Daily Archives: December 26, 2012

Cinema and Television

The Joy Luck Club

Leave a comment

Winter                                                              Moon of the Winter Solstice

Did you see the full moon last night with Jupiter atop it?  Here a mist clothed both in a gentle gauze.  It was a Christmas present from the universe.

Kate and I just watched the Joy Luck Club.  An old movie, yes, but a good one.  I read the novel, too, but a very long time ago.  And liked it a lot.  I remember that.

This one, like Lincoln, had me in tears at the end though for very different reasons.   The four mothers had stories of being daughters in China and raising daughters in America.  The daughters had an American heritage with the Chinese overhang effecting their lives in multiple ways, good and bad.

If you haven’t seen it and like family dramas, this is a good one.

Latin, Translating Metamorphoses

Ugh. Latin hard.

Leave a comment

Winter                                                                            Moon of the Winter Solstice

Ohhh.  Not exactly a headache, but a brain sensation similar to muscles after an intense workout.  Stretched to capacity.  Used. Up.  After a gnarly sentence with five phrases including 4 subjunctives, one participle and a partridge in a pear tree.  Even with all the application I could muster the middle two phrases still eluded me.  Sometimes, after this kind of experience I go back the next day and things become clearer.  I’ll try tomorrow.

Next.  An interval workout with resistance.  All of me will be stretched by the end of the day.

Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Great Wheel, Holidays, Third Phase

13 Baktun

Leave a comment

Winter                                                               Moon of the Winter Solstice

Another take on the end of the world.  Embrace it.  A website I saw suggested that the world did end on the 22nd.  The Mayan long count, 12 Baktun*, did roll round and stop.

But.  Only to start over again.  13 Baktun started on the Winter Solstice according to the article cited below.

So, we have just begun a new cycle of 394.26 tropical years.  This Winter Solstice was closer to the millennial transition than either New Year’s or even the turn of a century.

How will your life be different in the 13th Baktun?  Like me, you’ve lived all of yours in the 12th.  Those of born before 2000 are in a unique position in that we have lived through a centennial transition, a millennial transition and now a Baktunal transition.

Of course, if you’re a die hard rationalist you’ll note that one Baktun is like any other.  Well, maybe so, but they do give us, these chronological inflection points, opportunities to look back and assess and to look forward and hope.  Not a bad thing.

Why not give it a shot?  In my case I can look back over the 65 years spent in this last Baktun, my whole life, and consider its arc.  I can look forward to spending all the remaining years of my life in the 13th Baktun.  That means my aging will occur in a brand new chunk of time.  A chunk of time that I can influence as an elder, perhaps give it a positive shove before I return my atoms to the universe.

And, yes, I also embrace the circular, never-ending, achronological great wheel in which the seasons come and go talking of Michelangelo. On the great wheel of my life I have just passed Summer’s End this year, moving into the great fallow season.  There too my task is to prepare the ground for the next spring, that spring when I am a memory.

What will you do with your next Baktun?

 

 

 

 

 

*Wikipedia.  A baktun (properly b’ak’tun, English pronunciation: /ˈbɑk ˌtun/[1], Mayan pronunciation: [ɓakʼ ˈtun]) is 20 katun cycles of the ancient Maya Long Count Calendar. It contains 144,000 days, equal to 394.26 tropical years. The Classic period of Maya civilization occurred during the 8th and 9th baktuns of the current calendrical cycle. The current baktun started on 13.0.0.0.0 — December 21, 2012 using the GMT correlation.