I hate when you have a dream that seems to be so loaded with meaning it is almost inescapable.  One of those dreams that clings to the fabric of your mind with talons that won't loosen until later in the day.  It leaves you sitting there wondering what it means... and the issue is always further compounded when the dream never comes to its conclusion because you are woken by some sort of external commotion.  Always lame.  There was a dark haired woman trying to tell me something about one of my classes, and we were driving somewhere when someone shot out the tires of my Suburban.  She was frantically trying to tell me something when the damn cat decided it was time to make a racket.  Oh well, I may never know.

Today is the day after Christmas, and I think I am going to mostly relax, maybe do some photography out in the countryside.  I want to get out on Santa Rose Creek Road at sunset but i think that is going to have to wait until another day.  My entire family and I are going to see Avatar tonight, so that's a good thing.  Hopefully my mother doesn't get dizzy or anything.  She tends towards motion sickness sometimes, and that's never a fun thing.  The 3D might mess with her a bit, I think it will be OK though.  This time, I am going to have my voice recorder with my so I can record my thoughts as I drive home....last time I had an entire blog composed in my head while I was driving, only to have someone cut me off and me lose the entire thing.  It would be nice to get the rest of it.

It was good to see family yesterday.  Got to spend time with almost everyone, minus the two branches of the family that are rather far flung.  We don't get to see them too often, but they are always missed.  Those I did get to spend time with seem to be doing well, all around.  We had two small Christmas gift giving bits, one at each of the grandparents houses.  I got some very nice sweatshirts and some totally cool books.  My grandmother gave me three books; Truxton of the Constellation (about one of the admirals Washington appointed), Sailing in the Wine-Dark Sea (about the ancient Greeks), and The Sea Shall Embrace Them- The Tragic Story of the Steamship Arctic.  I have always been a big fan of the nautical themed reading, so I am looking forward to having time to read about these.  My parents gave me a book on the stars and constellations.  Beautifully bound, I am looking forward to it not being quite so cold at night so I can get outside and learn the language of the stars.  I am always somewhat jealous when I am looking at stars and whoever I am with knows all the constellations...and I can kinda find Orion.  There was of course all of the nice chocolates and cookies and other assorted holiday nibbles...and some caramel corn.  

It was nice to get text messages trickling in all day from friends and family...that always makes me smile.  Makes me realize how much I miss people sometimes.  There are so many friends who have drifted away over the years, that I shared a connection with in the past, but who have drifted away into the sands.  Friends I have made in classes, but who have faded into the mists of time.  People who as I age will become little more than a story I tell about "that time I ......"  or a faded memory of a day in the sun.  A memory of a night running through the park sprinklers or tearing down back roads.  Misadventures become treasured memories, the older you get, I am convinced.  The things that happened to me in my teens seemed to be great tragedies as the time, but looking back they make me chuckle.  For instance, I once shattered the oil pan in my '91 Mercury Topaz (the Ford Taurus' retarded little brother) in the bottom of a draw because my girlfriend at the time kept goading me for driving to conservatively.  Or the time I rear ended a farm truck, his trailer hitch punching a 4" hole clear through my bumper...that car is still sitting outside, it is my brother's now.  It has a new bumper on it...a gold one, that doesn't match the rest of the white car.  Or the time my best friend and I nearly managed to burn his parents house down.  We both had no hair on our arms and some burnt out of our hair...but it is funny as hell looking back on it.  (Kudos to you if you are reading this brother, you are doing well and I am proud of you.)  Or the frantic dash from Peruvian riot police through the open air market in Ñaña on New Years Eve because we were buying illegal fireworks.  So many memories, so many people, so much life...and so much more to come.  

