Ishmael, the sole survivor of the Pequod and the only one who can tell its tale, quotes the Book of Job in reference to himself: “and I only am escaped alone to tell thee” (Job 1:15-19). This put a song in my head: “The Frozen Man” by James Taylor:
Last thing I remember is the freezing coldWater reaching up just to swallow me wholeIce in the rigging and howling windShock to my body as we tumbled inThen my brothers and the others are lost at seaI alone am returned to tell theeHidden in ice for a centuryTo walk the world againLord have mercy on the frozen man
Ahab was being discussed in connection with Pharazon and the downfall of Numenor. When Tolkien’s Atlantis sank beneath the green wave, its king was not there but on a ship, which also sank. Bill Wright’s theory is that after its sinking, Numenor was frozen and is currently preserved “on ice” somewhere. The song fits this narrative uncannily well. The “Lord have mercy” refrain also makes more sense if the frozen man is not some random unfortunate but the arch-criminal Pharazon.
Like Ahab, the frozen man is missing a limb and requires a peg leg:
It took a lot of money to start my heartTo peg my leg and to buy my eye
What’s the frozen man’s name? You can’t make this stuff up:
My name is William James McPheeI was born in 1843Raised in Liverpool by the seaBut that ain't who I amLord have mercy on the frozen man
McPhee means “son of the dark fairy.” Our English word fairy and the French fée (which Phee coincidentally resembles) ultimately derive from the Latin for “goddess of fate,” of which Fortuna/Tyche would be one.
I’ve never lived in Liverpool, but my grandfather — who was also called William James Tychonievich, was known for saying “Beware the Ides of March,” and died just before I was born — lived in East Liverpool, Ohio.
My Uncle Bill, who picked up from Charlie the habit of reading himself into Beatles lyrics, made much of the fact that “Yellow Submarine” was about a man who lived “in the town where I was born.” The Beatles were born in Liverpool, so clearly they were talking about him. I always thought my father was a better fit, though, since he once worked “in the land of submarines,” programming unmanned subs for Martin Marietta.
That strange phrase, “land of submarines,” makes even more sense as a reference to the now-submarine land of Atlantis, and yellow/gold was Pharazon’s trademark color. That story helps make sense of these lines, too:
So we sailed up to the SunTill we found the sea of greenAnd we lived beneath the wavesIn our yellow submarine
Sailing up to the Sun fits with Pharazon’s sailing to the land of the gods, which was later removed from Earth and became a heavenly body. As I have mentioned before, Tolkien consistently emphasized the greenness of the wave that overwhelmed Numenor.
26 comments:
That line of asking mercy for the Frozen Man also seems to link back to your Grace Hopers.
You had introduced that phrase in conjunction with the Five of Pentacles, which shows two people left outside, freezing in the cold, and you called them Grace Hopers. If anyone would be saying "Lord have mercy on the Frozen Man", it would be those people shown in that image.
One of those Grace Hopers is even shown having to use crutches or supports to walk.
That James Taylor album is loaded, apparently. Given the New Moon Shine, probably to be expected. I had used the last song on the album, The Water is Wide, to refer to Galadriel's "Song of Eldamar", where both Taylor and Galadriel sing of the water being too wide to cross, and there is no boat in existence that can carry them across it.
The "I only am escaped alone to tell thee"/ lone survivor aspect and your connection to the Frozen Man reminded my of your account of the Vulture Odessa Grigorievna. You wrote about and linked the Vulture to that Tin Soldier, who had been a sole survivor, like Ishmael.
I looked it up again, and had forgotten that the Vulture's name was Odessa, and in the dream you liked that name because it sounded like Odyssey. Just recently, it was the cover of that Odyssey book by Robin Lister that brought to your mind the Great Wave that sunk Numenor.
In Dante, Odysseus sails far out into the west but, as his ship is approaching an island forbidden to mortals, a storm overwhelms it and it sinks. No one survives to tell the tale (which is why Homer knows nothing of it). Dante hears it from Odysseus himself in hell.
It’s nice to be able to look up old posts and find details you had forgotten, isn’t it?
Take note of the 34 in 1843. One of these days, I'll get around to the main reason that number is so important to me.
Bill's repeating of the name Robin Lister has reminded me of the sci-fi comedy, Red Dwarf. The main character is Dave Lister, the last human alive, released from suspended animation inadvertently lasting a few million years, following a radiation leak on the mining spaceship he works on. His only companions are the Red Dwarf's computer, a hologram of his dead superior, one of a humanoid species evolved from his cat, and later on a service android. You could say Futurama's Fry had it easy in comparison!
