Friday, May 31, 2013

THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON: A piece for lunatics

"The motion of the soul is circular"  - Plotinus
from "Green Man, Earth Angel" - Tom Cheetham

Unknown

Oh, that Penumbral Lunar Eclipse on the 25th of May....    Hang on Sloopy!                             
May 25, 2013


 “Everyman is a moon and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody"
              Mark Twain

Clair de Lune Espagnol, France 1909 - 2 minute film




Broken hearted Pedro leaves a boisterous cafe after a jealous quarrel with his sweetheart and is picked up by a flying machine that takes him to the moon.  Pedro and the Moon battle and after Pedro is given a pardon by three stars, he is dropped back to earth into the arms of his sweetheart who is glad to see him.  
                               Synopsis -  Clair de Lune Espagnol -  Emile Cohl, Director

You can watch the film on YouTube, totally fun, worth 2 minutes of lunacy. 


Three Stars Tattoo by Chances

O na hôkû no na kiu o ka lani - Hawaiian proverb
                            The STARS are the SPIES of Heaven 


Pink Floyd's 1973 album, "Dark Side of the Moon", original concept had to do with the pressures of modern life, travel, money etc., but turned into a "meditation on insanity". 

Dark Side of the Moon - Pink Floyd, analysis Vincent Amendolare
I was never a fan of their music, but I like some of their lyrics, especially the first & last two cuts: 

Breathe"...and all you touch and all you see is all your life will ever be..."

Brain Damage:"...the lunatic is on the grass, the lunatic is on the grass, remembering games and daisy chains and laughs, got to keep the loonies on the path."

Eclipse (Waters): "All that you touch, And all that you see, All that you taste, All you feel, And all that you love, And all that you hate...And all that you slight, And everyone you fight, And all that is now, And all that is gone, And all that's to come, And everything under the sun is in time, But the sun is eclipsed by the Moon."

For the past month from eclipse to eclipse, I've felt a bit like a LUNATIC (and I'm not alone!). But lunatic doesn't mean the same thing in french. It just means "moody."  In our little village the French refer to our Deputy Maire as a "lunatic".  I took french lessons from him for about a year & have to agree.  Tres moody! He spoke no English, had an Occitan accent I could barely understand...maybe that is what made him so moody.                                                                                                                                                                     
Lunar eclipses are disturbing to peace of mind, affecting the emotions like a slippery eel swimming inside the chambers of your heart. But they are also cosmic opportunities. The eclipse closes a phase, endings are inevitable, but that means there can be new beginnings.


"When Jaguars ate the Moon: and Other Stories"





Beaucoup de mythology surrounding lunar eclipses. The Egyptians believed that the moon was being swallowed by a sow for a short period of time.  The  Mayans believed that a Jaguar ate the Moon. Hati in Norse mythology was a wolf who swallowed the moon. Some thought the moon had been eaten by a dragon and in certain cultures, the moon was being swallowed by demons. They believed that curses and throwing stones would bring the moon back and rid the night sky of the demons.


Maria Cristina Brusca & Tona Wilson - 1995




  "So the self under the eye, lies
                                                                                        attendant and withdrawn" --

Sarah Moon



If your birthday is today make a wish upon your "Pole" (North) STAR


Tiffany Mays

It is said that those born on the 31st of the month ruled by the number 4 (3+1=4) and the planet Uranus, can be difficult to fathom.  They can have a propensity for sudden and explosive changes in mood.  Their tarot card is "The Emperor", stable and wise, but sometimes stubborn and tyrannical.

Look your emotional problems square in the eye.  Soften the hard edge when you can.  Avoid arguments, they are just a waste of your energy. Drop all Self-Doubt & expect to have a good time, "remembering games and daisy chains and laughs"...

Joyeux Anniversaire - Be a LUNATIC!

