Fabulous beasts?

Oh my god! We've been found out!

There is no kindly middle-aged lady working in an office. That's a chimaera, a fabulous beast, a story palmed off on generations of credulous camera-eyed fools. The world is, actually, full of tigresses and dragons. I have learned to see just one.

See the rest here.

7:23:43 PM      trackback [] 

Skinship

At Laughing~Knees, an encounter on a train in Tokyo:

She brought her face close to the baby’s and they locked eyes, followed by many kisses. I kept thinking, “Wow, she’s so French!” (she was speaking to her son in French, that’s how I knew she was French) But it was more than that. I also kept thinking, this physical interaction with her child, this unabashed display of affection, this “skinship” as the Japanese call such a relationship between two people, is what lays the base for a strong confidence in oneself. This little boy knows he is loved and will most likely grow up feeling part of some one else’s intimate world.

 

In contrast there was a Japanese father and his son sitting just two passengers off to the side of the French woman and her baby. The father sat there dour and immovable, arms crossed, with a huge frown sagging the corners of his face, while the boy hunched and stared out the window. Whenever the boy slouched or moved to another position the father would reach out and arm him back into position, while sternly muttering, “Sit up straight. People are watching you!” My eyes traveled back and forth between these two and the French woman and baby, and exhausted as I was, I always found myself turning back to the French woman. She made me smile.

12:51:10 PM      trackback [] 

Creative living

A post on Occupational Adventure (thanks to Naked Lunch for the tip) got me thinking about creativity. Curt links to Dewitt Jones’ article on creativity and writes of the idea that in the creative approach there’s more than one right answer. This applies to your career and your life as well as your creative pursuits. As Jones puts it, “The essence of creativity then is not a technique but an attitude; an attitude of curiosity, openness, and celebration.”

Many people think of creativity as applied to art or writing, but not as a way of living – of creating a life, whether one’s own life or a life with another person or with a family. Here’s an area that astrology can help, because it’s a system of symbolism, and symbolism opens things up rather than defines things. Think of poetry and poetic language – it evokes multiple associations.

The fifth house in astrology has to do with creativity, with play, with children and with romantic love (as opposed to partnership). It's where we express ourselves without calculation, childlike, with a joyful participation in the adventures of life. Or as Jones says, with an attitude of “curiosity, openness and celebration.” Interestingly enough, he also talks about creativity as like falling in love.

In this area of our lives, as with everything in astrology, how we choose to play out the energy is up to us. There is no one right answer. If one of the options associated with the fifth house isn’t available to us, we can express another. We don’t have to do them all. Some people can’t seem to do them all – I’m thinking of artists whose art consumes them to the exclusion of their love relationships or children. But for many of us, applying ourselves to one aspect of our creative energy actually feeds the others, by injecting energy into this whole area of our lives. As Dewitt Jones says, “when we're in love with something we find ourselves in touch with a source of incredible energy...we call it passion.”

But this area requires expressing ourselves without expectations and guarantees. If we fear making mistakes here we stifle our creative spirit – in any or all of its aspects. We need to take some risks. Again, from Dewitt Jones:

“So we've found a definition that makes creativity accessible to us; we've opened ourselves to the possibility that there's more than one right answer… So why do we still hesitate? What's keeping us from seeing that extraordinary solution and manifesting it into reality? Could it be the fear of Making a Mistake. Fear of mistakes is the single greatest enemy of the creative spirit.”

Maybe we can overcome this enemy by remembering there is no one right answer, that as Curt says, the right answer “might just be the right answer after the right answer that came just after the right answer that is precisely the answer you're looking for.” The creative house is the house of play. It’s your sandbox – have fun!

Update:
Curt adds some helpful links on overcoming fear of making mistakes.

12:15:45 PM      trackback []