Paterson Notes to Consider
• I read Paterson by William Carlos Williams. I think the movie is an homage to the experience of being a poet and a man and a city... and the movie is connecting itself to this experience. The book of poetry is much like the movie’s presentation of an adagio through time: poetry, letters, historical references, back to poetry, history, notes and seemingly random connections, etc. Nines may live in much more awareness of our interconnectedness and “the grand scheme of things” than the rest of us. I felt that in the book of poetry and certainly in the movie.
- Paterson is "a man and a city" (like the book of poems it refers to). This is an interconnected being: Someone who has a very active inner life that is taking in the external environment.
- Enneagram Nines' attention go to the external world and they may merge with it.
- Paterson may be a self-preservation Nine, or a Sexual/One-to-One Nine— but not a Social Nine, because Social Nines are countertype (where you don’t obviously or easily see the passion of self-forgetting).
- Paterson is content with himself and his small life, wandering, a member of the community, choosing one private way to express himself but never thinking to advocate (like Type 6) that his art form be broadcast or shared (like Type 3).
- Paterson is a Peacemaker/Mediator in the bar with the man who cannot get his female friend to date him.
- Paterson is unrushed, and unpaced enough to have time to find a young poet girl and make time/space/energy to listen to and to support her. This scene highlights the pacing and the empathy that Nines have.
- You want to be around Paterson, but you might not notice him and you might not know if he is there.
- He is kind. Non judgemental. Open. Supportive and loving of his wife and her Fourish needs for art, music, drama, newness.
- He didn’t care enough about his poems to save them, but he didn’t express much emotion over the dog eating them either. I’ve known a lot of 9s over the years that have said wistfully about the past: “If only they knew what I was capable of.” But of course they often never took the risk (6) to show themselves (3).
- The entire movie has a dream-like quality to it; when I first watched it I was tense and waiting for conflict, horror, fights, brawls, mental illness, terrorism, anything! It wasn’t until the end I thought: I missed this entire man’s life! I may be missing my own! I watched it again and fell in love with the character, because he was like so many self-preservation Nines I had dated in my younger years—- and I was so unlike them then -- attracted to their pace, empathy, and global/systemic ways of being—— but in the end, I ran them over while they were either disappearing into merging with me or they were blissfully checked-out (or possibly blissfully checked in)!
- I want to be like Paterson, only I want to have records of my life (in some way, to make a mark) to know I am here. Nines are not sure they are here, so they tend to go along to get along...
- An awake Nine risks individuating and being one amongst many, not just amongst.
• I read Paterson by William Carlos Williams. I think the movie is an homage to the experience of being a poet and a man and a city... and the movie is connecting itself to this experience. The book of poetry is much like the movie’s presentation of an adagio through time: poetry, letters, historical references, back to poetry, history, notes and seemingly random connections, etc. Nines may live in much more awareness of our interconnectedness and “the grand scheme of things” than the rest of us. I felt that in the book of poetry and certainly in the movie.
| wagner_type_nine.pdf |