The Sync Serpent

Excerpt from my chapter in The Sync Book 2:

"I closed my eyes and relaxed.  After several minutes the fatigue began to subside and I was about to open my eyes when something changed.  My attention was drawn to the lower half of my body which felt as if it were being slowly stretched like a length of elastic.  It was as if everything from the waist down had been snagged on an invisible fish hook and was being gently pulled towards some unknown destination.  Despite feeling bewildered by this unexpected turn of events, at no point did the 'stretching' become uncomfortable.

While trying to locate the source of the unusual sensation a spot of light materialized in the center of my vision.  The light was faint at first, as though it were reaching me from across a great distance, but like the sun piercing it's way through a dense cloud, the light gradually grew brighter and more vivid.  Different colors began to flood the periphery of my vision, hues of blue and green, and I intuitively knew that the ball of light was somehow responsible for the stretching in my legs.  It was like I was being sucked towards it, caught in a gravitational pull that I had absolutely no control over.

I knew that I could end the experience by opening my eyes but managed to resist the temptation and simply observed.  When I think about what happened next I'm reminded of the way in which our sun releases a solar flare into outer space.  I watched as a tendril of light curled outwards from the point of origin and continued to expand in a clockwise direction, spiraling towards me in slow motion.

As the light flowed along its corkscrew trajectory, the spiral path becoming wider with each rotation, I was hit with the realization that I was in the presence of a serpent.  A serpent made of light.

As the worm-shaped body approached I became conscious of the fact that if it didn't stop soon it was going to collide with my head, which is exactly what happened next.   As the light moved into and through my skull I felt an overwhelming tingling or vibrating throughout my entire body. There was a momentary feeling of ecstasy as the serpent merged with me.  The tail then passed beyond the realm of my perception, out the back of my head I suppose, and disappeared.  The spiraling light faded away, the stretching in my lower body came to an abrupt stop, and my vision returned to the grey black smudge that one would usually see while lying in bed with their eyes closed.

I thought that the experience had reached it's conclusion, however it turned out that this was a two-parter.

I kept my eyes shut while trying to digest everything that had just transpired.  I'd never seen or felt anything like this before so my mind was reeling with questions.  This inner monologue was cut short when two parallel rows of zigzags suddenly appeared at the top and bottom of my peripheral vision.  As the zigzag patterns took on sharp definition I could see that they were being created by rows of small triangles, each aligned horizontally, and seemed to consist of the same greyish light that the serpent had been made of.

My mind tried to put these new visuals into a context that it could understand, so it occurred to me that the two rows of triangles represented teeth.  Several minutes earlier a snake had corkscrewed its way through my head so it seemed natural to associate the triangles with the teeth of a serpent.  In my minds eye I zoomed out, looked down at myself lying horizontal on the bed, and almost burst out laughing at the mental imagery I'd concocted.  There I was, completely swallowed, my face peering out the open mouth of a giant snake."

The Clock and the Cat

"Two things are aesthetically perfect in the world - the clock and the cat."

Émile-Auguste Chartier

I was channel surfing last week and landed on the climatic scene of Back to the Future where Doc Brown is trying to send Marty home.  As the lightning illuminates the Tower I noticed the presence of this large cat.

The following day I'm doing the house work and Hot Tub Time Machine comes on the TV.

 

I'm only half paying attention as I do my chores, but it get's to point where the group of guys arrive at the hotel which will become their portal to the past.  As they enter the hotel one of the characters says,

"This place stinks of cat piss"

My mind automatically connects Doc Browns cat statue atop the Clock Tower to the cat piss hotel, and I think "Sync!"

But what on earth do cats and time-travel have in common?  My mind is a blank.

The caretaker of the Hot Tub Time Machine is Chevy Chase. 

I look him up on the net and find Chevy Chase connected to the Clock Tower, the Hot Tub...and now the Dog.

I'm thinking Chevy Chase...Time Travel...Dog

What do Dogs Chase?

The Cat.

And now I'm curious.

So last night I find a dodgy copy of Looper and stream if off the net.

While watching Looper, probably my favorite movie this year, my thoughts wander to the series of Time Travel/Cat syncs from last week.

It's not long before the penny drops.

I had time-traveling Joseph Gordon-Levitt connected to the Cat so where did Bruce Willis fit into the pattern?

 

It turns out I'd already made a video to help answer my own question!

Paradise Kitty from Richard Arrowsmith on Vimeo.

Feeling like I'm on a roll I start thinking about other actors who syncs with these themes.

Bill Murray gets caught in a Loop in Groundhog Day and he's also voiced Garfield.

Mike Myers traveled back in time in Austin Power and he was of course...

There's more I can add to this but I've run out of time.  If I get a chance I'll do an update tomorrow.

