We live in a wiggly, wiggly world, indeed!

I had several things I felt like writing about yesterday, most of them light and superficial because, truth be told, I felt good about what I said in my last one, and was humbly encouraged by the comments I got for it.

So here's what I started out debating as topics for yesterday's entry:

1) Responding to the feedback, I was going to wax intelligent a bit about how my bipolar state has probably affected how I see the world as dualities more so than perhaps I would otherwise. [Instead, I've posted two new links that are worth checking out if you want to get a bit of an insight into that side of who I am....they probably say it better than I could, anyway].

2) I had asked a fellow blogger who I visit regularly ("Wasted days") what 'tagging' meant, since I've seen several references to it. I was pretty sure I knew, but was checking....and yup, I was right; now I've got a list of info that I have to post about myself. [I'll do it in an later entry...promise!]

3) I was going to share the thought that 'talking' through these blogs is giving me the tentative incentive to start gently letting go of pieces of my myriad masks I hide behind in my 'real' world. Perhaps it's the chicken's way out, to peel off layers of me that I've kept secretively hidden for far too long, but it seems to be working. It's a scary journey, but also, with each new revealed tidbit, it's also becoming more empowering. It reminds me of a Psych course I took at University on the ages and stages of growth and development. It was a first year course, so there were about 200 students. Each week, the prof would have students bring in their kids at the 'stage' we were discussing. One day I particularly remember he was dealing with babies who had just started crawling. He had several moms up at the front with him as he went about his lecture, and the babies were on the floor by their moms. One point he was making was how we tend to explore our world. And sure enough, all the babies would hesitatingly crawl a little bit away, then return quickly to mom (safety check in time). The next journey, they'd go a little further and so on, until by the end of the class they were up at the back of the hall, and strangers were picking them up and playing with them as if they were lifelong friends.

So why didn't I choose any of those topics today?
What's my point?

A guy in Denmark drew a cartoon, that's my point.

When my parents were young, the news from the war would be delivered via newsreel and then be shown in the movie theatres each Saturday morning before the cartoons, followed by the serials, and then the feature movie (usually a double bill, too!).

Some years later, as the cold war got colder, the films moved to the classrooms teaching kids that the best way from getting a hole blown in their ass if there was a nuclear attack was to 'duck and cover' under their desks. And they practiced it!


There was even an official 'smokey the bear' kind of mascot to spread the word.

I came along about the same time as the laying of the Atlantic cable, so you could book a phone call to Europe for Christmas; then there was television; and not long after that there were transistor radios; then microwave transmission towers got built allowing for wireless transmission. Ah yes, those were wild and heady days!

A little while later, there was the Cuban missile crisis, and for awhile we didn't know if we'd be coming home from school dead or alive each day. Suddenly there were sputniks, and satellites, and astronauts, and cosmonauts, and mainframe computers and "I can kill everybody in the world 3.4 times, and you can only do it 2.9 times, so I win" mentalities. And we landed on the moon, and invented Tang, and "Mr. Gorbachev tore down that wall", and the cold war was finally over.

Somewhere in there, Mr. Gore invented the internet and overnight we've become an instant, constant global smallness.

There's nowhere left for our babies to crawl, and still feel safe. So I'm crying a bit inside tonight. Because there was a crossover point that happened somewhere back there, and we all missed it.

It's a kneejerk tendency in thought streams like this to say "Well, back in the days when I was a kid....". I know...things progress. Shit happens. The essence of it all though is that we're now at the critical mass point. As I'm writing this, we bemoan the greenhouse gas effect, and that chimpanzees are becoming extinct. We claim we're addicted to oil, but still plan multi-billion dollar pipelines to bring oil from the Artic. The list is endless.

We've created for ourselves the ultimate paradox. We are now collectively intelligent enough to know how to use our accumulated intelligence to continue this development trend line. We are also intelligent enough to understand the inevitability that the rate of change will continue to increase exponentially. Sadly, though, we're not yet collectively intelligent enough to recognize that our ability to retain any semblance of balance or control over the change is simultaneously exponentially decreasing. We're outsmarting ourselves to death.

It'll be a sad epitaph for humanity if it all comes down to a single cartoon in a Danish newspaper that none of us would ever have known about if it was drawn 15 years ago.

So, instead of writing about any of that, I thought just for fun I'd go to one of those sites where it'll give your horoscope when you enter your birthdate, and see if there was any hope for me, at least, the rest of you be damned!

Here's what mine said for today:

Feb 3, 2006: "You might be interested in doing some creative writing, since the Moon is sextile Mercury. You'll have an increased need to express yourself in written words. You might just enjoy writing a long e-mail to a friend, talking about some of your recent adventures. Or you could write some of your thoughts down in a private journal. making your thoughts concrete will help you focus."

Well! That was a kicker! So I thought, what the heck, let's do it for "this week":

Week of January 30, 2006: "The communications and travel axis of your chart is greatly emphasized at this time for many reasons. Neptune in Aquarius has been helping to dissolve away old beliefs that are no longer workable and has been doing so for some time. The presence of Mercury and the Sun are also helping you to isolate what is important to you and to decide what you want to focus on. But Saturn is also revealing to you how difficult it can be to literally change your mind. We get stuck in mental grooves and breaking out of them can be extremely difficult. It is great to have a sense of vision, but this needs work to help it materialize and keep it on a practical basis. On the other hand you are being shown that you can move beyond your comfort zone and where you are holding yourself back, and this too needs to be brought into the equation".

Holy horoscope, batman! I swear to god, I'm not making this up! You have to know I needed to check out the month prediction by this point:

February 2006: "As the month starts, be careful of the tendency of being too trusting. You may be in denial of something and deceiving yourself. Try to be realistic and face facts. In spite of being a bit spaced out and unfocused, this can be a very creative time. Take advantage of your state of mind and let the ideas flow, practice meditation, or use creative visualization techniques to manifest what you want to attract".

So now, my head really, really hurts! I've decided I'm just going to borrow the picture from the opening page of "The Bipolar Brain - take the Journey" link that I added, and go and meditate for awhile. I'm sure it'll all make sense tomorrow!



PEACE and TOLERANCE........spread more than the words......

Posted by Evydense on Friday, February 03, 2006 at 10:58 p.m. | Permalink