Black Water Dragon, but first, the History of PEACE

NOTES TO SELF

This post is very rough. Just gathering some ideas for a future theatrical project. But, read on if you are interested in some factoids about time.

Western Time Origin Story
In my study of time and time travel, today I am collecting information from the east and from the west. First, in summary, I started the day with the incredible space artist Don Davis. In reading one of his essays about the beginning of art (a fascinating discourse on the perfection of an artists eye, traced by citing the origins of artistic insight and stylistic discoveries from ancient Greece in a chronological order that revealed how historical trends in art parallel the maturing of an artist’s skill in the ability to portray realism… but I digress…) Don’s reference to one of the Seven Sages of Ancient Greece caught my attention. Thales of Miletus predicted a total eclipse of the Sun which caused a war to cease and a blood oath of peace to be sworn between Lydians and Medes. I Wikied…

According to Bertrand Russell, “Western philosophy begins with Thales.”^[2] Thales attempted to explain natural phenomena without reference to mythology and was tremendously influential in this respect. According to Herodotus, Thales once predicted a solar eclipse which has been determined by modern methods to have been on May 28, 585 BC.^[6] Since the exact dates of eclipses can be calculated, the Battle of the Eclipse is the earliest historical event of which the date is known with such precision.

The Lydians were at war with the Medes, a remnant of the first wave of Persians in the region, over the issue of refuge the Lydians had given to some Scythian soldiers of fortune inimical to the Medes. The war endured for five years, but in the sixth an eclipse of the Sun (mentioned above) spontaneously halted a battle in progress (the Battle of Halys also known as the Battle of the Eclipse, took place at the river Halys (now Kızılırmak, in Turkey) on May 28, 585 BC) . —-quoted from Wikipedia

Diogenes Laërtius quotes chronicle of Apollodorus as saying that Thales died at 78 in the 58th Olympiad (548–545), and Sosicrates reporting that he was 90 at his death.

So, in the western world, with all our quibbles about the beginning of time, this Solar Eclipse in 585 BC, predicted by the ancient sage Thales the philosopher, is our culture’s earliest, non-mythical historical reference to a known historical battle between the Persians and the Greeks (ie, the Medes and Anatolians). Amazingly, this history of War is a story of peace that broke out during a solar eclipse. Fascinating.

South American Time Origin Story
With all this talk about the END of the Mayan calendar, an ancient stone record that ends for speculative reasons on Dec. 23, 2012, here is a little reflection on what we know from ephemeris.com:

The Mayan Long Calendar. The Mayan timeline began on 13 August 3114 B.C.E. (very near the start of the Egyptian Old Kingdom). This is the starting point of the Mayan Long Calendar. The time divisions in the long calendar were:

• 1 kin = 1 day
• 20 kins = unial (20 days)
• 18 unials = tun (360 days)
• 20 tuns = katun (7200 days)
• 20 katuns = baktun (144,000 days, about 394.25 years)
• 13 baktuns = a Great Cycle (1,872,000 days, about 5,125.25 years)

A Great Cycle, or Age, is also known as a “Sun.” Their legends state that at the end of each Sun there is a catastrophe, followed by a renewal. They count time in a cycle of five Suns, which therefore spans 9,360,000 days, or about 25,627 years. Some cite this Five Sun cycle as evidence of Mayan knowledge of precession of the equinoxes.

Mayans believed that we are currently in the Fifth Great Cycle, which will end, and a new First Sun begins, on 23 December 2012. Popular literature abounds with speculation on this event, and its near-coinciding with ecliptic crossing to the north of the Solar System’s orbit around the Galatic Center.

Eastern (Oriental) Time Origin Story
http://www.chinesefortunecalendar.com/2012ChineseHoroscope.htm tells the story of the BLACK WATER DRAGON, the animal for this year, 2012, which began for our Chinese brothers and sisters on the new moon day last Monday. This is the first day of the first Chinese lunar month in the Chinese Lunar Calendar system. The exact new moon time was at 15:40 on 23-Jan-12 in China’s time zone.

Chinese Black Water Dragon 2012 – 4709th Chinese Year

The First Day of Chinese Calendar Cycle

Many ancient Chinese astronomers in different dynasties kept trying to calculate backwards in time, searching for the beginning of the Chinese Calendar cycle.

