The Moon The Sun and Sweet Synchronicity

a mail art masterpiece! lucky me!

the full moon at 4:59 this morning...

my Bright Shadow spread...

first card of the spread! no fooling!!! love the Tarot...

Majo playing Music, by Ramon Bayeu Subias...

Two packages arrived late yesterday afternoon, just before the rise of a brilliant full moon: a CD of comic Mozart rarities that I ordered last week, and this stupendous piece of mail art created by the funny, sweet, and talented Dean Grey. Wow! Isn't this drawing a stunner?? I took it straight away to my backyard where there was a remaining smidge of sunlight and placed it on the ground to photograph. Looks like this white beauty stopped to rest in the grass after his long journey from Chicago! This morning I knew that I would post about receiving Dean's mail art, so I put on my new CD and began processing my digital images. (I've meant to buy this CD for years. When I did my Monhegan residency, there was a shelf full of old Mozart records that I played daily while I was there, and this particular record was my favorite. It made me feel so HAPPY! I had forgotten the name of the record until last week when I saw the title scribbled on a slip of paper in an old journal found during my recent cleaning spree: The Comic Mozart. I went immediately on-line and found two CD's; The Lighter Mozart, which has many of the tunes from The Comic Mozart, and the original, The Comic Mozart, which hasn't arrived yet - it's coming long distance from Australia...)

So back to Dean's drawing. The white horse/unicorn reminds me of a piece I worked on a couple of years ago as part of the collaborative doll project I was involved in with 17 other artists. The doll is named Kiki Jung (daughter of Carl) created by my close friend (who happens to be the woman whose portrait I burned recently). Just before her doll arrived in the mail, I had a dream about a white horse, so I was determined to include this horse in the project somehow, even though I knew nothing of the doll. When Kiki arrived, I decided that I would make her a white horse. I researched the symbolic meanings of the white horse, and while looking at images, I researched the meaning of the white horse in The Sun card from the Rider-Waite Tarot deck, and learned about Jung's concept of the Bright Shadow. I knew about our Dark Shadow, and the importance of acknowledging our dark side, so this notion of a bright shadow , and our unrealized potential, really intrigued me. I named the horse Bright Shadow.

All of this was running through my mind while looking at Dean's beautiful white horse. And the backside of his envelope reads, Run free Run free Run free, Tears blowing in the wind. Run free Run free Run free Shine brightly and run free! Dean writes openly on his blog about his great struggle with depression and suicidal ideation, so his image of a tearful but determined white unicorn, charging, with glowing horn cutting through black ink, is moving indeed. Here is a potent symbol of Dean's fierce will and the courage required to face his darkness!

This morning I returned to the site where I had read up about Bright Shadow work a couple of years ago, and decided right then, in the middle of writing this post, to pull out my Tarot cards and do the Bright Shadow spread. I shuffled the deck, and made my 4 piles, and I kid you not, the very first card I turned over was The Sun (having The Sun card show up in this first stack of cards means my untapped potentials lie in the physical realm - I won't go into all that this means to me, this post is rambling and "Phoebe from Friends" flakey enough as it is. Suffice it to say that syncronicity is afoot!). Then I thought, Hmmm, perhaps the music I'm listening to has something to do with this flow of events, and decided to scan the CD cover. Now, can you see the similarity to my spread, and the images from the CD cover? A naked golden haired cherub with a red plumed feather, a gent wearing red, and two robed women...

So many connections, so much grist for the mail art mill...

Look out, Dean! I feel another piece of mail art brewing! This may very well turn into a volley! :^)