The bumps along the Way are undeniable. The world news defines them for us every day from every slant in every medium in shades of gray and black and in the colors of blood. For some, the New Year portends the end of the world, with the "end" of the Mayan calendar.--a register of time that repeats itself in cycles. According to Wikipedia, "the Maya name for a day was k'in. Twenty of these k'ins are known as awinal or uinal. Eighteen winals make one tun. Twenty tuns are known as ak'atun. Twenty k'atuns make a b'ak'tun." Will such a cyclical view of time wind down?
The Wikipedia account continues: "Sandra Noble, executive director of the Mesoamerican research organization FAMSI, notes that 'for the ancient Maya, it was a huge celebration to make it to the end of a whole cycle.' She considers the portrayal of December 2012 as a doomsday or cosmic-shift event to be 'a complete fabrication and a chance for a lot of people to cash in.'"
The conclusion? "Misinterpretation of the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar is the basis for a New Age belief that a cataclysm will take place on December 21, 2012. December 21, 2012, is simply the day that the calendar will go to the next b'ak'tun."
The k'ins of 2011 circled me back to my age of 16, second cycle. Through nearly two years of working the Food Addicts in Recovery, weight is no longer an issue, as it has been for most of my life. I'm living in a normal-sized body, eating fabulous meals of vegetables, protein, grain, and fruit. I shop (second hand) with joy, watching for colors and shapes and labels (!) that I've never worn before--so different from the black and navy days of 16, the first time around. I'm walking regularly, meditating, doing Taoist exercises, writing more, and working through the emotional aspects of life hidden while I lived in a "stout" (my grandmother's word for zoftig and above) and nearly inoperable body.
I've begun to keep my camera close, exploring Cloverdale's "wilderness," a 500-and-some-acre area behind the town's largest and most elegant senior housing development. A paved road goes continually UP to our massive water towers. Along the lower trail, Porterfield Creek, which once provided the town's water, winds through a canyon of manzanita and madrone, oak, pine, scrub, wild flowers, and early-morning spider webs, dewy and in multitudes in the low grasses.
You can check out my photos at http://byrdsbeautifulworld.blogspot.com. That website is no longer active but the archives remain. Scroll down the left column to the list of names (mine is near the top) followed by a number in parentheses. Click on that, and all my photo posts will come up.
Poetry readings this year have included three celebrating the state parks threatened for closure--seventy of them, mostly in Northern California. We're reading from What Redwoods Know, a chapbook edited by Katherine Hastings. More readings are lined up for 2012. You can protest the closures at savestateparks.org by sending a message to California's elected officials. The state budget will hardly notice the changes, with no consideration for lost tourist dollars in the park areas.
I also read twice with Night Writers, a Cloverdale writers' group, and frequently at the open mic at the monthly Center Literary Cafe in Healdsburg, now home ground for a community of writers. And last week I read at Valle Verde Senior Residential Community to a group of elders, including my 97-year-old mother.
I'm planning a "news fast" during January--the worst and the best of what's going on in the world seems to filter through even when you don't follow the headlines! The tumult and turmoil requires standing steady. I sometimes remember my favorite quote of Thomas Jefferson's and wonder if that cycle, too, has not begun again:
"I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. Our sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain."--Letter to Abigail Adams (12 May 1780)
May the mysteries of 2012 entice you and inspire you as we enter into the New Calendar.
Photograph, "Foggy December at Kings Valley," by Luna Zeffer






























