Troubling Abstractions
Part 9 - S3e9
Version 1.0
“Troubling Abstractions”
Part 9
Some recurring motifs in this episode: hand gestures, animals, water, characters operating in groups of
3.
The writing of this episode is a little different. Part 9 had a
lot of plot development, and this turned into an especially dense examination. I wrote in a lot of reminders and refreshers on what various symbols mean.
I feel that we should start this episode with a quick review of the Principle Colors and their meanings:
- Blue: Blue is Dead, Ignorant Laura lying on the beach wrapped in plastic. Blue is the Dead Scapegoat. Blue is the Blue Roses that mark false realities. Blue is the color of delusion.
- Red: Red is Suppressed Laura in the Red Rooms. She lives, she knows the truth, but she is exiled and forced to speak backwards in bizarre riddles and symbolism. It’s the Knowing Scapegoat that carries the sins of an entire community and is cast away into the desert. It’s a color of knowing the truth and desperately hiding it from yourself.
- Gold: Gold is the color of jackpots, money, and the ideal self as visualized through Transcendental Meditation. It’s the truth that Laura is trying to suppress, but re-abstracted into something desirable. “Find Laura” also has it that the golden orb presented to Senorita Dito represents the Twin Peaks Dream as an idealized reality in which Leland is an innocent “fell-a-victim” (Fellow Victim).
- Green: We are still decoding this one. Some thoughts:
- Money is green. Money is the abstracted truth about Leland abstracted into something desirable. Is there a connection?
- Other theories have written that green represents untapped or unaligned potential energy. I try to forget other theories in the course of this writing, but it’s an impression that seems to ring true and is hard to put out of mind.
- We can consider spiritual symbolism, though it’s not something I have an eye for. The green chakra is the chakra of the heart. It governs compassion, love, emotional openness, and balance. It is the connection that joins the Red-Orange-Yellow “animal life” chakras of the body to the Blue-Violet-Indigo chakras of sapient higher thinking and spirituality.
Now, let’s move on to the episode:
A DIRT ROAD OUTSIDE A FARM | 0
This episode began with Mr. C walking down a straight dirt road – no Brainwave Motif this time – through a windbreak of what are probably eucalyptus trees. Trees are an abstraction of Laura’s neurons, and the woods are abstractions for the deepest parts of her subconscious. The visual symbolism here points to the straight, untwisted road that Mr. C is walking on, and the windbreak may be a necessary coincidence, but we must note it anyway: the [ominous woosh] of blowing winds are an abstraction of negativity sweeping through her subconscious, so it is not a complete stretch to consider that something that blocks this carrying wind might have its own meaning.
There were bits of Red here too; Mr. C was covered in his own blood after being shot, and he snatched a red bandana off a fencepost to clean himself up.
ON A PLANE | 2
Here we got a better view of the private plane’s exterior. Remember that mirrored numbers and callsigns on vehicles are a ”Mulholland Drive” Reference.
- When flipped to the correct orientation, the callsign was: N450GD
- When converted through numerology, we get: (1 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 0 + 7 + 4), becoming 7.
- 6 windows that resembled the Holes motif - giving us a total of 12, this becoming 3.
Below the plane, and contrasting the straight dirt/earthy path that Mr. C was walking on, we saw the Brainwaves Motif in the river below. The river itself was mostly united, with only a brief split into two different pieces, and it was the first iteration of the water/aquatic theme that was woven throughout this episode.
Inside:
Gordon, Albert, and Tammy make up the first trio of characters that we will see in this episode.
Gordon Cole was watching the world through one of those 12 round windows. The light from outside the plane was overwhelming, turning the window into a pure, bright white hole that recalls the White Hole in the ceiling of the Mauve Zone, or the glow of Laura Palmer’s face after she opens it in the Red Rooms. It’s completely understandable that these scenes were not filmed in a real plane that was really flying through the air, but the resemblance seems intentional; they could have easily faked a view of the outside, or simply had the blinds pulled down while Gordon looks at something else, or even just had some natural tones of green and blue reflecting off of Gordon’s face.
Here we also found instances of Blue. Tammy and Diane were both wearing blue, and Albert was wrapped in a blue blanket. We also noticed that Diane was wearing animal print, and animals will be mentioned later on in the Roadhouse scenes at the end of this episode.
