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11/9/10

Music Break: Jan Dulles

Green Green Grass of Home...

De Beste Zangers van Nederlands 2010 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhdgO8rPQNU

Geography of the Mind

Achromatic with blurs of color...


The year of transition into the decade of a new era.

This year has been a battle conquering the twin evils of my reptilian brain: rage and fear, counterbalancing them with the better parts of my cerebral cortex brain: awareness and consciousness.

The tech/telecom/dotcom crash brought the economic crisis to me in 2000, a full Biblically epic seven years before it broke tide over everyone else in 2007. At the time it seemed as if I was wandering alone without a compass in a cultural wilderness I didn't understand. The rest of the country was awash in money and spending it like crazy while I was busy shoring up expenses, saving as much as I could and working harder at earning a smaller paycheck than I had in a long time. Inflation was killing me and I couldn't understand where everyone was getting their seemingly endless abundant flow of money. Clarity often occurs after the event.

In July 2007 I lost my employment (but interestingly, not all my income) and watched as markets tumbled and studied them to figure things out. As all the leading economic indicators were falling apart during these past three years, I was prepared financially and actively decided I was going to remain personally optimistic, since the other choice was not a viable option.

"One foot in front of the other" is still my mantra. Because if you stop, the bigger risk is the chance of never starting again.

Mentally I was doing well until the beginning of this year, as I was looking forward to the start of a new decade, more than ready to leave the last decade far behind me. It turned out not to be so easy. I recognized that the rest of the world was still crashing around me, more noticeable since I live in a state among the hardest hit by the housing boom and bust, and that others were not so prepared. Financially or mentally.

It also hit home to me that the local, national and global economic situation was more than theoretical and was a long term affair, a new institution of its own accord. I could not ignore or be unaffected that this is going to be a long global recovery, a historical change in societal way of life and that everyone was going to have to adjust to different circumstances, whether they recognized or acknowledged it or not.

Many still have not and will take a long time to come around, if ever, to understanding what hit them. I have no control over that.

My perception dissolved into varying shades of gray with blurs of color as I tried to adjust my vision to the new era dawning before us. As good things were personally happening to me, unexpected groundbreaking, life-changing positive events actually, I couldn't fully appreciate them because I was also fending off anger and being afraid of the unknown universe before me. I fought it off with reason and logic using experiences from my past, often to no avail it seemed and it is still a mighty struggle at times.

It is the blurs of color that are saving me. They represent things that are bright and full of light to reach for and keep me from disappearing into smoky ashen clouds. As things come sharper into focus they become objects that are important to me. They represent creativity, intellect and energy. This is becoming a watershed year that occurs in life and it's not over yet.

From my own beginning I was never meant for a regulation ordinary life. I've always struggled with being expected to fit into the same shoes as everyone else and go along with the crowd. There are many of us like that and I'm beginning to realize that this is probably the beginning of our time, a period when what was "normal" is no longer the rule. As I begin to understand that, although unsure of how it will play out, I see I don't need to know more specifically how things will unfold, only that they will and I have the tools to figure it out as it all happens.

The gray is beginning to fade and become something of color. What objects the color forms will become apparent as time makes life less opaque.

Arizona Landscape

Self-Impressionism Portrait...