And here's more about Metal Gear Solid: Phantom Pain, stuff I left out before because it's a major spoiler (be warned, potential players). Big Boss-Ahab, also called Venom Snake, was actually a loyal medic in Boss's service; during his coma, compatriots gave him treatments to become Boss's double in body and mind as part of greater plans. The real Big Boss rose from coma before Venom did, and with his face hidden under bandages, was codenamed Ishmael. Venom eventually learns the truth, his work unknowingly allowing the real Boss to focus on a more covert operation.
"Red Dwarf" is another link to tale/tail puns.
https://pulpcovers.com/the-tale-of-the-red-dwarf-who-writes-with-his-tail/#1
It’s by Richard Shaver, so there’s a baldness link, too.
In your Odessa dream, she said you met at the "2001 Odyssey Fencing Club".
Fencing, I would think, is a double meaning here. It can mean to fight with swords. But, fencing can also refer to enclose something or pen something in, which would directly link to Pharazon and the Numenorean story (as well as that Odyssey book cover).
After the Great Wave, Tolkien wrote that a "Girdle" had been placed around Middle-earth. Men would now sail one direction and arrive at their departure site if they sailed far enough due to all roads now being bent and the Straight Road no longer found or available to Men.
Girdle has come up before, in meaning a belt, but at its most basic, Etymonline has it from word meaning "to enclose". So, a Girdle and a Fence, in this particular instance and in the case of the aftermath of the Numenorean disaster, would be the same thing. Our world became fenced, enclosed, or girdled.
The fact that this Fence would have something to do with "space" or some interstellar setting, and not just this planet, is also suggested in the name Odessa gave you. "2001: A Space Odyssey" is a pretty famous space movie, and seems to be a purposeful callout from her 2001 Fencing Club name. I can't think of any other reason to include the 2001 reference, unless you thought of anything more personal to you.
Could also refer to future events. 2001: A Space Odyssey seems to have some symbolism in Man finding the Straight Road once again.
Stanley Kubrick directed the film. Stanley is a name that refers to Stones (like Stanley, Idaho, the nearest town to where the Rose Stone was found, apparently), and I guess Kubrick is of Jewish origin and might refer to a Ship in some way.
As a tangent, Kubrick also directed The Shining, which has been brought up here on occasion. The Shining, squinting at it hard enough, has somewhat of a Numenorean/ Hercules theme in that a Father is driven mad by malevolent forces and attempts to kill his own family.
Interestingly, in The Shining, Jack Torrance starts going crazy when he says "God, I'd give anything for a drink. I'd give my goddamn soul for just a glass of beer". In the Numenorean story, it is also a drink (from the lilies) that Pharazon and other Numenoreans will sell their souls for. The price was dear.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ao_TQhLSoXo
In that movie, it is writer's block that Torrance also struggles with. He can't seem to find a story to write. He also shows somewhat of an aversion to work, famously typing out the proverb "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy." Dull just stood out to me right now since it is a word that points to being a fool, as well as one that is slow in perception or understanding.
2001 Odyssey is the name of the disco in Saturday Night Fever, so I assume that’s where that came from as the name of a “club.”
I’ve never seen that film, but I know the name of the club because my Uncle Bill saw it as a 9/11 prophecy: We see the Twin Towers, then it cuts to 2001 Odyssey, where they’re dancing to a song (“Disco Inferno,” cf. my Odysseus Inferno reference above) about two mass fires a hundred stories high. Of course the tower destruction angle fits right in with the direction we’re talking things.
A disco is probably about the only place where that gold suit of mine might have been appropriate attire.
Yes, it must reference Saturday Night Fever in some way. Good thought. I've also never seen the movie, but apparently 2001 Odyssey was a real club, and it was in fact named after 2001: A Space Odyssey, so I think references to Kubrick's film, per above, also still might be valid. I guess the Disco also had sci-fi elements that were inspired by the film.
Of some interest, the real 2001 Odyssey club in the movie is no longer, and has been a Chinese restaurant for a number of years, at least according to an article that was a couple years old.
A Discotheque can literally mean "Record Collection".
Thus, Disco Inferno can take on a whole new meaning in terms of what is being lit on fire, and would seem to potentially point to Pharazon's burning of the lilies on Eressea, as one possibility or layer of meaning. The one half of Eressea was said to be basically consumed in flames in Daymon's story.
