Non-Exist-ENT
I AM THE DREAMER: A PROVISIONAL WAKING SURVEY OF THE DREAMSCAPE OF MY OWN PERSONAL TWIN PEAKS9/6/2017 Sitting in a Hitchcock chair about two feet from the television absorbed to the point of almost total effacement in my Sunday evening ritual of re-watching Twin Peaks to indulge a second soak in its radiance and collect favorite stills for THE GLASS BOX, I learned something about myself: I am simply not capable of producing a "hot take" on the finale. Frankly, I didn't even try--the prospect felt perverse somehow, like Skyping in from your soulmate's deathbed to a jumbotron at a truck and tractor pull to regale an arena full of strangers with an impromptu eulogy. That's a little hyperbolic, admittedly, but some experiences are just too personal to get all chatty about in public without taking a few deep breaths and collecting oneself first. A kind reader called "beduggles" noticed my reticence, correctly inferred the reason for it, and gently acknowledged it in a comment on a previous post: "Left speechless by the finale I see :)" Indeed, beduggles! Precisely so! I'm grateful to the intrepid beduggles for eliciting from me the following (lightly edited) reply, the writing of which helped me both to understand why I've been a little slow on the draw this time around and to articulate what's been percolating in the meanwhile toward the end of a less shell-shocked, more composed GLASS BOX treatment of the final two hours of our long-awaited, much-beloved sojourn back into the world of Twin Peaks: "If you've done me the kindness of reading other posts, you'll know that mindfulness--the state of living in the moment without being stolen away from present experience by regret over the past or anxiety over the future--has been a recurring emphasis in THE GLASS BOX'S coverage of Twin Peaks. Living in the present these past five days has included enjoying my son's ninth birthday, beginning the academic year, and being cast into awe by the finale. So, in an attempt to mitigate regret over not being the first to log a hot take on the big finale and anxiety over the question of when I will get around to logging a significantly colder take, I decided just to sit with it for awhile. I'm really glad to see, though, that you checked in looking for something, because I took almost 300 stills of the final two hours and have a working title for what I hope will be one of my better posts: "Who Is the Dreamer? The End of Ends and the Inception of Unceasing Wonder in Twin Peaks". Here's a teaser: it dips back into some of the Hindu and Jain influences of Twin Peaks-The Return, suggesting that the Jain Doctrines of Relativity provide a useful point of reference for understanding the question "Who is the Dreamer?" not as a puzzle to be solved through wily deduction of a singular "who", but as an invitation to the infinite, joyful exploration of the myriad complementary and conflicting perspectives on the narrative woven into the fabric of Twin Peaks. It will surprise no one that I loved the finale. There's no such thing as fulfillment without lack, so to experience fulfillment and lack in such rapid succession, side by side, making us to feel so poignantly what we already know but work so hard to forget, especially when we attempt to escape into beautiful stories...speechless, indeed. For now, anyway." I've just woken up from a terrible beauty of a dream, and I need to summon and remember it--to observe it in daylight--before I can hope adequately to process and articulate what it might mean. Now that I am finally awake, here're some of the things I vividly recall from the dreamscape of my own personal Twin Peaks. Perhaps revisiting these things will prepare me for the task of expressing the inexpressible in finally engaging the finale in writing sometime very soon. 1. I dreamed of places that made me feel foreboding terror and profound yearning at the same time. 2. I dreamed that in mindfulness there are no dead ends or red herrings, but only glorious windows into beautiful and terrible worlds. 3. I dreamed that wise people are custodians of modest places that shelter love and caring for others. 4. I dreamed that modeling entitlement to power over the world makes children callous, sick, and lonely. 5. I dreamed that sex is deadly, transactional, absurd, and harrowing and that women do all the work. 6. I dreamed that death doesn't care what I think about its timing or alleged narrative proportionality. 7. I dreamed that time is indifferent to my hopes but still willing to dazzle me at every moment if I have the eyes to see. 8. I dreamed that shame, self-loathing, and low emotional intelligence don't mix very well with ready access to firearms. 9. I dreamed that the self is a multitude of strange and conflicted forces gathered in precarious tension. 10. I dreamed that seeing the face of G-d leads to a transformed life of service to vulnerable others. 11. I dreamed of portals to other places. 12. I dreamed that the aftermath of violence is ferociously beautiful from a distance and then felt I had tumbled into darkness. 13. I dreamed that it's a world of truck drivers. 14. I dreamed incessantly of the long lost Philip Jeffries. 15. I dreamed that home isn't always where the heart is. 16. I dreamed of gorgeous humming neon tempting me to make bad decisions in the vain hope of intrigue. 17. I dreamed that five ecstatic minutes can be stretched across five months while only gaining resonance. 18. I dreamed that there are some serious duds in law enforcement. 19. I dreamed that-for heaven's sake!-do *not* fuck with accountants! 20. I dreamed of an enchanted world where mundane things pulse with the majesty and malevolence of transcendent things. 21. I dreamed that similar things are not the same; there are dire consequences for confusing a Venus de Milo and a Venus de Medici, for instance. 22. I dreamed that there are many, *many* more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophies.
2 Comments
Barbara
9/8/2017 03:55:28 pm
At 8pm on Sunday night I had a package of tissues standing by but I didn't need them until now. Thanks for your keen eye, open heart and deep appreciation of this singular odyssey.
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Mr. Roque
9/9/2017 01:03:01 am
Wow! Thanks a million, Barbara! Your encouraging words have made my night! I had a good cry over this one myself. Glad not to be crying alone! It really has been a singular odyssey, hasn't it? I'm hard pressed to believe that I'll live to see its equal. What an accomplishment and a gift to the world!
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