The following is the whole of what I've been contemplating for the past couple of years. I've only been on-line since November of 1993, so I don't yet know how much of what I say here has been already said by others. So, rather than start posting things to alt.tv.twin-peaks just yet, I thought I'd stick this in the archive and see if anyone responds. If you are inclined to do so, you can e-mail me at <[email protected]>. However, please do not send me any large files. Instead, just let me know about such files, and where I can get them.
The section of Thoughts and Ruminations appears exactly as it was written. The first sentence is the earliest thing I wrote, the last sentence the most recent. Some dialogue and other details drawn from the series and film may not be quite accurate, from what I've seen of some of the other material in this archive and in the newsgroup. I'll catch up and make corrections someday. In The Mysteries of Twin Peaks as Revealed by the Log Lady, I have added my own comments as each introduction has aired on Bravo.
This document includes:
An introduction (full of dreams and strange journal entries)
Thoughts and Ruminations on Twin Peaks (in the order in which they came to me)
The Possible Symbologies of Twin Peaks (drawn from a variety of sources)
The Mysteries of Twin Peaks as Revealed by the Log Lady (and some ruminations on what her revelations might mean)

At any rate, I hope this adds to the investigation. Until coming on-line, I hadn't run into anyone else who game a damn about what was really going on in Twin Peaks. It's good to have finally found a home of sorts for this material outside my own hard drive.
Christopher (call me Kit, not Chris) Frankonis
(November 12, 1993)

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INTRODUCTION
Just after midnight on November 11, 1990, I wrote the following in my journal: "Tonight I am going to try to dream of BOB. I am going to try to let my unconscious mind piece together information and sensations from Twin Peaks and see if I can come up with anything." Earlier, on Saturday night, the killer of Laura Palmer was revealed to be the BOB-possessed Leland Palmer, her father. I fell asleep listening to the Twin Peaks soundtrack.
The dream:
I'm in a cafe, sort of outdoors. I hear talking about some woman using a weird bank account to buy strange things. I keep trying to leave, but new things happen outside. Glows and other things. I am embarrassed that I keep returning every time something happens. I think that people are laughing at me, but I have to come back. The cafe becomes one side of the brick-floored, outdoor mall area of my college. More and more people are coming out to sit along the edge.

Out on the mall, by Henry Moore's "Large Two Forms." People are heading off toward the dorms to play the electric guitar. My friend Jack and I are listening, with the crowd, to the music from Twin Peaks that is floating in the air. Jack becomes Leland Palmer, and we become the only two people who can hear the music. He cries. I comfort him. I try to get him to come with me toward the source of the sound, but he won't. I hurts him. "In here?" I ask him, pointing at my head. "In here," he responds, pointing to his own.
I am out on a dark road. Leland is with me. Cars pass, right to left, along an intersecting road up ahead. Voices from inside them.  I'm acting like events are happening for the second time. I know what's next. The passengers in the cars are yelling things I've heard them yell before. That's how I know what's next. I'm waiting for the right car. Off to one side, a woman is killing herself.  "Just another normal night in Twin Peaks," I think to myself.
I turn left onto the intersecting road. Leland is no longer with me. I am approaching another left. Cars are turning onto it. One car turns onto the road, but I don't see it continue on the other side of a large bush. As I approach the road, the car is coming out again, having somehow turned around. For some reason, I remember that the first time this happened, the car didn't turn around and come out, allowing me to attack. There is a man driving the car, a woman in the passenger seat.
I scream something and run towards the car, breaking through the
side window as I lunge toward the woman.�
I woke up, feeling that at the end of the dream, as I stalked the car, I was playing BOB. That was why Leland had disappeared: BOB had left him for me.
Foward into December. On December 4, I wrote the following: "On this past Saturday's Twin Peaks, Leland Palmer was caught, BOB left him, and Leland died. Upon Harry's asking "Where's BOB now?" we were shown a strange, off-color scene in a ditch that began with a crashed car, its windshield broken." This made me recall my dream, in which I thought I was BOB as I crashed through the window of a car.
That night, I tried to re-dream that dream, in the hopes off seeing and hearing things I hadn't caught the first time. What were the voices in the cars saying? What did I scream as I crashed into the car window? I didn't succeed. But I did have a dream that included the following words:
"Hell isn't open just for those being sent there, it's open to anyone who wants to join."
CHRISTOPHER D. FRANKONIS
(August 11, 1993)
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THOUGHTS AND RUMINATIONS ON TWIN PEAKS
Fire walk with me�truth, reveal yourself to me? Truth in the sense of knowledge or experience transcending human reality. What lies after, outside, beyond this world may have nothing to do with the way we see things.
The divided heart symbolizes the root motivations of our kind. All of our actions (and our inactions) arise from either love or fear.  Physiologically, we feel both in exceedingly similar ways, centered about the heart. Love and fear are inexorably intertwined, and where there is one, there is the potential for the other.
The divided heart is not only Laura's, but everyone's.
The heart reacts to love much as it reacts to fear: A rapid beat, a tension of sorts inside the chest.
EARLE: "What do you fear most in the world?"
BRIGGS: "The possibility that love is not enough."
Is the white moose referred to in Access Guide to the Town ("the white moose appears to those in trouble because it understands the agony of sorrow and despair") the same as the white horse we see in the series and film? Was it changed from a moose to a horse, perhaps to be a little less odd, or to get away from the Northern Exposure link, or to partake of the symbolism of the white horse?
JAMES (relating what Laura said to him): "Do you want to play with fire, little boy? Do you want to play with BOB?"
COOPER: "Where do you come from?"
GIANT: "The question is, where have you gone?"
COOPER: "It's not so bad as long as you can keep the fear from your mind."
Circle Brand boots partake of the circle motif.
Margaret's (the Log Lady's) husband didn't die in a fire. He's in the Lodge. Or, he or his "vibes" are in her log. As Josie's image appears in the wood of a nightstand, and as Laura's "vibes" appear to be in her sunglasses.
COOPER: "But a town is like a river: Lots of hidden currents and eddies, concealing their own secrets. I haven't even broken the surface yet." From the audio tape.
Access Guide to the Town offers clues as to what would have happened in the next season of the series, had it not been canceled. Take the story of the football game. "Mystery play saves Peaks season." While this comment appears as part of a football game headline in the book, it is tantalizing, given the book's earlier reference to a Twin Peaks "Passion Play," taking place at Glastonberry Grove (in the book, a circle of twelve douglas firs; in the series, sycamore trees). The historical passion plays were forms of what were called mystery plays, because they dealt with the true nature of the universe, the greatest mystery of all (in their case, Christian beliefs). According to the book, this Passion Play, when it is held, occurs in the month of April. Given that each episode of the series covers the events of a single day (except for a couple exceptions), we can extrapolate that the end of the non-existent third season would have brought the storyline into the month of April, 1989. The book says that the Passion Play is meant to illustrate the victory of good over evil. The implication of all this is that the main thrust of the series' plotlines (BOB, the Lodge, etc.) would have been resolved at the end of the third season. The reference to the mystery play saving the season appears in large and bold print in the book, as do two other important statements. "He began to run the wrong way." This may be a reference to the BOB-possessed Cooper. "The best thing in our lives and we did it together." The town would have to stand united in action (unlike the blind eye they turned to Laura) in order to win. In addition, there is a marginalia which gives the comment of a coach: "The goal post is in the shape of an H and that means Hell and that's what you have to go through to get some points." Not just a reference to Cooper's coming experience dealing with BOB and the Lodge, but to what nearly all heroes in mythologies the world over must do at some point: Descend into the underworld. Not incidentally, Gilgamesh's descent into the underworld was through a mountain with twin peaks.
GIANT: "Don't search for all the answers at once. A path is formed by laying one stone at a time." Good advice not only to Cooper, but to the viewer. This is a series and film that requires a different sort of attention, an active one. But also a patient one. Often, forcing your way into it leads only to defeat. Many answers are there to be found, but only if you heed the giant's advice. The problem so many (re)viewers had was the one they always have in America: They want to know everything right away so they can shut down their brains for the rest of the trip. Twin Peaks didn't work that way. It's no wonder so many people abandoned it. They were too lazy.
LOG LADY: "Shut your eyes and you'll burst into flames." This comment should be heeded by individuals and communities alike. At Laura's funeral, Bobby says (of who killed her): "You did. We all did." The town shut their eyes to Laura's troubles (acknowledging them would have meant recognizing the town's problems as well), and so she died. Ignorance is not bliss, it's death.
LOG LADY: "He met the devil. Fire is the devil hiding like a coward in the smoke."
In the film, Laura tells Donna never to wear her stuff (this after Donna, wearing a piece of Laura's clothing and high on a coke-spiked beer, is tumbling into Laura's world). Later on, in the series, Donna finds and wears a pair of Laura's sunglasses�and starts smoking, coming on to James through the bars of his jail cell, and other peculiar things. I remember at the time that we all wondered why she was acting so strange, and if she was falling under whatever force had affected Laura. It must be a vibe thing, like when psychics claim they can tell things about a person by touching something that belonged to them, particularly clothing.
There seem to be two slightly different versions of the poem:
Through the darkness of future pasts
The magician longs to see
One chance out between two worlds
Fire walk with me

Through the darkness of futures past (or future's past, or future's
passed?)
The magician longs to see
One chance out between two worlds
Fire walk with me