And we've referenced the "sickness" of the Numenoreans, so Saturday Night Fever would be a tie-in there.
Saturday is a day that belongs to Saturn. Though never made explicit in Tolkien's works, many people have connected Sauron with Saturn (even tying in "the Rings" with the rings of Saturn). Thus, in the name Saturday Night Fever we have a sickness that can be attributed to Saturn/ Sauron, which would map very well to what caused the Numenoreans to assault Eressea.
It would also map well to my dream in which the source of my anger toward my children came from another Being, and we could identity that individual potentially as Sauron.
And sorry, I meant to make it more direct, but the Etymonline definition of Discotheque and a Record Collection also connected the term to a Library.
And the Chinese restaurant connection to 2001 Odyssey Club caught my attention obviously for the China link, but also a dream I had awhile ago in which I was sitting with a man in a Chinese Restaurant (or what I took as one based on bowls of something like lo mein on the table). When I woke up I associated the man with you, though that was just my interpretation.
Apparently the name Travolta means "to be overwhelmed" -- the very word I used to describe the fate of Odysseus as described in the Inferno.
By the way, did anything particular happen in the Chinese restaurant in the dream?
In conjunction with Overwhelmed, it looks like Travolta also means "Swept away, engulfed", which would also be very apt for fates of Pharazon/ Numenor. In Faithful, Pengolodh/ Daymon uses "sweeping" to describe what Eru did to the Numeoreans:
"Eru did ask politely to borrow that ax of Ki-Abroam, and taking it in hand, did swing it down, and cut the earth itself to her core, and as if sweeping some dried flies off his window sill, Eru brushed into that gaping cut the whole force of Numenor's remaining fleets..."
You have that mention or comparison of flies, again. I had mentioned Lord of the Flies in an earlier comment (as a reference to Beezelbub) and you just posted now in another post some images of insects being preserved in amber, several of them most people who aren't experts in insects would probably just refer to as your basic fly.
Travolta's grandfather was Sicilian, and it through him he got his last name, I guess. Vizzini from The Princess Bride was also a Sicilian. The Sicilian aspect might tie into both my dream of the Chinese restaurant as well as what I consider to a pretty strong link from just last night involving the film Goodfellas. It seems to connect, I think. I'll cover the Chinese restaurant in the first follow up comment, and then Goodfellas in a second one.
I should quickly note that Lord of the Flies sounds quite a lot like Lord of the Rings. That title was Sauron's, and I had Pharazon pegged as the Lord of the Flies, who would have been under a "Saturday Night Fever", or a sickness that was directly caused by Saturn/ Sauron.
OK, so in the Chinese restaurant dream in a nutshell...
I was sitting at a table with one man, but there were several other individuals scattered throughout the room. Bowls of noodles were on the table, and there were those wooden lattice dividers in the room like you see in Chinese restaurant decor sometimes. Each of the men, including the man I was sitting with, had been called in by their boss to receive a punishment for having failed him. It kind of had that crime/mafia feel to it. A black shadowy figure would appear at one end of the room and summon the next person back to meet with the boss.
I was in a conversation with the man I was sitting with. I kept telling him that it wasn't too late, and that he could and should get up and leave this restaurant right away before his boss called him back.
The man kept going through all sorts of justifications or reasons on why leaving the restaurant wasn't going to be necessary, including the fact that even if he was going to be punished by this boss, it wouldn't be that bad.
I had the specific thought "This guy doesn't seem to take anything seriously!", and that this was all some big joke.
It became apparent that the man was going to be the last one called back, and as the room now was emptied of everyone but him, he became convinced that it was going to just fine.
At this point, the man who had been called back right before came running back into the room. He was screaming wildly and was covered in blood - obviously something really bad had been done to him, and it looked to me that he was dying. It was a fairly horrible and chaotic scene. The black shadowy figure came back and summoned the man I had been sitting with back. Not wanting to stick around for how this would end, I got up from the table and left, at which point I woke up.
When I woke up, I associated the man with you (but will note that this was my interpretation - I did not remember what the man looked like from the dream nor call him by your name or anything).
The black shadowy figure was of a tremendous height and size - very tall. My remembrance of him is one reason I interpreted the appearance of that one man in your dream at your school asking for a receipt for something he paid you for as something negative. When you described him, it just gave me a similar vibe to the figure from my dream.
Anyway, this overall vibe of a crime boss punishing his subordinates who failed him then leads me into Goodfellas.