Gordon Answered A Phone Call (Motif) and was summoned to Buckhorn to examine the body of Major Briggs. This prevented Diane from going home. There’s a thread of abstraction there that I haven’t teased out yet – it will make more sense if we can decode the role and meaning of Diane as a character.
Gordon told us to write down the name of Lietuenant [Cynthia] K N O X. Names and their meanings aren’t terribly important in analyzing Lynch works, but when Gordon Cole emphasizes something, we should pay attention to it!
- Cynthia: Cynthia flowers resemble round, Golden circles (Ring [Jewlery] Motif). Lynchian spiritual motifs tend towards Indian and Eastern traditions, and in Eastern folklore, we find that cynthia flowers are held to symbolism of enlightenment, spiritual transformation, inner peace, and the crown chakra. It is associated with the number 6. It is used as an herbal treatment for insomnia – perhaps cynthia flowers help power peaceful, healing dreamscapes as the #6 Power Pole has powered the delusional and harmful Twin Peaks Dreamscape. As a name, it means “woman of Artemis,” the moon goddess of hunting and wilderness.
[Sources: Flower Symbolism on GreenyGardener.com, FoliageFriend.com, and the history of the name on Behind The Name.]
- Knox: “Knox” comes from the Old English “cnocc,” meaning a round-topped hill. It’s homophonic to the Latin “nox,” meaning “night” – this may be a bit of the Wordplay Motif. Numerologically, it breaks down to (1 + 1 + 1 + 4 + 1 + 5 + 1 + 1 = 15, or 6.)
[Sources: Knox surname history from House of Names]
ON A FARM | 3:30
We returned to Mr. C. The road he was walking on before was straight. Now, it is a split dirt road with a curve around a curiously-placed tree. The white barn to our right may be an inversion or mirror image of the white shed that was behind the boy in Episode 8.
- Episode 8: The scene was at night. The shed was small and far In the background, to our left. Its light was on.
- Episode 9: The scene was during the day. The barn was much larger and closer to us, on our right. Its lights are off.
Chantal, Hutch, and Mr. C make up the second trio of characters that we will see in this episode.
We also saw 7 in the barn door that Chantal comes out of.
Hutch and Chantal were wearing blue. Chantal was wearing silver necklaces, one with a Coin (Motif) shape, and a jacket with a prominent 1 on it. We will see one of the Roadhouse girls wearing similar jewelery at the end of this episode.
On a final note for this scene, Chantal retrieved the first-aid kid from a Black van.
ON A PRIVATE PLANE | 4:45
Going Home may need to be added to our list of motifs: Laura Palmer Answered The Phone and was Called Home in her best friend’s living room, and this extinguished the last time she ever felt safe, hopeful, and loved. Cooper!Dougie needed to Call For Help to Go Home. Mr. C says he “never really left home.” Diane desperately wanted to Go Home, but has just found out that she will be delayed because Gordon – our Bad Transformer – Answered The Phone.
Diane already finished 2 drinks, with Gordon Cole offering to get her another. Unless I missed something, she’s one of two characters to drink alcohol in this episode; the other is Ike The Spike. We will see that Ike’s drinking has a connection to Laura Palmer numbing herself in her bedroom and the Train Car Fantasy that follows. Is there a connection here as well? It feels like a forgotten name at the tip of my tongue. If only we can figure out what role Diane plays, as I said above, we might be able to tease it out…
Diane’s phone was an odd shade of yellow-green, and this color will thread throughout the rest of this episode. Unlike the F.B.I’s phones, hers didn’t work. It only said BLOCKED on a big Red banner. I think there’s something odd to the order of events here, so let’s note them:
- Diane looked at her phone, realized it was useless, and sighed in exasperation.
- Diane cursed Albert
- Tammy immediately got a call on her Black phone and was able to Answer The Phone with no problems or hesitation.
- The phone call in question was Warden Murphy warning Gordon Cole that Mr. C “escaped.” Remember: This is a lie, he blackmailed his way out, and that scene may have been a heavily symbolic re-staging of Laura finding Leland on top of her instead of BOB.
“He flew the coop!” announced Gordon. This is another example of the Wordplay Motif.