The first line echoes of the circle motif, particularly in light of the moments that repeat themselves along the way. Josie in front of her mirror. The "I thought Germans were always on time" dialogue in the diner. The One-Armed Man's reference to "the golden circle," which Cooper takes to mean his ring. Access Guide to the Town also mentions various circle-related things, including a belief in the cyclical nature of the world. Take the Passion Play, for example.  "One chance out between two worlds" presumably speaks of the whole duality thing. Twin peaks, the divided heart, love and fear, the White Lodge and the Black Lodge. Perhaps the magician of the previous line is BOB? Looking for a way out of his world into ours, through fear?
Harold's fear led to a self-imposed exile. In the isolation of his home, he was in control�be it through the writing of other people's lives or through the raising of orchids. Unable to face his fear�whatever its source, its nature�he killed himself rather than accepting the outside world into his hermetically-sealed psyche. Parenthetically, when Harold stumbles outside after Donna and the diary, he looks at his right hand shaking, and collapses. Much later, near the end of the series, Cooper, Pete, and a woman in the diner all experience a shaking right hand. That night, at the end of that episode, we see BOB slipping out from within the circle of sycamores, right hand first.
Laura's fear was probably sexual in nature. Adolescence is difficult enough as it is, but when unhelpful�or, in her father's case, harmful�parents are added to the mix, it grows into a matter of the soul itself. Leland was corrupted himself long ago (precisely how, we never learned). Her sexual self adversely affected by sexual abuse and incest, that developing sexuality became an evil thing, something perverse. It became an object of fear. Sex had been used as a weapon against her since she was twelve, and throughout the period when she began to have sexual urges herself. Since her experience with sex�incest�was terrible, her own developing sexual feelings told her that she must be a terrible person.
Harold's fear may also have been sexual in nature, not just social.  The symbolism of the orchid relates to male sexuality. The raising of orchids may have been an expression of Harold's sexuality, since sex itself (except perhaps with Laura) was not.
Cooper's fear was of his failures: Laura, Maddy, Caroline, Annie.  Faced with these failures, he runs ("he began to run the wrong way.") from his doppleganger/shadow-self in fear. The door to his soul is opened.
Had Harold's fear not driven him to suicide, it might have attracted BOB, just as Josie's fear does, in the face of what she has done to so many people, including Harry, the man she loves.
Ben Horne's bizarre transformation arose out of conquering�or at least facing�his fears about his way of life. The revisionist reenactment of the Civil War was an externalized production of a psychological battle. Winning a battle formerly lost in history covered for winning the battle against his former ways. The struggle for him is not over, however. Learning to be good is not a straightforward, clear-cut proposition. In fact, trying to be what he believes to be good, by telling the truth about Donna, gets his head smashed into a fireplace. (Also: The production of the Civil War seems to be one thing on the surface, but is in fact something else underneath�just like Twin Peaks.)
On the Log Lady. Her name is Margaret Lanterman. Her log was given to her by her husband on their wedding night. He (supposedly) died the next day in a fire. He was a fire fighter.
The occassional quotations from Shakespeare are interesting. There are Shakespearean elements to Twin Peaks, from the importance of forests to the role of music. The swing back and forth between dramatic (even tragic) scenes and more comedic (even slapstick) scenes has some parallels to Shakespeare, whose dramatic moments are truly dramatic and "high-brow," while his comedic moments are often quite "low-brow." Further, the reenactment of the Civil War - - specifically the scenery present when Ben Horne wins�looks remarkably like the stage of the Globe Theatre. There are also cross-dressings, people who look like each other, the aforementioned woods�of course, these things are also important in many mythologies from around the world. The notion of the fatal flaw (the downfall of the tragic hero) echoes in what happens when one meets the Dweller on the Threshold in the Black Lodge. One is confronted with one's failings�and one has a choice: To confront those failings (those flaws), or to run from them. Running in fear leaves you open to attack.
On the non-existent third season. If we are to believe Access Guide
to the Town, Cooper's birthday is on April 19 -- just about where
the storyline would have been at the end of the third season, when
Twin Peaks would have engaged in the Passion Play, and when good
would conquer evil (at least until the wheel�the golden circle -
came around again).

