The Blue Rose, Synchronicity, and the Surreal Stream

Just look at this random collection of junk and jewel!

Winter seems a time of challenge, does it not? It is therefore in this spirit that I again challenge my self to pick through the daunting stream of consciousness for a piece reflecting on time or the lack thereof.

Pictured is a sort of ancestral shrine. It is the centerpiece of a wider collection of photos: my children, parents, other relatives, and myself.

From the top down, I will describe the significance of each piece here.

First, the Raven! I am a fan of Poe, and have been since childhood. The Raven is among my favorite poems, cliche though it might be. I'm particularly taken with The Simpson's Treehouse of Horror version, and still take delight in my youngest daughter's response, at the age of around nine, when I showed her and the other children this, thinking they would be amused. It went something like this:

"I didn't understand a word he said."

But this Raven belongs in the ancestral shrine precisely because it was gifted to me by my mother, who's pictured, as a little girl who looks startingly like the abovementioned daughter, in the black and white photo.

Mom encouraged my love of storytelling.

The dapper gentleman leaning against the car with the dachshund by his side is my dear uncle Mike, who was my mom's best friend and also an intellectual touchstone for me as a child. Mom has passed on to a better place, but Uncle Mike is still alive and thriving in Texas. I hope to make a trip with the kids to see him this year if time and my meager savings will allow it.

Beside these pictures is a blue rose on a spring with two small Christmas ornaments hanging below it. The Christmas ornaments I have had since I moved into this house, and every year when we put up the tree, my girls find ways to hang the little fellas in places all around the house for me to find long after I've packed away the rest of the holiday hoo-ha.

Yes, I roll my eyes and sigh, but not being the most organized or fastidious person myself, I also chuckle. I figured these two might as well remain out.

As for the spring, it is the last remaining piece from an old boxspring which got me through several moves. Silly, I know, but when you can't afford a new bed, it's better than sleeping on the floor, so it seemed only fitting to give the fallen soldier a memorial, so to speak.

To the Blue Rose I shall return, for it is a discussion unto itself.

You will note that before the picture of my dear uncle there are four items. A bullet casing. A knot of wood. A black rock. A yellow rose. All of these are things I found on my walks to and from work. Like a little boy, I was for a time last year coming home with a pocket full of nonsense, filled with a sense of wonder.

Believe it or not, I am a grown man. I think...

The synchronistic significance of these items is their connection to my favorite fantasy series: Stephen King's The Dark Tower, which is based on Robert Browning's epic poem Child Rolande to the Dark Tower Came.

The protagonist of the series is a gunslinger, so the bullet casing explains itself. I loathe that this is something I find on the sidewalk in my neighborhood, especially as it is not all that uncommon. I found this one right in front of my house.

Knots of wood are also not uncommon, because I work at a factory in an industrial stretch down the street, and these things pop out of our pallets all the time. The significance of this to King's story is that a key is carved out of the wood in Roland's world, which unlocks a mystic door.

The black rock I collected while walking the railroad tracks. It stood out among the other rocks in the gravel, because of its luster, which now seems to have faded to grey within my home, perhaps because renewing rain does not fall in my kitchen, and also because it was the only one of its kind I found on the stretch of track between work and home.

It recalled to my mind one of my favorite lines from the series: "There will be water if God wills it." This is a retort to the old saying that one cannot get water from a rock.

Finally, the yellow rose I kept because yellow was Mom's favorite color, and also because the symbol of the rose is prominent in The Dark Tower. If you ever read it, you'll know.

My love of reading and writing started with bedtime stories and then grew with a library card, one that Mom got for me when I was in third grade, because I walked by the library every day and could hang out there sometimes while waiting for her to get off of work.

The Dark Tower was a series I started reading when I was about thirteen. The palaver between the man in black and the gunslinger at the end of the first book is what made me realize that I was a philosopher, that I had always been predisposed to deep thinking, whether I like it or not... and, as it turns out, after many twists and turns through a tumultuous life, I do like it. I like it a lot!

Mom once said that when she was pregnant with me she had deep rambling thoughts like none she ever had before or since.

I can confirm Mom was a practical person who wasn't predisposed to overanalyze and acted on behalf of others in a selfless, intuitive manner. A far cry from her son, who overthinks everything. However, I have noticed that I also tend to save people a lot of trouble sometimes, by anticipating things that otherwise would have escaped their attention in critical moments.

So both modes of action are to be understood as different phases of a single flowing unity. Solve et Coagula.

The incense holder is just an incense holder, which is sometimes used for its intended purpose.

(Someone once asked Freud about the significance of his cigar. For those who are aware of Freud's phallic conjectures, the ribald jest in the question should be obvious. Freud simply remarked, however: "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.")

Now we come back to The Blue Rose.

This one, of course, is a fake. As far as we know, nature does not produce blue roses. The Blue Rose, then, is the mystical symbol of a miracle. At the end of this essay you will find a poem I wrote in remembrance of Mom, who passed away in 2013, accompanied by another picture I took and a short Rommentary.

This brings me to the subject of synchronicity. I had written a draft of the poem and saved it to publish around Mother's Day. After publishing it, on my walk into work that morning, I found this fella lying on the side of the road.

It was discarded. It was dirty. It wasn't a real flower. But I could not help but think it a nod from mother to son that maybe it was time to pick myself up and brush myself off and move on.

I think of her every day. Fresh tears still spill, and I wipe them away. And that's okay. I would rather feel this than nothing at all, a dark hole I was damned close to falling into forever.

For all that, I remain a cynick, and I would here like to explain the distinction between a cynick and a skeptic.

A skeptic doubts. A cynick refuses to believe in obvious nonsense.

I'll never believe that true divinity could be anything but benevolent. I have seen enough examples of benevolence, in human beings like my mother, to know what it looks like.

If as above is like so below, and divinity is benevolent, then condemnation, manipulation, coercion, subversion, intrusion, and the intentional stoking of confusion does not come from divinity.

As to where these awful traits do arise, I won't point any fingers. They know who they are.

Then there is the question which must inevitably plague every philosopher more than any other:

Whence does evil arise?

All I can do is give you my (short) answer, which is but one among many, and encourage you to expand your own consciousness to think on it for yourself.

Divinity gives us a choice. It frees our will rather than demanding our obedience. Evil arises where we make a choice to control others rather than ourselves.

Many blessings, much love, and may you find your own Blue Rose in your wanderings and wonderings.