THE FARM | 6:45
There’s something interesting about the immediate transition from Gordon Cole’s declaration to the image of Mr. C and Chantal strolling out from behind the farmhouse. I think there’s also a visual echo here to the scene from “The Missing Pieces” in which Philip Jeffries strolls into the hotel lobby from a hard turn in the hallway.
We also saw the farm’s true owners, an older man and a woman, dead near the Green trim of the farmhouse’s front door. We saw no indication of what killed them, but the man was bleeding from the mouth. Mr. C and Chantal showed no regard for the corpses.
Note for chronology: it’s at this point that Mr. C sent the AROUND THE DINNER TABLE text message, though Diane cannot receive it while she is on the plane.
Mr. C called Duncan Todd to ask about the assassination of Dougie Jones. Todd was also wearing Blue, and he had a pattern on his tie suggestive of bubbles. This is both an instance of the Orb/Sphere Motif, and an example of the aquatic themes hidden throughout this episode. The Red dot on his laptop was oddly prominent and menacing, but that’s not new, it has always looked like this.
Mr. C told Hutch and Chantal that they had 2 days to kill Warden Murphy, followed by a “double-header” in Vegas (Losing Your Head Motif). Hutch then told Chantal to kiss Mr. C, a “wet one,” but Mr. C takes a “rain check” on sex. This is a dark echo of the Red Rooms kiss between Laura and Cooper, and two more appearances of this episode’s aquatic/water motif. Finally, continuing to track the Food Motif, we saw Chantal affectionately giving Mr. C a bag of Cheetos for the road.
LAS VEGAS PD | 10
Mr. C’s comically pink cell phone was immediately shifted from the background to the foreground of Janey-E’s pink outfit. We last saw her several episodes ago. We theorized that she was acting as a healed version of Ignorant Dead Laura, one that’s glimpsed the truth and is willing to fight back and confront her pain by inverting negative, delusional themes into healing ones. We will see if this theory continues to hold!
As it was said in the first episode: “it’s about insurance,” though we aren’t sure what insurance itself symbolizes. These three detectives are the third trio of characters in this episode, with the Jailing Bars Motif behind Bushnell Mullins.
Mr. Mullins argued that the attempted murder of Cooper!Dougie was an unavoidable product of the insurance industry, the result of an angry person not getting a desired result and holding grudges. D. Fusco countered that “[murder] is usually about money, pure and simple.” If we can figure out what insurance symbolizes, we might be able to decode their entire argument. For now, we can consider two things:
- The last time we saw Mr. Mullins, he saw that Cooper!Dougie was able to intuit that the “accidental fire” was not an accident. We concluded that this particular case was an abstraction of Laura Palmer’s attempt to reframe the sexual abuse as a terrible accident, not a deliberate crime.
- Murder is usually about money → The attempted murder of Cooper!Dougie is about money → The attempted murder of Good Dad Cooper is about the truth of Leland and BOB.
At this, Bushnell realized that he wasn’t being taken seriously and clenched his fist. This is the first of the hand gestures and language that we will be noticing in this episode.
More notes on the room itself:
- As noted above: the Jailing Bars Motif appeared behind Mullins, but it also appears behind the detectives in those cheap-looking slatted curtains. I find them reminiscent of the curtains in a cheap hotel or motel, but that may just be my own imagination running away from me.
- The room behind the detectives was an awful shade of yellow-brown-green. This may have been re-staged from Diane’s cell phone.
- The painting in the room with the detectives is a cowboy on a pale mule – NOT a horse! – under a cloudy sky. Nearby, an artificial, almost doll-sized chestnut horse was mounted in such a way to give the illusion that it was bursting through the wall. Above the Jones’ was a much less lively, brown-hued painting of a tree that grew to split in 2. It’s a little reminiscent of the Evolution of the Arm.
Detective T suggested that Dougie Jones’ identity was a result of the Witness Protection Program. Other theories have suggested that Carrie Pages’ isolated Texas house has a similar function – again, “Troubling Abstractions” is a hard focus on “Find Laura,” not others, but it’s an interesting connection that I find hard to shake.