Come to think of it, comedy and drama comprise yet another duality.
Twin Peaks (the town and the series) is like an iceberg. Only the most easily visible and obvious part is clearly seen, rising above the surface. But to learn the awesome truth of it, we must properly equip ourselves, and we must descend into the depths. Only then will we see what is really there. Shakespeare is like that, too.
Twin Peaks is a myth. Like all myths, it is meant to explain the mysteries of the universe. The series opens with a mystery, of the kind we are used to. But Twin Peaks is a true mystery story, dealing with the great secrets that only myth can handle.
It is important to notice that, although BOB is an external force, he is meant as a symbol�a dramatic personification�of (as Albert says) "the evil that men do." BOB needs our fear in order to enter this world, to enter our minds and steal our souls. A reviewer for the Village Voice, writing after the killer was revealed to be a BOB-possessed Leland Palmer, complained that such an idea placed evil outside the human being, rather than within it where it properly belongs. She missed the point. She missed that Twin Peaks was a myth, and she missed that BOB was a necessary device of drama in order to transform the idea of evil into cinematically presentable action. The reviewer failed to provide herself with a great enough context. Like most (re)viewers of Twin Peaks, she failed to adequately apply herself.
Important note, written on June 11, 1993: The Log Lady's introduction to the first episode of Twin Peaks, which aired tonight on Bravo, was very intriguing. It strengthens my belief in the direction I have headed on all this. "It encompasses the All.  It is beyond the fire, though few would know that meaning." Great stuff.
It is not just that Twin Peaks was a series many people taped, but that Twin Peaks was a series that had to be taped. There is little chance of finding your way through to the secrets and mysteries without an occassional review of what has come before. Just as Cooper sits down to bring together everything they've discovered, so must the viewer. Twice, characters actually look through videotape to find something not immediately noticeable the first time through (Cooper finding the bike reflected in Laura's eye, Jacoby seeing the gazebo in the tape of Maddy as Laura). It is a series not of the television age, but of the video age.
One reviewer once referred to Agent Cooper as a "holy fool." There are quiet hints that he may, in fact, be a kind of savior-hero. The white horse often symbolizes the coming of the savior-hero. Outside the interrogration room, where the BOB-possessed Leland is held, we see a shot of Cooper. Behind him on the wall is a half-hidden word.  All we can read of it is "king." Later, we hear of (and see) Glastonberry Grove�with connections to King Arthur (who of course had a Round Table, partaking of the imagery of the circle).  Windom Earle says that "the King must die." A reference to the chess game, to be sure, but also something more? In Fire Walk With Me, Philip Jeffries points at Agent Cooper and asks, "Who do you think this is there?" It is undoubtedly important that it is Cooper who stands at Laura's side at the end of the film. This is not necessarily to say that Cooper is King Arthur, or the King of Kings. It may just be Lynch's way of creating an aura, a mystique about Agent Cooper, who surely is a critically important figure.  The Arthurian link is interesting in light of Merlin being trapped in a tree�Josie's wood image, the Log Lady's log, etc.
The three official books relating to Twin Peaks are not necessarily able to be fully integrated into what the series and film have shown us. But that may not be the point. They are other clues.  Again, they are not there only to capitalize on the short-lived phenomenon, but to provide to the attentive and investigative reader more stones along the path.
I recall realizing at the time that the dream Cooper relates to Harry and Lucy is not the one we saw. Later, I learned that what he relates is, in fact, the ending to the European-released feature film built out of the pilot. But we often remember our dreams differently than we experienced them.
The One-Armed Man says that he took off his left arm after he "saw the face of God, and was purified." The left arm, the sinister arm, his evil. The Little Man From Another Place is the arm, is the evil. "With this ring," the Little Man says, "I thee wed." Teresa Banks' left arm once went numb, just before "her time." The ring (with the symbol from Owl Cave) is worn on the ring finger of the left hand, like a wedding ring. So why does Laura put on the ring in the train car? And why does The One-Armed Man throw it in?
Why is the symbol Cooper creates by combining the tattoos of the Log Lady and Major Briggs not, in fact, made up of those tattoos?  The tattoo we were shown to be the Major's is three triangles, but what Cooper draws uses three diamonds. A mistake, or did someone decide after the fact that they wanted to change what Briggs' tattoo was?
The One-Armed Man and the Little Man From Another Place tell BOB to "give me back all my garmonbozia (pain and sorrow)." BOB sucks the blood off of the hovering Leland Palmer with his right hand, and shoots it onto the floor of the Lodge, which absorbs it. Why is it The One-Armed Man's pain and sorrow? Or is it somehow his fault that all this is going on? But he screams at Leland Palmer on the street that "it's all your fault."
Who is Judy? Philip Jeffies says that "we're not going to talk about Judy at all." She must be important. The last word we hear, spoken by the monkey, is a whispered "Judy." If it's a reference, the only one I can find is Punch and Judy. Actually, the tale of Punch and Judy is quite interesting, and could be the reference intended. But I'm not sure at all how it fits.
DAVID LYNCH: "Sometimes a jolt of electricity at a certain point of your life is helpful. It forces you a little bit more awake."
DAVID LYNCH: "Believing in darkness and confusion is really interesting to me, but behind it you can rise out of that and see things the way they really are. That there is some sort of truth to the whole thing if you could just get to tht point where you could see it, and live it, and feel it. I think it's a long, long way off. In the meantime, there's suffering and darkness and confusion and absurdities, and it's people kind of going in circles. It's fantastic. It's like a strange carnival: It's a lot of fun, but it's a lot of pain."
The white light appears with the Giant, the white horse, and with the Little Man as he dances on the bed after Josie's death.
The story of Punch and Judy. "The story roughly in its present form is attributed to an Italian comedian, Silvio Fiorillo (about 1600), and it appeared in England about the time of the Restoration.  Punch, in a fit of jealousy, strangles his infant child, whereupon his wife Judy belabours him with a bludgeon until he retaliates and beats her to death. He flings both bodies into the street, but is arrested and shut up in prison whence he escapes by mean of a golden key. The rest is an allegory showing how the light-hearted Punch triumphs over (1) Ennui, in the shape of a dog; (2) Disease, in the disguise of a doctor; (3) Death, who is beaten to death; and (4) the Devil himself, who is outwitted. In subsequent English versions, Jack Ketch, instead of hanging Punch, gets hanged himself."
Pleased as punch: "Greatly delighted. Punch is always singing with self-satisfaction at the success of his evil actions." Doesn't the BOB-possessed Leland sing a lot after the murders of Laura and Maddy? Again, not of direct signifiance, but perhaps another cultural reference of thematic import.
The name Dale is from the Anglo-Saxon meaning "a dweller in a vale between hills." The word dale is a synonym for valley, the "low land lying between hills or mountains." Does Special Agent Dale Cooper occupy an important position between two worlds? Between love and fear, between life and death, between the White Lodge and the Black Lodge, between spirit and flesh, between this world and the next? The still-point in a tumultuous world?
Incidentally, the names Mike and Michael are from the Hebrew meaning "who is like God." The name Laura is from the Latin meaning "the laurel," which is a symbol of victory.
Digressing for one moment into The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer (which may or may not mesh with the series and film): Laura defines BOB as "Beware of BOB"�a recursive definition, again echoing of the circle motif.
In the end, knowledge of the specifics is probably unimportant. The reality is that, even without such knowledge, it is clear that there are strange, coincidental, interconnected things going on in Twin Peaks (and in Twin Peaks). In life, if you stare at the world long and hard enough you begin to see patterns�some real, some imagined. The main thing in TP is that we notice that there are indeed patterns. Then we have a choice: Investigate carefully to understand the patterns; or sit patiently as the patterns unfold for us over the long haul. But there was no long haul, because (re)viewers wouldn't apply themselves to either choice. The failure was not of the series but of its audience. The show had its weak links, but it was never as off track as many said. The problem was that everyone was fixated upon the mystery of who killed Laura Palmer, when the real mystery was much deeper, much greater, and more profound than that. As the Log Lady says in her introduction to the pilot, it is about "the mystery of life....It encompasses the All."
In the Log Lady's introduction to the second episode of Twin Peaks, she (in essence) chastizes the lazy viewer: "Do we have the time to learn the reasons behind the human being's varied behavior? I think not. Some take the time." So far, so good.
From Joseph Campbell's The Hero With a Thousand Faces (Part II, Chapter I): "As in dream, the images [in myth] range from the sublime to the ridiculous. The mind is not permitted to rest with its normal evaluations, but is continually insulted and shocked out of the assurance that now, at last, it had understood. Mythology is defeated when the mind rests solemnly with its favorite or traditional images, defending them as though they themselves were the messages that they communicate. These images are to be regarded as no more than shadows from the unfathomable reach beyond, where the eye goeth not, speech goeth not, nor the mind, nor even piety.  Like the trivialities of dream, those of myth are big with meaning." If only Campbell had lived to see Twin Peaks.
Leland describes for Cooper and Truman a memory of the man in the wanted poster (BOB) from his childhood summers at Pearl Lakes. He says the man lived next door. Of course, BOB couldn't have lived next door, because he's only a parasitic entity. The truth of things is probably that a neighbor up at Pearl Lakes was possessed by BOB, and abused Leland when he was a child. As an adult, Leland himself abuses his own daughter. Don't people call this kind of continuing child abuse the "cycle of violence"? Yet another intrusion of the circle motif.
This raises questions of who is responsible for violent and evil acts. Leland was victimized as a child, and went on to be a victimizer himself. This can bend back to Bobby's comments at Laura's funeral about who killed her�"You did, we all did." The continuing struggle between the influences of love and fear is matter for both individual and collective effort. Just as the townspeople of Twin Peaks ignored Laura's travails, so they probably kept their eyes closed to Leland's. When evil proves victorious, we are all in some way responsible.
BOB is, as Albert says, "the evil that men do." Or rather, he is a dramatic personification of the evil that men do. Words like representative and emblematic apparently don't mean much to the average critic/reviewer. Like in the Campbell quote, people were seeing the images and characters "as though they themselves were the messages that they communicate." When this kind of facile mentation occurs, "mythology is defeated."
Since it seems so indescribably unlikely that all of this "meaning" could have been clear to Lynch and Company from the beginning, maybe Lynch is right when he says that "ideas come from outside us ... as if they are being broadcast in the air and we tune into them, like our mind is a receiver." (An idea that is disturbingly reflected in the images of "wires in the air" in Fire Walk With Me.)
From a symbol dictionary: "Judy. One of a class of Macedonian fairies who destroy those they induce to dance with them. A personification of storm or wind."
From a book on goddesses: "Judy. See Vila."
From the same book: "Vila. One of the most powerful eastern European goddesses was called Samovila, Vila, or Judy according to the language of the people who pictured this woodland force as a fair-skinned winged woman with glistening garments and golden hair falling to her feet. She lived deep in the woods, where she guarded animals and plants as well as cleaning streams of rubble and assuring sufficient rainfall." While she may destroy men who kill the beasts of her forest, she will also befriend humans who wish to learn her skills.
With these things in mind, the references to a Judy in Fire Walk
With Me become very interesting. Particularly given the description
of Judy above, which resembles the angel Laura sees in the Black Lodge�a sequence not long after a monkey whispers, "Judy." In fact: A mouth eats corn, the monkey whispers the name, the scene shifts to the Red Room, and Laura sees the angel (or Judy?). If Lynch is not aware of all this, maybe he is receiving his ideas from somewhere out of the blue.
"You stole the corn!" screams The One-Armed Man at Leland Palmer.  According to one of the many symbol dictionaries, corn: Portends a quarrel; symbolizes abundance and harvest; is universally worshiped as the staff of life. Whatever is going on is perhaps a perversion of the natural order, an interruption of the cycle of life.
IRENE: "Out of all the people in the world, the best and the worst are drawn to a dead dog. Most turn away. Only those with the purest of heart can feel its pain. Somewhere in between, the rest of us struggle." In a way, this describes the spectrum of reaction to Lynch's work. His films (and TP) are like the mentioned dead dog.  Some (the worst) simply get off on the violence, sex, and strange allure. Others (the best, the purest of heart), see further�and understand. Still others (in between), just find confusion.
THE ONE-ARMED MAN/MIKE: "This is his true face. Few can see it: the gifted, and the damned."
On running the wrong way: At one point in Cooper's confrontation with the Lodge, he runs into a room where the Little Man points at him and admonishes, "Wrong way." Which brings up the piece by Martha Nochimson in Film Quarterly. It may be true that Cooper acts differently during his prolonged confrontation with Earle. Perhaps Cooper "began to run the wrong way" long before he entered the Lodge. Earle's machinations in Twin Peaks brought back into Cooper's mind his failings (Caroline's death; perhaps he even feels somehow responsible for Earle's madness). Cooper's still-unresolved self-doubt and self-fear over past events derails his giftedness.  By the time he is lured into the Lodge by Earle, he's just not ready in the way he needs to be.
COOPER: "What goes around comes around."
TRUMAN: "Round and round."

