When I finally found the right wallpaper for my Blackberry Simple Mobile, Goldilocks came to mind. There are no bears in my story. But there is the question of bearing, and what feels right, and finding the happy medium, which can be taste or size, but can also be a purely visual concern. For me it was like finding a center-point of rest. That place where you don’t have to think anymore. Because suddenly you are there, in the restful zone. Where it all makes sense again. Even with your eyes open.

Three apples, two gourds. Five items. One-two-three-four-five. All in a row. Like a human hand. One row. (One hand.) One window sill. Two colors, green on orange. As soon as I took the picture and saved it as wallpaper, I not only saw calmness, I saw music. Such calming notes, humming a slow and easy tune. In this world of constant movement and ever-present noise or sounds or some sort, how pleasant to observe objects at rest. Digital ones maybe, but still identifiable as the ones I had picked with my 3D hands at the 3D supermarket, and three of which I would presently eat with my 3D mouth. Etcetera.

Oh sure, I can create little tableaus at home any time for any number of reasons. This one is special because it was created at random for the special purpose of fitting into the rectangular screen of the Blackberry. And I didn’t know what I had done until I did it. And yes, I can calm myself and connect to the real in any number of other ways, but the point here is connection, and what I am connecting to while I am connecting to something else. The very phone that connects me to the outer world in a digital sense, (how it does so is beyond my mental comprehension) now also connects me in a strange way to something else. A bar of silent music I can listen to with my eyes.

A rectangle of light. In between a top bar and the lower bar — filled with shapes, aka icons, numbers and words, (which are also representations) and below that the keyboard filled with more letters, more numbers, which magically (if punched in correctly) transport me to the far corners of the globe — I had a bit of the old familiar 3D world. A world that I had actually touched, and would actually consume with an actual mouth, so that it would actually become part of my actual body.

The phone in question is the older version of the Blackberry with the small screen and qwerty board. It’s my backup phone, though I have to say I’m still partial to the tactile feel of the qwerty board. After I advanced to the Android and then the iphone, I missed that little Blackberry, and was happy to find another one that didn’t require a plan or commitment beyond thirty days. The first year I didn’t bother with wallpapers. Preloaded pictures of standard scenes were adequate. But then I became restless. Visually restless, you might say, and so I began to take my own pictures to use as wallpaper. But the Blackberry camera on the Simple Mobile is terrible. It bleaches out the colors. Plus it’s a rectangle. I couldn’t find anything that looked right.

It finally occurred to me to find some objects I could place in a line that would fit into the small rectangular space without interfering with the business ‘above’ and ‘below.’ Voilà!

The issue is balance and harmony and comfort, feeling and finding that place or state of mind that feels just right. Like our friend Goldilocks. Except my world is more complicated than hers was. And unlike Goldilocks, I am not dealing with actual porridge and chairs and beds, I am dealing with states of mind caused by looking at images. Which naturally as a visual artist, I am keenly attuned to. I might even go so far as to say I vibrate with them. Which is to say that although I have no physical contact with an object, and am not present in the scene being represented, I absorb and react to the sensory knowledge as if I were. I could say, oh well, I have a 4D sensibility, meaning that the life of the imagination is equally, if not more powerful than the physical world. But I want to keep this simple. Like my Blackberry Simple Mobile. Calls, texts and Twitter.

I want to say how if at one time I found I was led into a deeper, more real world, (the world of energy and vibration) by the intricate, complicated geometric shapes and drawings composed of circles and triangles intersecting one another, designs as flagrantly, impossibly beautiful as a snowflake, then now I have come full circle, back to the solid physical plane. Or at least the one with the illusion of solidity. The one where an apple decays in time. Or is eaten and digested, also in time, and goes through various  chemical changes that react upon the body. In time.

I guess I’m not so eager to be transported any more. It happens anyway. Ascension means different things to different people, and whatever it means keeps changing as we grow and develop and expand our awareness, develop our perceptions. Engage with our surroundings in different ways via sound and sight and touch and smell and taste. And then engage in the hidden world beyond the five senses through dreams and visualization and meditation. We need to know both, and feel at home in both, at one with both.

We need to be high at the same time we are low, be out when we are in. Transcend time while being in Time. Be in Space even if we aren’t sure where the ‘space’ actually is. Because now we are everywhere. We are everyone and No One. Everything and No-Thing.

My experience with the wallpaper for the Blackberry reminds me of the Lamaze class that prepared me for the pain of childbirth. I was instructed to bring a photograph to the hospital along with my nightgown and slippers and toothbrush and so on. The photo needed to be a picture of someone or something I loved and cherished that I could focus on during the contractions and take my mind off the pain. I practiced the breathing while looking at the picture, and when the time came, I was well-prepared to calm and soothe myself with both breath and image. At least for a few minutes. Until I had to have the C-section. Still, lesson learned. Pictures matter. Focusing on a specific image matters.

Now, at this birthing time of the New Age, when we find ourselves going through rebirths in various degrees at various times, we have to keep finding new ways to stay centered. At least I do. Because it is never the same moment, yet the moment is always Now. This week at least, I am keeping it simple with my Simple Mobile. Fruits of tree and vine, lined up quietly in a simple rhythm on the window sill. One-two, one-two, one…

Just for the record, my lock screen for the iphone is a playful Wheeee! A free-floating, flying figure, somewhere in time and space… while fruit waits, stationary and patient, on the window sill.