A Great Mountain Above Palm Springs – A Hike On A Windy Day

Ideas still floating around in my mind without anything coming together. Perhaps it is good that this happens at times. Good that a number of ideas and thoughts exist like miniature Nintendo video game kingdoms in your head. Not exactly warring against each other. Yet the threat of conflict between ideas always present. Which main idea will step up to the old plate and become the big idea for me for the present?

The novel on ancient Egypt was completed a few months ago and I still think it is the best thing I’ve ever done. From an original story by a leading Egyptologist friend of my friend Eric McLuhan. He is currently living on the island of Somoa so communication with him was difficult while I was re-writing his story. As I mentioned to you, these past few months have been filled with posting blogs on various topics to Midnight Oil and learning more about using Final Cut Pro X (via Udemy courses) and playing around with new tech toys like my new Hero 5 Black GoPro camera, Filmic Pro for the iPhone and model trains. Yes, model trains. My father was a huge model train buff and I caught the bug from him. Now, I am getting into N-scale model railroading and that strange world full of model railroading hobbyists like my father and have made a few trips to nearby hobby stores to buy materials to create scenery and structures for a miniature world designed just by me. A strange hobby for sure. If only Freud or Jung had put their minds to an analysis of the hobby.

* * *

So, my mind right now is somewhat in a dog-paddling mode. Keeping afloat but not attempting to go in any particular direction. Just staying in one place. Observing things rather than becoming an actor in things. Not motivated to go in any direction. To become an actor.

With this attitude, I watched the Golden Globes tonight. Glad that Showman received the best film score although it should have gotten best film. It was not hard to predict Shape of Water would receive the award as it was a much darker film than Showman and the Gold always goes to dark in these dark times. Shape of Water was a brilliant film in many ways – the first in the old interspecies romance genre. It had dark cinematography (colorized by a green tint throughout) and the look of something industrial, hard and metal with stark fluorescent lights containing little softness it its scenes at the government complex. The softness came at the apartment of the deaf woman janitor who eventually fell in love with the sea creature the government had captured and experimenting on.

Now, I have to at least take a look at Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale. It seems to have become the marching call for many women today. Over 9,000 high reviews on Amazon and containing a narrative that totally dominated the Golden Globes awards tonight. Certainly, leading women in Hollywood. It seems it is about time I took a look at it.  Have reserved it at the local library and will attempt its 331 pages when it comes in. Not sure how far I’ll get in it but probably much farther than I got in Joyce’s FW or U.

Have to admire a philosopher/writer like Atwood. Someone who can communicate a philosophy with words. Ayn Rand did it for the masculine side of things in Atlas Shrugged. It seems that one might consider Atwood as the feminine version of Ayn Rand and her Atlas Shrugged. It seems that our present time is begging to be the time for this feminist version. It is so obvious with the symbolism of the 2018 Golden Globes tonight.

At a time when a masculine symbol is inhabiting the White House, a large part of our culture attempts to erect another symbol that does not come from Washington DC and the realm of politics. But from Los Angeles and the realm of entertainment and stories. Yeah, of course they are much the same thing. But interesting to simply see the Golden Globes as a statement from Hollywood setting the terms for a new “narratives” in Hollywood stories.

The narratives for defining our world today are in battle with each other more than ever. But, more than this, a lot of people in culture can see this battle for the first time. Seeing things from the perspective of a symbologist, I always find masculine and feminine symbols engaged in battle. This is simply the way it always is. The battle of the two symbolizes the battle of dualities in the human consciousness. Dual symbols are built into all of us. Neither masculine nor feminine. The Golden Globes tonight was the response from the feminine symbol of Hollywood to the masculine symbol of DC under Donald Trump. It might be extended to a battle between the novelists Ayn Rand and Margaret Atwood. In many ways, these are the two greatest philosopher/novelists of our times. One, Ayn Rand, stressing the benefits of freedom and individualism. The other, Margaret Atwood, stressing the benefits of equality and community.

As a symbologist in the Jung tradition, I always look at things as an-on-going battle between two great symbols that dominate all our lives. The symbols are the masculine and feminine symbols within all of us. They are always in opposition, in battle with each other. Any narrative in culture always has an opposition narrative. The grand symbols of culture at particular times always inhabit the positions of opposition via feminine (equality) and masculine (freedom) symbols.

Of course, this paradoxical intersection of the two symbols of equality (feminine) and freedom (masculine) at the founding of America has always defined American’s views of themselves. The definition between feminine and masculine has been embodied in the historic political affiliations of the Democratic and Republican political parties. The Democrats will always symbolize the feminine symbol and the Republicans will always symbolize the masculine symbol. It is perhaps the key thing behind the dynamics of American growth. The battle between the feminine and masculine dualities, both present at the founding of the nation.

Sometimes, the battle is much more sublime and subtle than at other times. Sometimes, the zeitgeist of the times is announced (read and interpreted) in news and “talking heads” blabbering’s. The narrative “of our times” shows itself. Yet, at other times, these narrative hides in a subtle location.

The Hollywood Golden Globes Awards of 2018 have established a Hollywood narrative for 2018 and beyond. One can laugh at the narrative and say it is ridiculous. But of course, the narrative is always part of us. That other opposition is, of course, our self. Our constant “villain” or “antagonist” against us in the on-going story of our lives we continue to write each day. As Jung always observed, the two opposition symbols are within each of us rather than placed in different people. Such a simple yet profound few words.

In all of this, unsure where the story you and I have been discussing falls.

Sent you my notes for making a screenplay on the year that Sayyide Qutb spent in America. A disgusting time to observe in many ways. An essential time in other ways. Think this could be an important story that could teach many in the world today. Basically, a story about the year that the founder of radical Islam spent in America – in Greeley, Colorado – in 1948.

There seems elements of both comedy (as in the Jihadist story we’ve emailed back-and-forth on) and some serious approach about addressing the roots of radical Islamic culture today. Was it founded in the America of 1948? If it was, what were the chacteristics of this time in American culture?

A story taking place in 1948 America when Qutb arrives in New York City in 1948.

Relationship between American values in the late 40s to the development of radical Islam.

Anyway, the nexus of the idea sent to you in the PDF on the Milestones story idea.

Enough for now.

Sending BCC to a few friends as I realize that this is not a bad post from me.

Be good for you and me to conjure up something one of these days. Eric and Andrew. You guys pipe in whenever. Great going through a few months of great emails from you guys. We created a great Jihadist story line that still sits in the old central vault of our communications.

* * *

Anyway, ideas continue to float around.

Two grand symbols in opposition. I think of this grand clash.

Nothing is ever resolved by the domination of one symbol. One symbol dominates for a period of time. Yet its period of reign is an aspect of the grand cycles of life that contine to work their influence like the great clockmaster. Any symbol that rises to great power in the world is a symbol of one aspect of the two-sided symbolism of human beings: masculine and feminine.

Washington DC represents the masculine symbol.

Hollywood represents the feminine symbol.

An interesting dicotomy.

An unusual antagonist (Villain) as well as a protagonist (Hero).

The two grand symbols in Washington and Hollywood.

One can never go wrong by creating stories where the dynamics of these symbols are not resolved.