I am going to be doing alot of photography editing over the weekend.  I have been taking shoot after shoot the last few days, and I need to get them all cleaned up so I can give them to the people in them.  I did a Christmas shoot for my sister and her boyfriend, everyone was pleased with that.  I did a shoot a week ago or so of my very good friend.  It came out beautifully, she was very pleased with the results.  Yesterday I took some pictures of some of my family, but I forgot my tri-pod.  I want to go visit soon and do formal portrait shots, maybe with chiaroscuro lighting.  I think that would look nice and be a good thing to keep.  

One of the things I find interesting about our society is the way appearance is judged with age.  Men and women perceive appearance entirely differently.  As men age, they become 'regal' or 'distinguished' while women perceive themselves to become 'haggard' or 'old looking'.  It is a strange thing for me.  It seems to me that age is something that you earn (of course, I am a man, so I have a slightly different viewpoint than a woman would) and that all signs of that aging are something that you have earned by living a life worthy of age.  Douglas MacArthur said "You are as young as your faith, as old as your doubt; as young as your self-confidence, as old as your fear; as young as your hope, as old as your despair." I think that he is dead-on in this.  Certainly, the body will age, but the body is merely a vessel for that which you are.  Beauty if not just physical, though that is a part of it.  Beauty is also in the eye of the beholder... someone once said, "Why do people love us? We are always trying to figure that out, but only by using our own point of view. That way is so limited. Sometimes they love us for things we don't even know about ourselves. For example, they love our hands. My hands? Why would anyone love my hands? But they've got their reasons why. You must accept that and realize the person they know and love is different from the one you know."  I don't know who said it, but i think it is very true.  When someone tells you that you are beautiful, or that there is something about you that is a wonderful thing...just accept it, because even if you don't see it, they do.

Time to begin wrapping up this year, and packing it away to be ready for next year.  Its going to be a good one!

This time of year we find ourselves surrounded by all manner of holiday decoration, festivity with little or to no knowledge of the tradition behind it.  It is not often that we look back at the history surrounding a tradition and take an honest look at WHY we do what we do every year.  When I discuss things like this, it is not an attempt to undermine the current traditions surrounding the holidays, but rather of enlarge and enrich the tradition with the knowledge of the other things that came before it.  I have no problem with the Christian Christmas, in fact I find it a wonderful holiday...but I think we can enrich our own experience if we look at what lies behind the rest of the tradition.

In the second century BC, things were not looking too brightly for Rome.  The Second Punic War was raging in Northern Italy as Hannibal crossed the Alps.  The Romans has endured a defeat so terrible it left the waters of the lake on which the battle was fought red for days, one of the Consuls had been killed in battle by the Carthaginians, and things were generally going very badly.  In the wake of this nasty year, the senate decided to have a festival to raise the spirits of the people.  They declared what is now December 17th the festival of Saturnalia.  It was designed to be a single day of feasting, gift giving, singing, dancing, drinking, and general merriment.  The Romans, like all people, really enjoyed their holidays.  What began as a simple smallish celebration that lasted one day eventually became a week long celebration that got bigger and bigger as time went along.  This also coincided nicely with the winter solstice, of the day when the days began to get longer again.  The day that the light began to triumph over the dark.  

Early Christianity, especially once it got into the early emperors, had a very interesting habit of re-purposing holidays for their own uses.  The Germanic Eostre became Easter (thats where we get the eggs and rabbits from...its really a fertility festival, not the celebration of the death and resurrection of Jesus...oops).  Things would essentially go like this... the Romans would march into an area, and inform the natives that it was time to fall under the power of the empire.  They, generally speaking, gave the roman army the finger and prepared to lob rocks at them.  The Roman did what they were very good at and killed lots of people.  When the people were tired of being killed, the Romans would offer them a truce and allow them to join the empire.  In an effort to make Roman society more palatable to the unwashed masses, they would take one or two or their holidays, and convert them to Roman/Christian holidays with the same basic practices but a new name (or in the case of Easter, the same name.)