Malcom, when speaking of Evelyn and her husband, speaks of a cycle (her husband beats her, she breaks one of his possessions, he beats her, etc.).
Gertrude Jobes' Dictionary of Mythology, Folklore, and Symbols says that dwarves often steal corn. They also make rings (usually connected to fertility).
The message to Major Briggs from someone in the Black Lodge, via Sarah Palmer�from the Log Lady's husband? Or from Josie?
There is something important about Pete Martell that we never learned. In Access Guide to the Town, Pete is listed (along with the Log Lady and Agent Cooper) as a member of the Twin Peaks Theosophist Society. It is doubtful that any such group would have appeared in the series. Rather, it is the subject of theosophy that is important. An encyclopedia entry on theosophy reads: "Any philosophical system starting with mystical belief in the pervading force of infinite divinity (God) in the universe, with evil the result of man's devotion to finite goals. The Neoplatonists and Cabalists had theosophical systems, as did Jacob Boehme. More specifically, theosophy is the movement fostered by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky in the late 19thth cent., based largely on Indian philosophy and stressing the latent spiritual power of man, refined by various transmigration of the soul and enlightened by occult knowledge." A dictionary says that theosophy is "a religious system proposing to establish direct, mystical contact with the divine spirit." We can plainly see why the Log Lady and Agent Cooper would be connected to theosophy. But Pete Martell? Of course, we must remember that Pete Martell (along with Agent Cooper, an unidentified woman in the diner, and maybe even Harold Smith) experienced a shaky right hand. Perhaps Pete knew more about the mysteries of Twin Peaks than he let on. The fool often has knowledge others do not.
In the final episode, the again-sane Nadine Hurley seems afraid upon hearing the name Mike. Does Nadine know something about what lies beyond the fire? Is there a deeper meaning in her fear than simply being confused after being hit on the head with a sandbag?
EARLE: "I tell you, they have not died. Our hands clasp, yours and mine."
How does the Log Lady's warning�"Shut your eyes and you'll burst into flames."�relate to the other fire references? The meaning of the admonition is clear enough: Don't be blind to the truth. The town does nothing to help Laura, hence Bobby's accusation�"You want to know who killed her? You did. We all did."�at Laura's funeral. "There is a sadness in this world," the Log Lady says, "for ... we are ignorant of many beautiful things ... like the truth." Ignorance equals shutting your eyes? Sadness equals bursting into flames?
Does our ignorance arise from fear? Do we fear the truth, especially if it is a self-truth? The town is afraid to admit Laura's troubles because they reflect the larger troubles of the town itself. Cooper fears his failures, and runs from them (embodied by his shadow-self) instead of facing them down. "Look in the mirror," the Log Lady tells us.
"These creatures" or "these ideas" that "introduce themselves," to us, "but we swear we have met them somewhere before." The Log Lady says, "Yes." As if to suggest we have met them before. Where? "Look in the mirror," she tells us. "Some ideas," she says, "are destructive, some are constructive." Some of them "can arrive in the form of a dream." Dreams come from within. We speak to ourselves in our dreams. These ideas�they are our own. These creatures�we have met them somewhere before. In the mirror.
The Red Room is our collective dream. It is a place where what lies within us comes out to play.
"Some ideas arrive in the form of a dream," says the Log Lady. As Leland lays dying, he recalls to Cooper how BOB came to him in a dream when he was a child, and asked him if he wanted to play.  Earlier, he tells Cooper and Truman that the long-haired man in the wanted poster would flick matches at him when he was a child, asking, "Do you want to play with fire, little boy?" James tells Truman much the same thing, except it came from Laura: "Do you want to play with fire, little boy? Do you want to play with BOB?"
PHILIP JEFFRIES: "Well now, I'm not goin' to talk about Judy. In fact, we're not goin' to talk about Judy at all, we're gonna leave her out of this. Who do you think this is there? I sure as hell want to tell you everything, but I don't have a whole lot to go on.  Oh, believe me, I fought 'em. It was a dream. We lived inside a dream. We lived above a convenience store. Listen and and listen carefully. I been to one of their meetings. [unintelligible] I found something. And then there they were."
Was Jeffries an agent? Or someone else somehow once involved with the FBI? Cole says he's been gone nearly 20 years�or is it 2?  How long did it feel to Jeffries?
During the ravings of Philip Jeffries, we see a shot of BOB and the Little Man From Another Place walking away through the curtains of the Red Room. Why those two together? They are also seen sitting together at the green formica table.
MRS. TREMOND'S GRANDSON: "Fell a victim." Said as he seemingly points in BOB's direction.
As Jeffries says "and then there they were," we see a shot of a mask being pulled away to reveal the monkey's face�a moment earlier, it was the Grandson pulling the mask away from his own face.
MRS. TREMOND'S GRANDSON: "The man behind the mask is looking for the book with the pages torn out." Is BOB the man behind the mask, or is Leland? One of them is the mask, one is the man behind the mask. The Grandson is wearing a mask, white with a long nose� which recalls the Jumping Man wearing white face paint and a long nose. And the Grandson is seen holding some sort of stick/staff thing, also seen in the possession of the Jumping Man.
There are two ways to look at it. One: Since BOB is who Laura is seeing, he is the mask and Leland is the man behind the mask. Two:
Since BOB is the "wild man," from deep within us and the world, he is the man behind the mask, and the normal-seeming Leland is the mask.
LITTLE MAN: "With this ring I thee wed." Seemingly said to BOB, who is sitting across the table from him.
LOG LADY: "When this kind of fire starts, it is very hard to put out. The tender boughs of innocence burn first. And the wind rises.  And then all goodness is in jeopardy." Said to Laura Palmer, her hand on Laura's forehead.
From The New Yorker (Dec. 17, 1990): "[Catherine] Coulson explained that the log connects the Log Lady to her dead husband and to other worlds."
If Twin Peaks is a myth, what is it telling us? That the world spins on an axis of love and fear. That this life is filled with things dark and heinous, and if we close our eyes to them then All is lost. That there is both individual and collective responsibililty. That we must face the Truth, most of all about ourselves. 
The song Julee Cruise sings ("Questions in a World of Blue") is clearly related to the rest of the film, and to the emotional state of Laura Palmer during the scene at hand. To take a single example:
The word "blue" is significant. At the airport early in the film, Lil's rose is blue. Consulting a few symbol dictionaries reveals that a blue rose symbolizes the impossible, or the unattainable.  The color blue stands for truth�questions in a world of truth?
The shifting patterns of the repeated close-up of a television screen are blue, and relate to the occultish goings-on (the impossible). After the encounter with The One-Armed Man in his truck, Leland cries: "A man like that, coming out of the blue!"
Come to think of it, the mysterious poem essentially speaks of trying to know the Truth, to recognize the All.
In the series, the Log Lady says that her husband was a logging man. In Access Guide to the Town, it says he was a fire fighter.  Why the discrepancy?
The Log Lady's husband gave her the log on their wedding night. He gave her the jar of oil ("an opening to a gateway") just before he died.
It is important to notice that Dr. Jacoby eventually corrects himself, saying that he smelled burnt engine oil not in the hospital (when Leland killed Jacques Renault) but in the park (where Jacoby was attacked). This means two things: 1) Leland, not the BOB-possessed Leland, killed Jacques Renault; and 2) The heavy-breathing man, the man who attacked Jacoby, was Leland�in fact, the BOB-possessed Leland. We saw him earlier, sitting in the dark and looking rather evil, watching unseen as Maddy left the house to go to the gazebo in Easter Park. He followed her, and hid in the bushes to watch.
BOB can be "let in" in a couple of ways. Leland was taken as a child, when BOB was "in" a neighbor at Pearl Lakes. BOB also came to him in dreams. But BOB can also "take" you if you physically visit the Black Lodge, as Cooper does in the final episode. But the whole of the series and film suggests that the tale about the White and Black Lodges related to Cooper by Hawk is not entirely true.  From what we have seen, death is a release from the trials and travails of the material world and the influence of BOB. At the end of the film, we do not see Laura having to confront the Dweller on the Threshold. Instead, she is visited by an angel, who has not gone away after all. It is only while in this earthly life that we are subject to the ravages of what BOB and the Black Lodge represent: Our baser selves. As Leland lay dying, he says he sees Laura, beautiful and welcoming. Death is the passage out of a life filled with things both dark and heinous. The confrontation with the Dweller on the Threshold (shadow self) is one we live out in this world, not in the next. The next world frees us from the bonds of this confrontation: Laura sees the angel, Leland sees Laura� and both are liberated. The concerns of this world have no relation to the one beyond the wall of death. They are inextricably a part of our earthly existence alone.
All of this has significance in the question of whether the Log Lady's husband is actually dead, or merely in the Lodge.
"The fire I speak of is not a kind fire." Is it those things both dark and heinous in the world? Does the peace and beauty and truth and welcoming encountered by Leland and Laura lie "beyond the fire"? Does "fire walk with me" mean a surrender to these things both dark and heinous? Is the Lodge between two worlds? In a Project Blue Book videotape, Windom Earle speaks of the Dugpas (or is it Dugbas?), sorcerers who were seeking access to the powers of the Black Lodge. Are they the magicians who "long[s] to see"? To have the fire walk with you means to give yourself up to the darkness, to surrender to our baser selves. To go "beyond the fire" means turning to love, not fear? We can do this in our earthly life. But it also exists naturally for everyone beyond the fire� as Laura finds.
MIKE once said that BOB had been his familiar. This suggests that MIKE was a magician of some sort�perhaps the magician of the poem, perhaps a Dugpa. The Dugpas were searching for access to the power of the Black Lodge. The magician of the poem longs to see through the darkness of futures past�in other words, into the All (a transcendent knowledge kept from mere mortals, perhaps "beyond the fire"). Is this why MIKE speaks tells BOB to "give me back all my pain and sorrow"? Did MIKE, as a Dugpa, open the gateway into the Lodge? And now he works to undo what he has done?  Familiars are often spirit-possessed animals. BOB is our baser, animalistic part. This might explain why, in the film, BOB and the Little Man From Another Place are shown together. The Little Man, being the Arm (MIKE's sinister energies which he abandoned when he "saw the face of God and was purified"), is aligned with BOB, being the darkness within us all (or at least being a parasite feeding on that darkness should we let him in). But still the question remains: Why, then, does The One-Armed Man throw the ring into the traincar�given Cooper's warning to Laura not to take it, which suggests it binds one to the sinister force of the Little Man. If BOB is just the darkness within each of us: The LIttle Man telling BOB "with this ring I thee wed" suggests that the ring signifies a bond between our own darkness and the Arm. So, again, why would The One-Armed Man throw the ring into the train car if he is trying to stop BOB? Laura's putting on of the ring weds her to evil, presumably. Which then raises the question of why Leland is made to kill her. If she finally surrendered to BOB and the Arm (through the ring), why did she have to die?
Perhaps the poem can be divided into two parts. The first is about the magician wanting to see through the darkness of futures past.  The second speaks of there being one chance out between two worlds, which is to walk with the fire.
The Black Lodge/Red Room lies between two worlds: This one and the next.
Cycles. Just as the Dugpas once worked to gain access to the power of the Black Lodge, now the government is trying to do the same.  The battle that is drawing nigh is a recurring battle. The last time (or a previous time), MIKE was involved�and now, as a possessing spirit, he fights against the terrible powers held there.
"Maybe that's all BOB is," says Albert. "The evil that men do." And as we know from Shakespeare, "The evil that men do lives after them."
To move beyond the fire is to see beyond fear. Fire is fear and the things both dark and heinous it unleashes from within us. What lies beyond the fire? The All. What lies beyond fear? Love. "I'm talking about seeing beyond fear," says Cooper. "I'm talking about learning to look at the world with love."
"Fire," says the Log Lady, "is the devil hiding like a coward in the smoke." This too connects fire with fear and evil things.
Corn: The fertility of the earth; awakening life; life springing from death; abundance. To steal the corn, then, is to steal life� to interrupt life's cycle.
According to the J.C. Cooper book, the left side is the sinister, dark, illegitimate, inward-looking aspect. It represents the past.  The right side is the future, outward-going principle. The side of honor. In Christianity, at the Last Judgment the sheep are on the right hand and the goats on the left. The Little Man From Another Place is The One-Armed Man's left arm. At the end of the film, Laura sits at the right side of Cooper (the savior-hero).
Also according to the J.C. Cooper book, "the ring is equated with the personality, and to bestow a ring is to transfer power, to plight a troth, to join the personalities." The One-Armed Man bestows the ring unto Laura in the train car. But for what reason?
