Forever Blowing Bubbles

The Bubble Man in Central Park, New York City

Once you discover this post is in fact about the Age of Aquarius, you have my full permission to roll your eyes and say “There she goes again!”

But do give me this.  After almost three weeks in America this past October during the government shutdown, hearing Obamacare this, Obamacare that, and what has this world come to with America spying on her allies, I was ready to get the hell out of Dodge.

The day we flew back to the Netherlands, we ate lunch with dear friends who are fit to be tied about personal and worldwide privacy and security invasions, and, quite honestly, are wanting to flee the country.  As though it happens only in America!

As I sat there listening to their obvious consternations, feeling helpless, I had one of those brain farts.

“We are living in the Age of Aquarius!” I began….

[hold that thought]

Astrological ages last approximately 2,000+ years each while the vernal equinox precesses clockwise through the twelve zodiac constellations.  Thus far we have tracked 6 astrological ages by major changes in the development of Earth's inhabitants…culturally, socially, politically…all the way back to BC 10,000.

The previous age was the Age of Pisces (the fish), from ca. BC 6 to AD 1994.  Pisces is about universal love, compassion, self-sacrifice, altruism, creativity, intuition and deep spirituality…as well as  deception and illusion.  It was the age of Monotheism, Spirituality, and the Fish...the age of Christianity and the effect of the Jesus-fish (Ichthys) on the entire world, for good and bad.

All astrological ages have a cycle of discovery, trial and error, progression, growth and resolution related to the traits of their individual zodiac signs.  Starting with the crucifixion of Jesus to everything that followed, including untold wars, revolutions and reformations, burnings at the stake, heresies, and sectarian hatreds, all in the name of Christ…you get the picture of why Universal Love had to climax the end of the Piscean Age.

Thus the logical segue to the Age of Aquarius:  universality, friendship, emotional detachment, individualism, invention, philanthropy, humanism, vision, enlightenment, intellect, originality, technology, change, freedom, science, quantum physics, String Theory, space.

And so?????

It means we've begun a new age of figuring out what we can and cannot do in a world small enough to fit in the palm of our hand!

It means we're ascertaining what controls and regulations are necessary every time we invent something new, especially related to the world-wide-web.

It means we have to befriend our enemies in order to coexist in one world!

It means we will probably find life on other planets.

And on the heels of our earth's worst "natural disaster" ever, killing over 3,600 people thus far, it means we're figuring out climate change on this planet, for its survival.

I don't mean to sound simplistic.  But instead of despairing, a bit of pragmatism helps me midst the craziness.  We need those right now (like my Atlanta friends) who hate the misuse of power.  Inequality.  Slavery and sex trafficking.  Invasion of privacy....

THIS is the time to "fix" it.  THIS is the age when it will happen.

Are we ready for this social awakening en masse?  Can we embrace the individual choice to make it happen?  One step, one person at a time.  Each doing our part.  Not pannicking.  Not despairing.  Believing all things.  Allowing Love to win, which surely was the lesson meant for the last age?

Of course, we can also blow bubbles between our spurts of human and technological awareness, right?  Why not!

Spell-Check

Years and years ago while married to Bill (for 21 years), he often told me I would be a good proofreader.  Seriously.  He would catch me circling (with red-ballpoint pen) any typo in whatever book or magazine I was reading at the time.  And he meant it as a compliment.

Today I’m doing well if I can complete my own sentences without spell-check, having become a bit of my mother.  The more languages she learned, the worse speller she became.

A month ago Petra wrote about the Charm of Mnenomics, remember?  When I read her post, I chuckled because I was already forming these thoughts after that quickie trip to Ireland two weeks earlier.

Look at that elegant, artistic font above from a book in the Old Library at Trinity College in Dublin.   Don’t you wonder how those scribes of yore corrected typos without spell-check or white-out?!  Or did they?

Take MISSISSIPPI, as a mnemonic example.  I bet you learned to spell it as M-I-crooked letter, crooked letter-I-crooked letter, crooked letter-I-humpback, humpback-I.  HA!  It has a sing-song rhythm you could never forget.

To put me in my place, I remember terrible spelling snafus I made while growing up.  My name happens to be Virginia Louise but my family called me Bootsie for short (long story).  Somewhere along the line, when I obviously thought my powers of logic were exemplary, I decided the ‘sie’ at the end of Bootsie was the same sound as the ’ise’ at the end of Louise.  You don’t want to know how long I called myself (on paper) Virginia Lousie (lousy!) before I nearly died in horror on the spot.  Jeez Louise takes on new meaning, right?!

