Ah Shucks

This past week I stumbled into someone who said we had entered the Age of Aquarius on March 23, 2023. Oh, joy!

 

I've been looking for the Age of Aquarius since 1967 when I saw the stage play Hair in Los Angeles, California.

 

 

"When the moon is in the Seventh House

And Jupiter aligns with Mars,

Then peace will guide the planets

And love will steer the stars,

This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius,

Age of Aquarius"*

 

The Age of Aquarius represents an age of world Peace, where we love one another without prejudice and fear—I was looking forward to that. 

 

However, upon further investigation, I found that we are still on the cusp of the age. And Astrologers can't agree on when the next age will happen.

 

I don't know how much stock we can put on the Sun's passage across the sky. Astronomers say that as the earth wobbles, we see the Sun move through the constellations--the 12 houses of the Zodiac.

 

Ages last 2,150 years, and Pisces began in 68 BC.

 

That adds up to 2597 years until Pisces ends and Aquarius begins.

 

I don't know about you but waiting for 579 years is out of my ballpark. We can't wait for the new age to drop on us like the Aquarian lady pouring water out of her urn.

 

 

"Harmony and understanding

Sympathy and trust abounding

No more falsehoods or derisions

Golden living dreams of visions

Mystic crystal revelation

And the mind's true liberation"*

 

 

So the story goes…The lyrics to the song/poem Aquarius, were scribbled on a piece of paper and found in a wallet in a NY taxicab.

 

(What a brilliant piece of marketing and/or a contribution to humankind.)

 

And that piece of paper, the song, a mash-up with "Let the Sunshine In," sung by the music group "The Fifth Dimensions, hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart on April 12, 1969. It stayed there for six weeks, on the chart for 17 weeks, and earned three Grammy nominations in 1970, winning for both Record of the Year and Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals.

 

The song's album, The Age of Aquarius, peaked on the Billboard chart at the number two spot in late June 1969 and spent 72 weeks on the chart. It garnered two Grammy nominations."

 

Hair and the song The Age of Aquarius lit a fire under a generation that changed our culture. They protested the Viet Nam war, changed dress codes, sexual mores, championed Civil Rights, supposedly ended segregation, (again), burned bras, draft cards, and gave permission for both men and women to grow hair, for men to grow facial hair, to wear jewelry, and burn draft cards, and for women to burn bras. Oh, and co-ops came into being where people wanted organic food, and natural childbirth was ushered into hospitals.  

 

Why are we losing some of those hard-fought-for rights and changes?

 

Why is there so much fear and quick resort to violence when once we championed Peace, put flowers in our hair, knew we could make a difference, and believed in a better world?

 

I want the enthusiasm we once felt. I want to believe again.

 

 “You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. I hope someday you'll join us. And the world will live as one.” –John Lennon

 

“Oh, let it shine, c’mon
Now everybody just sing along
Let the sun shine in
Open up your heart and let it shine on in
When you are lonely, let it shine on
Got to open up your heart and let it shine on in
And when you feel like you’ve been mistreated
And your friends turn away
Just open your heart, and shine it on in.”*

 

*

Source: LyricFind

Songwriters: Galt Mac Dermot / Gerome Ragni / James Rado

Aquarius / Let the Sunshine In (The Flesh Failures) lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC

 

 

Signs—Pits and Pieces

“Twould Be More Fun…to Go by Air…but We Couldn’t Put …These Signs up There--Burma Shave.”

 

Remember those? 

 

As you drove along the highway, usually on long strips of isolated roads laden with sagebrush, you would come upon a little sign…then another...and another followed by “Burma Shave.”

 

We kids loved to see them—reading one aloud, waiting for the next one--maybe an eighth of a mile down the road—reading it and the next until the punch line, and laughing as the last sign, “Burma Shave,” rolled by.

 

The above sign quote was from Charles Kuralt’s book, A Life on the Road. It took me back to Sunday mornings when I sat mesmerized in front of the Television, watching Kuwalt sitting in a chair, no props, simply a chair, where he spun out tales of small-town America.

 

For twenty years, Kuwalt roamed the back-roads of America and gave America back to Americans on the CBS Sunday morning TV show On the Road with Charles Kuwalt. 

 

How I envied his job.