The number six, according to the J.C. Cooper book, is equilibrium.  "It symbolizes the union of polarity." Also: Love, health, beauty, chance, luck. Perfect balance. A "6" appears on the telephone pole in the Fat Trout trailor park that Agent Desmond seems to take as a clue�it turns him around toward the trailor of Mrs. Chalfont, where he finds the ring and disappears. To the Chinese, there are six senses�the mind being the sixth. The telephone pole, of course, is connected to "wires in the air."
Again according to the J.C. Cooper book, the black dog is "sorcery, diabolical powers, the damned." It also "has the qualities of a fire-bringer and master of fire." An image of a black dog barking appears in the road confrontation between The One-Armed Man and Leland Palmer. In flashback (not long after), we see Leland fleeing a motel where he has just seen Laura. Mrs. Tremond's Grandson hops around the parking lot in a circle, wearing the mask. The soundtrack speaks: "The black dog runs at night." A black dog brings misfortune.
The One-Armed Man, possessed by MIKE, speaks of BOB having been his familiar. Familiars are often in the form of animals (spirit-possessed animals). Whenever this was, could MIKE's familiar have been a black dog?
So, MIKE was some kind of magician in search of a source of evil power. Having found it, he and BOB�his familiar, possibly in the form of a black dog�killed together. Eventually, MIKE saw the face of God and was purified. He cut off his left arm (his sinister and evil side, whose energies now reside in the Black Lodge, in the form of the Little Man From Another Place), and devoted himself to stopping BOB�and atoning for his past deeds. This is why The One-Armed Man tells BOB to "give me back all my garmonbozia (pain and sorrow)." But he says this apparently in relation to what has been done by BOB/Leland. How are these deeds specifically the fault of MIKE?
Collective responsibility and action. "You want to know who killed her? You did. We all did." The town could have saved Laura. The people around Leland could have saved him when he was a child. "The best thing in our lives and we did it together." What happens if we ignore the truth? "Shut your eyes and you'll burst into flames."
Mrs. Tremond's Grandson is dressed like an FBI agent: Black suit, dark tie, light shirt, etc. "Behind all things are reasons." This included?
JACOBY: "The problems of our entire society are of a sexual nature." Dancing can be a symbol of fertility. Fire can represent the libido, sexual fertility, forbidden passions. A forest can speak of fertility as well. A monkey can symbolize sexual desires.  The orchid has sexual connotations. The pine can represent virility. A ring can symbolize the female genitals, as well as (again) fertility). "Twin peaks" is (among other things) a sexual joke.
According to A.E. Abbot's Encyclopaedia of Numbers, the number 6 indicates "that man's spiritual path lies in the balance of the spiritual and the physical, the external and the transitory. It represents harmony, proportion, co-operation, and implies order and harmony brought to manifestation."
Harold Smith, shut-in and raiser of orchids, says that he "grew up in books." He gathers people's stories into a "living novel." According to the J.C. Cooper book, the orchid can represent "the scholar in seclusion."
GIANT: "One and the same." Martha Nochimson, in her Film Quarterly piece, says that this is the Giant telling Cooper that he and the Little Man are "one and the same." But to me it seems as if he is saying that he and the Old Waiter are "one and the same." After all, the Giant appears right in the exact spot where, a split moment before, the Old Waiter was standing. They are dressed similarly. And one often appears in the same location as the other.
"I am my own judge," the Log Lady tells us. This is what happens to Cooper in the Lodge. He judges himself. His fate is entirely in his own hands: Face his shadow-self (love); or run from it (fear). It is the choice we all face. The long confrontation with Earle brings into sharp focus Cooper's unresolved feelings of past failure. In essence and effect, Cooper was running from his shadow-self from the moment Earle arrived in Twin Peaks.
The Log Lady's introductions continue to leave open the question of whether the evil in Twin Peaks comes from within or without. Ideas that introduce themselves, speaking so strangely (like in the Red Room). Ideas that arrive in the form of a dream. Creatures who introduce themselves, but we swear we have seen them before. In the mirror. All the characters in our dreams. Just aspects of ourselves? In truth, BOB may indeed be an external force. But he cannot do as he pleases. We must let him in. How? He takes advantage of our weakness if we fail to face ourselves. If we fail to face the truth. "Shut your eyes and you'll burst into flames."
The Log Lady knows in her heart if the answers to her questions are correct. Not in her mind, but in her heart. The seat of "understanding (as opposed to reasoning)."
The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language defines a myth as "a traditional, typically ancient story dealing with supernatural beings, ancestors, or heroes that serves as a fundamental type in the world view of a people, as by explaining aspects of the natural world or delineating the psychology, customs, or ideals of society."
"Have you ever seen," the Log Lady asks us, "something startling that others cannot see?" Few people saw the startling somethings that were the true mysteries of Twin Peaks.
The One-Armed Man and the Little Man From Another Place ask BOB to "give me back all my garmonbozia (pain and sorrow)." BOB takes the blood from Leland's floating body and shoots it onto the floor of the Red Room, which absorbs it. We see a mouth sucking up creamed corn from a spoon. Important: Earlier, we saw a whole bowl of corn on the formica table. But here it is only a spoonful. The return of the stolen corn (stolen by BOB) is not yet fully achieved.
In the series, Donna witnesses Mrs. Tremond's Grandson performing a magic trick with creamed corn. This is the same scene in which he speaks (in French), "I am a lonely soul"�words which later form the entirety of Harold Smith's suicide note. Donna takes Harold's use of these words as a clue and goes with Agent Cooper to the Tremond house (where, of course, the resident knows nothing about what Donna is talking about). This bolsters the idea that Harold knew of the mysterious forces in Twin Peaks. Who knows what information resides within all those books he was keeping of people's lives.
Is the Little Man From Another Place in fact the MIKE that possesses The One-Armed Man? Or just the sinister energies of the once-living MIKE? Of course, the actor who plays the Little Man is named Michael (for whatever that's worth).
GIANT: "It is happening again." JULEE CRUISE: "The world spins." COOPER: "What goes around comes around." THE ONE-ARMED MAN: "The golden circle."
Mrs. Tremond and Mrs. Tremond's Grandson speak normally in the real world, but strangely above the convenience store. BOB speaks normally after Josie dies, but strangely when he takes Earle's soul (in the Lodge). The One-Armed Man speaks normally in the real world, but strangely in the Red Room. Earle speaks normally in the real world, but strangely in the Lodge. But Cooper speaks normally in both places.
The Log Lady speaks of "eyes that have no soul." In the Lodge, at the end of the series, Cooper encounters a number of dopplegangers (including his own) whose eyes are completely white.
DAVID LYNCH (on Twin Peaks): "It's like sex and it takes time."
DAVID LYNCH (on Twin Peaks): "The thing is about secrets."
LOG LADY: "Where does creamed corn figure into the workings of the universe? What really is creamed corn? Is it a symbol for something else?" Here, we have the first confirmation that Lynch intends for some things to merely symbolize other things. Mrs. Tremond asks Donna if she sees "any creamed corn on that plate." There is creamed corn on the plate. Mrs. Tremond asks the same question again. There is no longer any corn on the plate. Instead, it is in the cupped hands of Mrs. Tremond's Grandson (but only for a moment). He's studying magic. The disappearance of the creamed corn in this scene represents the fact that the corn has been stolen (by BOB).
As Cooper dreams about the fact that "the owls are not what they seem" (told to him by the Giant, and later by the signals Major Briggs shows him), we see BOB, at the foot of Laura's bed, the image of an owl projected upon his face. Much later, after leland dies, after Truman asks where BOB is now, we see an owl flying out of a bright, white light.
While talking to Albert about ancient Asian history, Cooper speaks of his belief that events of the past are very much related to those of the present. The golden circle. The battle continues.  Circles and cycles.
Cooper realizes that Truman and Hank Jennings were once close friends. In fact, they grew up together. Hank was a Bookhouse Boy, one of the best. How much do the Bookhouse Boys really know about the mysteries of Twin Peaks (and, therefore, how much does Hank know)? What made Hank change from one of the best to one of the worst?
COOPER: "Buddhist tradition first came to the land of snow in the 5thth Century A.D. The first Tibetan king to be touched by the dharma was King [unintelligible]. He and succeeding kings were collectively know as the Happy Generations. Now some historians place them in a watersnake year, 213 A.D. Others in the year of the water ox, 173 A.D. Amazing isn't it? The Happy Generations." ALBERT: "Agent Cooper, I am thrilled to pieces that the dharma came to King Ho Ho Ho, I really am, but right now I'm trying hard to focus on the more immediate problems of our own century right here in Twin Peaks."
COOPER: "Albert, you'd be surprised at the connections between the two."
MRS. TREMOND'S GRANDSON (to Donna): "Sometimes things can happen just like this." He snaps his fingers. Mrs. Tremond takes the cover off of her plate. 
MRS. TREMOND: "Creamed corn. Do you see creamed corn on that plate?" Donna looks at the plate. There is creamed corn on it.  DONNA: "Yes."
MRS. TREMOND: "I requested no creamed corn. Do you see creamed corn on that plate?" Donna looks again at the plate. There is no creamed corn on it.
DONNA: "No." The creamed corn is is the cupped hands of Mrs.
Tremond's Grandson.
MRS. TREMOND: "My grandson is studying magic." DONNA: "That's nice." Mrs. Tremond's Grandson folds his hands on his lap. The corn is gone.
LOG LADY: "You wear shiny objects on your chest."
MAJOR BRIGGS: "Yes I do."
LOG LADY: "Are you proud?"
MAJOR BRIGGS: "No, achievement is its own reward. Pride obscures it. Cream?"
LOG LADY: "My log had something to tell you. Do you know it?"
MAJOR BRIGGS: "I don't believe we've been introduced."
LOG LADY: "I do not introduce the log. Can you hear it?"
MAJOR BRIGGS: "No, ma'am, I cannot."
LOG LADY: "I will translate. 'Deliver the message.' Do you understand?"
MAJOR BRIGGS: "Yes, ma'am, as a matter of fact I do."
COOPER: "How long were you and Hank friends?"
TRUMAN: "We grew up together. Hank used to be a Bookhouse Boy. Back then, Hank was one of the best of us."
LELAND (looking at the police sketch of BOB): "I know him. My grandfather's summer house, on Pearl Lakes. He lived right next door. I was just a little boy. But I know him."
JERRY: "Is this real, Ben? Or some strange and twisted dream?"
MAJOR BRIGGS: "Well, I may reveal this much. Among my many tasks is the maintenance of deep space monitors, aimed at galaxies beyond our own. We routinely receive various communications. Space garbage to decode and examine. They look something like this. Radio waves and gibberish, Agent Cooper. Till Thursday night. Friday morning, to be exact."
COOPER: "Around the time that I was shot."
MAJOR BRIGGS: "The readout took us by surprise. Row after row of gibberish, and all of a sudden, 'The owls are not what they seem.'" COOPER: "Why did you bring this to me?"
MAJOR BRIGGS: "Because, later in the morning, 'Cooper. Cooper.
Cooper.'"
COOPER: "My God."
ALBERT: "Senor droolcup has, shall we say, a mind that wanders." Speaking of the Old Waiter at the Great Northern Hotel. Hawk once told Cooper of his belief in "a dream soul that wanders."
The image of a ring of fire was originally meant to appear at least twice in the film, but didn't make it for technical reasons.
The sound of the revolving ceiling fan resembles the sound of the owl's beating wings.
According to J.C.J. Metford's Dictionary of Christian Lore and
Legend, the owl "stood for the Devil who ensnares souls." Also:
"Black dogs are the familiars of witches." Also from Metford:
Michael "defeated Lucifer when he revolted against God." Michael "rescues souls from Limbo." Still from Metford: Limbo is "the outskirts of Hell" where "the Just of the Ancient Law awaited their release by Christ." When Cooper first physically arrives in the Red Room (in the last episode of the series), the Little Man From Another Place tells him that "this is the waiting room." The Red Room is neither this world nor the next, but a place "between two worlds." It is Limbo.
"Is there a bigger being walking with all the stars within?" A reference, most likely, to the Giant. Is he part of Cooper? Or maybe his "spirit guide"? Hawk believes in several souls. Is the Giant Cooper's "dream soul" that wanders to the land of the dead?
Harold Smith looks furtively toward Mrs. Tremond's house as he's letting Donna in.
Does Teresa Banks have one green eye and one blue eye? If so, what's the significance?
ANNIE (to Laura): "My name is Annie. I've been with Dale and Laura.  The good Dale is in the Lodge and he can't leave. Write in in your diary."
Not only is Mrs. Tremond's Grandson dressed like an FBI agent, he's dressed strikingly like Gordon Cole.
"The Black Dog Runs at Night" plays when we see Mrs. Tremond's Grandson wearing the mask and holding the stick. When Laura is given the picture, and when Leland is leaving the motel where he's just seen Laura and Ronette.
News from the Jobes book, on the number six. "Abundance, beauty, connubiality, consideration, harmony, interference, liberty, love, marriage, mercy, peace, pleasure, polarity, reciprocity, reliability, spirituality, symmetry. When debased, entanglement, seduction, strife, vice. Pythagorean number of life and good fortune. By sporting men considered to be unlucky.... Deity attributes: justice, love, majesty, mercy, power, wisdom. By mystics called the Teacher. It's nature is cooperative, and it controls artists. Under its influence are a blend of the intellect and emotional. Equalizing in effect. Corresponds to the color blue.... It produces a character that is considerate, idealistic, optimistic, peace-loving. In a name or cycle denotes the need to assume a responsibility other than one's own." Interesting that it corresponds to the color blue.
BEN: "What's the greatest gift that one human being can give to another? The future."
========================================

