Watching The Fountain

(I revised this because I have some students who are blowing my mind with their insights and making me happy to be teaching this summer--one of them asked me if I had seen The Fountain, yes, I did, and it went like this...)

OK, prepare yourself to open your mind to the possibilities, put on Muse's "Super Massive Blackhole"



and then check out this Discovery Channel special on Black Holes:



Then see Darren Aronofsky's mindblowing film The Fountain (don't listen to the mundane critics who do not get this film--it is bold, unique and deep--it is to be experienced ... why are there so few filmmakers that understand that cinema should be an art form that transforms you when you experience the film):



Unwind, revisit, ponder everything while listening to Modest Mouse afterwards, especially their song The Stars are Projectors...

Thank you Darren Aronofsky for initiating this fictional derive!!!!!

Then to keep the pleasant strangeness going read Haruki Murakami's stunningly weird and beautiful Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (my first time reading one of his books, but I will definitely be reading more--the first 30 pages I was having a hard time grasping the dual worlds he portrays in this novel, then, all of a sudden, it became so real... as if I had been there before and this was not all that strange):

"You are fearful now of losing your mind, as I once feared myself. Let me say, however, that to relinquish your self carries no shame," the Colonel breaks off and searches the air for words. "Lay down your mind and peace will come. A Peace deeper than anything you have known" (The Colonel speaking to the Man, who has lost his Shadow, at the End of the World: 318)

"First, about the mind. You tell me there is no fighting or hatred or desire in the Town. That is a beautiful dream, and I do want your happiness. But the absence of fighting or hatred or desire also means the opposites do not exist either. No joy, no communion, no love. Only where there is disillusionment and depression and sorrow does happiness arise; without the despair of loss, there is no hope. (The Shadow speaking to his Man at the End of the World: 334)

Then have a friend sense that you need some powerful meditative words to ground you:

When all the world is dark and fear surrounds me,
when my night-blind soul cries out for help,
I turn to thee.
For thou are my opening to the Light and hope.
Like a child crouching in the dark, bereft of love,
I call to thee for succor and for comfort.
How long must I remain in darkness?
How long must I suffer the darkness of others
that threatens to engulf me?
From far beyond the ultimate source of Light
comes the vouce of my desire.
i lift my head but remain silent, accepting
what I cannot change,
enduring that which seeks to overthrow me.
Hope, that most beloved of messengers,
comes winging down the paths of morning.
The darkness lifts, and I see beyond the shadows
to the sun.
I look to thee and I behold my beloved.
I open the window of my battered ark.
And, like a yearning dove,
my heart flies through the opening to freedom
and the Light.

(Amy S. states that "This is the 15th path on the road to ultimate no
thingness-which is the Ain Soph of the Kabbalah.")

and then delve into the 5 volumes of Alan Moore's "Promethea" series (which provides a unique fictional perspective on the development of magical thought and belief):