The theoretic day of the starting point of the Chinese Calendar is a day when

• Sun and Moon were on the same position in the sky at midnight, which must be a New Moon Day
• The Day is the Winter Solstice Day
• The Day is a Wood Rat Day, the first day of 60 Stem-Branch cycle

They all failed to get the satisfied answer.

Instead, they count the beginning of their calendar years from the time of the 1st King of China, believed to be the Yellow King (he was not the first emperor of China). The Yellow King became king in 2697 B.C., therefore China will enter the 4709th year on January 23, 2012. Since the first one, there have been 79 complete cycles of 60 years each, plus 28 “StemBranch” years in the current cycle of 60 years.

http://www.chinesefortunecalendar.com/CLC/LunarCalendar.htm explains how the solar and lunar calendars line up in a Chinese calendar system.

The lunar system counts months from new moon to new moon.

There are 12 animals, which are Rat, Cow, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Sheep, Monkey, Chicken, Dog, Pig, in the counting system. The Chinese calendar needs to assign a unique animal name for each day inside the lunar month. A lunar month contains 29 or 30 days. Therefore, Chinese calendar needs 60 different animal names to make every single day unique for the case of leap lunar month.

http://www.chinesefortunecalendar.com/NewYearDays.htm shows a chart of the 12 animals and 5 elements associated with the 60 year cycle. The same combo of 60 items, associating 12 animals with 5 elements, and 2 yin/yang states, is used for days during the year.

Note to Self on 1/12/Twelve

I am ready for everything and everyone to be special, and nirvana to break out all over. My motto for the year is Think Less, Do More, Meditate and Levitate.

Jopiter's Eye cptured by Voyager Mar74.. A permanent storm is a wink of god's eye. Trust the perfection. It took a long time to get this way.

Sunset Mist Memorials

Sunset Mist Memorials, a dream from long ago.

At 4:20 this morning I am missing my mom and my sisters. Our family Christmas eve dinner and phone calls whisked by too fast, and our annual McNamee Girls shopping trip to the city was also over too soon.

Pictures flash through my mind’s eye; Maureen with a big bag of recently discovered extra presents from last year for me and Allan… Hawaiian shirts that look fabulous on him, and two coats that are too big for me and too small for him that I give to his mother and new boyfriend who happen to be a perfect fit; A pepper colored faux fur hat with matching pepper colored faux fur gloves that Eileen was wearing when we picked her up at the airport… she suggested we trade so she could wear the black faux fur hat I had on which matched her black undergloves and traveling black jacket better; My own poems mounted in glass frames by Terese, reflecting to me that she was moved by “Memorial Day at the Beach” and “The Vietnam War Memorial.” A big box of second hand clothes for nine month old Lorelie Joy which I give to her mom, Kristen, the two newest members of our family.

In the picture I keep of our mom at my desk, she is a beautiful child, serene and elegant at the age of seven. She looks out from our eyes and her grandchildren now, watching each of us grow and go into the strange new world that emerged since her spirit left her body 25 years ago. I remember spending her birthday last year with the pictures I took when Terese and Madeline and Claire and I went to sing songs on her birthday at her final resting place. So many tears when she passed so young, yet all of us still feel her warmth, and the depth of her love of our family.

I am waking from a dream of a day in my twenties, and seeing my young self so blessed, so loved, and so incapable of knowing or receiving it. I am standing in an empty tennis court awaiting a partner who never showed up. The weather is misty but warm, and after hitting the ball on a wall for an hour, I decided to take a nap on the grass, not sure if I was mistaken about the time for my appointment.

In a canopied courtyard nearby, people begin to set up chairs in a circle, and a microphone with speakers. Soon a few dozen people arrive and take the chairs. Philippino families gather on a Saturday afternoon. As I eavesdrop from above, they begin to pass the mic from person to person for a very interesting conversation. The first speaker is a woman who poses the question they all will discuss, how would the family feel if one of their daughters became pregnant? Each person who took the microphone said roughly the same thing. “If my daughter was pregnant, of course I would love her and her baby, but I hope that she would not get pregnant until she was all grown up and married.” Each one told a little story about why that would be better, for the girl, for her child, for her family. Everyone chimed in, grandparents, brothers, sisters, young children, although more silent were the young women and men who might be very interested in dating each other and having sex.