George Kelly of G. Kelly Pie & Mash Shop - Eel Pie Island, London

"AND ALL YOU TOUCH AND ALL YOU SEE IS ALL YOUR LIFE WILL EVER BE."
Pink Floyd - The Dark Side of the Moon






Monday, May 20, 2013

"I SET FIRE TO THE RAIN" - Besieged, A State of Grace, Pushing Daisies & Seven Streams

"I set fire to the RAIN,  and I threw us into the flames
  where I felt somethin' die..."  Adele

I Set Fire to the Rain - Nik Helbig

Set Fire to the Rain & Assassin Creed Jump - Secr3TDesign

THUNDERBOLTS & BIRD SONG--

For weeks, Zeus & Thor have been hurling thunderbolts and creating massive downpours. The wettest year in France in 40 years--they keep telling us.  Zeus, the God of Sky & Thunder, won all his battles with the help of the thunderbolts forged for him by his uncles, the Cyclopes and his son the smith-God Hephaistos. The mighty Thor, Norse God of Thunder, used his Giant-slaying magic hammer to win his battles. Thor even created the tides by drinking down part of the sea.


The biblical rains keep coming and the birds keep singing.  It seemed to me that they were singing louder & more sweetly the harder it rained. Turns out some of the volume is related to mate selection as the little fellows have to go to greater lengths to show their worth in uncertain climates. But another thing that happens to bird song in the rain is similar to the effect raindrops have on light waves. Like the rainbow effect, as rain drops take light and twist the spectrum into components, so do the rain drops take the sound waves of the bird song and distort them. And, as a drop of water will magnify an image, the rain drop will amplify the sound of the bird’s notes.  The result is that what we think we hear really isn’t what it is. 

Wren singing his heart out in the Rain - Kreations by Kerri




 So if people sing in the rain, do our voices & songs sound distorted?
 What we think we hear really isn't what it is?


Clockwork Orange - Singin' in the rain


Sometimes I wish my life were a Musical - Nabigator

But no one was singing anyway...

Everyone around me felt soggy, out of sorts & BESIEGED

The SEVEN of CUPS kept showing up



The Seven of Cups can stand for the waters of delusion, the clouds of intoxication, the emotional waters rotting in the depths of destiny.  They have fallen from the grace of Tiphareth, the center of The Tree of Life.  Seven of Cups talks of the human desire to experience the unknown, the subconscious & the wish to escape the plain old reality to find a better world somewhere in fantasy.  Promises unfulfilled, drunkenness, violence, selfish dissipation, deception in love and friendship, success often gained, but not followed up.  The emotions are out of balance; some deep disappointment has not been resolved.  Oh, doom & gloom.  Recognize and accept your own shadow.


Brocante - Chateau de Charras


My Shadow - Long in the Orchard

" Besieged is how most people feel most of the time: by events, by people, by all the necessities of providing, parenting or participating and even by the creative possibilities they have set in motion themselves, including, especially, a success they may have fought for over long years...As creatures we define ourselves through belonging or not belonging, we cannot help but make commitments to people, places and things, which then come looking for us. Conscious or unconscious, we are surrounded not only by the vicissitudes of a difficult world but even more by those of our own making...Little wonder that men and women alternate between the dream of a place apart, untouched by the world and then wanting to be wanted. But we live best at the crossroad between irretrievable aloneness and irretrievable belonging, and even better, as a conversation between the two where no choice is available...Nel mezzo, in the midst of everything, as Dante said, to be besieged - but beautifully, because we have made a place to stand - by the people and the places and the perplexities we have grown to love, seeing them not now as enemies or a force laying siege, but as if for the first time, participants in the drama, well known friends, familiar and surprising, privileged to knock on our door so that we may see them and sit down with them again, perhaps for a very last time."

Begun in a tiny Paris hotel room - but gifted with a balcony for coffee, and an undeserved and glorious view of the Eiffel tower - after waking and starting to think about Buddha’s mythical and miraculous declaration, supposedly said at the moment of his birth.
Heaven above; earth below,
I alone and sacred


Excerpted from essay, Besieged-- David Whyte's  Reader's Circle Essays 2011-2012


 Under the Lime Tree, Cellefrouin, Fr.


