Sunday, June 9, 2024

Running with Claire

I went for a run yesterday morning on some roads near my parents' place out here in Oregon.


While on a road called West Union (more on this in a bit), i decided to change up my running music.  I went to the search bar, and the history came up.  Down the list was a song called "What if" by Five for Fighting, and I decided that I was going to listen to this song.


As the song started, I got the feeling like I had run far enough up this road and I should turn around and head back home.  I turned left to look across the street, which was a busier kind of road (I was running along the sidewalk on this particular stretch), and the very first thing I saw was the main entrance for a golf course and residential community called Claremont.


When I saw the sign, I immediately recognized Claire's doing, in both the song selection and in encouraging me to turn around and look left at that particular spot.


I crossed the street and took a picture of the entrance.  Here it is:




Claremont is a French word that can mean something like Light or Bright Mountain.  Mountain of Light.  It also, of course, contains the name of William's Claire.  Claire-Mont.  


The sign has a rose underneath the name (I believe - it looks like a rose in bloom).  Not surprising, since Portland, Oregon is known as the City of Roses.  Lots of roses.  Lilies and Roses have factored into William's exploration of Keys, and here you have potentially a representation of those two Keys together on the sign:  Claire and the Rose.  Two different Keys and Beings represented.


Anyway, after taking the picture, I started running back down the road, and I had the very clear thought that I hadn't quite picked up on the full 'wink' here.   I missed something of relevance.  So I turned around and ran back over to the entrance.  I had noticed a road sign at the intersection there earlier, but hadn't really paid attention.  Looking up now at the sign, I understood what I had missed.  Here it is:




The two roads that intersect there at the entrance are West Union, which was the road I had been running on, and Claremont.  


In my story, if you remember, West is where a Family will go, and Union (both a reunion and an eternal union) is what that will be about.  Also, 'Mountains' in my story are symbolic of worlds, and on the street sign I saw this, not as having to do with Claire the Being specifically in this case, perhaps, but about Tirion.  The Bright Shining Mountain.


And X marks the spot!  With the two street signs forming that X


So, we have Two Keys, Claire and the Rose, on the entrance sign, and a mention of a Union out West in Tirion on the street sign.  That is what I gathered as I stood there at the intersection.  And then it seemed I was good to proceed on my run.  I at least catalogued what I was supposed to see, even if left to guess what it all means.


This whole scene and experience was "Claire" to me, for whatever it is worth.  Her voice felt a bit new to me when she came kind of bounding into things on my end last year, if I understand things correctly.  Based on everything since 2019, I've obviously been acquainted with the voices of different Beings, with Asenath and Eowyn being two different voices, it seems, among a couple others that I have also mentioned on this blog who I feel like I have at least a good reason for identifying as such  I understand Claire to be another, distinct voice, and is likely the primary driver behind William coming across my blog, and the connections between our two sets of writings and experiences.  That is how I see it currently. 


You can see signs of her approach and, later, her sense of humor in how some of that went down.  Some of it is pretty funny in hindsight, but at the time I was pretty serious in my intent to not get mixed up with Beings (humans, goddesses, or otherwise) that I couldn't trust.   The book my daughter left out with the schoolbus that helped me put together the entire story of Tirion immediately after I wrote in my post that the 'Sync Fairies' weren't teaching me anything new is a classic example.  


Or having me imperceptibly assemble that wink with the Gold and Silver audio jacks alongside the Morley Hum Exterminator was pretty good.  I mean, I had said I wasn't going to walk around taking pictures of these winks, so she worked within that constraint, and over several days I unknowingly assembled that sync that I couldn't help but take a picture of because it was right next to me as I sat at my desk.


And she adjusted her approach to match the recipient after a potentially rough and uncertain introduction -  which I appreciated.  It started out with the feeling of being so much more "direct" than in other settings or with other assumed Beings, but she adjusted and met me where I was at that time.  And everyone was cool with me taking a month off to figure out what I even wanted to do.  No forcing me to do anything I didn't want to take part in.


And to be clear, I associate the Claire from William's posts with William more than anything, and as a voice distinct from others I am more familiar with in different ways, but I got roped in for whatever reason. So while I may have been more than happy to let William alone on this one, that hasn't seemed to be how things are working.  I don't know - I am just kind of going with the flow, honestly.  I fought it a bit last Fall, but once I determined for myself that it was going to be OK and I didn't need to worry, my approach right now is to see where things go.  



Five for Fighting


The impetus for turning around, remember, was this song "What if" by Five for Fighting.  


