Often, when we share stories with others, we use language that reflects our current waking realities.  It is interesting to hear Hillary Clinton relate stories of ‘being under fire from snipers’, when the actual footage from the event shows otherwise.  Her story suggests that she feels increasingly under attack and vulnerable to those critics who snipe at her potential qualities as President of the United States.

If Hillary was elected President it would be interesting to see how her stories developed.  She may begin to use more secure and confident language, or perhaps she feels innately insecure and under constant threat.

As Newsweek reports, for many years Clinton has been telling the story of her visit to Tuzla in Bosnia in 1996, gradually adding embellishment and changing details.  This is a natural and widespread process as stories of our specific experiences evolve into declarations of archetypal awareness.   It often begins within 24 hours of the actual event as we seek to share our impressions with others. 

Ronald Reagan often related that he had been in Normandy in 1944 and was present at the liberation of the Nazi death camps. He reportedly later told an associate ‘Maybe I had seen too many war movies, the heroics of which I sometimes confused with real life‘.

As editor of The Shinbone Star,  Dutton Peabody declared in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance ‘This is the west, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend‘. 

As a coincidental and almost homophonic footnote, Gene Pitney, who had a Top Ten hit with the title track from The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is best known for his signature song, Twenty Four Hours From Tulsa.

Today at 05.48 was the the Vernal Equinox, when the length of day and night are equal.  Although the date is often used to mark the equinox, the correct term for the whole 24 hour period is the Equilux.  At that time on this day, light and shadow are equal.

In the northern hemisphere, the equinox is often regarded as the first day of Spring, one of the inspirational influences for Igor Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring.  First performed in 1913 in Paris by the Ballet Russes, it was a complex and innovative piece.

From a musical perspective it seems very fragmented, with recurring melodic motifs that emerge from unpredictable rhythms driven by colourful dissonances.  I am always drawn to how glimpses of these fragments emerge and echo, building a wonderfully moving experience from apparent drama and tension.

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Arthur C Clarke, one of the greatest exponents of possibility space has passed away at his home in Sri Lanka. 

As one of Clarke’s three Laws of Impossibility, he stated ‘The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.’

Arthur was a master of venturing into what seemed impossible and realising the possibilities of what was previously unvisioned and unknown.

As well as being a master of visionary space, he was also equally at home immersed in the rich waters of passion and curiosity.  He once said ‘How inappropriate to call this planet Earth, when clearly it is Ocean.’

Perhaps he is exploring some other spaces now, maybe gently waking up in a Louis XVI boudoir, or floating as a Star Child enclosed in a transparent orb of light.

Recently, a number of my clients have been dreaming about being in a wild wood.  In many of these dreams, there was a sense of encroachment and threat, with the forest being clear felled by anonymous figures.

Often when we dream of forests, we are exploring areas of ourselves that may be unknown to us and unseen by others.  In waking life, the traditional response to encountering the unknown in a forest is to cut the forest down to try and make the unknown known. 

Until relatively recently, Britain used to be covered in broadleaved forest from south to north.  Year by year, it was removed to deny sanctuary to wild creatures and those who lived beyond the law.  Now there are only a few square miles of ancient woodland left and those once familiar sanctuaries are gone.

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Out to The Fruitmarket Gallery last night to the opening of their ‘Print The Legend’ exhibition.

The exhibition, curated by Patricia Bickers, celebrates the concept of the Wild West as a possibility space.

In this land of possibility space, the archetypal often meets the specific, as shown in the film The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.

In the film, Dutton Peabody, the editor of the Shinbone Star speaks the classic line ‘This is the west, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend’.

When we dream, we often find ourselves printing the legend.  We take our own personal myths and legends and print them in the reality of our dreams.

As Joseph Campbell said ‘A myth is a public dream, a dream is a private myth’.