A reversal

Memories

Chapter 17 A reversal

Susan lay in bed and looked lazily out the window. A white butterfly fluttered near the shutters and in a haphazard manner, came into the room. As she looked out at the window across the street, she had a vague sense that someone was lying on a bed there, waiting to get up.

It caused her an anxiety which pushed her to get up. She sat on the bed and lit a cigarette. The sensation had caused a fear in her and she immediately found herself remembering the incident of Bob and the bear, in the Appalachia. It had consumed her attention thereafter, especially when she found herself in a pit of great empathy for Bob.

She went into the kitchen to make some coffee.

The emotion carried her backwards in time, to her home in the valley, in Northridge,

Her mother had been at work that day. Her brother was in the living room watching the cartoon, Yogi bear, on TV. Her father who spent a life time working as researcher at the Los Alamos laboratory in New Mexico, had been laid off work, over the previous 2 years.

The events that followed, still held a rigidity that she couldn't penetrate. It seemed to her, that he had locked all the doors, told her and her brother to stay in the TV room, called her mother on the phone and had threatened to shoot her and her brother and then himself.

The police arrived, in what was a typical hostage situation, the negotiations were begun to have the father release the children.

Suddenly, she jumped, as a car backfired outside and caused her to lose her train of thoughts. Carrying the coffee, she walked over to the table where her notes lay in disarray.

As a child, her brother was diagnosed as suffering from meningitis. It was considered a mild form of mental disorder and was capable of subjecting the patient to great bouts of imagination and mental imagery, causing an acute lack of focus and concentration.

Susan had relied on her father as an anchor in the way that she managed herself and her perceptions of the world. In the months when the father was unemployed, he was in a state of distraction and caused her to lose focus on the issues. In his place, her brother had taken over but he was constantly imitating Yogi bear, as a wise cracking survivor, in the way that he related to her. It destabilized her even more.

In the last two years, when she had come to know Charles, she felt a great relief in her mind. He was always on top of things, had a response to everything and maintained a consistency in his actions. She related to that positively and for a while, had viewed him as a father image. But he had brushed it off.

She empathized with Bob's situation and was glad that her relationship with Charles remained unchanged. However, when Charles had told her about his proposed study into the archetype images in TMNT, she had felt an anxiety, in the same way, that she had thought her brother, was always full of Yogi bear nonsense.

Years later, she had visited her father in the correctional facility and had a pleasant exchange with him.

 

“I sorry about the mess,” he had said, “ I'd been under a lot of pressure.” Tall and lanky, his face had carved into creases that reflected the weight of concern he had about his own integrity of issues.

He had told her then that he was reading the book, ' Moby Dick ' by Herman Melville, and he found it incredibly useful as a way to view his own actions. He seemed contented somehow but did not want to return to a reconciliation with her mother.

Her mother had not remarried but will never bring herself to speak of the incident in the hostage situation. She had continued working and spent her leisure times doing cross stitch.

Meeting Tom, while researching on the Algonquin produced an incredible balm in her feelings. In Tom, she saw a person who had learnt to organize and manage his thoughts on the issues. But the loneliness that she perceived in Tom, was something, she was glad she was spared.

In going over her notes on the curriculum preparation, she realized that she was using one, or a combination of the men she had come to know, as being representative of the average individual in the world, and in some ways, herself. Our lives are in a process of self discovery, she figured, and the purpose of education and learning is to address such concerns. She aimed to write a curriculum that addressed the needs of such an individual, as it exists in society today.

She took another sip from the cup and went over her notes again.

 

 

 

TMNT, Charles surmised, was a work of faith by its creators, Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird. It referred to the master of the group, as the perceptor of all actions and the one who brought a perspective to life. They fought an evil man called Shredder, who was not unlike the ripper, that Charles identified, in the destruction of faith in individuals.

The 4 mutant turtles had the name of famous artist from the world's past, intimating the need for individuals in society to apply a creative and artistic flair to their handling of situations and the cultivation of responses to them. A little handling from a katana, where that might be necessary, helped.

Charles viewed the work as a way in which modern society brings older teachings in our faiths and finds new ways to affirm and renew the experience. In particular, he was keen to show, how the new images may have the impact of distorting or shredding past images of faith and to re-cultivate the experience into a new phenomenon of life and understanding.

The way that Splinter views the world is a reflection of the normal situation of an individual. The world itself is represented as an archetype experience in the life of April, as the living individual in the story. The life of the individual is therefore viewed as the attempts to bring a metaphorical representation of our thoughts and to develop that into a rational, conscious perception of the individual in the world.

 

Like Peter Pan, The Wizard of Oz, Beauty and the Beast or any of the growing expressions of the experience, TMNT indicated a far greater push for the actual physical achievement. To get on with it, and stop giving excuses. The turtle, as Charles observed in the study of Indic civilization and the Nanticoke, had a powerful unconscious effect on individuals.

Each individual, thought Charles needed to write his own story as a perception of life in the world. In that they would come to understand themselves as both the archetype and the social self, in a life that unfolds daily.

It seemed to Charles, that in some way, he was doing exactly the same thing.

Reviews

[patricia]

Like how this starts as a trigger jolting Susan back to previous trauma/shocks etc. You fill in the history nicesly as you describe the very interesting hostage scene. A car backfiring is used to good effect in ending her reflections. I would like to have this story as a book in my hand, that I could curl up into an armchair with. I was quite moved by the fathers sufferings. the paragraph projecting generalisations, onto people from her experience of one or two individuals was superb. Liked the Ninja Turtle and other Archetypes reflections, they are very informative and worth a bit of studying. Many Gems in this chapter. Thanks.