Circus of the Stars....
The highwire is a coveted act. The risks, the daring, the burst of headlines over a single splat. The way the spotlight highlights audiences sitting in the dark beyond the perilous action. The hidden safety measures that could fail at any moment...
It's all about one thing- EYES ON.
Magic screens all around us. EYES ON. What are they telling you?
What do they want from you?
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Lost. Eyes on.
I've always seen the Eyes. They know me. They watch all of us.
From Like A Whisper: Go Ask Alice II
At the center of the plot for SyFy’s version of the classic tale is a sort of Brave New World dependence on drugs to make the Wonderland population docile and obedient. To quote Director, Nick Willing:
“What I was interested in was [the idea of] being able to manufacture your emotions. One of the things I fear may happen to us is that we swap genuine emotions for something that is given to us. We cry at the television commercial and think that those tears are genuine. I was fascinated with, not so much in how these things could be addictive, but how we are slowly constructing a world where we swap genuine emotions or something which is manufactured cheaply. Wonderland seemed to be a good place to set that in because the Queen of Hearts has that kind of personality in the book.” (SyFy)
In this world, the “soma” comes from the milking of human emotions against their will and without their knowledge. The White Rabbit, an organization of henchmen trained to serve the interests of the Queen of Hearts, use the Looking Glass to enter the human world and steal unsuspecting humans for the procedure. These humans, called “oysters” because of the “precious pearl” of emotions inside them, are then put in a trance state and sent to the Casino where neurotransmitters in the floor collect their emotional responses to sexual stimulus, success at gambling, and other similar emotions. Like the oysters in the original Alice and Wonderland, the humans are entirely consumed by the people supposedly caring for and keeping them safe. Their emotions fuel a legal drug trade that is robbing Wonderland of its sanity, strength, and sense of purpose. Among those in charge are the re-imagined Walrus and Carpenter who are in control of the emotions extraction science and who, in the case of the Carpenter, ensure Alice’s import to revolution.
It's all real.
Some of you are starting to hear rumors of terrible things that the mainstream news isn't showing you. That can't be real, surely. We are mind drugged, intoxicated with entertainment. We are swept along, clinging to our little boats or spreading out our little picnics and chatting gaily as currents sweep us along. We are in this together, lost in a rising current on A Swiftly Tilting Planet.
The book opens on Thanksgiving evening, 10 years after the events of A Wind in the Door. Meg is now married to Calvin and is expecting their first child. Calvin has become a scientist and is in Britain at a conference; Calvin's mother Branwen Maddox O’Keefe joins Meg's family for Thanksgiving dinner. When they receive the news of impending nuclear war caused by the dictator "Mad Dog Branzillo", Mrs. O'Keefe lays a charge on Charles of Patrick's Rune, a rhyming prayer of protection inherited from her Irish grandmother.
Charles Wallace goes to the star-watching rock, a family haunt, where his recitation summons a winged unicorn named Gaudior, who explains to Charles Wallace that he must prevent nuclear war by traveling through time and telepathically merging with people who lived near the star-watching rock at points in the past.
They are threatened along the way by the Echthroi, the antagonists introduced in A Wind in the Door, who now seek to alter history in their favor. Gaudior and Charles Wallace's travels bring them to Harcels, a Native American boy at least 1,000 years in the past; Madoc of Wales, a pre-Columbian trans-oceanic traveler; Brandon Llawcae, a Welsh settler in puritan times; Mrs. O'Keefe's brother Chuck Maddox, during their childhood; and Matthew Maddox, a writer during the American Civil War.
Throughout their journey, Meg connects with Charles Wallace from home through "kything", the telepathic communication she learned in A Wind in the Door. Gradually, it is revealed that Branzillo is a descendant of Madoc through all Charles' other alter-egos, and of Madoc's treacherous brother Gwydyr; and ultimately, Charles' manipulation of Branzillo's various ancestors, results in the re-union of Madoc's line, and the transformation of the present Branzillo into an advocate of peace, to prevent the war.
Invoke the Rune...
Throughout the story, Charles Wallace invokes this poem to ensure the victory of good. The poem features in several parts of the book, each with slightly different wording or different punctuation; the poem's definite composition is unsure.
It is very similar to a portion of James Clarence Mangan's poem "St. Patrick’s Hymn before Tarah,"[2] a poetic rendition of Saint Patrick's Breastplate.
The rune within the L'Engle's book has one significant difference from St. Patrick's Hymn. "At Tara" is replaced with "With Ananda"; the original refers to the Hill of Tara. However, in L'Engle's version, the words are different, and this has relevance to the overall context of the plot, as Ananda is both the name of the Murray family dog and the Sanskrit word for "bliss", a kind of internally-generated divine condition, which is neither a deity nor a physical location.
From Surveypalooza-
Like I said, maybe it’s coincidence, but I stand with Branwen O’Keefe (L’Engle), an often overlooked quote by a crucially missed glimpse into the importance of even the most minor character, showing up on the doorstep at the very moment that history faces a terrible fork in the road.“At Tara in this fateful hour
I place all Heaven with its power,
And the sun with its brightness,
And the snow with its whiteness,
And the fire with all the strength it hath,
And the lightning with its rapid wrath,
And the winds with their swiftness along their path,
And the sea with its deepness,
And the rocks with their steepness,
And the earth with its starkness,
All these I place
By God’s almighty help and grace
Between myself and the powers of darkness.”
To the unwitting warriors in the spotlights, bless your hearts. I see you. Many of us see you. We know behind the scenes is the hardest role of your lives.
Off topic, but who knows, maybe related somehow. Earlier this week I dreamed that 3D minecraft was more physical than ever. It wasn't just holograms in 3D space with geolocated claims any more, it was 3D real. I even ran into a redstone operation where players had figured out they could distill ores out of broken down crystalline structures from their little mining operations. The mo creatures mobs were a little different in real life and scary as heck. In the dream I was still a techmod clearing out abandoned claims, lmao. Quite a big job in that dream. It's funny I even dreamed it, I've barely logged on this month.
Wake up, sweethearts. You're late for school.
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