Any idea what you yourself were doing in the restaurant? Were you also awaiting a punishment?
So, last night, I had this idea to watch the first part of Goodfellas, for whatever reason. I had watched it once a long time ago, and couldn't remember much of it.
The movie started out super synchy with the title itself. Apparently, the book it is based had the title Wise Guy, and the movie originally was going to be called Wise Guys. In the 2024 story I had been working through, we had these Three Beings - the Chip Monks - that I associated with the Wise Men. Seemed like a relevant title.
Made even more so by the fact the movie starred Ray Liotta. Ray Liotta appeared on my blog due to his role in the movie Field of Dreams as the baseball player Shoeless Joe Jackson. I just left comments here in the past few days about Pharazon's missing leg being an impediment to him wearing a required shoe - thus being Shoeless.
In Field of Dreams, Kevin Costner's character (also named Ray) builds the baseball field specifically to give Shoeless Joe Jackson one more chance to play baseball, after being banned from the game. Back when I wrote about Field of Dreams, I was still holding on to the story of Pharazon (you, in my theory) being one of these Three Wise Men heading on back to France and Tom B.'s House.
So, seeing Ray Liotta in a movie called Goodfellas jumped out at me. Liotta, apparently, is a name that means Lion, by the way. His character is Henry Hill, a name that means King or Ruler on the Hill.
It was as I was thinking through some of this, that we learn that Liotta and the mob hung out at a restaurant called Bamboo Lounge. It wasn't an exact hit, but I had just made a big deal in comments here about the 2001 Odyssey Club now being a Chinese restaurant called Bamboo Garden. The name was close. And we've seen symbols relating to Lazy Lions who Lounge, so it just kind of felt related, but that could just be because of the narrative building in my head.
In the Saturday Night Fever example, I had tied the song Disco Inferno to the act of setting something on fire, with the specific example of Pharazon setting Eressea and the lilies on fire.
And wouldn't you know it, Ray Liotta actually burns down the Bamboo Lounge in the movie (with the help of Joe Pesci). Disco Inferno?
Anyway, just seemed to point to this whole story of secret combinations/ organizations with this crime/ mob theme, going back to my dream above.
It wasn't completely clear why I was there. Nothing was narrated or anything, so as with all of this stuff I just have to interpret and it might/ might not be an accurate take.
It's possible I was there to be punished, but that wasn't my sense. I was free to get up and go, and that is what I did at the end when I appeared to fail in convincing the man to also leave. After the dream, I wrote down that my sense was I was more of an observer, I guess, but that was a word I chose to describe my feelings toward the end when the man wasn't listening to anything and I felt all I could do was sit and watch in the end.
My whole attention during the dream was directed toward the man I was sitting with, trying to convince him to leave.
That is another reason I had equated the man with you. As you now know, quite a lot of what I wrote in 2024 was either directed specifically to you or involved you in some way. You were my primary focus, and that, at least on one level, seemed to tie to the dream.
And, just for the record, I don't even know what leaving the restaurant would look like, or what choices that would involve. I don't even know for sure if that wasn't some dream of the past, not really a present or future thing.
It’s still weird to think I was reading your blog regularly and contributing to the sync stream and had no idea whatsoever — it literally never once crossed my mind as a possible hybrid — that several of the characters we were posting about were supposed to be me.
It’s such an extraordinary blind spot to have had. I mean, this isn’t even the first (or the second) time someone has had delusions of grandeur on my behalf, and I should have picked right up on it. And anyway people just naturally tend to see themselves in stories and identify with the characters. I don’t know why I didn’t.
Maybe my inability to put together a coherent story was at least partly due to an unrecognized foundational assumption: I just took it for granted that any story would be one about other people.
Hypothesis, not hybrid
Yeah, that's possible.
You've mentioned your Uncle Bill several times as someone who had these delusions of grandeur on your behalf in relation to past lives. In what seems like a fairly big sync in this regard, I share not only your uncle's first name, but also his middle name. William John.
With you I kind of felt my hand was forced, honestly, so apologies for any weirdness. You came bounding into my blog, and your syncs came so forcefully into my actual life, that I needed to at least try to figure some things out. I mean, the primary reason I got back in touch with Leo after not talking to him for over 2 years was because I was confused about what to do in relation to "you".