 

And then we moved to San Diego, where John Sinor wrote folksy essays, similar to Kuwalts, for the San Diego Union-Tribune. I envied his job too. His tagline was “Every day problems of everyday people,” 

 

“A tough-looking but harmless lizard adds to our annual dessert hike. For a moment, I thought I was looking into a mirror.”—John Sinor.

 

As it turned out, although we didn’t know it, we bought a house right next to his. We were on the edge of a canyon, so nobody was on the other side of our property. I never took the chance to become acquainted with him, though--too bad. 

 

I remember his story about the little white deer who roamed Presidio Park in San Diego. No one knew what happened to her mate, but she, a lone deer, would, on misty mornings, give happen-chance viewers a belief in magic. I never saw her and didn’t know she existed until I read Sinor’s column where City officials worrying about her safety as she would sometimes be seen on the road, decided to move her to safer territory. Someone shot her with a tranquilizer gun and used too much tranquilizer.

 

Bambi all over again.

 

And now I think about those signs, the physical ones alongside the road that made us laugh, the inspiring writers who made us want to create something of value, and last night another sign came up-- about the spiritual nature of we, the people.

 

I got a glimpse into how the universe works. 

 

Our lives are made of bits and pieces, signs, showing us the way. 

 

Look what we have been through, little biological bodies carrying a soul we didn’t know we had for a long while. We had an inkling but couldn’t quite get it. We went into psychology, physiology, and anatomy to get a picture of what we were about. All the while trying to eke out a living while also trying to make sense of this complex condition called life. We muddled through—the good, bad, and ugly--but if bad was all we were, we probably wouldn’t be here today.

 

Remember what Steven Pressfield said about cleaning the way, so the Muse doesn’t soil her gown on the way in?

 

She doesn’t always come, but she sometimes does, and often after years of labor. (It takes enormous sweeping to clean our emotional/spiritual house or years of wandering in the wilderness before bumping into the giant Sequoia.)

 

Many a creative has felt the Muse’s effects, a formula that presented itself whole and complete, an answer to an equation that made itself known, a writer who read over his material and said, “Who wrote that?” 

 

These sorts of events often happen after you have swept your house. 

 

Burma Shave went out of business in 1963. Change happens. They sold to Remington.

 

Change happens with the signs too.

 

Last night I watched Nanci L Danison speak of her death experience and felt that that lady was spot on.

 

She added more signs into the link of signs—how we are biological animals of the earth with an eternal Soul, how we’re had God all wrong by believing in a Patriarchal being who lives outside us and is kind and compassionate on the one hand, and doles out punishment on the other—demanding sacrifice, admiration, and who sends people out to kill and do atrocious things. And would send his creations to eternal punishment, for heaven’s sake. 

 

We are afraid to stand up to that whatever, for fear of death and eternal damnation. 

 

On the other hand, some say, “God is Love,”

 

Love, smove, you say, it doesn’t feel like it.”

 

“I’m both enamored with and terrified by Jesus’ audacious ethic,” writes Barney Wiget, vagabond preacher. “His Sermon contains some of the most fetching words ever spoken and, at the same time, the most unachievable to live under human steam. Love your enemies, do something good for the person cursing you, and do it without telling anyone you did it seems pretty out of reach to me!” 

 

The biologist in me liked that Nanci Danison said, “We are all animals.”

 

The spiritual person in me liked that she said we are souls, a part of the God being, 

a part of The Source. She sees the two, the biological entity and the soul, as separate.

 

I have hesitated to go to this place, for I know everyone has their belief system, and we want to respect that. So? What am I afraid of? Just say it. The last sign might say, “The Source in Within You.”

 

I have come through Catholicism, Protestantism, Atheism, Unitarianism, Science of the Mindism, and the Law of Attractionism, to a new understanding. Most all isms carry a sign, a piece of the lineup that tells the joke, but crash into the others before completing the run. 

 

Nothing has changed my mind from ancient beliefs that God is too big for us to understand. For example, I’ve read that some Native Africans say God does not live in a Church, but in the forest and the fields and on the mountain when the rains come.” 

 

My model is that God is like the ocean, and we are the drops in it. We are all a part of the whole.

 

But that model is my need to have a visual picture, something to explain the unexplainable. Scientists are now studying consciousness, which is probably another aspect of Source by a different name. We are getting pieces and signs and slowly piecing them together. 

