work in progress

Accept that you are a work in progress, both a revision and a draft: you are better and more complete than earlier versions of yourself, but you also have work to do. Be open to change. Allow yourself to be revised. ~ Dame Maggie Smith, Keep Moving: Notes on Loss, Creativity, and Change

moon over NYC

In a world cocooned and immersed in a constant barrage of externalized prompting, do we even realize who we are and what we do? Are we original individuals or mere sheep led out to pasture? 

Social media especially can all too easily lend itself to project an idealized or romanticized life. 

Mercury | ups & downs

This week may not go quite as planned. We can feel the best and worst of moods, experience lovely moments of flow, and go through patches of great technical difficulty as Mercury - symbolic arbiter of communication, thought, and transport - retrogrades, as it squares difficult Pluto and trines hopeful Jupiter.

Mercury Retrograde in Libra

Mercury square Pluto has us look at the worst-case scenarios. Mercury trine Jupiter can help us see our situation from a larger perspective and optimistically free ourselves from old patterns. The truth of our situation may lie between these two extremes. Those conflicting aspects can neutralize each other and leave us just puttering along.

Olivia Lopez | Filipina Fashionista

The life of Olivia Lopez is filled with luxuries most only fantasize about - transatlantic adventures, five-star accommodations, and chic designer duds. 

But before she came a blogger to watch and now a formidable brand in her own right, she was a young Filipina immigrant adjusting to life in a new country.

Just the kind of blazing wonder | wander | woman we choose to highlight here at wonder | wonder | world. Not so much as influencer but by what has influenced her.

Refinery29 caught up with Lopez to discuss her upbringing, the moment she knew she was a creative at heart, and how she cultivates appreciation for her culture.

Moors of Iberia

Al-Andalus, also known as Muslim Spain, Muslim Iberia, or Islamic Iberia - was a medieval Muslim territory and cultural domain that in its early period included most of Iberia - today's Portugal and Spain. 

The Alhambra & Generalife palace & fortress in Granada

Under the Caliphate of Córdoba, al-Andalus was a beacon of learning, and the city of Córdoba, the largest in Europe, became one of the leading cultural and economic centres throughout the Mediterranean Basin, Europe, and the Islamic world. 

Ultimately, the Christian kingdoms in the north of the Iberian Peninsula overpowered the Muslim states to the south. In 1085, Alfonso VI captured Toledo, starting a gradual decline of Muslim power.

Clothing of al-Andalus in the 15th century,
during the Emirate of Granada

With the fall of Córdoba in 1236, most of the south quickly fell under Christian rule and the Emirate of Granada became a tributary state of the Kingdom of Castile two years later. 

Emir Muhammad XII surrendered the Emirate of Granada to Queen Isabella I of Castile, completing the Christian Reconquista of the peninsula. Although al-Andalus ended as a political entity, the nearly eight centuries of Islamic rule has left a significant effect on culture and language in Andalusia.

Muhammad XII's family in the Alhambra

moments after the fall of Granada

[Manuel Gómez-Moreno González, c. 1880]

This is a documentary of history not taught in western education about the Moors that invaded Europe, educated and civilized  the caucasian who at the time was in the Dark Ages - sick and dying.

The Europeans stole their history, advanced sciences, enslaved them, forced on them their idol gods and beliefs and now claim to rule the world.