He then says that his tail light replacement – a Red light – cost 239$. With numerology, this becomes 5. Detective D joked that it “must be a beauty.” This joke dovetailed into Cooper!Dougie’s vision of the flag while an instrumental of “America The Beautiful” played in the background, the repaired tail-lights becoming abstracted into the woman’s bright red heels. This is, of course, a ”Wizard Of Oz” Reference as well.
The 9-11 on the police van outside was normal, lacking the mirrored callsign of the ”Mulholland Drive” Reference. We should not only notice when themes and ideas keep re-appearing, we must also try to notice their absence!
THE PREMIERE MOTEL | 19
Some points of interest from this outside shot of the motel:
- The MOTEL lettering and other parts of the signage are Red and reddish-orange. In general there is a sense of strong contrast to the many shades of blue from earlier in the episode.
- The PREMIERE portion of the sign is Gold, and there’s an odd shape beneath it like a Gold Coin (Motif) dropped into a slot. The word “premiere” in itself refers to the number 1.
- The address is 5333 of an unknown street. The numerology of this is 5.
A brief refresher on the symbology of motels: Laura frequently did sex work in motels. She may have spotted Leland “chickening out” after seeing his daughter in the room, and this was the first challenge to her belief in Leland as a good, innocent man. Transformed!Jeffries is hidden in an otherworldly motel.
We find Ike the Spike calling Duncan Todd to inform him that the attempted murder was a failure. The code phrase “no cigar” is a manifestation of the Fire and Smoking Cigarettes Motifs – but this time, the negativity that these motifs represent lost. It’s like a two-pronged chain of code words:
- no murder → no cigar → no fire to light said cigar → no pain and suffering; Good Dad Cooper still lives!
- no murder → no cigar → no smoking tobacco → Laura cannot choose cigarettes over muffins in the Hayward’s living room
That ugly yellow-green color followed us here, too: from Diane’s cell phone to the back room of the police station to the dingy and cheap halls of this cheap motel.
In this moment, I find connections the scene of Laura Palmer numbing herself in her bedroom preceding the Train Car Fantasy. His injured hand is also another piece of the hand gestures and language motif that is seeded throughout this episode.
- Laura numbs her mental pain with cocaine and alcohol → Ike numbs his injured hand with alcohol
- Laura raises her left hand, wearing the ring, into the spotlight → Ike raises his wounded and bandaged hand while being placed under arrest
This does not qualify as the Arms Raised Motif because he’s the only one doing it, and no unspoken knowledge is being shared.
- Laura and Ronette scream like trapped animals → Ike whimpers softly
- Laura is murdered and the killer escapes → Cooper!Dougie is unharmed and the attempted murdered is quickly captured
The attention to hands is re-emphasized by the joke about having Ike “by the whole palm.”
At first glance this seems to be a positively-oriented mirror image of what was once a deeply negative and wounding Primal Scene, as Janey-E was doing throughout Episode 6.
TWIN PEAKS SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT | 20
Following Ike’s arrest we cut straight to the sun rising over Twin Peaks.
We are not yet sure what role Lucy plays in “Find Laura” / “Troubling Abstractions.” It remains a point of analysis that perhaps all blonde women are somewhat less-abstracted and strange representations of Laura Palmer herself.
In this scene, we watched Lucy/Laura surreptitiously choose the Red chair and ottoman set, with the order confirmation appearing in bright Green. Lucy wanted the beige set, but she put aside her own desires. She made a series of 90-Degree Turns as she smiled out of love for Andy. The word “love” was used quite a bit in this particular scene.
I also found myself with a dark thought: is Andy’s gentle apology and temple kiss a re-enactment of Leland apologizing to Laura after the Dinner Table scene?
THE HORNES’ | 23
This scene may be a re-staging of the series’ pilot, with Sylvia Horne taking the place of Sarah Palmer as she called for her daughter. Laura was, of course, absent.
Johnny tumbled down the stairs wearing all Blue. There was the sound of shattering glass and a Flash of Light. We didn’t see the action of Johnny Losing His Head, but the bloody Hole (Motif) in the wall made it clear what happened. The photograph next to him was of the falls outside the Great Northern, and it’s Black And White (Motif).
THE BRIGGS’ HOME | 34
There’s a lot of 2 sided symmetry in Betty Briggs’ home; two ceiling lights, two lamps, two light switches (set to OFF), two more lights behind Betty, two doors in the hallway, and so on. More on the Food Motif, we can see that she had been drinking coffee. The sickly yellow-green color that’s been following us around had moved to the matching lamps of 2 women Fishing (Motif).
