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penniesforthestorm · 4 years

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“There’s something wrong here”: Twin Peaks Recap, Season 2, Episodes 20, 21, and 22

Well, here we are. (Long strange trip, etc....) Below are the annotations for the final three episodes of the original run of Twin Peaks, along with some additional theories and observations. This has been a tremendously fun exercise; if you’ve been following along, pop on over to my inbox any time--I’m always up for more discussion. Stay tuned for my rundown on Fire Walk With Me, and very soon we’ll move onto The Return. Until then, I’ll see you in the trees...

Episode Twenty: “The Path to the Black Lodge”

-Windom Earle’s “pawn” was named Rusty Tomawski, and he was traveling with a band when their van’s tires broke down. Hope he made it to that great gig in the sky...

-Deputy Andy Brennan, on the environment: “Styrofoam never dies as long as you live.”

-Doc Heyward, to Ben Horne: “It’s what’s in your heart you should be worried about.”

-Wheeler’s business partner in Brazil has been murdered, so he’s trying to make tracks. Buddy, we hardly knew ye...

-Briggs shows Coop and Truman the Project Blue Book files on Windom Earle, including a tape of him discussing “dark sorcerers called Dukhpas” that inhabit the Black Lodge. Coop realizes he has mistaken Earle’s reason for coming to Twin Peaks in the first place.

-At the RR, Bobby Briggs and Shelley Johnson have about as much of a serious discussion as we’ve seen them have. This is the thing about Bobby--he might be a brat, but deep down, he truly loves Shelley. I believe he wanted to love Laura, too.

-Coop and Truman talk with Audrey, Donna, and Shelley, and confirm that they have all encountered Earle in various disguises, and that Leo Johnson wrote out the poem.

-Ben talks with Audrey at the Great Northern- when she leaves to chase after Jack, Ben is alone in the office, but he suddenly jerks around as if he hears something. Cut to Pete Martell in the lobby, crooning a lament for Josie Packard: “Josie, I see your face...”

-Earle captures Major Briggs. “Garland, what do you fear most in the world?” “The possibility that love is not enough.”

-At the Roadhouse, Coop teaches Annie how to dance, calling her a ‘queen’. The Giant appears, waving his hands and mouthing “No”, in warning.

-OK, as much as I would go fishing with Major Briggs, that goes double for good ol’ Pete Martell. Up around Seeley Lake, right at the end of July so we could get some huckleberries, too.

-In this episode, we see repeated instances of people’s hands trembling: a woman at the RR, Coop, and Pete as he waits for Audrey...oh, and whose arm is that, reaching out of the blackness in the woods?...

Episode Twenty-One: “Miss Twin Peaks”

-another directed by Tim Hunter

-Leo frees Major Briggs, whispering “Save Shelley”

-Norma was the first winner of the Miss Twin Peaks Pageant (quelle surprise...); in the discussion, Annie mentions Laura Palmer.

-Cooper makes the connection between BOB and the Black Lodge, and also with Josie’s death

-Donna confronts Doc and Eileen Heyward about Ben Horne; what I’m wondering is, where are the other two Heyward girls? (Also, it pleases me that Donna and I have the same middle name; it’s a common one, but still.)

-Major Briggs is in bad shape at the sheriff’s office, but he manages to tell Coop and Harry: “Fear and Love open the doors” to the Lodges. He also mumbles “Judy Garland”...

-And the pageant begins! I guess one of Annie’s convent sisters must’ve been a Rockette at some point; her form in the kickline is impeccable. And how about Lucy Moran, pregnant and still knocking out fouettes, pirouettes, and landing a split?!

-Audrey Horne: “When something you care about is in danger, you must fight to save it or lose it forever.” Annie’s speech is, of course, perfect. Donna confronts Ben Horne, and Lucy chooses Andy. Exit Richard Tremayne, to the collective relief of us all...

-And Annie is our queen. Really, who could begrudge her? I’m glad she gets her moment with her crown, her roses, and the adoring crowd, before the darkness falls.

Episode Twenty-Two: “Beyond Life and Death”

-Andy, reassuring Lucy: “I’d help you have that baby right there in the elevator, in front of God and everybody.” I love them so! much!

-Coop and Truman confirm the entrance to the Lodges at Glastonbury Grove, among the sycamores. I do love Pete’s interruption: “King Arthur is buried in England! ...Last I heard...”

-The Log Lady brings the oil from her husband, and Hawk brings in Ronette Pulaski to confirm the scent. This is one of my favorite details: way back at the beginning, it was Hawk that kept watch over Ronette in the hospital. Who knows what she remembers from that time, but I love it that she instinctively turns to him for refuge when the scent scares her.

-Annie officially meets Windom Earle; she is quite reasonably terrified, but strong enough to maintain a little skepticism, like, what is this dude’s problem?

-Some loose ends, tied (sorta): Nadine fully regains consciousness (I still don’t know what to make of the Mike business); Donna, with her bags packed, confronts Ben Horne and her mother, Doc and Sylvia Horne show up. Congrats, Ben, you’ve infuriated two families...