THE POSSIBLE SYMBOLOGIES OF TWIN PEAKS
(Drawn from: J.C. Cooper's An Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Traditional Symbols; J.C.J. Metford's Dictionary of Christian Lore and Legend; and Gertrude Jobes' Dictionary of Mythology, Folklore, and Symbols.)
ANGEL: spiritual influence acting upon the earth; messenger of God;
saintliness; sweetness
BLUE FLOWER: spiritual happiness; magical or special powers
BLUE ROSE: the impossible; faithful unto death; martial honor
CIRCLE: perfection; eternity; heaven; unity; limitlessness; a
cyclic process; the ultimate state of oneness; never ending
existence; a monogram of God; protection
DANCE, DANCING: the act of creation; a process; the desire for
escape; the passage of time; fertility; release from disagreeable
circumstances; war; victory; orgy; grief; joy; gratitude; sex;
protection; black magic
DUALITY: ambivalence; the physical and spiritual nature of all
things
DWARF: hidden forces of nature; the Father Spirit; the unexpected;
the unconscious; the instincts; ignorance; inferiority;
abnormality; possessor of supernatural powers; unpredictability
FINGER SNAPPING: disdain; peremptory command; the beginning or end
of an idea, cycle, process
FIR: fervor; power; patience; choice; elevation; constancy;
immortality; regeneration; fidelity; purity; regal beauty; pride;
fire; sun; hope; the androgyne; the elect who are in heaven; those
who excel in patience
FIRE: spiritual energy; the libido; fecundity; creation;
destruction; purification of evil; the soul; the creator god;
essence of life; the sun; authority; power; spiritual enlightenment
and zeal; sexual fertility; martyrdom; regeneration; forbidden
passions; war; the torments of Hell; Pentecost
FIRE, FLAME: transformation; purification; the lifegiving and
generative power of the sun; renewal of life; impregnation; power;
strength; energy; the unseen energy in existence; sexual power;
defence; protection; visibility; destruction; fusion; passion;
immolation; change or passage from state to another; the medium for
conveying messages or offerings heavenward
FLAME: transcendence; the Holy Spirit; wisdom; the soul; the
supreme deity; charity; love; religious zeal; martyrdom
FOREST: the female principle; the Great Mother; the unconscious;
danger; mistakes; problems; the obscurance of reason; fertility;
enchantment; hunting; the home of outlaws, fairies, supernatural
beings
GIANT: the unconscious; the forces of dissatisfaction; everlasting rebellion; despotism; evil; impending evil; the Terrible Father;
Universal Man; the father principle; quantitative simplification;
man before the Fall; the id; tyranny; protector of the common
people
HEART: love; will power; romantic love; love as the center of illumination and happiness; love of God; the seat of true intelligence; understanding (as opposed to reasoning)
INCEST: longing for the union with one's self; individuation;
corruption or perversion of the natural order
LEFT SIDE: associated with the past; the sinister; the repressed;
the illegitimate; the abnormal; involution; death; the unconscious;
introversion; the magical; the moon; clumsiness; awkwardness
MASK: dissimulation; ambiguity; equivocation; possesses a magic
quality; indication of what the wearer would like to be;
protection; hypocrisy; hollowness; attribute of the
personifications of Deceit; Vice; Night
MIRROR: imagination; thought; unconscious memories; consciousness; self-consciousness; self-realization; the ego; introspection; truth; wisdom; fertility; love; the soul; virginity; reflection of one's inner self, feelings, or emotions; attribute of the personification of Truth (especially a hand mirror)
MONKEY: sexual desires; imitation; maliciousness; unconscious
activity; the baser forces; pettiness; the sanguine temperament;
lasciviousness; flattery; hypocrisy; melancholy; pride; idle
foolishness; attribute of the personifications of Idolatry,
Dissimulation, Inconstancy, Avarice
MUSIC: order; harmony; a general restorative; related to fertility; harmony arising from chaos; the harmony of the universe; will; mockery; generally indicative of the prevailing atmosphere (chaotic, erotic, somber, etc.)
ORCHID: The orchid is named from the Greek word for a testicle, orchis, because its twin bulbs resemble testicles. French vernacular calls it testicule de pretre, "priest's testicle." In England it was "dog's stones." The Romans called the orchid satyrion and said that it grew from semen spilled on the ground by copulating satyrs, or else that the flowers grew from the scattered pieces of a satyr's son named Orchis, who was sacrificially killed and dismembered. Naturally, with all these associations with male sexuality, the orchid came to be regarded as a potency charm. Pliny said that holding the roots in one's hand would arose sexual desire, and that the flower should be given to rams and billy goats when they are "too sluggish." Parts of the orchid plant were common ingredients in love potions. When a man gave a woman an orchid as a gift, in the language of flowers he expressed his intention to seduce her. Is it then so strange that in our own society the orchid has been considered the most desirable of floral gifts?
PINE: immortality; longevity; virility; victory; grief; endurance;
pity; philosophy; gloominess; punishment; associated with Saturn,
Capricorn
RING: continuity; wholeness; marriage; an eternally repeated cycle;
delegation of authority; a contract; union; the female genitals;
power; bond; slavery; fertility; female love; authenticity;
justice; legitimacy; invisibility; mourning; eternity; partakes of
the symbolism of the circle
SYCAMORE: abundance; variety; curiosity; wisdom; love
TATTOO: a rite of entry; declaration of allegiance to what is
signified by the mark; a "turning point" in a man's life; has
magical properties; a cosmic activity; protection; sacrifice;
mystic allegiance; counter-magic; adornment
TWELVE: universal order; salvation; perfection; completeness; holiness; harmony; power; justice; temperance; beauty; grace;
mildness
TWIN MOUNTAIN PEAKS: duality
TWINS: two opposites that have a complementary function (life/death, sunrise/sunset, etc.)
WHITE HORSE: innocence; intellect; reason; celestial knowledge; the
Divine Word; the conquering Christian; the pure and perfect higher
mind; the hero's steed; imagination; dawn; manhood
WILD MAN: primeval force; the primitive, instinctive, baser part of
the personality; the unconscious in its perilous and regressive
aspect
WOOD: wisdom; mother; life and death; celestial goodness in its
lowest corporeal plane
========================================

