A White Feather on a Byron Beach?

My blogging friend Mike Perry is always writing about and relaying other people's stories of white feathers as signs.
But I have rarely found any white feathers laying at my feet.

Yesterday though while walking along a very windy and cold 
Byron Bay Beach I found the above white feather   
(OK, it has a patch of grey, so this story may fall into a grey area;-)
which I was amazed wouldn't blow away, even though it was slightly buried in the dry sand.
I picked it up thinking about Mike's feather stories and contemplated taking it home, even though I didn't see any message for me here, as I don't know of anybody who has recently passed away.
After thinking about taking it home, I thought it was just an ordinary feather and I would just throw it to the wind and see how far it would fly.
The wind was blowing a gale, so I thought it would fly right out of my sight, but soon as I threw it above my head it plummeted like stone and clung to a piece of grass in the sand like a nail to a magnet. 

I was so amazed I decided to take a photo of this feather defying the strong wind.
I thought surely it would have blown away by the time I had my camera ready, but I got two shots of it and it never looked like blowing away with the wind, so I picked it up and took it home.
What it means ... if anything ... I don't know, but I'll always be amazed by this feather's seemingly magical ability to stay put in the face of enormous opposition to the winds when I glance at it on my shelf.
Maybe therein lies the message for me?

Eli Wallach, star of The Magnificent Seven, dies at 98

"Eli Wallach, whose films included The Magnificent Seven 

and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, has died aged 98.

Character actor Wallach - who began his film career in 1956 after 10 years on stage - was admired for his wide range in a career spanning six decades.
His portrayal of bandit chief Calvera in The Magnificent Seven was regarded by many as his definitive role.
When he received an honorary Oscar in 2011, he was described as a "quintessential chameleon"."
Eli Wallach, star of The Magnificent Seven, dies at 98

 Eli was a hero of one of my musical heroes.
The Wisdom of Darren Hanlon

Lightning Strikes That Change Lives

Update: 29th June, 2014
Re-reading one of my old posts about Susan Sarandon -
James and the Giant Peach Syncs
I just realized Eli was in the Oliver Stone movie
Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps
with Susan.
Six Degrees?

Video Intro to the Book "Afterlife" by Barry Eaton

"Barry Eaton’s book “Afterlife” was launched in Australia in 2011 and in the USA in 2013 – and is creating much interest worldwide. 
You can also find it in the Kindle format. 
In his book Barry researches the afterlife from his own experiences and those he has interviewed. 
He simplifies things and adds that we are spiritual beings in a human body and not the other way around. 
He tells us how we can communicate with the afterlife and puts answers to questions we may have thought of but never knew who to ask."
Afterlife: Uncovering the Secrets of Life After Death 
Barry has interviewed hundreds of people on RadioOutThere as well as conducting over two thousand readings. 
He has also run spiritual groups since 2000. 
You can catch his weekly programs on his own internet radio show. 

RadioOutThere.

http://www.psychicreporter.com/barry-eaton/

I wrote a post in 2011 about meeting Barry at the 
Byron Bay Writers Festival -
White Feathers

Barry Eaton (far left) hosting a talk
 at the Writers Festival, Byron Bay

At the writers festival I met Barry Eaton and bought his book Afterlife, which tells of his memories of his last life as a British soldier killed in the battle of Somme in France during WW1 and the memories of his preparation to come back as Barry Eaton in this life, which he is living now.

Interesting stuff.

We Need to Talk About Maleficent/Maleficence

It's funny how timing is everything when it comes to reading a book, seeing a movie, and stories in the current media about 
film stars who seem to be connected by six degrees or less.

 I was reading We Need to Talk About Kevin 
(only because I had attended a talk in Byron Bay with the author earlier this year and bought  a signed copy, otherwise I had no intention of ever reading the book)  
at around the same time I saw Maleficent at the cinema in  
Byron Bay, too ... of all places.

Lionel Shriver and Matthew Condon at
 St. Finbar's Hall, March 1st, 2014

In Maleficent a curse is put on Aurora (the sleeping beauty character ... kind of) that before the sun sets on her 16th birthday she will fall into a sleep like death.
In the book We Need to Talk About Kevin, Kevin shoots up the school 3 days before his sixteenth birthday to avoid being tried as an adult.

But that's not the synchy part, before Kevin goes on his shooting spree he asks his English teacher (also one of his intended targets) what the word maleficence means.
Then later in the novel says it, as he puts an arrow into her.