 

Another explanation is that God exploded himself into all souls. With our human bodies, we are the little antennas, like neurons from God, feeding back to the Source. In this manner, Spirit knows what it feels like to be flesh and boney creatures, to love and be loved, to bring forth offspring, to find our spark of creativity, and to look in awe at His paradise. 

 

Maybe when it said in the Bible to worship God, it meant more like “Look out in wonder, and appreciate it.”

 

If we thought we were all in this together, we would act differently. The biological entity looks out for itself, for its nature is to survive. The spiritual entity has another agenda.

 

“I hold that a writer who does not passionately believe in the perfectibility of man has no dedication nor any membership in literature.”
— John Steinbeck, Nobel Prize acceptance speech, 1962

 

Creativity

We all have a creative urge.

It doesn't have to be writing. Neither does that creative outlet have to be an occupation, but wouldn't it be wonderful if it was?

Creativity feeds the soul. Do you create a mean omelet? That's creative.

Sometimes our efforts can drive the physical, mental, and emotional aspects of us batty. That is if we are trying to put our creation out to the world or practicing to become a Jeti.

Think of a time when you were pursuing something and wanted to quit?

Did you?

If you persevered, what was the rewarding part?

(The baby was born. You graduated from college.)

Think of your successes.

What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.
— Jane Goodall, primatologist

 

On the last blog I mentioned our Real Estate Business, today I am including a copy of Our Newsletter for your perusal. It’s FREE for blog readers and visitors to our site https://vibrancerealestate.com

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Yep, We're a Small Company

"What is it with business people trying to sound big? The stiff language… the artificial friendliness…the legalese. You read this stuff, and it sounds like a robot wrote it." 

"This mask of professionalism is a joke. We all know this. Yet small businesses try to emulate it."

Quotes from Rework by Jason Fried and Davis Heinemeier Hanson. CrownBusiness@RandomHousse.com

 

I wondered about this, too, when my daughter and I decided to start a Real Estate Brokerage. (My daughter has kept her Real Estate Agent license long enough to qualify as a Principal Broker; thus, she can create her own agency. I'm an agent. She's the boss.) I wondered if people go for the big guys and ignore us.

 

Yet how did Avis, the car rental company, take on Budget? With their slogan, "We try harder."

 

Years ago, looking for a Realtor, I thought I ought to find the top seller and go with them. They know more, I thought. They have more experience. Now, I think, "How hard is it to write up an offer?"

 

When we were planning to move from California to Oregon. I looked up a Real Estate Agency that was a top seller. We bought a plot of land found by an agent who presented it to us. Not the big guy. The second Realtor found the property, showed it to us, wrote up the offer, and that was it. It was a simple transaction. It was raw land at a reasonable price, just what we wanted. (We built a house on it.) I felt guilty for not going with the agent who showed us a half-dozen houses—however, she was showing us top-dollar homes for what we could afford.

 

Years later, I again enlisted a top seller. (I'm a slow learner.) They simply took pictures of the house, placed it on MLS, and waited for someone to find and buy it. They didn't have a bevy of buyers looking for what we had to offer. However, this was in 2009, the worse time to sell a house. 

 

We rented it. And moved to Hawaii--and back. (See The Frog's Song by Joyce Davis) The renter knew about a Land Sale where the renter takes over the payments. The mortgage company kept quiet for they were getting paid at a time people were defaulting on their loans. The renter was delighted, for he had a house without a down payment. We were overjoyed that we weren't making house payments on a place that was too expensive for the market, plus we owed too much on it to pay a Realtor.

 

The renter paid the mortgage until he could obtain a loan and bought the house.

 

All's well that ends well.

 

Now I'm a new Realtor--passed my test, got my license, and have been working on a website. I keep shaking my head if I go into the Home Search engine we placed on our site. That process took a learning curve. They say our search engine, firmly attached to MLS, is better than Zillow, for it keeps homes for sale up to date. Zillow, being a national company, takes a while longer. Sometimes when going to Zillow, you find the home of your dreams pending or sold. I'm shaking my head, though in wonder. How can people afford a house these days.

 

The market will level out. It's inevitable.

 

If interested, here's a peek at our site:

 

Something to whet your appetite:

 

Something to whet your appetite:

 

 

 https://vibrancerealestate.com  --Home of Pink, the Pink Flamingo. If people have a For- Sale-Sign in their yard, shouldn't it have a Pink Flamingo on it--not my big fat face?

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