THE MYSTERIES OF TWIN PEAKS AS REVEALED BY THE LOG LADY
AND SOME RUMINATIONS ON WHAT HER REVELATIONS MIGHT MEAN
 

PILOT
Welcome to Twin Peaks. My name is Margaret Lanterman. I live in Twin Peaks. I am known as the Log Lady. There is a story behind that. There are many stories in Twin Peaks. Some of them are sad, some funny. Some are stories of madness, of violence. Some are ordinary. Yet they all have about them a sense of mystery. The mystery of life. Sometimes the mystery of death. The mystery of the woods, the woods surrounding Twin Peaks. To introduce this story, let me just say it encompasses the All. It is beyond the fire, though few would know that meaning. It is a story of many, but it begins with one. And I knew her. The one leading to the many is Laura Palmer. Laura is the one.
[Important here are the references to mystery. Life and death. It
"encompasses the All," as every myth must do.]

EPISODE 001
I carry a log, yes. Is it funny to you? It is not to me. Behind all things are reasons. Reasons can even explain the absurd. Do we have the time to learn the reasons behind the human being's varied behavior? I think not. Some take the time. Are they called detectives? Watch, and see what life teaches.
[Important here is that "behind all things are reasons." The
statement that "some take the time" can be seen as a criticism of
the failure of the audience to adequately apply themselves.]

EPISODE 002
Sometimes ideas, like men, jump up and say, "Hello?" They introduce themselves, these ideas, with words? Are they words? These ideas speak so strangely. All that we see in this world is based on someone's ideas. Some ideas are destructive, some are constructive.  Some ideas can arrive in the form of a dream. I can say it again.
Some ideas arrive in the form of a dream.
[Important here is that "all that we see in this world is based on someone's ideas." But are they someone else's ideas, or our own?
The mention of "a dream" not only refers to the dream at the end of
this episode, but to the connections between dreams and the real
mystery. Much later in the series, the dying Leland recalls that
BOB came to him in a dream and asked him if he wanted to play.]

EPISODE 003
There is a sadness in this world, for we are ignorant of many things. Yes, we are ignorant of many beautiful things. Things like the truth. So sadness in our ignorance is very real. The tears are real. What is this thing called a tear? There are even tiny ducts, tear ducts, to produce these tears should the sadness occur. Then the day when the sadness comes, then we ask, "Will this sadness which makes me cry, will this sadness that makes me cry my heart out, will it ever end?" The answer of course is yes. One day the sadness will end.
[Bobby tells the townspeople gathered for Laura's funeral that they
all killed her. By pretending there was nothing wrong with her,
they share responsibility for her death. The assurance that "one
day the sadness will end" could refer not only to simple emotional
grief, but to the passage out of this life's travails�as happens
to Laura in the film.]

EPISODE 004
Even the ones who laugh are sometimes caught without an answer.  These creatures who introduce themselves, but we swear we have met them somewhere before. Yes? Look in the mirror. What do you see? Is it a dream? Or a nightmare? Are we being introduced against our will? Are they mirrors? I can see the smoke. I can smell the fire.  The battle is drawing nigh.
[Is the use of the word laugh related to the previous mention of
sadness? Or is it a reference to those people who give a knowing
laugh, certain that they have figured things out, only to be
"caught without an answer" after all? The "creatures who introduce
themselves" are surely the same as the earlier ideas that introduce
themselves. Which makes us wonder if these creatures aren't, after
all, merely part of ourselves. "Are we being introduced against our
will?" Is BOB, after all, only "the evil that men do?" And the
proclamation that "the battle is drawing nigh" reflects the
possibility of a coming mythological confrontation between good and
evil, love and fear.]

EPISODE 005
I play my part on life's stage. I tell what I can to form the perfect answer. But that answer cannot come before all are ready to hear. So I tell what I can to form the perfect answer. Sometimes my anger at the fire is evident. Sometimes it is not anger, really. It may appear as such, but could it be a clue? The fire I speak of is not a kind fire.
["All the world's a stage." But for whose play? Here the Log Lady
reinforces the truth of her importance. But who is not ready to
hear? People in the show, or those watching? How is her anger a
clue? If it's not anger, what is it? Remember: "Fire is the devil,
hiding like a coward in the smoke."]

EPISODE 006
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, yet there are those who open many eyes. Eyes are the mirror of the soul, someone has said. So we look closely at the eyes to see the nature of the soul. Sometimes when we see the eyes, those horrible times when we see the eyes, eyes that...that have no soul, then we know a darkness. Then we wonder, "Where is the beauty?" There is none, if the eyes are soulless.
[Earlier, we are told that the sadness in the world comes from our ignorance of many beautiful things like the truth. So truth is beautiful. And beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Is truth to be found there also? If there is no beauty where the eyes are soulless, then is there also no truth there? Those who open many eyes�are these eyes their own, or those of others? Are they those who see with many eyes, or those who open the eyes of others?
"Shut your eyes and you'll burst into flames." In the last episode,
Cooper encounters a number of dopplegangers whose eyes are
completely white�soulless?]

EPISODE 007
A drunken man walks in a way that is quite impossible for a sober man to imitate, and vice versa. An evil man has a way. No matter how clever, to the trained eye his way will show itself. Am I being too secretive? No. One can never answer questions at the wrong moment. Life, like music, has a rhythm. This particular song will end with three sharp sounds, like deathly drumbeats.
[This seems to be another suggestion that we pay close attention.  Also, that "one can never answer questions at the wrong moment" recalls that the perfect answer "cannot come before all are ready to hear." It is something of another admonishment aimed at those viewers who became impatient. Life, music, and this series all have rhythms. And they cannot be rushed. "Don't search for all the answers at once. A path is formed by laying one stone at a time."
Cooper will hear these words in the next episode.]

