As I was strolling through downtown Portland on this sunny Sunday afternoon, my eye was caught by the rainbow sign displayed on the door of one of the businesses at SW Sixth and Clay — across the street from University Station post office. The sign in front of Brain and Body Yoga invited passers-by to “Check Your Aura.” This by itself is not that unusual — I don’t see many street signs for aura photographs but there are a number of places one can have them done. I noticed it more because of the aura colors in the sign itself.
What’s fascinating about this one is that it’s next door to the DMV — in fact they share an entryway so their office doors are almost side-by-side. What if we could have aura photos on our driver license cards instead of the often dreadful photos we have now. Would we try to be in a more pleasant frame of mind before we got our licenses? Would we all have black clouds around our heads as evidence of the stress induced by waiting in line or proving our names? Would the traffic officer examining your license be able to tell that you were having a particularly bad day because your aura was so different from the one in the picture and cut you a little slack on that speeding ticket? Or perhaps that guy checking photo ID at the beer festival might notice if your colors indicated you could be the belligerent type. Would we have handy little guides to the aura colors alongside our regular hair and eye color?
I don’t think I’d personally be able to make much use of them — or at least not yet. I know people who can routinely see auras but I’m not that skilled. Perhaps we all will be at some point. In the meantime it’s just coincidence that those businesses are so close together — or do I mean foreshadowing?
