlike quality of reality with its various wyncs at understanding 2001 the year and ultimately showed a correlation between the films we watch and the events we experience. Alignment. The Dream is Reel. 2001 ultimately pointed us at Jupiter, as Dave Bowman & Hal made their way toward that planet seeking the next "monolith" which of course (like the first monolith, was a gateway to a new state of consciousness. . .)

And thus, The Sync Whole operates under the guidance that the symbol of The Jupiter Mission points toward: a gateway advancing toward truth, healing, and wholeness. This is what DB discovered when he traveled beyond Jupiter and into the infinite.

A risk of course, is if the symbol of Jupiter is concertized, and no longer points toward the goal, but becomes the goal. As I stated earlier, I think we all read the symbols we use slightly different. On it's face--the truth of Jupiter is Joy in the only moment we have, NOW. This is the Rainbow Bridge. By becoming and staying aligned with NOW, one is completely present and timeless. Everything & Nothing in a moment. The Alpha & Omega Point Break! The Philosophers' Stone. The Fountain of Youth. The Tree of Life.

The Jupiter symbol is sticky for me though. One of the "true" associations that has been made regarding Jupiter is that it = 42 (& 421, & 214, & 1024 & 99, & ect). Because one of our first associations with our jupiter symbol was the Douglas Adams answer of "42" to life the universe and everything, I've tended to read it fairly personally. Like Dave Bowman, I am a "42". Because IMDB. (Douglas Bolles) Also, my birthday is 4/2/72. Sure, just coincidence, and Jim is a 420 which is close (and totally loaded as well.), but I am 42 (db). From the beginning of our games, I couldn't help but read ME as the point. And I'm sure you've well noted how my reading of sync is so micro. That my life doesn't point to it, but it points to my life. I'm always telling you about how everything relates to me! Since I was a little child, I've always known that the movies speak to me, personally. . .

solipsism |ˈsälipˌsizəm|

nounthe view or theory that the self is all that can be known to exist.

Of course the common usage of solipsism has a connotation that points to an egocentric, self-centered individual. The irony of course in all this is that despite this selfish looking practice of mine, the message I personally receive from the Jupiter symbol loudly and clearly is selflessness! Huh?

Jupiter is the father. Others stress that Jupiter is Joy., but I'm unwilling to OVERLOOK the fact that he is The Father.

In Roman mythology, Jupiter or Jove was the king of the gods, and the god of sky and thunder. He is the equivalent of Zeus, in the Greek pantheon. He was called Iuppiter (or Diespiter) Optimus Maximus ("Father God the Best and Greatest") As the patron deity of ancient Rome, he ruled over laws and social order.

Iuppiter originated as a vocative compound of the Old Latin vocative *Iou and pater ("father") and came to replace the Old Latin nominative case *Ious. Jove^[4] is a less common English formation based on Iov-, the stem of oblique cases of the Latin name. Linguistic studies identify the form *Iou-pater as deriving from the Indo-European vocative compound *Dyēu-pəter (nominative: *Dyēus-pətēr meaning "O Father Sky-god").^[5]

Older forms of the deity's name in Rome were Djeus-pater (“day/sky-father”), then Diéspiter. Djeus is the etymological equivalent of ancient Greece's Zeus and of the Teutonics' Ziu, gen. Ziewes. The Indo-European deity is thus the god from which Zeus and the Indo-Aryan Vedic Dyaus Pita are derived.~Wikipedia: Jupiter

Traditionally, he hasn't really been a role model, in fact, the state of the world as we find it, is his doing!

See, to get into power, Jupiter in his Greek mask of Zeus, fought the existing power--his father--and overthrew him using his father's methodology and practices thus becoming the self same image of his father. A monster in a monster economy built upon fear and revenge.

42

Mid-Air

(In this chapter of The Shining, The Overlook's black cook strong with the intuitive abilities known as "Shining" finds himself in Jupiter Country--Up In The Air--aboard an airliner rushing back to The Overlook from his winter home in Florida hopefully in time to save Wendy and Danny from the MONSTER that Jack has become in assuming his ROLE as the caretaker for The Overlook.)

Although this post has now taken us UP into the mind of Jack Torrance let's return to chapter 23, and get back down to the playground so we can talk about one of the major themes that I'm reading from the dream lately. Often my sync choices reflect to me tension in my own being. To find wholeness I'm presented with an overall "lesson" coming at me from all points. For quite some time now, (perhaps a few years even) the theme has been the idea of growing UP & what it means to be an adult.