Further demonstrating how those powers of logic did not elude me, I’ll never forget the day I was singing a Daily Vacation Bible School song…”We’re going to the mansion on the Happy Day Express.  The letters on the engine R-J-E-S-U-S”…and suddenly “got” it.   Though I had sung it correctly, of course, it hadn’t computed.  Yup, very embarrassing.

This, of course, is totally aside from the they’re-there-their, your-you’re, lose-loose, then-than, its-it’s, led-lead, etc. quirks.  For some reason, those were always easy-peasy for me.  I understood that kind of logic.

Growing up we had a guy in our church, one of the biggest brainiacs I’ve ever known, who went to MIT.  I remember being aghast by letters he’d write home filled with spelling errors.  Later I learned that Einstein had dyslexia and he, too, was a terrible speller.  In fact, the list he’s on has quite an impressive line-up.  Long before spell-check!

Bottom-line, don’t you wonder if spelling is relevant at all, as long as we’re communicating?  Have we made it more important than it needs to be?  What does it say about us when we turn our nose down at typos and those who make them?  Especially if it has nothing to do with one’s intelligence!

Gotta love Winnie-the-Pooh, my guru, when it comes to these spelling things:

You can’t help respecting anybody who can spell TUESDAY, even if he doesn’t spell it right;
but spelling isn’t everything.  There are days when spelling Tuesday simply doesn’t count.
(from The House at Pooh Corner, 1928)

My spelling is Wobbly.  It’s good spelling but it Wobbles,
and the letters get in the wrong places.
(from Winnie-the-Pooh, 1926)

How can you possibly dispute the logic of that!

Our Shoppe Gallery

While celebrating our weekends, and in the spirit of our global collaboration and community of support, we are featuring our personal art as 'Vision to Verb' notecards.

 

Our hope is that they'll inspire you to join with us in our support of KIVA - empowering people around the world with start-up business loans.

Manipulation as Art

I’m talking about Vision, of course, but also about Verb...which I’ll get to in a minute.

Many eons ago, back when digital photography was first taking off,  I had a most interesting conversation with sister Ruth about pure, unadulterated photography vs. the kind of manipulated photos we see nowadays using textures, blurs, selective coloring, HDR, etc.   Photography like what you see above (from the Budapest subway).

[I’m not talking about basic tweaks with straightening, contrast, shadows and sharpening.  As a professional photographer once told me, that’s not considered “manipulation.”  It’s…expected.]

As Ruth and I talked back then, she made no secret of the fact she was not a fan of photo manipulation.  At all.  Furthermore, she mentioned that our big-time photography nephew agreed with her…back then.  Pure, unadulterated photography.  That’s the real photography.

As one terribly prone to being swayed by “what people think,” I was devastated.  Here I was, older sister and aunt and wannabe photographer, succumbing to the evils of cheap art.  I nearly nose-dived myself into a hellish depression.

How epiphanies come out of the blue (do they?), I don’t know.  But within short order an AHA! came that, thankfully, pulled me out of my slough of despond.

“Think about it this way,” I said to Ruth back then.  “You’re a poet in your own right.  A published poet.  A lauded poet.  Loved by many.  But some of us don’t always like it, ‘get’ it, or read it.  Sometimes it takes too much energy.  We just want the pure, unadulterated written word.  The real conversation as it happened.”

That’s when it dawned on me that poetry is language manipulation.  Isn’t it?  It’s not always easy on the eyes or clear or understood or swallowed whole.  Or it IS, depending on the eye of the beholder!  It’s an art in its own right, whether we like it or not.  The lucky ones go down in history as our heroes and mentors.  Ruth is becoming one of them herself, truth be told.  And the more I read her, the more I understand her…just as I do some of you who have the gift.

Actually, my guess is that many photography purists dabble in digital manipulation these days, having gotten over the hump, like Ruth, venturing into their own path of “tools of the trade.”  It’s not that we/they have to “get with the program” as much as just acknowledging we’re not living in the same world anymore. 

Which reminds me of brother Bennett (who died in 1996 at age 47), a professional film photographer before the age of digital who did his own manipulations in the dark room with the solarisation technique.  I still remember his negatives becoming silk-screen templates placed on top of each other to create one image.  He was a master at film-photo manipulation. 

Maybe when it comes down to it we’re all manipulators in one way, shape, form or another?  It may not be digital or verbal, premeditated or controlled.  But deep down I bet something very creative, artistic, human and soulful guides us skillfully to alter and edit Life as we know it in order to navigate this world today. 

Sometimes, if we admit it, we just do it because we can and because it’s fun.

Don’t you wonder what it all will look like a few years down the road…if we get to live that long?!