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| "hidden" click to view |
-Ed, Ice Breaking episode
"hidden" NE quote from Ed click to view
"O the Northerns, the episodes of Northern Exposure,
this unbeknownst gem of a tv show, so beyond tv itself,
yet perfectly delivered via the genre's format of episodes.
seems like a silly show, and silly so often it is, but so often
too, right when you least expect it, it hits home sO deep
that you grasp your heart and either smile or cry or laugh
or rejoice in reverent silence. and you certainly
can't believe that you are watching tv."
ceci on NE, comment on 5/1/10 post
Ed's quote comes from one of the "epic" Northern Exposure episodes, as I did deem during my intensive study with each episode in 1997, from the my collection of VHS recordings that I captured during the year before as the show was in syndication. The episode is about the breaking of spring in Cicely, Alaska, when the very last days of winter are holding on as the entire town is anxiously in a holding pattern waiting for the ice to break, which would mark the release of the great melt down into the spring days. As the sound of creaking and squeaking of the ice on the big break verge permeates throughout the town, everyone, completely on edge, in their own way has their own "meltdown." It's a pattern of sanctioned madness, but at the very essence of chaos in randomness.
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| detail of "Portal" acrylic on hoop drum, 2000 click to view |
You'll have to see the episode to know of what Ed is referring to in particular here (season 2, ep 5: "spring break") ...but let me just say that these words from our innocent yet astute Ed have always hit home for me. As I tend to express through my artwork, life is a dance between chaos and control. We are certainly in control of every step we take, yet as we are always changing and growing so do our chosen steps, and as we are walking in and responding to a world of unknown circumstance, our controlled chosen steps are truly that of a unique chaos. Trace these movements and you'll indeed get a pattern, a random pattern... which I feel is evident in the very lines we discover in all life's growth or decay, such as... Veins in a leaf, lines of your skin, grains of wood, inside our cells, topography of land, the cracking of concrete, a nebula…whether micro or macro, all things in life tend to share the lines of a unifying random pattern. Each form is a total unique expression, yet there is a universal order that connects everything on every level. Of course this "order," this "pattern," is mostly hidden, especially in the face of our assumptions that chaos has none. What I love about Ed is that he doesn't make any assumptions, and thus matter of factly accepts and proclaims that the randomness itself is a pattern. Such is life and such are we. Beautifully random. Randomly beautiful.
∞ ceci
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O MY GOODNESS GRACIOUS. so I throw in a Northern today, it's been a couple weeks since I've watched an ep, I don't even look at the disc I'm about to play, as I so often do, love the random play, AND what ep comes up... out of 110 episodes.... YES, uh huh... the ICE BREAKING EPISODE! Dude, didn't this happen during one of our first ZBOOk 4EVER expressions about Northerns? why do I continue to be amazed? this happens a lot frankly. BECAUSE we are available to this MAGIC, this SYNCHRONICITY that, when you don't have blinders up, IS EVERYWHERE. IS All The Time. and it IS what we have continually experienced thru our play in ZBOOK, it has made ZBOOK possible in truth, and right back at us, has made ZBOOK a 4ever propagator of our trust in it. As have Northerns, like right now, "case in point," as Fleischman is known to say :)
ReplyDeletebeyond this even... right now I have the chance to pay attention... to the fact that this episode has come up for me, for us, two times in one week, first via Z page "hidden" with Ed's quote, and then again today by random episode play. this is not unlike pulling a tarot card for me (twice), or having a dream and a standout dream symbol. I will watch this episode today, no matter how many times I've viewed it before (in the dozens by now), with great alertness and mindfulness... there could be something(s) that it reflects for me right now that is currently relevant and helpful. with with most great art, the piece doesn't change but I do, and so it has the potential to speak to me differently each time. And it has. And so it does.
!
in gratitude ∞
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Well albeit. Watching this Ice Breaking episode, like I have done DOZENS of times, only to discover that Ed actually says, "It's a random pattern, That's the pattern." same words, same sentiment, just reversed phrases. I have been known to be rather dyslectic :) I guess I stored this fave quote of mine in my brain in this reverse fashion and thus upon releasing it here on Z page, years ago, out it came as such. well, that's the game of telephone for ya. and how stories get rewritten. this one is not quite rewritten, but perhaps this way, extracted from it's episode context, it is more to the point, in this order, this form. anyway, that's probably one of the reasons this episode has been pulled like a tarot card to view this week. gives z page a bit of an added chuckle for me now :)
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