&

While in the playground (down to earth), about to give the rabbit a heir cut, Jack Torrance thinks about his father, and his childhood. His father was an abusive man whose authority was based upon his physical power. He beat his order and his idea of civilization into his wife and children with his cane. Vitto Corleone, the Godfather, inhabits a similar world. He explains his role thusly, "Women and children can be careless, but not men." And this is because it is man's duty to maintain our system of living--civilization--a patriarchal little experiment that's been going on now for the past 10,000 years or so.

So then, to be the father, is to be the head of the family. The wife--usually an over emotional and irrational creature-has her duties too, but primarily her role is to serve her spouse, the head of the family. Their Son, the heir to the throne, lacks the discipline and rationality of the father, and at times seems to have too much of his mother in him, but will eventually have to learn his place, his role, and do his duty. It's the father's job to prepare him for a life and world of order, to teach him about a system that lacks carelessness. He has a tool too--you know, "spare the Rod. . ."

Your son is just a Big Baby after all and when YOU can impress upon him the importance of the system, the order, the civilization that makes our way of life possible, then you've done your duty and turned a soft heart into a man. (And the system requires above all else that you do your duty, even if it means choosing the system over life.)

As caretaker for The Overlook, Jack is put in the untenable position of having to chose between what's expected of him and what's necessary. He attempts to satisfy the expectations of civilization upon him in his role as the father, against what is actually needed for the emotional and physical well being of his wife and child. He is trying to balance his egoic adult responsibilities within the system without identifying with and becoming his role. (Impossible?)

Vitto, The God'sFather, wanted to spare Michael, his fourth child, from inheriting the life that was his--the life of a mob boss operating in a Dog-Eat-Dog, vendetta economy. Vitto dreamed of Michael being 100% legitimate, not a gangster, not a thief, not a criminal, not a murderer. Vitto purposely insulated his last born away from The Family. Sure Michael knew the score, but he wasn't part of it.

Michael was a college man, and a war hero. Clean. And God does Pachino look boyish in this role. His father, the head of the family, purposely kept Michael away from the "Family Business", which is a serious business indeed. Of course, like in all myths, Michael too became his father when he acted to avenge him in a situation where the proper care of family's interests required a strong and necessary response to the actions and claims of fellow "business" competitors acting within the bounds of the competitive system. Behaving like a proper king, Vitto stepped down and handed over the kingdom to his son, rewarding him for doing his duty and making him the head of the family business which is later explained in a big reveal to his naive wife as being no different than any other business, just more direct about how it's practiced thus revealing the corruption of the entire system of men. It is a man's world after all and everyone in the system is dirty--lawyers, politicians, judges. Everyone has a price. That the business of business is the exploitation anything or anyone to get more. Material is dirty. More Better Cheaper Faster (the speed of NOW!)

And this is the nature of the Overlook Hotel as well. Although it looks impecably clean and only rich and dignified people stay there--it is run by dirty gangsters. Or this is what Jack discovers in a scrapbook found in the basement of the hotel when he begins learning his duties. His employer made it very clear that their could be no rats in The Overlook, and so as Jack put out traps he learned the true nature of the stately place for which he was assuming the role of caretaker. He learned the nature of the business, that the pursuit of and acquisition of material leads to an identification with material--and thus the vices of The Head tend to be materialistic in nature:

What if our father was different though? What if he did spare the rod? Let us look at another chapter 23:

The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.

He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.

Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever.

Oh if only that guy was the father, eh? Sounds like a good life for a kid.

Of course Our Father has a wandering eye, and tends to blow shit up in bursts of anger. . .

-Whose lord is a Shephard? God our parents are screwed up, and with that we begin moving toward the whole . . .

the eyes have it, proceed with the motion. . .

Yesterday, 11/9/10 (written 9/11/10 in Europe), The Goddard spaceflight center reported discovering two giant bubbles at the center of our galaxy pictured above. You'll also recall from a fascinating NOVA program, that at the center of not only our galaxy, but all galaxies is a supermassive black hole.

November 9th is a big day, as I mentioned above. It was, (before 9/11/2001 occurred) The End of History. It's the day that the Berlin wall came down. The subject couldn't be treated any better than it is in a novel called Black Dogs by Ian McEwan.

This is the story of a Man and a Woman, a Marriage, a Divorce

and a kind of reconciliation. . .

The husband in McEwan's Black Dogs is East Germany, and the wife is West. Her being is defined by her spirituality, and in the face of western materialism, she becomes a buddhist. He takes refuge in science, structure, organization, and political policy. The Wall divides the once whole of Germany. It's not a natural boundary, but a created division. This story continues. . .