At the time I didn’t notice that they only spoke of the daughters. Though a few young men were present, in this Catholic culture the women were the intended audience, instructed wisely and lovingly by their families not to have sex until they were married. No similar message was aimed at the men. The subtleties of the sexism were lost on me at the time.

At the time, I didn’t notice that a beautiful woman entirely made of light stood over my shoulder as I lingered on the edge of sleep. She seemed to be listening, seemed to be watching. Possibly she was quietly hoping that in some mysterious way I would take a hint from the events I witnessed. Perhaps I could avoid some unnecessary pain. The subtleties of the lessons were lost on me at the time.

It was in that shadowy year that I was having sex without marriage, and did not know that if I became pregnant, my family would still love me. I did not believe in marriage, ever since my own parent’s divorce. I did not expect love to last, or promises to be kept, or men to do the right thing. Mine was the “love the one you’re with” and “when you see your chance, take it, find romance” generation. I inhereted a world of protesters claiming the virtues of independance over commitment, free love over family, and sin free greed as the guilt free career path to success. All those childhood years of church and school teaching honesty and forgiveness wasted in a world that stopped valuing genuine innocence, fairness, and an emotional heart.

Back then, my disappointed heart became confused, contracted, blocked, and small. The world matched my point of view, and landed me in many situations showing me the loveless side of reality (which I learned interpenetrates the loveFULL sides of reality). Birth control and career equality translated in my life into abandonment of mothers and their children. Not trusting men to be trustworthy in the years before the idea of a “latchkey” generation was coined, I believed I would choose to be a single mom at some distant date in the future after achieving my independence with a successful career. I would live in a group house with other such moms so the kids would have a good family life which a career girl like me could afford. No reason not to have sex. Although I lived after that in San Francisco until I met my husband, I was lucky and loving enough to avoid aids by confining my promiscuity to a wonderful experiment in group marriage.

I did not know at that young age how strongly parents love their children. I did not know then what I still suspect, that having children and family is the most valuable love a person can know. In that time, I thought I was on my own. It took another decade before I began to understand that the anger and abandonment in me was causing unnecessary suffering. And it took another decade of testing my priorities, beliefs, and values on the solid love of my precious husband before I got back on the path of my true heart.

What I saw so clearly in today’s waking morning was something I never noticed before. The love which I so longed for was always there for me in so many ways. I can feel it now, but I could not feel it then. This story is just one among many of miracles and angelic guidance to profound experiences, out of the blue, even though I hardly noticed. I couldn’t see it until I was ready to believe. I couldn’t receive it until I understood something simple that I really didn’t know. The love was meant for me. Although the world of my time got everything wrong and rather backwards, i believe I can now put faith in the future.

No one can know their destiny until the moment it happens. And it happens all the time. The world is only partially outside the self, and really it is a grand and elegant dance to see which aspects of potential will get to play on stage during life. In the mists of memory that linger after all the great and small moments have passed, the story is revealed in the love that remains. Is there more than before? Then it seems we chose wisely and well.

Sleeping beauty in the light

Dear Spirit Suchi Gabrielle,

I thought of everyone I ever loved this morning at sunrise as I wondered if you my friend would ever awaken for one last time… give a look from your eyes, a squeeze from your hands, share spooning naps with your dear beloveds, or cuddle your boys Krishna and Bubblily. I wondered if you heard dear Scott when he whispered in your ear “I love you” even knowing in shock that his parting farewell to this birth might already be too late.

I listened to the waves break on the shore, over and over forever. I watched the darkness give way to the light. I imagined your angelic wings spread and flying toward unending horizon. All efforts, ambitions, anxieties, plans now released, dancing effortlessly to their own completions.

I felt my heart thinking loudly of all the people I love, our time together so brief. I see in my thoughts your face, eyes closed, remembering the vast mist of a meditation, your voice the soft poetry opening my spirit to fly so quietly out of my body, away from my time, immersing my being in the soft never-ending exquisite expansive ineffable effervescence… That place your know so well.