Part 2:  Through the Looking Glass

Bill Murray and Mike Myers both have a strong 'Stripey' vibe going on in the images above.  Garfield is a striped cat and the Myers posters speak for themselves.

If we use this as a jumping off point then we can take these syncs into the realm of Aztec mythology.


Tezcatlipoca was the Mayan deity who embodied the energy of the Cat.

According to Wiki he is associated with a wide range of concepts, including the night sky, the night winds, hurricanes, the north, the earth, obsidian, enmity, discord, rulership, divination, temptation, jaguars, sorcery, beauty, war and strife.

TezCAT was often depicted with Stripes running horizontally across his face.

It's one of his defining features.


His name in the Nahuatl language is often translated as "Smoking Mirror".

Smoking

Mirror

Here we have Bill Murray emerging from the Smoke, with emphasis on the Stripes.

Tezcatlipoca is a deity associated with the North.


On a clock face North would be represented by the Midnight hour.

In the night sky you can find the North Star by following the Big Dipper, which looks like a Frying Pan.  This is one of the first things my dad taught me about the stars as a kid.  Look for the Pan in the sky and it'll point you towards the North Star.

So if we combine some of these elements, Tezcatlipoca the Smoking Mirror, the Pan which points North, and Midnight, we arrive at a 1970s group called Flash and the Pan.

I checked out the Midnight Man music video and found some strong Tezcatlipoca syncage going on inside.

 

 According to one source Tezcatlipoca was responsible for the creation of the Big Dipper, or Pan:

The Great Bear Constellation, or Ursa Major, is believed in Aztec tradition to be the single footprint of Tezcatlipoca. The Great Pole, or North Star, was considered a place sacred to the gods, and Tezcatlipoca, not being an entity of goodness, was unable to approach it, but hopped around the Pole Star on his single foot creating the Great Bear Constellation.

Tezcat points to the North Star which in turn points to the Center, or the Whole, so it makes sense that he should be a strong sync-attractor.  You can go as deep into his pattern as you like and you'll never reach the end...but that's beside the point.

For now let's follow the darn cat and see we it takes us.

Back in 2009 I kept seeing synchronicites involving the Cat and the Train so compiled all the syncs and put them intp a post called Keeping Track of the Cat.

Here's one of images I used which shows how the CAT associates with the Pyramid or Mountain.

The journey to the North Pole begins at Midnight.

Now I'm not going to take this post to oblivion, been there, done that, worn the T-shirt, but what I do want to touch on is the Cat's relationship with the North.

I live in the North of Scotland, as far North as you can get without getting your feet wet in the North Sea, and the vikings who landed here a long time ago decided to call the area Caithness, which means 'Land of the Cat's'.

The Cat syncs with the North, and the North syncs with Tezcatlipoca, and here we see the Midnight Man doing his best 'walking on water' impression.

If you're aligned with North you're technically 'walking on the water'.

Sean Bean played a character named Loki in the movie Far North.  Here we see him standing on ice aka walking on water.

Sean Bean (Loki) also starred in NORTH County alongside actress Charlize THERON, whose very name encodes the word NORTH.

Jake pointed out in Lometheus Rising that Charlize THERON/NORTH has the letters LOKI on her kitty cat T-Shirt:

Sean Bean, who syncs with Loki and now the Cat, was King of NORTH in the awesome TV show Game of THRONES.

In Thrones he lost his head, in a BIG way.

Here we see Sean Beans decapitated head mounted on a North pointing spike.  This is the Midnight Hour, or the Witching Hour, when everything aligns perfectly and our sacrifice grants us a much higher vantage point.  This is the moment we arrive at the Pole.  Or North Pole.

I'm not even going to get into the whole Bigfoot thing, it just get's too weird.  All we need to know is that it has something to do with the journey that our Sole/Soul makes up the K2 mountain, and we'll leave it at that.

Now usually a break is considered a BAD thing, especially if you're trying to reach the Summit and your leg suddenly gives way.

Which brings me back to the Aztec deity Tezcatlipoca, who only had one leg.  Apparently a giant fish swam away with his other one.

Not many people want their head on a spike, or their leg to break, but in this sync-context it's actually a good thing.  It's like breaking the old habits, or old cycles, or the chains that keep us from moving forward.


Sometimes the shackles need to come off and 2012 seems to be the perfect year for it.


Now what does any of this have to with Time-Travel I hear you ask.  That's how I got caught up in this loop in the first place so I'll try and round this off with one last sync.

Catman Bruce Willis and Elijah Me and my Cat Wood both starred in the movie North.

Bruce Willis time-travelled in Looper and 12 Monkeys while Elijah Wood started his career in this movie.  He's the young kid who watches Marty showing off his skills as a 'CRACK shot'.


Better go now.  Got a train to catch.  Funny how time McFlies when you're having fun.

Thanks for reading.

R