…upon recommendation I look at the film to identify some of its content. I have never seen it before.
I am certain I have acted it out. In 1983 I owned a floral delivery service in which I distributed flowers throughout Wake County. I had a GE radio much like the one in this film for playing personal tapes as we didn’t have a radio in the van.
In 1990, while taking a psychology course, I drew a tree behind a fence I later deduced was a pyroclastic cloud. I had only been exposed to Jung’s work at that time through The Power of The Subconscious Mind by Joseph Murphy. It was the same year of this film the publication, The Essential Jung, by Anthony Storr was published. I grabbed this book from my shelf and my copy of The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious by Jung and headed into the living room to type this post. I opened The Essential Jung, immediately to page 198, where is written information regarding being “stuck in the unconscious automatisms of the mind”. This of course is exactly what had been happening to me until I discovered The Tinkling Symbol. Jim Jones and Guyana come to mind as possible victims of this novel and Putnam Photographers. Having performed this feat many, many times, it is clear to me someone read or was reading The Essential Jung at the time some cataclysmic episode occurred, such as the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helen. I wonder now if the floral delivery service person actually resided in California or Washington State. My drawing could be nothing more than someone having viewed a news report about the event.
This film likely portrays the horrific consequences of that eruption while also capturing the consequences of a nuclear attack, “killing two birds with one stone” (I’ve heard amongst the dialogue). What I did notice about the dialogue in the film, is the father set his oldest son up for death, “move your dead ass”, dramatized in the film as a near case of mother, son suicide, the mother quickly giving up on it as a resolution to their situation. The father also directs his son to wake up, “it’s time to wake up”. This I relate to The Woman In Green, Ordeal on Locust Street and Twenty-Two.
I now feel certain this is what I was acting out in 1988 when I contemplated attempting suicide by asphyxiating myself in my car, although the undiscovered novel at that time was most likely the driving force behind my behavior. There were incidents in my personal life in which I spent the night in my car many times since 1988 and once in 1973 after having viewed a play. Was this a manifestation of the unconscious drama?
I also noticed the birds and fish on Alexander’s shirt after viewing the first part a second time. This also seems related to my painting and The Tinkling Symbol. It all came together as I stated here, I concluded originated from Millbank prison detainees. It is now clear that may have nothing to do with the basis of this book.
Update: Page 201 in The Essential Jung also describes the attributes of the unconscious, “immitigable, immovable, and inaccessible (I question this now)”, with unseen powers which can invade our waking lives.