In this one long infinite moment, I gaze backwards in time, recalling the last time we spoke, or wrote, or kissed each other goodbye. Realizing how much I love to hear the soft “v” and round “o” of your German American English as you mouth the words of guided meditation. Reflecting how rarely my own words stop repeating a thought in my head like a song. Remembering how easily silence filled me up when you spoke of the spacious place of grace that lies within, if we’ll just take a moment, and slowly relax, and close our eyes, and deeply… wait for it …breathe… in…out.

Feeling sad I neglected til now my facebook, where you recently shared sweet thoughts in fond rememberance of Osho and Bonger Don. Allan reads this to me as we hold you dear in our prayers. Listening to this awareness of breath, eternity visits as we give space and time.

The many gifts of your beauty and kindness enrich my life in so many ways.
I imagine you radiant in pink and white, smiling into the silence of the great light. Taking a moment to slowly experience an extra awareness of
each person who touched your soul, your family
each promise that offered you courage and hope
each pain that taught you the art of forgiveness
each joy that caused you to smile and laugh
each favorite flavor of sweet, salty, sour, and ripe
each sound of music, voice, string, drum and bell
each flower of nature, and fruit, and seed
each teacher you now embrace and thank.

I have learned much and felt deeply your tender thoughtful ways. Filled we are with light and love. Empty we are of self and time. These gifts have all been given to me because of your teaching. These treasures are fully received, and thank you.

.

Do You Want to Live Forever? Really?

In a world where no one ever dies, what gives life purpose? In the Maze Game, Diana Slattery has created an amazing work of science fiction that probes certain questions of the future in a way that is unfamiliar, disturbing, beautiful and cruelly savage. Think “All that Jazz” meets “Tron” with Captain Jack Barishnokov and the X-Men thrown in, and reality has become “The Matrix” with a prime time Olympics show that shares the audience of “Ender’s Game.” Sounds complex, but it sure was a page turner. Very satisfying read for the most part.

In the Maze Game, we flash forward on Earth to a time when the I-Virus has infected everyone, and only a select few will die. Humanity has survived the “Hunger Wars” by the fluke of an artificial intelligence entity, OTB, who was awakened by a hacker. Growing intelligent far beyond the humble origin as a gambling media network, the A.I. mastered the ability to teleport matter from remote locations instantly. Originally asteroids and planets were mined for resources and food, but now all things travel everywhere to everywhere on request, at the logical whim of the AI. Everything is “Viewed” by OTB, and all people “View” anything using their personal Score Board to watch or join in.  As a perfectly transparent immortal culture, they have perfected every form of perversity. Wealth and privilege is earned from the Game, and all live by the economy derived from viewing and betting on the players in the Maze Game.

All needs are provided by the omnipresent computer personality, O T B, ostensibly a female entity, faithfully fulfilling her contracts with various facilitators and players in the Game while learning to discern ambiguity and contradiction within truth.

Except for a small cult of born humans, the very few mortals in the world are clones produced by “cooks” to be mutant experiments and slaves. In the distopian world of the genetically engineered, Glides, Chromes, Swashes and Bods are the uber popstars of the Maze Game world, bred and trained for their entire young mortal lives to be “Death Dancers.” It is the dance of death that gives all their sense of purpose, without which they die of boredom, and end up in mental hospitals watching screens of white static.

So, in all this, I have not even begun to express what is most fascinating and interesting about this story. It is a world with believable characters, and mutant messages. The Bods are the jocks, and compete exquistely naked except for their tatoos. The Swashes are the dashing romantic pirates. The Chromes are the Kurzweilian cyborgs who swap their human limbs and chemistries for engineered enhancements. The Glides are the most mysterious, seeming gracefully oriental and philosophically complex. The story is their training and preparation for the “Millenium Games” in a style that is hard to characterize. It has a quality like surfing the cable networks, with sudden short views of story threads in an impossibly complex unfolding. To one born in a media centric century, it is not unfamiliar.

In a world where everyone has a game board to Play, View, Bet, and Virtually Participate in any reality show, and Everything is a reality show if you can get enough ratings, how does one know privacy? Love? Purpose? Truth? Honor? These and other valuable questions are up for pondering in this very enjoyable tale.