Click to make photo bigger, so you can read it

Then last night I see this story on a news site about Angelina not wanting Brad to mingle with Quentin Tarantino and his new girlfriend Uma Thurman -

Angelina Jolie and actor Brad Pitt pose
at the premiere of Maleficent
at El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood

Angelina Jolie Forbids Brad Pitt from Partying with Quentin Tarantino and Uma Thurman?
"Rumour has it that Angelina Jolie does not want Brad Pitt to hang out with Quentin Tarantino as she thinks that Tarantino is a bad influence on Pitt.
Projecting Jolie as a dominating partner, print edition of National Enquirer recently said that she has banned Pitt from meeting Tarantino and she also refuses to socialize with Tarantino and his current girlfriend Uma Thurman. 
Tarantino and Pitt became buddies when they did the movie Inglourious Basterds together, but Jolie is unhappy with bad partying habits Pitt has picked up from the filmmaker.
 Moreover, it is also being said that Jolie is uncomfortable hanging around with Thurman as the latter accused her of having an affair with Ethan Hawke. Hawke and Thurman were married, when Jolie allegedly had an affair with the former on the sets of "Taking Lives" in 2003, as per the reports.
 Meanwhile, it is being also being said that Jolie and Pitt's marriage is getting delayed from time to time. Apparently, Jolie doesn't have many female friends and she is waiting for her daughter Shiloh to be her bridesmaid when the little one grows up.
"They might let a lot more time go by before tying the knot because she doesn't have any close women pals she can call on to stand up for her at the ceremony," a source told Radar Online. "Angelina's told Brad that they couldn't marry until Shiloh's old enough to be her bridesmaid.""

Also, one of the victims in the novel We Need to Talk About Kevin was considered annoying because he was a cine-file who would often bore people (and Kevin) with his ability to quote whole Quentin Tarantino scripts.

Click to make photo bigger, so you can read it

But it gets weirder because Rich Martini was assistant director on the movie Salt starring Angelina Jolie and he responded to a sync post I did about AJ a while back by saying Angie was a real down to earth person and he got on really well with her.

Rich Martini & Robert Thurman (Uma's dad)
 in his class at Columbia U.

Funny in the "six degree of separation sense" is that Rich is real good friends with Robert Thurman (Uma's dad) and has even gone to Tibet with him and made films about Bob's travels.

The Flipside of Vanity
"That's funny. I got a chance to know Angelina while working on the film "Salt."
Contrary to popular media, she's about the least vain person I've met. A great sense of humor. The odd thing about the "destroy vanity" quote was one morning I awoke to hear someone speaking to me in Latin; 
"vanum populatum." I don't speak Latin, but it means annihilate vanity. 
I thought "I live in LA, where do I start?..."  
Reply to my comment from Rich Martini about AJ and Vanity Fair.
10 Meditations to Ponder

The movie Salt is also a bout a "sleeper" agent.
 Jolie plays a Russian "sleeper"spy, who doesn't realize that she is one, thinking that she is an American spy instead.

Jolie is set to reprise her role as Evelyn Salt in the sequel to Salt, 
Salt 2 (The continuing adventures of CIA agent Evelyn Salt), which is in pre-production.
Trivia:
The first movie concerned a possible nuclear strike. 
This movie, if the title remains "Salt 2", will share the name of the negotiations between President Carter and Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev. 
The second round of Strategic Arms Limitation Talks were known as "SALT II"
Coincidence also that Jolie's character is named Evelyn (Eve) Salt in the movie Salt and in the book and movie  
We Need to Talk About Kevin Kevin's mother is named Eva.

The novel is written from the perspective of the killer's mother, Eva Khatchadourian, and documents her attempt to come to terms with her son Kevin and the murders he committed.

Interesting also that AJ chose Lana Del Rey to sing the main song for the movie Maleficent.

My blogging buddy Jason Barrera just wrote an excellent post on Lana Del Rey at his Mask of God blog - 
ISIS UV IV

Poison Ivy (Uma Thurman)

Oddly enough the only reason I ever saw the movie We Need to Talk About Kevin was because my first-born child was named Kevin and ironically enough, seeing the Poison Ivy poster above with the date June 20 makes me smile, because that's the date of his birthday, which is the date I wrote this post without even consciously realizing I had posted it on his birthday.

Brad Pitt. Shades of cool?

I wrote a post about soap and Brad Pitt's movie Fight Club

and posted it early May 28th, Australian time and about 24 hours later on May 29th (Australian time) I see on the news that a guy jumped onto the Red Carpet and punched Brad Pitt in the face.
Soap, 237 and the Peppermint Twist

The suspect, 25-year-old Vitalii Seduik

Life imitating art?

School shooting scene from the movie,
We Need to Talk About Kevin.

