The blue light special and the special blue light

Blue moon photo by Noel Zia Lee


Courtesy of Creative Commons.

The Given Self is now at the MOA

There was a blue moon last night. People say “Once in a blue moon” when they’re talking about something really unusual, and I’ve got one for you. My friend Bob wrote me this:

We went to Barnes & Noble at MOA yesterday with the grandkids and there you were on a shelf above Eckhart Tolle. Four copies in stock.

For those of you who don’t know, MOA is Mall of America. My husband, in a moment of true Christmas spirit, actually took me to the MOA a few weeks ago seeking shoes. The ones I wear all the time had gotten embarrassingly shabby and I’d asked for new shoes for Christmas, not knowing the MOA would be the only place left in town to get the brand I like. I hadn’t even thought, while I was there, to see if The Given Self was on the shelves. After Bob wrote me, I had to run tell my family (if not run back out there to see for myself).

I don’t know how long they’ll stay in stock, but it was a pleasant surprise that this non-traditional publisher had done what I heard they could do – get books on shelves.

Books being on shelves doesn’t mean what it used to, but when I told Angie about it, she said she’d called the library and that two local ones would love for me to donate copies of The Given Self. They’d put them in a special area where they highlight local writers. I guess books on shelves still means a lot to some people…and to me. I’m actually pretty psyched about it.

I suspect my books being on shelves at the MOA (or elsewhere) has nothing to do with the “blue” moon, but this morning, I noticed my first blue-light morning of the winter, and it feels as if a little of the magic or the mystery is continuing. I don’t know what creates this light. Maybe, since it’s very cold today, it is the cold. Regardless of how it happens, my back yard is bathed in blue, perhaps not a “light” but a “hue”. A hue of blue.

But I’ve gotta tell ya, when I first thought “blue light,” what followed wasn’t deep thoughts about magic or mystery but “blue light special.”

I can’t recall which department store had or still has blue light specials, but it’s one of those popularized phrases that got stuck in my brain.

We actually talked about this at my sister’s table on Christmas. I think it began as a discussion of creativity and kids, and she and I talking about our youth and how we played library, and put on plays and made up songs. One of our songs was composed entirely of commercial lyrics. If you’re old enough, you might remember them:

Halo, Halo, Halo everybody. Halo’s the shampoo that glorifies your hair/
So see the USA in your Chevrolet. America is asking you to/
Brush a brush a with the new/
Brillcream, a little dab’ll do ya, one spot glorifies your hair, so watch out, the girls will all pursue ya’. They love to get their fingers in your/
Campbell’s soup. Have you, have you, have you had your soup today? Campbell’s of course. Campbell’s of course. Once a day every day have a bowl of/
Mr. Clean he’ll clean your whole house and everything that’s in it/
From the land of sky blue wa-a-ters. Comes the flavor fresh for brewing. Hamm’s the beer refreshing. Never stops refreshing you.

My son then talked about the movie “Demolition Man” where old commercials played constantly on the radio and people used the ditties as common phrases of conversation.

Henry had Spaghetti O’s the other day and I found myself sing-songing, “Uh oh, Spaghetti O’s.”

I don’t know why the commercials of my childhood seem more benign. Maybe because there were fewer of them. How many shampoos were there? Breck, Prell, Halo, and VO5? Remember “cream rinse?”

Okay. A bit of nostalgia. And maybe a warning, or at least a caution, about what gets in your head and stays.

Even something like The Given Self. I ended the book saying that once you get the concept, you can forget about it. You don’t need to have your given self stuck in your brain, just like you don’t need rules or memorized bits of information or TV commercials. You can let go. Move on. Live a bit more spontaneously. That’s what I’m hoping anyway.