Google And My Aura-Seeing Character

[dr_pretentious]

I needed to check my recollection of aura anatomy, since my protagonist sees auras and I don't. One of my sources for Ria's New Age fixations discusses the hara line, which supposedly is sort of like the aura's spine: a person undergoing an intiatory death-and-rebirth experience without changing bodies may experience a shifting or splitting of the hara line, though the problem eventually rights itself when the new spiritual lessons are integrated. Okay, for purposes of fiction, I can run with that. But what does Ria think the hara line looks like while this is happening?

Googling "hara line" gets a lot of descriptions and pictures of a healthy hara line that's not doing anything exciting.

Googling "hara line shift," however, gets papers on the poet Frank O'Hara and how his poems use line breaks to shift subject, viewpoint, and attitude.

Can I just say I love this slightly fluffy poem? Oh, and here's an audio recording of Frank O'Hara reading it to a live audience.

Next time I need to fact-check this story (or, in the case of Ria's odder beliefs, fallacy-check it), I'll brave my old pile of paper books. Oh Internet, we love you, stop distracting us.

Comments

[showingup.livejournal.com]

I got a giggle out of that!

Tell us what a messed up hara line looks like when you find out, will you?

[showingup.livejournal.com]

By the by, it might amuse you to know that when I was reading this on only a few minutes of light therapy, I misread

I needed to check my recollection of aura anatomy, since my protagonist sees auras and I don't.

as

I needed to check my recollection of aura anatomy, since my proctologist sees auras and I don't.

And I'd read the whole paragraph before I realised there was something not quite right about that.

Yes, my brain is a strange place...

[jeneralist.livejournal.com]

And when I google "aura hara line shift", thinking to help you out, the first link I get leads... directly to your post!

[spindlewand.livejournal.com]

What's wrong with me? I get distracted just as easily by the piles of print books. Oh yeah, the ADHD...

I am quite amused at the idea of a proctologist seeing auras, particularly while working.

And now I have to go look up hara lines. (My father, BTW, is convinced I see auras but frankly, I think it is something just a tiny bit wonky about my corrective lenses...)

[jamesenge.livejournal.com]

I love the O'Hara poem, and lots of his stuff. The aura stuff sounds interesting, but it would be a bummer to commit to something in a story and be pestered by aura-readers. "That's not what they look like! You didn't even mention the ithrydonian frequency ripples!"

[catjuggling.livejournal.com]

With my new Kid Psychic book (thanks for the confidence boost BTW) I've only scratched the surface of what it would mean to be a fake psychic and running a phone service (mom) or hosting a TV Show (brother) and MAN can some of that stuff be a distracting read. Then taking my world and inserting the kid with his Aztecan Chihuahua spirit guide, deciding where the line goes between the two is becoming daunting.

I'm actually thinking that an offline, old fashioned approach to research my be a better way to go.

[thunderpigeon.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the Frank O'Hara poem; I haven't read him in years, but I still love his stuff. My favorite, I think was "A True Account of Talking to the Sun at Fire Island."