Myths as a Psychodynamic Image

This is the entrance to the Yancheng Amusement Park in the southern part of Changzhou.  The appearance is a combination of Chinese myths, traditions and imagination.  This image is somehow "charged" with a pulse if one allows it to have a depth.  In constraining the image, it becomes just an arrangement of material with the intent to sell, sell, sell.  Yet, it can only "sell" an experience if it evokes something beyond the constructed material, the "face."  So, again, I am taken back to the image being "charged."

"An image is a structure capable of carrying energy and, when so charged, has the power to evoke energic response within us.  Like to like, or dissimilar to dissimilar, the evocation of something in us moves us whether we will it or not.  Our ancestors were right to personify love and rage as gods, for they are powerful possessions of the spirit by affectively charged experiences.  Whoever has been transported to the heights of ecstasy and plunged to the depths of despair has known the god who has already known him."  (Hollis, Mythologems, p. 10)

There is no doubt in my mind that this image is more about a dream state that is intentionally "talking" to me.  In the face-to-face experience of this scene, the living image draws not only the imagination, but often draws the body to enter into that dream state.  One is "invited" to enter into a land of myth, magic and . . .  It is easy to see this in action if one would only stop and look.  The looks on the faces of those about to enter this image, enter into a land of "make-believe" says it all.

I have been learning that the images are there, waiting for me to be ready to sense or intuit their presence and invite me into a dialogue that is impossible to put into words.  But sometimes, the images are so powerful that there is no invitation, only a compulsion as though the darkness within one's self is drawn to the fire of the image, into a collective darkness.  Is "love at first sight" one of these images that are more about darkness than light?  I wonder as in consummating this "love at first sight"one enters into a state of ecstasy an experience of a "little death."

So many questions that will never have answers for my limited little brain.