These three men make up the fourth trio of charactrs in this episode.
When Sheriff Truman started to explain himself, Betty silently held up a hand to stop him. This is another iteration of the hands-gesturing motif that’s been in this episode.
The day before Garland Briggs died in a Fire (Motif):
As soon as Mr. C (pretending to be Good Dad Cooper) left, Garland told Betty that these three men – and he specified them by name – would come to ask her about Cooper. He squeezed her shoulder on telling her this; this is a gesture we’ll see again later in the morgue scene. He instructed her to give the hidden tube of co-ordinates to these three men.
Only after this story does she offer coffee to the men.
All echoes of each other: “this is the chair.” “This is the girl.” “This is the water, this is the well.” The chair is Red, and one wonders if this is related to Lucy’s furniture choices earlier (Quantum Entanglement). The co-ordinates were hidden where someone’s head would be, with an unlock switch to seater’s right. The co-ordinates were in a dull Silver tube, and in a line of Golden Orbs/Eggs/Spheres.
There was also an unlit Fireplace behind them. The lamp, curtains, and walls, were all Golden. After this second message was passed, Betty again offered the men coffee. Is this an echo of Tracey bringing coffee to Sam 2 times before being allowed into the secure back room?
A MORGUE IN BUCKHORN, SD | 26
Gordon Cole announced that this is “THE WAITING ROOM.” This is an echo of The Arm’s same announcement at the end of Season 2. In future versions of this writing, we will want to watch these episodes back-to-back and try to find other connections. Until then, a reminder of these characters’ roles in “Find Laura:”
- The Arm is Laura’s delusions “reaching into her reality.”
We need to find more detail on this, or reconsider this role entirely.
- Gordon Cole is the Bad Transformer that twists her perception of reality and hides things in layers of symbolism&abstraction until it makes sense through the lens of her delusion&denial. This is a self-protective mechanism! He/it is not ill-intentioned or villainous.
Diane said, “I’m not in the mood to see a dead body.” She wanted to Light A Fire/Choose Cigarettes and check her phone. These are both echoes of the Living Room Primal Scene, just altered somewhat by the invention of cell phones: Laura chose cigarettes and was Called Home, Diane chose cigarettes and was checking to see if she’d been Called Home while she was on the plane.
The phone’s yellow-green color is still here, and duplicated into her box of American Spirits.
Lou Ming wrote that Tammy Preston’s arrival represented the merging of several other characters – the men around the table – into one character. This was a small step towards unification and healing. We’re not sure of Diane’s role in the dreamscape, as of this writing, but we have been considering the idea that she represents or ‘carries’ all 3 versions of Laura within her in a similar way. If we consider this, there may be a 5 – 3 – 1 sequence here:
- 5 characters [Gordon, Cynthia, Dave M, Albert, and Tammy]
observing
- 3 characters, always a pair/couple plus one [ In Diane: (Red + Blue Laura) + Odessa Laura/Carrie Page ]
observing
- the question of whether she’s been Called Home? / the phone itself? / the cigarettes?
- And the parallel to the previous scene by receiving the “Around The Dinner Table” text is also worth nothing.
Note for chronology: It is at this point that Diane received the “Around The Dinner Table” text message from Mr. C.
A final note: on the wall to her right was a painting of a wide, unbroken river representing the (Many Becoming The One Motif) and another instance of the aquatic themes in this particular episode. Remember the symbols:
- A healed Laura Palmer is represented by unity. The numbers 1 and 10. Rivers that flow as one body of water, not split into smaller waterfalls and creeks. These represent the end of her fragmented identity/dissociative disorder. Carrie Page is a version of Laura that still has a lot of healing to do, but is, finally, no longer split into Red and Blue Lauras living in a bizarre self-serving&self-harming fantasy version of her hometown. Gold, as covered at the start of this writing. Not answering the phone, not being Called Home.
- The F.B.I represents the higher parts of Laura Palmer’s mind that seek this healing and re-unification. The Blue Rose Task Force, in particular, represent the even higher parts. They are more aware of the surreal nature of the dreamscape and its true nature as a fluid part of something greater – this is shown to the audience as feats of magic, folklore, and co-ordinates.