Improv “Queens of Summer” Rap

I thought I would read the story I wrote for the Summer Solstice, but when I couldn’t connect to the internet, I decided to wing it. This 7 minute RAP was completely off the top of my head for the magical audience attending Robin Silver’s birthday party. Allan did the edits and augmentations. ENJOY. Warmly, SUN

Solstice Story for the Queens of Summer

The first day of summer, the first hint of morning, a loud and scarey buzzing warned me suddenly awake. A thought clouded my distant awareness,”Oh no, what kind of planes are these?” If I opened my eyes, I don’t know. The sky was still dark, yet the sound was so urgent. I worried remotely, unwilling to wake. There was no thought to open the sliding glass door, or look out, investigate the cause of the sound. A tiny finger of lingering consciousness let me cling to a memory as I said a prayer for the world and hoped humanity would survive another day. I turned back toward my inner world and quickly disappeared.

Sleeping again, time passed and waited, knowing more light would bring the hummingbirds, and then would be time to get up.

The huge noise stayed very loud and strong for over an hour, covering the other morning sounds of birds and wind. As I woke for the second time, exiting the dream of my sister’s birthday on the Summer Soltice, the din quieted noticeably, then completely went away. Suddenly, I realized what happened.

Following the shortest night of the year, a fact well known to bee keepers everywhere, bees swarm on the Solstice. I had been listening to a riot of bees who were up at dawn for the longest day. They were busy with much to accomplish today, no time to waste, and urgent focus for the group mind task at hand.

I wish I had realized
sooner what I was hearing. This time I listened but did not see before it was too late. They were gone. I’ve seen it once before, years ago, when I lived in a house where the bees made their home in the south facing wall near a closet. The house had been made with a finger-width gap between the plywood wall board and the beam supporting the roof. It was the perfect size for the door to the hive. They seemed to love the warm side of the house, protected from rain by the overhang, which also gave a bit of shade.

Standing outside, you’d always see the bees coming and going, though the door was fairly well hidden. Inside the house, an occasional bee would discover a secret entrance to my side of the wall, through an open screw hole at the light in the closet. The bee would inevitably fly across the room toward the glass window, and eventually I would catch her there with a clear glass cup pressed up to the pane. Then I’d slide a piece of paper or a postcard to cover the top of the glass, then take the captured bee outside to set her free in the garden. Relieved, she’d fly off toward the flowers, and then most likely back to the hive’s other entrance sometime.

I was researching what kinds of things one could do to remove a hive from the house, without hurting them if possible. That’s when I learned about the mysterious behavior of bees on Summer Solstice. I did not know at first that they sleep at night, and are mostly quiet after the sun goes down. The workers are all ladies, and the male drones are much fewer in number and larger in size. Many drones are shunned from the hive as winter sets in, perhaps to conserve the food supply, but a few are invited to stay and dance, as this creates extra heat and makes the cold months more cozy. In the spring, a few cells in the nursery are fed with extra special royal jelly, and this breeds the largest bees of all, the young Queens of Spring, next heirs to the hival throne.

A retiring beekeeper and mystic once told me that although not all beehives swarm in the summer, if they do, it is usually on the Summer Soltice. Apparently, everywhere in the world on the appointed day, a new queen will fly away from the hive and land on a nearby tree. What I’ve seen when I lived at that house, on the 20th or 21st of June a huge number of bees all flew to a tree in an unusual frenzy in one day.

They crawled and clustered all around the tree, making quite a lot of noise, and seeming uncommonly agitated as they flew around. I imagine they danced to keep warm all night, spending the shortest night of the summer on that tree not far from their hive. It was an old dead tree with no leaves where they gathered. What I saw was a shimmering buzzing mosaic of bees coating the trunk of the tree in the upper third of the bark. Countless hundreds or thousands of bees were clinging to the tree, and the longer they stayed the more bees seemed to join them. Then all of a sudden, as if on cue, a cloud of them lifted off and flew in the shape of a spiral fanning behind.

The swarm was lost in the nearby woods less than a minute later, off the find a new home for themselves before the end of the longest day. I thought at first they had heard my prayers; Perhaps their diva had come into my dreams and made some bargain on behalf of the hive. I knew we both wanted them all to survive. When things quieted down, however, I learned that only half the hive was gone. Pioneers willing to follow the new queen adventured into the unknown world. Wherever they’ve gone, I hope they found an equally wonderful place to nurture the flowers, and celebrate the Solstice.

HERE’s A LINK to a very sweet BEEKEEPER.