Showing posts with label Dumbo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dumbo. Show all posts

Friday, September 15, 2023

Can anyone identify this magic feather?

Yesterday I posted a sync regarding Dumbo and the Tom Petty song "Learning to Fly" ("Further syncs: Alma 13, Tom Petty, Dumbo, Melchizedek").

In the movie, Dumbo is given a "magic feather" -- a tail feather taken from the crow Specks -- and told that it will enable him to fly. In fact this is just a psychological trick, intended to give Dumbo the confidence to attempt flight, and in the end he discovers that he can fly even without the feather.


This morning, when I went out, I found a large nearly-black feather on my doorstep.


It's not a crow feather -- I've never seen a single crow in my nearly 20 years in Taiwan -- but I can't for the life of me figure out what kind of feather it is! Night heron feathers would be white at the tip. On a dove feather, the anterior vane would be much narrower than the posterior. (Very few birds I know of would have the two vanes so equal in width, especially on a long tapered feather.) No local bird of prey would have solid-colored feathers. Myna feathers always have some white on them. It's much too tapered to belong to a moorhen or anything like that, and again there's the issue of the equally wide vanes. The degree of curvature seems highly unusual, as does the very short calamus on such a long feather. I'm completely stumped!

Searchable online feather atlases are mostly limited to North American birds, but I tried using one anyway to see if I could at least narrow things down to a family or something. No luck.

I welcome hypotheses from any ornithologically inclined readers.

Thursday, September 14, 2023

Further syncs: Alma 13, Tom Petty, Dumbo, Melchizedek

Yesterday (September 13) I published a long post about synchronicities triggered by William Wright's August 2 post "Eleanor and 'Wake Up Time.'" (Mr. Wright's title alludes to a dream of his and a Tom Petty song.) The syncs occurred more than a month ago, obviously, but I was on a blogging break at that time. Yesterday just happened to be the day I got around to publishing them.

This morning, I checked Coat of Skins and found a new post by Mr. Wright, "Rock & Roll in Rivendell: Tom Petty, Elrond, and Alma the Younger," also dated September 13, in which he also just happens to revisit his August 2 post and expands on his ideas about Tom Petty. Mr. Wright believes in the Book of Mormon, Tolkien's Legendarium, and reincarnation, and his post proposes that Tom Petty was the reincarnation of both the Tolkien character Elrond and the Book of Mormon figure Alma the Younger. In connection with this idea, he mentioned the 13th chapter of the Book of Alma:

In addition, there is also a tie with my guess of Elros (Elrond's brother) being Melchizedek.  Alma's discourse and mention of Melchizedek found in Alma 13, can in this case now be viewed as Alma-Elrond teaching the people about his brother, Elros-Melchizedek.

Mr. Wright's September 13 post made no mention of my own, so I assumed it was a genuine coincidence our posting on the same day. Just to be sure, though, I left a comment on his post noting the coincidence, figuring that if his post had been influenced by mine he would mention that in a reply.

Shortly before noon today, I was in a local restaurant -- Café D&D, a known sync attractor -- waiting for my lunch to be served. While I was waiting, I decided to check Coat of Skins on my phone to see if Mr. Wright had replied to my comment. He had:

That is interesting. I hadn't read your post before writing this one. I was actually thinking on Part 2 of the Stone aftermath storyline, and decided I would go back into the notebooks from 2021-2022 to see if they would be worth looking at to refresh my memory. That is when I saw Tom and "Learning to Fly" and, based on everything else I have been thinking as mentioned in the post, decided this was the nudge to go all in on the Elrond-Alma angle first.

Just as I read that reference to "Learning to Fly," there was a jingle of bells as the door opened and a customer walked into the café. She was wearing a T-shirt that said in big letters "FLY DUMBO." Under this was a picture of Dumbo, the cartoon elephant, and under that, in much smaller print, "Believe in yourself." Here's a picture from the Internet of the same shirt:

The chorus of the Tom Petty song begins, "I'm learning to fly, but I ain't got wings." Dumbo is about an elephant who, despite not having wings, learns to fly by flapping his ears. (I'm also reminded of Richard Amiel McGough's "Looking for Dumbo" dream.)

After checking that comment, I was still waiting for my food, so I decided to read a bit in the Book of Mormon. I've been reading it regularly, three chapters a day (sometimes a bit more), since around the middle of August. Yesterday I had finished to Alma 11, so my three chapters for today were Alma 12-14.

In Chapter 12, Alma the Younger (Tom Petty) speaks to Zeezrom, primarily on the topic of resurrection.

In Chapter 13 -- the one mentioned in Mr. Wright's post -- Alma talks about the role of priests and angels, making particular mention of Melchizedek.

In Chapter 14, Alma and his fellow preacher Amulek are imprisoned, and everyone who believed their words is burned to death.

Melchizedek, fiery death, and resurrection -- where have I seen those three things juxtaposed recently? See my September 8 post "Phoenix syncs":

Ace of Hearts

On the A page of Animalia , an Ace of Hearts is near a picture of a running man whom I interpreted as a reference to Arnold Schwarzenegger....