In this way, it is only fitting that the image of a ‘healthy’ river would follow the F.B.I around as they traverse the Dreamscape. We will keep an eye open and see if this trends in other episodes.
In The Processing Room:
Garland Briggs’ death and the appearance of his corpse are abstractions of Laura Palmer’s dissociative break.
- Laura saw Garland reading from the book of Revelations. She came to see him as an enigmatic, powerful, and wise figure. He reflected into her Twin Peaks Dreamscape as one of the most high-awareness characters in the Blue Rose Task Force, and later on, he became a supernatural being on the same level as The Fireman or Senorita Dido.
- Garland figured out that Dale Cooper had been replaced by his negative doppelganger.
Laura demanded to know who was assaulting her. Laura saw BOB turn into her father. She was unable to accept this and rationalized it as demonic possession. This reflected into her Dreamscape as Good Dad Dale Cooper becoming possessed and replaced.
- This version of Dale Cooper that would become known as Mr. C was perceptive, and he knew that he was about to be caught. Garland was seemingly killed in a mysterious Fire and hidden in a secret dimension.
Fire is a symbol of negativity and destruction. Characters that get too close to the truth about the nature of BOB are killed, exiled, or otherwise silenced – just as Laura banished a whole half of herself to the Red Rooms.
- Garland’s head was removed. We only see his head and face in the Mauve Zone/Unconscious. In the Dreamscape, his head was inexplicably swapped with Ruth Davenport’s.
The Losing Your Head Motif is an abstraction of Laura becoming completely disconnected from reality. The head exchange, while gruesome and strange, may served a mechanical purpose for the positive&healing&unifying parts of Laura’s mind; it’s such an improbable and inexplicable thing that doing it erased many undesirable “timelines” or possibilities that were not part of the healing process.
- A wedding ring between Janey-E and Dougie Jones appeared in his stomach.
Wedding rings and rings in general are abstractions of Laura Palmer blaming herself for the abuse and continuing the cycle by harming others. In previous abstractions, the ring made people’s arms go numb – numbness being a symbol of dissociation and ignoring the pain caused to others. Here, the guilt and blame has literally been internalized into the body. In “The Return,” golden objects are swallowed as an abstraction of Laura suppressing&ignoring her good qualities in favor of continuing to stay disconnected from reality. See: the Junkie Mom swallowing golden pills to stay high, Lucy swallowing chocolate from a golden wrapper to hide her stomach problems from Andy.
Janey-E may represent a transformative figure, a version of Ignorant Laura that becomes more aware of her situation and stands up for herself. We’re not sure yet.
Dougie Jones, as himself, is a negative Father Figure image that is eventually transformed into a positive one.
- Garland has the body of a man in his forties (4). This is as he was 25 (7) years ago. He should be 72 (9).
Not sure what 4 means. 7 is the lucky number that makes jackpots – the golden truth – come out. Not sure what 9 means.
Laura’s psyche and self-image has been frozen in time for 25 years. This is a known effect of severe trauma. It’s reflected into her dreamscape in Garland’s chronologically-mismatched corpse... the inability of certain characters to resolve problems that have been going on for years/generations... and the generally stagnant nature of the Dreamscape as it continues to recycle, abstract, and replay the same horrific experiences in layers on top of itself over and over and over again.
There was another instance of the Wordplay Motif in the joke about losing one’s cats-eye marbles. It’s also a call forward to the animals that will be referenced in the Roadhouse scene at the end of the episode. A small piece of numerology: Bill Hastings was a marble (Orb/Sphere Motif) champion in the 6th grade.
Gordon Cole placing his hand on Albert’s shoulder is a repeated gesture; we heard about it earlier, when Garland did the same thing to his wife. We may call this the Grounding Gesture and will keep an eye open for it in the future. Both instances that we’ve seen this gesture involve characters with a silent, shared understanding. In this way, it may be similar or identical to the Arms Raised Motif.
SOMEWHERE IN THE WOODS NEAR TWIN PEAKS, WA | 32
Jerry Horne’s role in the Twin Peaks dreamscape continues to elude us. We did note the Red and Blue patterns throughout his clothes, particularly in his gloves and hat. The gloves were knitted with an image of an alpaca or llama. This is another of the animals that we’ve seen in this episode.
