71: IF THE KIDS ARE UNITED.....
Sat 4th May 23.45 - Mooning Monthly Edition 71 hangs out with the arty nippers.....
Happiest of May Days dear Mooners.
We hope our message finds you well at this Celtic festival of Beltane, soon to be followed by a new moon in Taurus on Saturday night, just before midnight. This may well be the Saturday night to party with your tribe but the vibe is likely to be chilled rather than full on. Taurus loves to party but places even more importance on family, so if we can mix them together it promises to be a weekend to remember.
If that party feeling doesn't float the collective boat, somewhere in the coming week we should still take time to connect with kin - the olds and the newbies in particular. This would be a very good weekend to hang out with the newer kids on the block. Fancy dress followed by jelly and ice cream with the under 5s may well be the rave we're all looking for.
Play is a verb very few adults allow themselves to exercise in day to day behaviour. Even when applied to partaking in sport, the adult world tends to take playing much too seriously, to the point where it abuses the original definition of the word: to have fun. Spending time with children, whether our own or those of others, remind us of the playful creative energies inherent to childhood: vivid imagination, living in the moment, acceptance, vitality, excitement, enthusiasm and the unbridled joy of exploration.
As adults, we regularly limit our fields of potential experience through our life expectations, expectation being the ultimate source of most disappointment. This is the unavoidable learnt behaviour of our upbringing: a social and cultural education that becomes habituated as we make repeated life choices based on our preferences for things as mundane as footwear and beverages or, more crucially, relationships.
As we age, we have a more extensive past from which to draw those preferences and expectations and yet.....and yet....we still end up making childish blunders without any of the compensatory benefits of playful joy. We sadly, often lose the carefree joys of childhood somewhere in the process of conditioning ourselves to become the adult person we believe ourselves to be.
Although he was no paragon of virtue, the artist Pablo Picasso had a couple of pertinent things to say about the vitality of childhood:
“It took me four years to paint like Raphael but a lifetime to paint like a child.”
He might initially appear to be bragging about his natural abilities (evident from his early teens at art school - his father was an art teacher) but surmises later in life that the greatest challenge he faced as an artist was to regain what he had lost in the process of his education in the adult world. He makes the point more specifically on another occasion:
“Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.”
Quoting Picasso under this Taurus New Moon is particularly apt. It's a moon ripe for the artist in all of us, and for 'artist' read 'child'. Earthy Taurus has a taste for the aesthetically beautiful things in life and this will be a wonderful week in which to engage with the arts, whether as practitioner or audience, to creatively enhance our own understanding of beauty in the world around us.
Let's break out the pens, pencils and paints even if it's just to doodle on the back of an old envelope, with the intention to playfully make marks on paper, card or canvas without expectation. There's great joy to be found in a squiggle and a squirt as another great 20th Century artist, Jackson Pollock, long evidenced:
"Painting is self discovery. Every good artist paints what he is."
As we Mooners are aware, new moons are opportune periods in which to sow the metaphoric seeds of our intentions in full confidence that they will bear a fruitful harvest in due course. This would be, therefore, an auspicious week to make the metaphoric literal by sowing flower or vegetable seeds wherever an empty patch of earth can be found. In our gardens naturally, but this might be a call for a little guerilla gardening in our wider neighbourhoods, particularly in the urban environment. A few judiciously dropped seeds: sweet peas, sunflowers or cosmos on a bare patch of soil, topped with a pocket full of potting compost will transform a walkway for bees and passers by for the summer months ahead. An occasional dousing with tap water as you pass will nuture their growth nicely. Rocket salad will sprout like the most vigorous of weeds through until autumn wherever you sprinkle its seed, so let's enlist the energies of this great Beltane Spring Festival to encourage fruitful growth and harvest in the world around us. The chances are that dynamic will be reflected within.
This Taurus New Moon reprises the cosmic theme of collective action and responsibility outlined at the last Libra Full Moon (link here). Since our last missive's predictions, there has been a significant weight of international direct action focused on our accelerating planetary ecological meltdown. A new study showing even the most remote places on the planet are now subject to airborne microplastic pollution (link here) gives rise to growing fears that the lungs and organs of most living creatures, including humans, are harbouring imperishable materials, potentially disastrous for our health.
Those influenced by this bullish Taurus New Moon might find themselves operating at the head of the herd, making tough personal commitments in word and deed for the benefit of the flock as a whole. Fired by this week's typically Taurus practicality, we might join the direct action ourselves; petition our MPs and local representatives for change and withdraw our finance from businesses and systems designed purely to profit from the discomfort or exploitation of others. We can certainly take a stand on plastic consumption itself, with the intention of minimising plastic use and purchases in our own sphere of influence. We can support online campaigns from the comfort of our digital tablets and send money to those causes that are doing their part to alleviate suffering where suffering is the predominant life experience.
This is not a time for our Taurus Bull to laze in the glorious sunshine of global warming (beautiful as it is currently here in the UK). It's a time to devote his reliable practicality to the issues at hand, individually, collectively, at home and abroad. Under this Taurus New Moon we need to create the responsible thoughts, words and actions that will sustainably tend the fields in which we graze. We can no longer chew the verdant cud of privilege with cheerful oblivion to consequence in the wider world. Ignorance is no longer a valid excuse.
With increased awareness of the power at our disposal, individually and collectively, to manifest change towards a world that benefits all and not just the few, we can create systems and organisations that ensure the beautiful landscapes of tomorrow are ones in which we all can play.
“Look at life with the eyes of a child.” ~ Henri Matisse
With phthalate free love 'til next time