When Constantine I declared himself a Christian in 313 and announced the Edict of Milan, declaring religious tolerance, one of the first things he did was convert the holidays.  The surest way to have a total and open insurrection on your hands if you were a Roman emperor was to take away the holidays of the masses.  The Roman Vox Populi spoke loudly when it came to their holidays and the observance of the things they saw to be important.  When he became a Christian, it was necessary to turn these preexisting pagan holidays into Christian holidays so that they could still be celebrated.  This is the origin of Christmas...it has nothing to do with the birth of Christ...but its a damn good story and it works.

Other things like the Christmas tree and the wreaths and the holly are all tied to early magic tradition because they still live in the dead of winter, when everything else has turned brown and died.  Santa Clause is varying the figure of Saint Basil of Cesarea, Saint Nicklaus of Myra, Odin (who led the Norse gods on a hunt through the sky during Yule...you know that thing the Christmas dessert is named after), or even Kriskindl (the 'Christ Child').  Everything is a massive mish-mash of traditions from everywhere, then adapted to meet our modern commercial Christmas needs.  

As I said at the beginning of this, I am not attempting to undermine Christmas, or devalue it in any way.  For many people, it is about Christ and their traditional religion, but it is always good to know where something comes from to fully appreciate the depth of that tradition.  When you sit around the Christmas tree with your family, think about the depth of the belief in the Yggdrasil, or the World Tree of the Germanic tribes.  The Yggdrasil connected all levels of existence, and all parts of the world together.  This is the symbolism behind the Christmas tree.  A verdant green tree that never dies, and ties us all together.  It is not just some tree we chop down, cover with sparkly shit, and put presents under.  Always look deeper, because the true beauty of a tradition lies in its depth and breadth, not just its modern face.

Now, I am going to go and celebrate Christmas with my family, and think on my family and friends.  All those I have loved through the years and love still today.  Those I no longer see and those who are part of my daily life.  Those who are still with me and those who have passed on to parts unknown.  Merry Christmas everyone!

Io Saturnalia!

I went downstairs into the break room this morning and found a can of popcorn.  You know, the jumbo popcorn cans with the goofy picture of Santa on the outside and that flimsy divider in the middle with the three popcorn variants?  The ones that get shipped and mailed all over the country as the perfect example of corporate holiday giving.  The boss walks into the room, tells his assistant Mr. Smith to send something to each of the customers who did over X number of dollars with the company and signs a piece of paper so his signature can be printed on the card.  Mr Smith calls up the Popcorn Can Company or some such thing, and faxes them a list...next week hundreds of Santa-tin popcorn buckets are streaming across the country.  Nobody who ever receives a can of popcorn thinks, "Gee, they sure thought about this one," but on the other hand, everyone likes popcorn, so it works for everyone.

Everyone likes everything except for the caramel corn, that is. The moment the popcorn can is set down, the plastic seal on the top broken, and the lid pried free by frenzied hands, everyone knows what happens next.  The cheesy popcorn, with cheese that is as real as a Hollywood romance, is immediately set upon and devoured by all close enough to get a hand in...and then everyone walks away.  While the cheesy popcorn is consumed as if nobody has eaten anything in months, and the 'butter' flavor follows quickly...the caramel popcorn stays around forever.  Now, don't get me wrong...I like caramel corn.  My mother used to make caramel popcorn all the time, and it was wonderful.  This...creation on the other hand simple seems to sit around forever, in its third of the can with the distended cardboard divider.  For months it will sit there until someone decides they need a can for something, and Santa disappears into someones garage to be used as a rag can or something.  

I just don't get it...can't we just have a can of cheesy popcorn?

It is an odd feeling so look through the fog sometimes.  It covers our world with a layer of mystery and turns everything into a quiet monochrome.  Everything gets the volume turned down on it, life itself seems to lose some of the loud brashness that seems to always surround us.  I like the fog, I like walking slowly through the fog-covered fields, or watching the sun rise and try to fight its way through the mists.  The bright diffused light that covers everything...its great for taking pictures in.  I had intended to head out this morning and do an early morning photo shoot, but I ended up staying out late last night, then came back home and fell asleep in front of my computer while writing, I woke up at 3:30, head drooped and hands resting on my keyboard.  

