I was going to go into story-telling mode but I just can't seem to pull it together, so instead I will just note some things for now and then see if I can clear my thoughts up or at least find a way to write about it.
They ended up settling on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2, which I was kind of in and out of so I don't really know what happened. However, when they were picking a movie, my son really wanted to watch War for the Planet of the Apes. Out of nowhere. They were on Disney+ searching and it came up as one of the featured selections. He got a hard "no" since it is PG-13 and just looked like the kind of movie that was going to freak him out.
So they settled on turtles. I did note at the time, however, that it was interesting that he wanted to watch a movie about talking apes given the last few posts on gorillas, sasquatches, etc. that have been over on William Tychonievich's blog. None of the Planet of the Apes movies have ever come up before in terms of movies to watch. I haven't watched any of them, and neither have my kids, and they have never expressed an interest in them.
Tonight, we didn't have much going on, and the kids were going to watch another movie. And what do you know, my son REALLY wants to watch that War for the Planet of the Apes movie tonight, so he takes another shot at seeing if he could get away with it. My daughter wanted nothing to do with it, so my son started trying to negotiate, saying he would go watch it out in the barn, or on a smaller TV we have in our basement office. He was that interested in watching this movie. He once again got shot down, of course, and they ended up watching a movie called Family Switch, which they ended up really liking.
What was once again interesting to me is that over on William's blog, his most recent post has a poster for one of the Planet of the Apes movies, this one being "Escape from the Planet of the Apes". He came across it while scrolling down a chat site.
And actually I just now noticed something when I went over there to confirm which movie the poster was for. William used a phrase from a well known Christmas poem to describe him coming across the picture. Here it is (bold added by me to highlight the phrase):
The random /x/ thread it served up when I was trying to find the Crowley book was this one, soliciting comments on a schizo meme about symbolism. Since some of the "galaxy brain" level symbols -- deer, rainbow, bee, sunflower -- seemed potentially relevant, I scrolled down a bit until what to my wondering eyes should appear but this:
That phrase is from 'Twas the Night Before Christmas, when the speaker goes over to the window, looks outside, and sees Santa Clause (St. Nick).
When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter.
Away to the window I flew like a flash,
Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.
The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow
Gave the lustre of mid-day to objects below,
When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,
But a miniature sleigh, and eight tiny reindeer,
A man going to the window and looking out of it has come up now a couple times over on William's blog, most recently in his reading of the Notion Club Papers and Lowdham going to the window (for the first time - the second time he will begin to re-enact events surrounding the Fall of Numenor). That particular instance brought a few things together for him, including some of these other 'window' mentions that have come up.
Now, it is possible, and probably likely, that William knew very well that the phrase he used came from this Christmas poem and involved a man going to the window, and used it specifically because of this. If not, then it is another remarkable window reference. If so, however, it wasn't why I noted the phrase in the first place, as I didn't know that was the part of the poem it came from until I went to find it and copy it in here. I was actually just primarily concerned with the Christmas theme.
You see, the movie that my kids just watched tonight, in place of the Planet of the Apes movie, was set during Christmas and had a Christmas theme. The movie itself involves a family that swaps bodies. Here is the brief description of the movie from Netflix's site:
A family descends into chaos days before Christmas when a rare cosmic event causes the parents to swap bodies with their teenage kids.
Bodies are swapped, and (Spoiler warning) it is not until Christmas Day that this family is restored to their own, proper bodies and everything is made right.
This then gets to the part where I wanted to pull this together into a story about our Coats of Skins (the name of this blog, and the bodies we all currently possess) as well as the Christmas tie in, including Jesus himself adopting one of these bodies in order to bring about the Resurrection, but I can't get my thoughts together and it feels forced (I will leave the title, though, as an allusion to at least part of where I was going to go with things).
Consequently, as mentioned, this post was more to catalogue the Planet of the Apes connection, as well as the little Christmas tie-in.
I did not consciously remember that that line had to do with going to the window! It just popped into my head as I was writing for no apparent reason.
ReplyDeleteOK, then that mention becomes really interesting then, as does the fact that I instantly recognized the phrase and where it came from when I saw it (but not that it came in the context of a window).
ReplyDeleteLeft a bit of a thought-stream in the comments section of your latest post about some symbolically interesting things that may or may not be relevant. They just came to mind as the poem phrase became more interesting for me to think about.