The song comes from the album "Bookmarks", which given William's affinity for books, seems relevant.  Here is the album cover art (which is what comes up on Spotify):




In William's recent post about Claire, he performed some kind of sorcery with Tarot cards (a subject that I know nothing about).  He received some impressions of a card he was about to turn over, and one of those involved a piano playing do re mi.  He would later go on to do some impressive tying of do re mi to Claire's initials of CdL, and therefore tie Claire to a piano, and perhaps more specifically the musical scale or song that he envisioned.


Five for Fighting's cover art obviously has a piano, which I find to be a clear wink in this case, including its current condition.  It is need of some restoration work - badly.


The name of the band is interesting for its reference to hockey.  In hockey, you have minor and major penalties.  Minor penalties get you a 2 minutes stint in the penalty box.  Majors are the more serious infractions that will net you a nice 5 minutes in the penalty box.  Majors are particularly bad because you are out for the full 5 minutes, and your team is short-handed regardless of whether the other team scores.  With minor penalties, if the other team scores, you get your guy out and your are back to even strength.  With majors you serve your full time.


Fighting is always a major penalty, thus the name "Five for Fighting".  In our story, who ended up becoming engaged in fighting?  The Numenoreans in their assault on Eressea and Valinor.  And for it, they were introduced to the Penalty Box, a pretty major one where they resided probably for some amount of time.  With the exception of Pharazon, of course, whose fate seems to have been different, and was likely designed as such in order to help in the restoration and redemption of his people, which would have included these Elvish Fathers - the 96.


Hockey, interestingly enough, is a sport that people play while they move on the top of water.  Walking on water has been a theme, and hockey players skate on water.  Sure, its frozen, which is why they can do it, but it is still water all the same, and they are gliding around on top of it.


In any case, here is the "What if" song that was playing while I was investigating the Claremont scene:






5 comments:

  1. Before he started calling himself Five for Fighting, John Ondrasik was in a band with Scott St. Clair Sheets.

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  2. The only FfF song I know is this one:

    https://youtu.be/Vx6hmUv06tg

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  3. I had forgotten for the moment that "Superman" was a Five for Fighting song.

    That is an interesting little connection with some of the writing here about Kal-El/ Superman with Gim Guru (potentially Faramir).

    I had never seen that music video, so it was funny to see a man dressing up as a bird-plane.
    A spoof on Superman being mistaken for both a bird and a plane, I guess, and thus the man is attempting to be a copy of Superman based on an assumed appearance. As in, someone who had never seen Superman might read the account of people saying "It's a bird! It's a plane!", and assume they needed to dress up as a bird-plane to look like Superman.

    This matches up pretty well the account of Pharazon, who dressed himself up in gold to match the description of the prophesied 'noble' (Gim Guru, in my story) who would lead people home. But it was a ridiculous image and caricature and not really how that was going to look or work.

    And, of course, Pharazon has shown up as a large bird on this blog and over on WJT's.

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  4. Since the sync fairies are open to suggestions, how about suggesting they talk to you "as one man [or woman?] speaks to another"? The syncs are sometimes impressive, I will grant them that. And your ability to spin them into a cohesive story is even more impressive. And generally, I like your story a lot. But mostly I find the syncs pretty tedious and open to virtually any interpretation. And while it's impressive that they can make you and WJT come across similar words/ideas that line up, or apparently even control the music algorithm of Spotify and the suggested video algorithm of YouTube, I'd be more impressed if they would just send you a plain-language text or email. After all, if they can control an algorithm they should be able to manage sending an email. Or they could go old school and show up in real life, introduce themselves, say what needs to be said, answer questions, etc. Something more along the lines of what we read about in scriptures.

    Not that I'm in a position to advise goddesses on how they choose to communicate or not, but then I can't help but wonder.....is this how goddesses WOULD choose to communicate? For me it's an open question still.

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  5. For what it's worth, my assumption is that signs can come from God (or in some way involving the intelligence of God) in conjunction with personal involvement with a non-mortal human (with human-level intelligence); the non-mortal human would influence thinking, or somehow bring their spirit to bear on the person's spirit, or somehow make their presence felt directly. If aligned with the will of God, God would provide those accompanying signs. In effect, the non-mortals are depending on and expecting God to shape creation in a desirable way, with the non-mortal involvement being part of a divine plan.

    This is with the assumption that God is constantly creating creation in collaboration with other beings (those beings constituting creation), meaning that he can work in communications targeting any particular being.

    At the same time as this, there can be fake signs that don't require much intelligence to make (demonic) or signs that are intended for deeper learning purposes (ie the lesson not to take external 'communications' too seriously!).

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