EPISODE 2.001
Hello again. Can you see through a wall? Can you see through human skin? X-rays see through solid, or so-called solid, objects. There are things in life that exist, and yet our eyes cannot see them.  Have you ever seen something startling that others cannot see? Why are some things kept from our vision? Is life a puzzle? I am filled with questions. Sometimes my questions are answered. In my heart, I can tell if the answer is correct. I am my own judge. In a dream, are all the characters really you? Different aspects of you? Do answers come in dreams? One more thing. I grew up in the woods. I understand many things because of the woods. Trees standing together. Growing alongside one another, providing so much. I chew pitch gum. On the outside, let's say of the ponderosa pine, sometimes pitch oozes out. Runny pitch is no good to chew. Hard, brittle pitch is no good. But in between these exists a firm, slightly crusted pitch, with such a flavor. This is the pitch I chew.
[She knows in her heart if the answers to her questions are
correct. The heart. The seat of understanding (as opposed to
reasoning). "I am my only judge," she says. As Cooper will be his
own judge in the Lodge. As we are all our own judges. Once again,
she leaves open the question of whether these ideas or creatures or
characters that come to us in our dreams are external or internal
forces. The lesson to learn from trees that stand together,
providing so much? "The best thing in our lives and we did it
together."]

EPISODE 2.002
As above, so below. The human being finds himself, or herself, in the middle. There is as much space outside the human, proportionately, as inside. Stars, moons, and planets remind us of protons, neutrons, and electrons. Is there a bigger being walking with all the stars within? Does our thinking affect what goes on outside us, and what goes on inside us? I think it does. Where does creamed corn figure into the workings of the universe? What really is creamed corn? Is it a symbol for something else? 
[Finding ourselves in the middle. Pitch that is in between runny
and hard. "One chance out between two worlds." The tensions between
love and fear inside us all. Here, we find the first confirmation
that one thing can symbolize something else.]

EPISODE 2.003
Letters are symbols. They are building blocks of words, which form our languages. Languages help us communicate. Even with complicated languages used by intellgent people, misunderstanding is a common occurance. We write things down sometimes�letters, words� hoping they will service in those with whom we wish to communicate.  Letters and words, calling out for understanding.
[Letters and words. Letters under the fingernails of BOB's victims.
Words on the pages of Laura's secret diary. Misunderstanding, not
only among the citizens of Twin Peaks, but among the viewers of
Twin Peaks.]

EPISODE 2.004
Miscommunication sometimes leads to arguments, and arguments sometimes lead to fights. Anger is usually present in arguments and fights. Anger is an emotion, usually classified as a negative emotion. Negative emotions can cause severe problems in our environment, and to the health of our body. Happiness, usually classified as a positive emotion, can bring good health to our body, and spread positive vibrations into our environment.  Sometimes when we are ill, we are not on our best behavior. By ill I mean any of the following: physically ill, emotionally ill, mentally ill, and/or spiritually ill.
[The subject of anger is raised again. The relationship between the
inside world and the outside world, their interplay. Emotions and
the well-being of both worlds.]

EPISODE 2.005
Sometimes nature plays tricks on us, and we imagine we are something other than what we truly are. Is this a key to life in general, or the case of the two-headed schizophrenic? Both heads thought the other was following itself. Finally, when one head wasn't looking, the other shot the other right between the eyes and, of course, killed himself.
[Is this more suggestion that BOB is simply "the evil that men do"?
That we may think we are not in control, but in fact we are?]

EPISODE 2.006
Sometimes we want to hide from ourselves. We do not want to be us.  It is too difficult to be us. It is at these times that we turn to drugs, or alcohol, or behavior to help us forget that we are ourselves. This of course is only a temporary solution to a problem which is going to keep returning, and sometimes these temporary solutions are worse for us than the original problem. Yes, it is a dilemma. Is there an answer? Of course there is. As a wise person said with a smile, "The answer is within the question."
[It remains unclear if BOB is an outside or an inside force.
Problems which keep returning, the golden circle, it is happening
again. The answer is within the question. It is within the
questioner.]

EPISODE 2.007
A poem as lovely as a tree: "As the night wind blows/The boughs move to and fro/The rustling/The magic rustling that brings on the dark dream/The dream of suffering and pain/Pain for the victim/Pain for the inflicter of pain/A circle of pain/A circle of suffering/Woe to the ones who behold the pale horse."
[Is this earthly life a dream of suffering and pain? Laura's was,
but she was released from it in death. Circles. Only Sarah Palmer
has seen the pale horse, so far as we know.]

EPISODE 2.008
Food is interesting. For instance, why do we need to eat? Why are we never satisfied with just the right amount of food to maintain good health and proper energy? We always seem to want more and more. When eating too much, the proper balance is disturbed and ill health follows. Of course, eating too little food throws the balance off in the opposite direction. Then there is the ill health coming at us again. Balance is the key. Balance is the key to many things. Do we understand balance? The word balance has seven letters. Seven is difficult to balance, but not impossible if we are able to divide. There are, of course, the pros and cons of division.
[Balance. Inside and outside. Runny and hard pitch. Love and fear.
BOB feeds on fear, and the pleasures, as we feed on food. But it is
our fear, and our pleasures, which draw him out into the world. So
it is up to us to maintain the balance of our lives. Creamed corn
is food. Did stealing the corn upset the cosmic balance? Why the
number seven? The numbers six and twelve appear in the series and
film, but seven? And just what are the pros and cons of division?]

EPISODE 2.009
So now the sadness comes, the revelation. There is a depression after an answer is given. It was almost fun not knowing. Yes, now we know. At least we know what we sought in the beginning. But there is still the question why. And this question will go on and on until the final answer comes. Then the knowing is so full, there is no room for questions.
[The sadness, the depression. Once we learned the answer to the
question�"Who killed Laura Palmer?"�too many thought there
was nothing left to learn, no mystery left to unravel. But there
was still the question why, a question that will go on and on, like
the golden circle. "Then the knowing is so full, there is no room
for questions." As Laura has no more questions at the end of the
film.]

EPISODE 2.010
Complications set in. Yes, complications. How many times have we heard, it's simple? Nothing is simple. We live in a world where nothing is simple. Each day, just when we think we have a handle on things, suddenly some new element is introduced and everything is complicated once again. What is the secret? What is the secret to simplicity, to the pure and simple life? Are our appetites, our desires, undermining us? Is the cart in front of the horse?
[Cooper has solved the mystery of who killed Laura Palmer, and is
to leave Twin Peaks. But the world has other plans, plans which
force him to remain. But, of course, he must remain, for it is
there that he will fufill his destiny.]

EPISODE 2.011
Is life like a game of chess? Are our present moves important for a future success? I think so. We paint our future with every present brush stroke. Painting. Colors. Shapes. Textures.  Composition. Repetition of shapes. Contrast. Let nature guide us.  Nature is the great teacher. Who is the principal? Sometimes jokes are welcome. Like the one about the kid who said, "I enjoyed school. It was just the principal of the thing."
[Repetition. Circles. If nature is the teacher, is Cooper the
principal? The principle of the thing is to not let our desires run
away with us. But we enjoy what our desires bring. So we would not
enjoy such a principle, or the principal who would show us.]

EPISODE 2.012
Is a dog man's best friend? I had a dog. The dog was large. It ate my garden, all the plants and much earth. The dog ate so much earth it died. It's body went back to the earth. I have a memory of this dog. The memory is all that I have left of my dog. He was black, and white.
[Was her dog the dog of Dead Dog Farm? Or the black dog of the film? Or something else entirely? Does she ask if a dog is man's best friend to impy that it is not? Her dog was black and white.
Like the chessboard. Like the twin lodges.]

EPISODE 2.013
My husband died in a fire. No one can know my sorrow. My love is gone. My dearest friend is gone. Yet, I feel him near me. Sometimes I can almost see him. At night when the wind blows, I think of what might have been. Again, I wonder why. When I see a fire, I feel my anger rising. This was not a friendly fire. This was not a forest fire. It was a fire in the woods. This is all I am permitted to say.
[She feels her husband near her. Her log is always near her. It was
not a forest fire, but a fire in the woods. This seeming
contradiction can only be a clue.]

EPISODE 2.014
The heart. It is a physical organ we all know. But how much more an emotional organ. This we also know. Love, like blood, flows from the heart. Are blood and love related? Does a heart pump blood as it pumps love? Is love the blood of the universe?
[The heart. Understanding, as opposed to reasoning. If love is the
blood of the universe, what is fear?]

EPISODE 2.015
A death mask. Is there a reason for a death mask? It is barely a physical resemblance. In death the muscles, so relaxed. The face so without the animating spark. A death mask is almost an intrusion on a beautiful memory. And yet, who could throw away the casting of a loved one? Who would not want to study it longingly? As the distant freight train blows its mournful tone.
[Clearly, it is the mask of Caroline she speaks of. But could she
as well be speaking of the white mask of the film? And what are we
to make of the freight train?]

EPISODE 2.016
A hotel. A nightstand. A drawer-pull on the drawer. A drawer-pull on the drawer of a nightstand, in the room of a hotel. What could possibly be happening, on or in this drawer-pull? How many drawer-pulls exist in this world? Thousands. Maybe millions. What is a drawer-pull? This drawer-pull�why is it featured so prominently in a life or in a death of one woman who was caught in a web of power? Can a victim of power end in any way connected to a drawer-pull? How can this be?
[Why the word "drawer-pull" instead of "handle"? At any rate,
clearly the linkage between Josie and the drawer-pull is connected
to the linkage between the log and Margaret's husband. Was he a
victim of power?]