-I had forgotten how much this cuts back and forth once Coop enters the Lodge; worth mentioning that Gordon Cole described Shelley Johnson as ‘looking like the babe without the arms’, and in the hallway of the Lodge, there’s a replica of the Venus de Milo

-The business at the bank, Audrey crossing paths with Andrew Packard and Pete Martell-- I’ve brought up before that the Eckhardt/Packard intrigue storyline never quite meshed for me, but I do like Packard quoting Marcus Aurelius like the pompous s.o.b. he is...

-Bobby, on the subject of Leo: “He’s probably up in the woods having the time of his life.” Well, in a manner of speaking, that’s not wholly inaccurate...

-OK, Theory Time (tm)!: Sarah Palmer, seen here delivering a message to Major Briggs. I believe that “Sarah” is a Lodge denizen, or intermediary of some kind, similar to the Giant or the One-Armed Man-- she is able to perceive BOB and the others, and to give warning, but cannot directly effect the outcome of a situation. Whether she always was, or whether, at some point, she was overtaken, I’m not sure, but I think this plays into her arc in The Return, and may explain some of FWWM.

-And into the Lodge we go. The Man from Another Place says, “The next time you see me, it won’t be me.” The Giant reveals that he and the waiter are “One and the same.” Coop meets: Laura (”See you again in twenty-five years”); Maddy (”Watch out for my cousin”), Caroline/Annie (”I saw the face of the man who killed me”/ “You’re mistaken, I’m alive”), and Leland Palmer (”I never killed anyone”). Windom Earle offers to take Coop’s soul in exchange for letting Annie live, and Coop accepts, but BOB intervenes.

-Cooper, regaining consciousness at the Great Northern: “I wasn’t sleeping.” And the mirror shows us the awful truth: a Return, of someone we hoped we’d never see, riding along with the last person we’d hope to see him with.

...Whew!! That’s all for now, though, of course, this is only a stop on the journey. Keep your owls close and your donuts closer, and...meanwhile...

#tv #recap #watching twin peaks again #long post #twin peaks

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eleiszon-blog · 6 years

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The Map to the Black Lodge

A breakdown of the petroglyph in Owl Cave, Windom Earle’s “map to the Black Lodge”. The symbols vary from geographical to alchemical and the meanings vary from abstract instruction to clear direction. As with all Lodge-related things, it is largely a riddle, a cryptic thing. Authorship is unknown but was presumably either a Native who bested the Black Lodge and returned home to record the petroglyph for others to attain enlightenment, or a spirit-inhabited Native who crafted the petroglyph to draw potential prey to the Black Lodge. Given that all the symbols I’ll be analyzing are of a singular piece, the images used are all a duplication of the petroglyph in whole with the relevant piece highlighted by way of a pink circle. So --- Let’s begin: Albedo. A stage in the alchemical ‘Great Work’ which relates to purification. Represented, as here, by a white sun. Only those who have achieved ‘albedo’ can access the White Lodge.

The Giant and the Little Man. Attendants of the Waiting Room. They greet Dale upon his arrival and provide instruction for his impending ordeal. The Little Man initiates the test of the Dweller on the Threshold by casting Dale into the flames. A dual nature is inherent here: Giant, dwarf. The Giant aids Cooper. The dwarf cackles as Laura is murdered. Duality.

‘Where we’re from, the birds sing a pretty song.’ -- Birds in the woods. A piece of the ‘map’ element in the petroglyph.

Antimony. A symbol of the animal nature in humans. ‘Animal life’. Ferocity. Courage. Fire. Antimony is also used as a compound in flame retardant. A dual meaning: Embrace the fire. Careful you aren’t burned. Indeed, the key to resisting the Black Lodge. Fire, for one must be strong...But should one be scorched, they are doomed.

Neptune. The lower stem represents matter. The trident above represents the stages of the matter. Past, present, future. Birth, life, death. Beginning, becoming, being. Earth, Black Lodge, White Lodge. Interpretations may vary but the core idea is alike: The process of change.

A symbol of conjunction. This refers both to the planetary alignment which unlocks the gate at Glastonbury Grove and to the alchemical operation which results in lesser enlightenment, the state from which one’s perception is clear to attain permanent, lasting enlightenment. It is the key to entering the Lodge and also the potential found within the Lodge.

The alchemical symbol for Iron. An element governed by Mars, symbolic of resilience and the need to temper primal instincts -- like fear, the thing the Black Lodge aims to stoke in its prey.

The ‘owl’ symbol engulfed by fire. The owl is a symbol of wisdom. Wisdom consumed by primal instinct, symbolized by fire. Owls are in some cultures escorters of souls. This piece then symbolizes the fire - primal urge, vicious impulse - blocking the smooth transition of the spirit. This is the risk of the interloper -- and indeed, the fate of Dale Cooper for twenty-five years.