At our center we are Whole. We are one thing and we are nothing. Yet the two bubbles at the center our galaxy prompt me again toward the idea of the Garden State. Union. The Sync Whole has us looking UP, looking to Jupiter as this loving exemplar of being, yet these two bubbles at our center and my current tummy ache decry that Jupiter is only half of the story. . .

Freedom

There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, "Morning, boys, how's the water?" And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, "What the hell is water?" ~DFW This Is Water

Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom to be lords of our own tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the center of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talked about in the great outside world of winning and achieving and displaying. The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day. That is real freedom. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default-setting, the "rat race" -- the constant gnawing sense of having had and lost some infinite thing. ~DFW This Is Water

"I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams." - Hamlet.

"Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: A fellow of Infinite Jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is!" --Shakespeare Hamlet

The King & The Tyrant (Father's Day)

5/25/2010:

Every month a speck of dust rubs my clammy insides and around this central point, I try and build my newsletter blog posts. My hope is that upon the conclusion of my writing, a pearl is formed. This month has been the most difficult to write of all the newsletter entries I've done. Many things have come together all at once leaving me both confused and exhausted.

--Why is this difficult, aren't you just trying to sell produce?

Sure. But I hope you realize that it is more than this. The [redacted] is not just business as usual, or that is what I strive to communicate and hope to believe. I don't do this for money. I want to believe that I stand for something. . .

--So, what do you stand for?

Each month, I invoke some sort of muse or God toward the beginning of these experiments in advertising. The aim of the invocation is "authenticity", serving something to which to be true.--Wait. Perhaps that's it. Maybe, I just answered the above question indirectly. What do I stand for? I stand for the authentic. That is, a true experience of being alive. This month we celebrate the solstice, and the father. If I'm invoking anything to be true to this month, it is myself. . .

As a member of the produce team, it would be difficult not to be a goddess lover. As one begins to consider the Earth that supports us, it isn't much of a stretch to then personify our home as mother and to take on the cause of protecting her. I recently saw a special on PBS called Born Wild: The First Days Of Life. It showed mothers and babies and how various animals care for their young--and they are all different. Of course the most striking to me was how the Amaurobius spider mother offers her own body for her newborns to feast upon. She willing gives her entire self for her offspring. Beautiful, right? Wait, what if we don't have to kill her. I feel like the spider baby screaming, Wait! Sop! We don't have to eat her! She can give us all milk almost forever!

A week ago, the Idaho chapter of The Friends of Jung presented a sneak peak at The Flicks of an unreleased film called, Call Of Life. The film unflinchingly looks upon our civilization's impact upon the world and life. Talk about spiders eating their mother. It kind of messed me up. And here is the interesting part of being a father. The father wants to control the situation to arrive at the desired results. But by holding on so tightly, the father becomes the tyrant, the monster of the story. The Mother has a natural system and order that supports life. The Father's control of the environment enabled civilization, but he now thinks that it is actually he that is in charge--that civilization is above the natural order, not part of the web of life. The father needs to learn how yield, submit, to let go. . .

I might be the monster in the story, the ogre. Life is such a struggle for me. I'm aware of the harm that our lifestyle causes, yet then create harm in trying to get my house to also be aware. I've become a tyrant trying and teach my children to value the "things" in our life, but not to worship them. I don't want them to waste anything. I want them to know that they aren't the only people in this world, and that their actions effect others and can harm them. We should be conscious of how we live. Of course, I'm trying to control them. . .

Did you know that one can quantify the life of a honey bee? One honey bee produces about 1/12th of a tablespoon of honey (.028 oz). Honey is true gold. To waste any honey at all is to take for granted the life a of a bee. Of course that is the case with everything. The laughter and joy of children is also precious. An ogre trying to impose controls upon his tiny subjects also diminishes the joy in this world.

I wish there was an outside "bad guy" we could point to for this tale. But, like in Gilgamesh the hero is our problem. If there is any evil at all, it is the king turned tyrant. Is Walmart our enemy? What about BP? These corporations are serving us and our needs. They are only giving us exactly what we want, and this is why they are successful. The darkness we fear is ourselves. The so called "others" are us. For a few years now I've been throwing myself against the wall of global consumer capitalism, being ground into nothing from the daily grind against a tyrant of a system. Thankfully there is another way. I recently stumbled upon a wonderful quote from Richard Buckminster Fuller:

"You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete."

