I just wanted to log a couple interesting things from the Keystone trip last week that I didn't have a chance to mention. I think I had already brought up my interest in the name itself (Key-Stone), but I don't think I brought up much else specifically about it (other than writing about a few dreams and thoughts I had while there).
I was actually really glad I went. I was still feeling not great at the time (from being sick), and had little energy when we flew out, so I didn't even know if I was going to be able to really go skiing much at all. It turned out just fine, with the only real issue being the dry mountain air and high elevation not doing much good for my cough.
The Seven-Sided Key-Stone Star
Before I get into some other details, I did want to call out or draw attention to the logo of Keystone itself. Here it is:
You have what I imagine is meant to be a snowflake. Snowflakes, however, always have 6 'arms' as it forms its crystal structure (although I've read they can also have 8, it seems). Here we have 7 arms, for whatever reason. The arms or crystals of the snowflake join to form a star at the very center of the image.
These details are interesting to me because, recall, in writing about and discussing our Key Stone, I have both likened it to a crystal (a Palantir), which again a snowflake is, as well as to a Star. El-Anor, for example, literally have "Star" or "El" in its name. Further, it seems these Stones are not completely natural - meaning, they didn't just appear in nature, but were specifically constructed to have certain attributes (such as communication and travel) using technology and/or means that we aren't aware of. Thus, the 7 arms of this particular Key Stone are fitting, as just as a 7 sided snowflake is not something you would find in nature without modifications being made, we can say the same things about these Stones.
These are the things that a person thinks about while on a gondola ride up the mountain with that logo all around you.
The Hill-Murray Pioneer (or First Man to the Hill City of Tirion)
Speaking of gondolas, it was the second morning where we had the run-in with the Catholic priests from Hill-Murray.
My wife and I had arrived at the River Run Gondola right when it started running at 8:30a. As we were walking up to the lift, I looked back behind us and noticed a man was wearing a jacket with a green "HM" logo. This logo is pretty recognizable to us here in Minnesota, as one of the local Catholic private school here in the Twin Cities is called Hill-Murray and has the exact same logo. It looks like this:
I remarked to my wife how interesting it was have someone with a Hill-Murray jacket walking up behind us here in Colorado. The man with the jacket was with one of his buddies, and they ended up getting shuffled into the same gondola car as we were.
Once inside the gondola, I couldn't help but ask the man if I was mistaken in thinking that he was from Hill-Murray (always a possibility some other organization has the same logo). It turned out he was, or at least used to be. He had been a Chaplain at Hill-Murray, but was now working at another school in the Twin Cities. These 2 men were part of a group of 5 Catholic priests who come out to Colorado once every winter to ski (the other 3 priests were still sleeping that morning, apparently, so these 2 took off to get some earlier skiing in).
Anyway, we had a good time talking the whole way up the mountain, and then wished each other well. That was it in terms of interaction with them. It wouldn't be until later, after I got back from Keystone, that the idea to look up the meaning of the name of Hill-Murray came to me (you know my thing with names).
I obviously know "Hill", but I was interested in Murray. There are a few variations, but it seems like "Sea Settlement" or "Settlement by the sea" from Gaelic origins are consistently cited (there is also a reference to the name meaning a descendant of the servant of the Virgin Mary, or something like that).
Thus, with Hill-Murray we could fairly easilty get something like "Hill Settlement by the Sea". This seemed interesting given my storyline includes Tirion, the Holy Place that some will gathered to. That place is on a hill, and is said to be by the sea, and at least from our perspective, is out in the "Sea" (meaning outer space somewhere).
And of course this seemed to fit well with the theme of Keystone, since the Stones (as Keys) will somehow assist with opening a passage to Tirion (the Hill Murray). Perhaps little connections, but again, they all seem to fit within this narrative of a Stones, Beings, and travel to Tirion.
Two other things on this Hill-Murray theme really quickly before a couple other Keystone connections.
First, my youngest son's hockey team will often have their practices at Hill-Murray's ice rink. As I have mentioned before, he is obsessed with football, and has obviously heard the term "Hail Mary" before. When he refers to Hill-Murray, he unintentionally replaces the Hill with Hail, so Hail Murray just because I think it sounds so much like Hail Mary to him.
In a post from back in November of last year called "First Man: Armstrong and Hail Mary", I explicitly tied the "Hail Mary", as well as Neil Armstrong (a "strong-man" or "strong-arm"), the Apollo 11 moon landing, and the movie "First Man" to the story we have explored with Faramir using Stones, travelling across 'Many Waters' and 'touching down' on another world. It is a story in which frankly I am in a bit of a rut, or tunnel vision, in persisting to explore and write about, but as you can see, I continue to see it or experience it in all of these little things that continue to point to that story.
Second, I had forgotten until my wife and oldest son came back from a Hill-Murray hockey game the other night that the mascot of the Hill-Murray is the "Pioneers" - so the Hill-Murray Pioneers. They had gone to the game because Hill-Murray was playing the High School my son will likely attend next year (he is in 8th grade) - the Mahtomedi Zephyrs. Hill-Murray and Mahtomedi both have really good hockey programs, both having won state championships in the last couple years. Anyway, they came home talking about the game, and mentioned 'The Pioneers" and I filed it away to look into it later that night.
It is kind of a strange name for a Catholic school, I think. Probably because I was raised Mormon, I always associate Pioneers with Mormons here in the U.S. I grew up in Oregon as well, and we of course had the pioneers along the Oregon Trail. It it just didn't seem very "Catholic". For example, Jesuit High School was the big Catholic school in my hometown growing up, and their name was the "Crusaders". Very Catholic.