“I Am Not Your Foot” seems intended to be an echo or parallel of another contradiction, “I Am Dead, Yet I Live.” The raspy, whispered tone of the voice and attendant subtitles are evidence of this connection.
Jerry had to tap his foot 2 times before bracing himself, gathering his courage, SEIZING his foot and screaming at it to “GO AWAY” on the 3rd try. The reward for his bravery was tripping himself.
TWIN PEAKS SHERIFF’S STATION | 34
The Food Motif appeared twice here, first with Chad, then Lucy.
Chad was reading a firearm enthusiast’s magazine called LOCK N’ LOAD. This title was in Gold font, with a subheader that read “FINDING THE HANDGUN THAT IS RIGHT FOR YOU.” As far as I can tell, this has never been a real publication. He was eating 2 microwave dinners and a bowl of something yellow and sick – perhaps this is intended to be Garmonbozia, or more of Diane’s lingering yellow-green color. He was also eating these things in a forbidden area; coffee and donuts were allowed in the conference room - a place where evidence is laid bare in front of The Arch of suppressed knowledge and hopeful paintings of many-bodied waterfalls merging into single-bodied rivers - but lunch is not. We’re still trying to figure out the role of food&eating in the Dreamscape, so the distinction is important.
Lucy was at the desk eating a large sandwich. “I’m not here,” she declared. This is another contradictory statement. “I Am Dead, Yet I Live” → “I Am Not Your Foot” → “I’m Not Here.” She was fittingly surrounded by shades of Blue, the color of delusion and denial… such as declaring that you’re not in the place that you are, or that you don’t exist. Continuing with the hand gestures motif, she moved as if to wave goodbye at the three men as they passed by, but her hand was stiff and palm-out in the classic STOP gesture.
Sheriff Truman asked Bobby to open a window before they could sit and examine the messenger’s tube that Betty gave them. Laura believed and/or hallucinated that BOB was crawling through her window at night. All connections and thoughts must be noted.
The tube itself was Silver and has no openings – none of the Holes Motif, in other words. There were no hidden buttons or tricks – the tube’s contents are honest, truthful, and open. It had to be opened outside in the sun and open air, but there was really nothing stopping Bobby from bouncing it off the floor, or going straight outside without stopping in the conference room in the first place. There’s a feeling of arbitrary rules in action that reminds me of the “You Can Go Out Now” scene.
Outside: Bobby had to violently strike the tube on the ground, and this generated a Ringing/Tone Motif. He had to hit it 2 times to make it work, and when he picked it up again, he held it to his face like (sigh) an old-fashioned telephone (Answering The Phone Motif).
These are observations of the hidden paper itself, which apperas at ~ 38 minutes:
- It’s wrapped up with the COOPER/COOPER message from the original series’ run. Truman and Hawk explicitly draw our attention to it. “Two Coopers.”
- Space Coordinate: 253 yards East of Jack Rabbit’s Palace – a “make believe” world where Bobby and Garland would invent stories.
This becomes 10/1. The compass direction, East, may have spiritual/archetypal/abstractive importance.
- Time Coordinate A: 2:53
This also becomes 10/1
- Time Coordinate B: 10/1 and 10/2. They choose the first one.
Becomes 2 and 3 respectively
- The soil from the area is a grounding agent. It prevents electric shock. It’s also a great example of the superstitious, folkloric rules of the Dreamscape.
- The drawing is of the twin mountains. Above the left, a Red circle. Above the right, the Black Dot That You Don’t Ever Want To Know About, crested with a Red crescent moon.
A MORGUE IN BUCKHORN | 40
There was something not quite right about the exterior of the building. Maybe it was all the windows being blacked out, curtains drawn. Maybe it was my imagination. The Arch Motif appeared here, but the lights were dark. The small American flag that was in the background of the sheriff’s station conference room has moved to the foreground, positioned above the entryway.
Gordon Cole to Diane: “We used to smoke together, way back when, you remember?” (Smoking Cigarettes/Fire Motif)
Gordon Cole and Tammy Preston decided to stand outside with Diane while Albert and Constance examined the body. After a few awkward moments, Gordon caved and, using one of the silent hand gestures we’ve been tracking throughout this episode, asked for a drag of the cigarette. Tammy Preston didn’t approve. He declined to finish the cigarette.