But then it rained some more and the grass kept GROWING

Back of the Chateau

Lime trees next to the Orchard

On Thursday, Ascension Day, it was whispery still--the house in blue shadow; we lit candles and reveled in all the shades of blue in the room, in the sky, shifting from Cerulean to Azure, Midnight Blue, Alice Blue, Prussian Blue, Persian Blue, Egyptian Blue, Maya Blue and best of all, Indigo, the  color of "seeing".  I felt like having a "Seance on a Wet Afternoon", with Kim Stanley and Richard
Attenborough--remember that spooky movie? 


Indigo Sky


the erratic light, the willful clouds, scarlet poppies, a lazy bumblebee
at the edge of a lavender just planted, & the ubiquitous CUCKOO
announcing Spring's courtship made me feel dizzy, ditzy and alive.



Now the clouds look like grey butterscotch rolling along
















 Here comes the "Grace" part: Quelle beauté, & I couldn't trap it on paper.
My words leaped like spring lambs, but not onto the page!  Days were filled with half started emails and scraps of notes flitting through the elementary air...hopscotching between via positiva & negativa while the soppy spring offered its tender blossoms festooned on every fruit tree...it will be a good year for the bees.  Fat bees on lilacs spotted on evening walk.

Lilacs in the Mist


Apple Tree - Verger


This year's blossom, last year's fruit

I fell into GRACE:  Had some amazing Tarot events,
transcendent readings at La Charrue & Le Marquisat.  I am grateful to be a small piece of the puzzle for change to take place in someone's life.  One woman said she woke up from a dream that told her to go to Les Gardes Ponteroux (the hamlet where I was reading) on her way to Paris, she had never heard of the place and showed up at my table with a bewildered look on her face. The cards revealed a key to resolve a massive decision for her and she left with tears of gratitude.  It was very intense and wonderful to see that kind of transformation.  At La Charrue I read for a whole family, mother, father, son.  Amazing to see the trinity of their cards & destinies intertwined. 
Ça m'a plu - That pleased me!
grace (v.) Look up grace at Dictionary.com
c.1200, "to thank," from Old French gracier, from grace (see grace (n.)). Meaning "to show favor" (mid-15c.) led to that of "to lend or add grace to something" (1580s, e.g. grace us with your presence), which is the root of the musical sense in grace notes (1650s). Related: Graced; gracing.
grace (n.) Look up grace at Dictionary.com
late 12c., "God's favor or help," from Old French grace "pardon, divine grace, mercy; favor, thanks; elegance, virtue" (12c.), from Latin gratia "favor, esteem, regard; pleasing quality, good will, gratitude" (source of Italian grazia, Spanish gracia), from gratus "pleasing, agreeable," from PIE root *gwere- "to favor" (cf. Sanskrit grnati "sings, praises, announces," Lithuanian giriu "to praise, celebrate," Avestan gar- "to praise").



Today is "Whit Monday"  - Lundi de Pentecote - Pentacost Monday - It's still raining.

Pushing Daisies - Via Positiva
"Pushing Daisies" Season 1, Episode 7 Quote:
Vivian - "I think it is brave to try to be happy"

THE SEVEN STREAMS

Come down drenched, at the end of May
with the cold rain so far into your bones
that nothing will warm you
except your own walking.
And let the sun come out at the day's end
by Slievenaglasha with the rainbow's doubling
over Mullock Mor and see your clothes
steaming in the bright air.
BE A PROVENANCE OF SOMETHING GATHERED,
a summation of previous intuitions, 
let your vulnerabilities walking on the cracked sliding limestone
be this time, not a weakness, but a faculty
for understanding what's about to happen.
STAND ABOVE THE SEVEN STREAMS
letting the deep down current surface
around you,
then branch and branch as they do,
back into the mountain
and as if you were able for that flow,
say the few necessary words
and walk on, broader and cleansed
for having imagined.

David Whyte
from "River Flow" 

Pushing Daisies - Via Negativa


The Seven Streams - The Burren, County Clare