Let me tell you what is authentic. It is Boise, Idaho here and now. There are people doing things here that they love to do, and if we support them, we can create our own vibrant, sustainable local web strong enough to sustain ourselves through any national or global crisis. We can lead the country through our example to a new paradigm and to paradise. Our local farms are beginning to produce right now. Do take advantage of this moment. The old model of everything the same for everyone everywhere is killing us, and it doesn't give us any sense of place. We've lost our sense of home. Let's create a new model. One that ties us to the land that supports us. Let's live in Boise, and all that that entails.

I've personally dropped the ball, and have been selfish with my time. My own "wants" and desires have taken away from the real, authentic work I should be doing. I'm sorry. I haven't been writing about our local growers as I said I would. I will continue. I want to introduce them all to you. I myself want to meet them, and see what it is that they do. I will not struggle anymore. I will try and submit my own greedy wants for the good of the mother, and for the good of our family. You know we are all one family, right?

I will try and be a better father. I promise.

9/25/2010:

I hope to offer some explanation of this tonight after work. I just finished J. Franzen's latest work, and have begun again to consider the question "how should one live?" I can see maybe a local nonlocal sync whole post on the horizon, and well anyway, maybe we'll talk tonight.

db

mobil ave (intro)

. . . it's worth recalling that the Greek word psyche meant both soul and butterfly, and that the character Psyche travels down into the Land of the Dead to prove herself worthy of Love. ~Rachel Pollack

"Happy families are all alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

~Leo Tolstoy: Anna Karenina

Mal: "You're waiting for a train; a train that will take you far away. You know where you hope this train will take you, but you can't be sure. But it doesn't matter - because we'll be together."

Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat, 1895

locomotive |ˌlōkəˈmōtiv|

noun

a powered rail vehicle used for pulling trains

adjective

of, relating to, or effecting locomotion

• archaic (of a machine, vehicle, or animal) having the power of progressive motion

ORIGIN early 17th cent.(as an adjective): from modern Latin locomotivus, from Latin loco (ablative of locus ‘place’ ) + late Latin motivus ‘motive,’ suggested by medieval Latin in loco moveri ‘move by change of position.’

Loco-Motive

loco

adjective informal

crazy.

ORIGIN late 19th cent.: from Spanish, ‘insane.’

motive

noun

1 a reason for doing something, esp. one that is hidden or not obvious

2 (in art, literature, or music) a motif

adjective [ attrib. ]

1 producing physical or mechanical motion

2 causing or being the reason for something

There is an urban myth that when the Lumiére brothers premiered one of their earliest films, The Train Arriving, 1895, the crowd rushed out of the theater--you see, the film was nothing more than a train arriving, but the story was, that those watching this new dream-like technology feared for their lives, expecting this oncoming train to overtake them. . .

I'm being overtaken by this symbol as well. Yet, recall "The Beginning Of Something Big"

I got something coming, and I really wanted to add to this today, but my train didn't arrive. I might need some help getting out of this limbo, out of this belly of the whale . . .

someone get me a train. . .

. . . I'm beginning to make sense of the pattern,

to see an exit from the Labyrinth, to understand the Corn Maze,

(that or I've gone crazy in a lighthouse)

Inception is describing something to me, that much is sure, but what, I don't know. [I think I do today.] There are a lot of sync elements in this film bringing together many strands of thread that I've looked at in the past. The film is presenting these strands together though, perhaps--no definitely--as one piece of thread, but knotted so tightly that to finally see the rainbow connections, one must realize the unity of the previously perceived separate strands while demystifying the paradoxes and untying the knots. That task complete, I believe we can then follow this one thread, Ariadne's gift to us out, of the labyrinth. . . maybe.

Easy right?

Of course, that fucking train . . .

. . . such a potent symbol too. Like the very internet itself, uniting and dividing--an unbroken line of connections, forming patterns, and relationships, but destroying something else in the process too.

Before I get to the sync knots, I want to mention the butterfly I invoked at the beginning. On the final night of The Ti♋er, the fatal 4, became The Furious 5 by way of a ceremony at Strange Eye's place (lovely chap!).

Of course I was wearing my ridiculous blue, 1970's western JackET. During my blessing, Jim sang a beautiful Icaro about a blue butterfly. At that moment I knew that this was my icaro, that he wrote it for me and for this moment. (And that was true for that moment.) It was a very moving evening. Jim literally transformed into my uncle, my father's older brother, and I naturally became my father. In that moment, Jim and I truly were brothers.

Jim's ceremonial gear in the late 50's

Jim on drums, me clowning on the uke.

sync walk 7/27

(more soon!)