 In the novel We Need to Talk About Kevin, Kevin uses a crossbow, but in the movie, it is just a bow and arrow, instead of a crossbow.
In the novel Kevin singles out his victims by sending them all invitations to a bogus ceremony to honour their talents.
And it is also hinted in a major way that he went on the rampage because of his unrequited love for one of the hottest girls in his school.
In fact she is the only one shot straight in the heart with an arrow, dying almost immediately.
So, the book sort of portrays Kevin as a maleficent kind of cupid.

Maybe we need to talk about 
Katniss EVErdeeN, too?

We Need to Talk About Hollywood
And as another blogging friend pointed out in her post, 
Murder in the IV,  "As I was reading news coverage of the Isla Vista rampage I noticed the town is often referred to by its nickname—The IV."

Pioson IV(y)?

 And as for the name Aurora (the sleeping beauty) in the movie Maleficent, another blogging friend at his blog often writes about the name Aurora and the events surrounding that name.
Aurora: Synchromystic Wonderland

"What Aurora may truly turn out to be is a complex "occult" 
(as in the original meaning of the word, "hidden," not "paranormal") 
synchronicity story of which more and more is being revealed daily. 
Joker and other copycats will focus the Aurora incident in other directions as we see the breathtaking nature of the red dawn event fade from the attention of the media and Twitter nation. 
It is becoming integrated into our culture, nevertheless. 
The facts are that, on a synchromystic level, layers of the onion are being peeled back carefully as we move away from Friday, July 20th."
 Aurora: Synchromystic Wonderland

Pioson Ivy and Bane,
from Batman and Robin

Lana Del Rey's latest album Ultaviolence is said to get it's tittle from the novel A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess.
A novel that was made into a movie by Stanley Kubrick.

A 1965 film by Andy Warhol entitled Vinyl was an adaptation of the Burgess' novel as well.

The novel, Shriver's seventh, won the 2005 Orange Prize,
a U.K.-based prize for female authors of any country writing
 in English. In 2011 the novel was adapted into a film.

A scene from We Need to Talk About Kevin

"Around 1961, Andy Warhol started painting cans of Campbell's soup, in all 32 varieties. 
He liked to tell people that his mother made him Campbell's soup and that's why he painted it.
The soup cans are probably the most recognizable images in American art, and Warhol intended it that way. 
He borrowed the Campbell's brand fame to help make his own; 
he appeared in Time in 1962 as part of the Pop revolution that was remaking art — destroying the serious, sublime aspirations of artists like Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko. 
Warhol was doing Campbell's soup at the same time he was painting Marilyn Monroe and Liz Taylor. 
In his art, Campbell's was a "star" like a movie pinup."
American Icons: Warhol's Soup Cans

Orange is the new black?

Getting back to the Anthony Burgess/Stanley Kubrick movie 
A Clockwork Orange, the other day I noted how the use of orange jump suits for prison uniforms has become popular since the decades following the A Clockwork Orange movie of Kubrick's, not that they wore orange jumpsuits in the movie though ... they are black.

I thought it was interesting that someone pointed out to me AJ plays a character named Fox in the movie Wanted.
A movie I'm yet to see.

I had written a post a few weeks ago about firefox and AJ's movie Foxfire.
Plus Jamie Foxx was mentioned in the same post and of course he was the star of QT's last movie Django Unchained.
Firefoxx?

And of course QT's most famous movie assassin is his current girlfriend Uma Thurman, who Angelina doesn't want Brad hanging around.

And now QT is making a third Kill Bill.
Kill Bill:Vol.3.

So, what's my point with this post?

Elliot and Peter Rodger on the red carpet

My point is that every single human being is connected in some unconscious way and that while our lives seem to be random events, there is something guiding us all along in our life's path to cross with other life paths ... whether that be for good, or ill, or both.
What that is ... Higher Selves, God, The Collective Unconscious?
I don't know.
But Blind Freddy can see that there is something happening behind the scenes on this planet.
I like to think it is what Jung was on about, 
The Collective Unconscious. 

Peter Rodger was asking the question in his documentary  
Oh My God

But now Peter Rodger is in the same situation of the fictitious Eva Khatchadourian in her attempt to come to terms with her son Kevin and the murders he committed. 

A position no parent would ever want to be in.

There is a maleficence in the world, but it comes from seeing ourselves as separate from the other souls who we do seem to be connected to on a deeper level.
Maleficence is a selfish egotistical and unthinking force, that we can all be subjected to when we see ourselves as separate, or in an uncaring random world.
But if we look deeper we will see that things aren't so random.

The connecting, or God force of The Collective Unconscious must be love.
And the maleficent force must be hate.
The choice is always ours, I think.