Alchemical symbol of tin governed by Jupiter, symbolic of wisdom and philosophy. A balanced and wise mind is needed to withstand the ordeals set upon you within the Black Lodge.

Twin peaks. A waterfall. Another piece of the ‘map’. Depicted upon each ‘peak’ is a swirling portal and indeed, many characters encounter swirling portals upon the mountain in The Return.

Symbol of Ceres, goddess of plentiful harvest (notably corn) and law. A goddess who receives blood sacrifices. The Black Lodge harvests ‘garmonbozia’ (’pain and sorrow’, as of sacrifice) represented by creamed corn and shows many signs of being very strict regarding its own sense of laws. Windom Earle paid a price for trying to undermine that law, whether he knowingly broke it or not.

‘From pure air, we have descended.’ -- A drawing of some...Things...Descending to earth. A line below, wavy as to suggest undulation. ‘Going up and down, intercourse between the two worlds.’ The descended things are circular -- like BOB or perhaps Laura, per their forms in The Return. The origin and travel means of the spirit world.

Mercury, symbol of travel, transformation, ambiguity, fluidity. In a word, mercurial. The forms of Lodge spirits is malleable. The flow of time is only barely directed. Time and dimension are traversable roads while matter can be changed at a whim. Mercurial is the nature of the Other Place. Mercury is also the mythological messenger, and many spirits of the Lodges play this role.

Star of Inanna, later called Ishtar, Sumerian goddess of (among other things) sex, desire, war, combat. Sound familiar? All domains of Thelema’s ‘Babalon’. Associated with Baal by way of various worship in the ancient Near East region. The ‘mother’ of the Lodge entities. (The actuality of the Babalon-Baal stuff is highly debatable as human interpretation of multiply-translated semi-truths.)

A variation on the alchemical symbol of sulfur, symbolizing the ‘active’ component of transformation. Sulfur is regarded as one of the ‘prime’ substances of matter, and in perfect balance with mercury (see above: transcending matter, impulse, spacetime and all that) was said by some alchemists to product the sought-after ‘gold’. A human entity - sulfur - who successfully changes and attains the mastery represented by mercury becomes their perfect self - ’gold’. The purgatorial aspect of the Black Lodge.

Symbol of sublimation, the alchemical process of reducing a thing to its principle elements, thereby creating a purer thing. Arguably the goal of the Black Lodge in testing its visitors. Occasionally represented by angelic forms, ala the entity Ronette saw in the traincar and Laura saw in the Abyss.

A shaman’s mask, likely drawn in specific mimicry of the Native tribes who lived in the region. In general, a representation of ‘the magician’ who ‘longs to see’. For the series’ purposes, that would be Dale -- though, per other entries on the matter, I do believe that Phillip Jeffries is currently a greater Magician than Dale.

The symbol here bears a resemblance to the alchemical mark of lead, symbolizing death and impurity. Lead is in some alchemical traditions the base matter from which ‘gold’ is obtained by separating out impurity and flaw.

The sycamore circle at Glastonbury Grove, and its accompanying pool of blackened sludge. The precise location of the gateway to the Waiting Room. Perhaps the most crucial element of the ‘map’. The black sludge is fear made incarnate - scented by the man who lay near as Leland murdered Jacques, scented by Laura as MIKE assaulted BOB’s host in traffic, and lying in a pool at the gateway where many likely died at the hands of former partners MIKE and BOB. When Dale visits in season two, his coffee is changed to resemble this sludge as a threatening omen. Wow, BOB, wow.

Finally, the most crucial piece of the petroglyph for understanding the nature of the Lodge and the Other Place as a whole. A series of dots separated by an undulating, interfering waveform. Bear with me, reader. We’re going to take a few moments to discuss quantum mechanics -- and also dead cats. And keep in mind that I am not a scientist but a layman. Anybody who has lived a fair while has heard of Schrödinger's cat or some variation. The cat is in a box, unobserved. The cat is both alive and dead, simultaneously. This is called a ‘superposition’, a quantum state in which all possibilities are of equal probability. Wave function collapse is said to occur when the wave function reduces to a singular state -- or, more accurately, the probability of one state rises to 100% while the rest decrease to 0%. This is represented in the petroglyph. The dots are the probable states. The wave is the function. It has not yet collapsed so all of the states remain equally probable. This is the nature of time in the Other Place. All possibilities are known -- but not yet resolved. Consider that if time were simply readable like a book, BOB should have known Cooper would ultimately regain himself and never even bothered with the doppelganger business as it was predestined to failure. Yet that isn’t how it happened because Cooper regaining himself was only one of the many probable states. Time is not a straight line in the Other Place but an uncertain wave. What will happen is observable -- but it is observed alongside all other possibilities, thus it is only known as what ‘could’ happen.

And so the petroglyph depicts, in various cryptic manners: Entities of the Lodge, directions to the Lodge, the alchemical nature and function of the Lodge, and finally the nature of observable time within the Lodge.

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