My first strategy was actually avoidance, if you remember. I had started off my Coat of Skins blog in an attempt to make sense of some loose ends and things from 2019 - 2022. You came into the picture in the middle of that process, and I wanted to actually disengage from you and the syncs. So, I got to the part where I had "figured out" (as much as we can actually say things like that) that the Rose Stone had gone to Tom B.'s House from Idaho, in 2021, and everything related to that, and then shut down the blog for the first time. I figured I had gotten to a good spot, felt good about the story making some kind of cohesive sense, and didn't want to do or write any more, particularly if it involved these syncs.
But that wasn't going to work, because even when I stopped writing, everything else kept persisting, so I made the call to jump back in and think through some things. You may not remember, but that was in October 2023, and I came back with the initial post of "The Great Pumpkin and Waiting", showing an image of Linus in his pumpkin patch. This was before the Pumpkin symbolism became so important, and so that return to writing with that title seems relevant in hindsight.
My guess is that much of what I wrote from October 2023 to the end of 2024 was done with some expectation or assumption that you were involved in the story in some way.
You mentioned in an email very early on, that you had little patience for people who claimed they were somebody important in a previous life, or who claimed others were. Perhaps your blind spot and they way the blog posts and syncs worked out was crafted in such a way to work around that. If you suspected that you were potentially viewed as being some of the characters mentioned, you may not have allowed yourself to join in or link to it like you did?
That’s a bigger sync than you think. Out of the blue you tell me you have the same name as my Uncle Bill. Earlier the same day, I randomly asked WG when she was born and discovered that she and my Uncle Bill have the same birthday.
My uncle has no interest in Tolkien or Mormonism, has a worldview centered on the late Charles Manson, and hasn’t communicated with me in nearly a decade. It’s hard to see what role he could have in all this, and yet the syncs are there.
Out of curiosity, who did you think was going to read your blog? Did you have a target audience in mind when you started, or was it just (as a blogging associate of mine from ages ago used to say) “because talking to myself doesn’t generate archives”?
Interestingly, the person who first alerted me to your blog’s existence was the chap who used to comment here as “ben,” and who was the second delusions-of-grandeur guy I had in mind in my comment above. He and my uncle claimed many of the same past lives for themselves.
With Coat of Skins I initially attempted to look back at 2019-2022 and see if I could make sense of things. It was my own personal project, and I didn't have a target audience in mind. Back in 2017 - 2019, I had created another blog called A Good Seed, and so was familiar with the Blogger platform. It seemed natural just to keep using that.
I second guessed actually doing it in the beginning, but I had that dream in which a woman's voice mentioned writing certain things on the blog, and that I would become friends "the sons of Alma". I had at the time linked the blog and finding these friends together, so that also became part of it. I don't think that is correct now - those are two separate statements.
But, because I had joined them, you came along and I wondered about the sons of Alma bit. I had puzzled that comment out to mean Helaman and Shiblon, and so I had wondered about any connection between you and Helaman.
That published before I was done... continuing on...
The Helaman connection came both from the words of the woman but also other symbols and connections that were being written about at the time. For example, Little Skinny Planet, which I took as a direct reference to the planet on which the Little Skinnies live, or the Stripling Warriors. Other things like you jumping right on the Tom Petty line of thinking and how people said that you looked like him (I guess like Jason Statham a well?), which helped further that Tom Petty/ ALma connection which was a dead end.
So, I kept a bunch of different storylines opens and kept feeling through things. I wrote about my approach like Choose Your Own Adventure, meaning when I get to various uncertainties or decision points, I keep my fingers in the pages at those points so I can revisit things and explore other answers. Eventually, I landed on the sons of Alma being the Stone Couriers, as I wrote about, and so not having anything to do with you. That still makes the most sense to me.
So, Pharazon is where I've landed to date for you. Just a guess I don't have an answer key. It is interesting, when I go back to the email I wrote you about the various storylines in my head even back at the end of 2023, I wrote " in one story you are a potential friend in Helaman, in another you are in league with the devil, and in another you suffer from from similar but different mental illnesses to which people have told me I suffer from."
I guess "in league with the devil" prevailed.
I remember ben. He wrote to me about the same things and claims, and my advice was the same I've given others who have written to me about who they think they are, which is I don't think it is a productive or good path, in general. He was actually another reason I took down the blog in 2023, as he was internalizing everything I wrote, and I didn't think that was going to be good for him. Basically, the opposite approach you took.
Again, you are different, in my own approach, in that your syncs were so intrusive on my life I needed to figure some things out. But even then, I didn't tell you what I thought directly throughout 2024. It wasn't really something I was going to just say unsolicited. But, you asked me.
So just remember that - you were the one that asked me.
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