Last night I went with the whole gang to see Avatar.  If you have somehow missed the story surrounding this film, than I will give you a bit of background.  James Cameron, the director, is the director of other blockbusting greats like Titanic and the Terminator (the one that didn't suck), spent ten years working on the project.  This movie is essentially revolutionizing the way films are made and produced, even going so far as to develop a pile of new camera technology specifically for the purpose of filming this movie.  The movie itself, from a cinematic standpoint, is visually stunning, but I don't think that is the best thing about it.  The true meaning and message of this movie runs deep, very deep.  It is interesting to see is panned by critics, but in their derision is the greatest compliment possible to a director for a project like this.  Remember, these are the same critics who think that the Twilight series is an "Engrossing tale of teenage romance."  These are not people who are traditionally very good at picking up depth.

Avatar touches on the deeper thread within each of us, something I have been focusing on more and more as time passes.  I had forgotten it was there for some time, but like a true friend, when I turn back, it remains.  Avatar is essentially a story about each of us, about the interconnectedness of the entire human race, about the havoc we wreck on our own home, and about the lack of regard we take for all things surrounding us.  The story line is an interesting mixture of Norse mythology, with most of the movie centered around a Yggdrasil like "home-tree" in which the native population live.  The natives are very well connected to the world in which they live, passing energy and life back and forth...it is a very Native American view of life.  

This view of interconnectedness sharply contrasted to the rather Western Military Industrial forces who essentially sought to rape the planet.  It was an odd thing for me to watch, because while Cameron was displaying this all in a theatrical format, you could CLEARLY see the connections drawn between the world in which the story took place, and our own...but longer ago.  Crowfoot, a Blackfoot Indian warrior and orator once said, "What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset."  Life IS all around us, in the tiniest of things.  Everything that happens surrounding us is life, and the tragedy is that we so seldom recognize it.  

 

Heinlein, in his book, "Stranger in a Strange Land," speaks of the way that the Martian religion is a study of all life.  A cherishing of the life that is contained within all things.  To 'grok' a thing was to understand it, and make it part of you.  In Avatar, Cameron uses the greeting between the natives, "I see you."  The English words 'I see you' mean very little in of themselves, frighteningly little.  So it is true with almost all we say though...the spirit behind those words is where the true power reveals itself.  It is not just a statement of your acknowledgement of someone presence, but a signification that you see within...not just the physical.  It is possible to see someone, but never know they are there.  'I grok you,' would be more appropriate in meaning if you were to combine the two.  Every day we see people and exchange pleasantries without THINKING about it.  We never reach out to FEEL what the person we are talking to is truly feeling or thinking.  There is a depth that is brought into play when speaking from the heart like that.  

Environmentally speaking, it is interesting to see the differences in attitude between a culture like those of the native tribes and those of the western world.  One views themselves as above the natural world, and resources are there to be consumed...the other views themselves as part of the natural world, and it is their job to protect it and take from it only what they need while thanking it for its generosity.  I am not going to tell you which is which, but only one of them has a problem with urban sprawl and pollution.  

Take a moment to find something beautiful in the world around you, in the path a lead takes as it falls or the flight of a bird.  The brave blossoming of a flower or the tiny ripples made as a fish breaks the surface of a pond.  Look at the world around you and actually see it...grok it...  You are part of it, and it is part of you, as a planet we are in dire straights if we do not realize this fact very shortly...

As an aside, I think I am going to go buy some blank mini-cassettes so i can take audio notes while I am driving for the purpose of writing.  I have found I have some of my best thoughts behind the wheel, but they fall out of my head as soon as I park...gotta fix that.  :P  Now I am going to go take a hungry friend a sandwich...hooray Subway.