#39: Pics Or It Didn't Happen
The last dregs of Pisces Season
Many years ago, I worked at BuzzFeed. It feels like a fever dream now: working at a tech startup in New York City…meeting celebrities in the office by day (Ludacris is really short), getting wasted at bars in Brooklyn by night. I was seeing someone that worked at MTV, shared one bathroom with three roommates, and spent more time cursing the L Train than I’d like to admit. I was young, stupid, and full of confidence.
Looking back…the experience encompassed both some of the best and worst times of my life thus far. It’s also a period that time has claimed. It’s been morphed into something that hardly feels real. But then I see a single picture, and things come flooding back.
Other people might see this picture and remember the media frenzy that happened around it, arguably creating one of the first “viral” moments as the Internet knows them today. But for me, it’s different. I was on the ground floor (well, specifically, the 5th floor) where it all originated.
I see this photo— ahem, in blue and black, and am instantaneously transported back to my early twenties: to the BuzzFeed offices in Flatiron, to relationships that shook me to my core, and to a longstanding situationship with New York City.
I was tickled in my research to see that the post was originally published on February 26th, knee deep into Pisces season. Of course. It was The Dress that started countless confusing and frustrating conversations, questioning what was real by distorting “reality” right in front of your eyes. How strange to be confronted with a photograph, seemingly indisputable evidence, that was also invariably open to interpretation.
I find it to be both a frustrating and liberating example of knowing that people see the same things in very different ways.
They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but sometimes it isn’t worth any. It’s about the feelings that accompany it…infinite, complicated, impossible to contain within the confines of language. I watched my coworker publish a single photo that challenged the truth of millions. It was the ultimate illusion in just a few pixels.
In light of the continued devastation in Gaza, the atrocities that are playing out in real time and a knowing that we’re still only at the beginning…I don’t have many words this week, but instead, a prompt: to notice how the current pictures in the news are making you feel.
I viewed pictures of Aaron Bushnell burning himself alive recently. They made me uncomfortable and sad, but also inspired and hopeful. They made me feel a lot of things. So, the assignment right now is to not look away. Sit with the photos populating your feeds (not just the nice ones) and process the emotions that arise. You might notice that they’re conflicting. Pisces energy has a way of doing that— both attracting and repelling at the same time. The symbol for Pisces, after all, is two fish swimming in opposite directions.
It’s a nice reminder that we’re allowed to feel both, and it’s probably what makes us human; a need to grieve the thousands that have died and desire to help the thousands that are still suffering, coupled with the pull to fully check out and bury our near bursting emotions in vegan brownies (I made these this week and they were delicious) and reality television (I still struggle with this one…but
recently ushered me a ticket onto the Love Is Blind train).Pisces energy, this foggy, liminal space we’re still traipsing through till March 20th, simply isn’t known to be great with words. There are both too many and not enough. What it does know how to do is weasel itself into the nooks and crannies of the subconscious and permeate it until it’s felt. It knows how to paint a beautiful picture that may or may not be real…but that takes hold of you in a way that words can’t always seem to reach.
If you find this deluge of energy challenging, know that Aries season (arriving hand in hand with eclipse season this year) is just around the corner. Come March 20th, things are guaranteed to change. It won’t be “easier” per say, but life will become intense in a very different way. Rather than sensing our way through the muck, we will be ready to DO SOMETHING about it.
For now, look at some photos. Old photos, new photos, photos of you, photos by you, photos that speak to you. Feel into the person you were in pictures from a decade ago as much as the selfie you took five minutes ago. And dare to feel the feelings that keep circling your diary and dream journal…because it’s almost time to shift into overdrive. Eclipses speed up the timetables of our lives and Pisces’ passive default setting will be switched into Aries’ need for instinctive action.
There’s a Pisces New Moon this weekend (Sunday, March 10th) though, and it’s the last lunation before the eclipses take hold. It’s a beautiful time to intentionally feel your feelings, and even make a vision board. Find/create images that reflect your mushy insides: fear, love, empathy, frustration, sadness, hope…nothing is off limits and it’s allowed to all exist together. Let the pictures you combine make meaning out of the mayhem and create hope for the future. Things will be changing soon.
I went on a hike today and saw five bears hanging out together. The most I had ever seen was three at a time. It was magical and the photo I took doesn’t do the feeling justice.
How’re you feeling? What’s the last photo you took? How does it make you feel?
Through time and space,
Erin River Sunday