INTERROGATION ROOM | 43
Principal Hastings brought us straight to the Losing Your Head Motif as he clutched his head and wailed. We find out that Principal Hastings is 43 (7). 25 years ago, he would have been 17 or 18 (8, 9). The reflections of Gordon Cole and Dave Macklay in the window hovered above his head. This image recalled the true meaning of the Convenience Store Primal Scene; that is, all of those supernatural characters were dwelling and scheming in the “upstairs” of Laura Palmer’s psyche as her father tormented her about her necklace around the dinner table.
Principle Hasting’s Story As He Tells It, Summarized:
- He ran a blog called The Search For The Zone
Remember that Z is part of the Co-Ordinates Motif. X axis, Y axis, Z axis.
- They entered The Zone, an “alternate reality,” and met Major Briggs 14 (5) days ago.
- Ruth was good at finding hidden things. She was the one who discovered the co-ordinates to find The Zone in the first place.
This is not a desirable trait in Laura’s Twin Peaks Dreamscape. Characters who get close to the truth, no matter how abstracted, disappear.
- Garland was “hibernating,” his choice of word. He wanted to go to “a different place” and asked the crew to find “important numbers/co-ordinates” for him. Ruth wrote them on her Hand (Motif). I don’t remember which one, but we will see this for ourselves later on.
- They brought Garland those co-ordinates the previous Thursday, but something went wrong; “others” came in and held him down by the neck, demanding his wife’s name.
This is the detail he opened with, but it did not appear again in his story. We can only guess that it happened when Ruth died.
- He says: “I didn’t kill her, I loved her, it’s all my fault, it never should have happened.”
Internalized guilt and self-blame is the Blue Scapegoat’s role; remember Blue Laura’s placing the ring on her finger as she’s murdered. As Bill is a Red Scapegoat, this is more likely to be an echo of Red Room Leland’s “I did not kill anybody.”
- Tammy shows him 6 photographs. Garland is number 4.
- He circles the photo and dates it in red pen, September 29. (29/9/2016 → 2)
This lines up with the October co-ordinates possessed by the Twin Peaks PD and gives us the following timeline: they discovered the Zone on 15 September (6) and returned to it on 22 September (4).
- Tammy pressed Bill to continue his story and he slowly blinked to clear his mind (Blinking Motif)
- They gave Garland the numbers from Ruth’s hand, and he started to float.
- Garland said “Cooper” 2 times, and he Lost His Head. This is the traumatic event that triggered another recurrence of The Split, with Ruth and Bill playing Scapegoat roles.* According to Bill, it was “beautiful… and then Ruth was dead.”
At this point, we should stop to remember what David Lynch said: “I hate slick and pretty things. I prefer mistakes and accidents. Which is why I like things like cuts and bruises - they're like little flowers. I've always said that if you have a name for something, like 'cut' or 'bruise,' people will automatically be disturbed by it. But when you see the same thing in nature, and you don't know what it is, it can be very beautiful.”
- Bill’s description is this quote in action. He saw Garland’s head disappear, and it was beautiful. He had no way of knowing it was an abstraction of the most horrible night in Laura Palmer’s life.
- Ruth died. We weren’t given details, only that there were “so many others.” This is the staging of Ruth as the Blue Scapegoat in this Split Event, and an abstraction of Laura Palmer’s mind splitting into so many pieces that it could populate ‘a whole damn town.’
- Bill Hastings woke up at home afterwards, and he was horrified by that sudden transition. As the Red Scapegoat he was permitted to survive, but he kept the burden of sin/knowledge to himself by telling nobody, not even the police, and pretending that it was just a nightmare.
This may be related to Mr. C’s statement that he “never left home,” and the Homegoing Motif in general.
- Albert terminated the scene in his characteristic way by implying that Principal Hastings is a “fruitcake” (Food Motif).
* Garland Briggs’ headless corpse in itself is an abstraction of Laura Palmer Splitting and Losing Her Head. This means that one abstraction more-or-less sparked another, yet both of them represent the same event. This is the kind of spiraling, fractal abstraction that defines the rules and imagery of “Find Laura.”