So, like I do, I looked up the name. Here is some of what Etymonline gives me:
Figurative sense of "a first or early explorer, person who goes first or does something first" is from c. 1600. ..... "to lead or prepare the way to or for, go before and open (a way),"
I don't know, but this is just one more thing that seems to fit into the story. A pioneer is the first to do something, and who prepares a way or goes first (and thus establishing a path for others to follow).
Consequently, once again I see a story in these little seemingly unrelated details that come together in one spot or event. Here I am at Keystone sitting in the gondola ride heading up the mountain with the priest from Hill-Murray. In the story, Faramir is the Hill-Murray Pioneer - the first that will go to Tirion (the City on a Hill by the Sea) using the Key-Stone. But, perhaps he won't make the journey alone - being with family and who knows, a priest or two hailing from where he is off to.
Seems to work, and it is funny how names of things continue to say things, at least to me.
New Moons (again)
The condo we stayed at was just a short walk to the Gondola - something like a 3 minutes walk with ski boots on, so almost literally right out of the door. On the way is a cafe called "New Moon Cafe". We decided to have lunch there on our second day there. The name seemed somewhat relevant to me, because of this notion of a New Moon Shining (eclipse, Black Hole, Stones aligning... whatever). I ended up ordering a sandwich called the "Marilyn Monroe".
I should have recognized this, but Marilyn is another form of the name Mary, meaning "Star of the Sea".
Giant Chessboard
Along that same walk, right outside our condo building to the left was a giant chessboard. This chessboard has also come up before, specifically in the music video to "Kings and Queens" by Ava Max. I mention that song in specifically alluding to Eowyn, and exploring her where-abouts, and specifically placing here in Eru-Place. I would later wonder out loud (through my writing) as to whether she is still there, or is not back in Tirion. Based on the interaction with the Three Disciples, at least at one point she was in Tirion, so it is unclear whether the Eru-Place visit was before or after this (or both). Not sure.
But, in looking back on that post, I noticed that I had only inserted the lyric video to "Kings and Queens". I had originally had the actual music video in there, but it kind of annoyed me, honestly. Just a lot of twerking and gyrating around by Max and the other dancers, so I swapped it out. Consequently, the chess board and pieces from that video never actually show up here in my writing.
But, William Tychonievich posted the video on his blog in one post, and then explored some of its imagery in another called simple "Milkommen". The name of the post comes from one of my 'words' I wrote about in one of my posts (here), and while not generally interested in either the words nor their potential translations or meaning, he was interested in that word. In writing on it, he posted on his ideas around the word referring to not only "Ammonites" (the converted Lamanites in the Book of Mormon), but some other thoughts as to what the "milk" from the word could mean.
As part of this, the post takes a bit of a random turn to some things that I now realize have come up a bit in my own writing recently. This is also where the chessboard from Ava Max's video comes in, and he sets it up by referencing "Through the Looking Glass", the sequel to "Alice in Wonderland". In that book, the world is set up a chessboard (or more specifically, Alice is set up as a Pawn on a chessboard by the Red Queen). Also of interest for my purposes, is the book starts off with a reference to a white and black cat, and WJT also references a 'sync' from his friends' writing about Kubla Kahn, which is another instance of a white and black cat.
Recently, I've written in a few posts about Faramir and his role potentially being represented by or being involved with a black and/or white rabbit, and that this rabbit seemed to have some connection to Black (and potentially White) Holes, Solar Eclipses (New Moon Shining). These analogies including references to the white rabbit from Alice in Wonderland, and to interstellar travel between worlds.
I further noted the difference between the Black and White Holes, or the rules or environment that would need to be in place for either to exist in the post "Black holes, Rabbit holes and walking through stars". In our world, where entropy is real and irreversible, and time only runs in one direction into the future, only Black Holes are apparently possible. In another world or situation, with different rules, where time, for example, ran the other direction (or at least wasn't bounded or limited to only one direction), White Holes would be the norm or at least possible:
There is nothing in general relativity that dictates, per se, what way time flows in. Black holes appear in our universe because time, or the future, happens in only one direction (I am summarizing as best I can what I have read and understand... which isn't much). If you were to flip the flow of time, you would get White Holes, theoretically.
In some theories, these White Holes represent the 'exits' to Black Holes - again, a kind of yin and yang. The White Holes, however, would need to exist in a place where such a phenomenon is possible - which may be a separate ' universe' altogether... one that has slightly different rules than our own, including how entropy is involved (or is not involved, rather).
One important thing to note about the world in "Through the Looking Glass", which WJT didn't specifically call out in his post, is that everything in that world is reversed from our own, just like a reflection in a mirror. Logic, time - it all runs differently or the opposite of what we would expect in our own world. This makes sense since a mirror is exactly what Alice went through to reach that world.
It is in such a place where White Holes would exist, and everything that comes with the concept of worlds or Beings without decay, given physics and logic running opposite of our own, or at least differently.
On this point, and going through looking glasses, I remembered just now that I posted on the music video for Eurythmics' "Here Comes the Rain Again", in which Annie Lennox looking at her own reflection in a mirror is a scene repeated multiple times.
Anyway, just some random odds and ends in thinking about Keystone and various little connections to a much larger story that continues to remain not quite clear in terms of being both explainable and believable, but yet seeming to have some consistent themes or implications.
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