Dancing Shards

Years later down in the southern province of Suhag in Egypt where King Scorpion lived 5,300 years ago I worked with archeologists discovering clay tablets recording taxes on oil and linen; a special material ancient Egyptians considered ritually pure under the protection of the goddess Tayt.

The hieroglyphics, line drawings of animals, plants and mountains, revealed stories of economies and commodities. Early writing.

In Nevali Cori we found 9,000 year old shards of pottery depicting dancers.

“These images,” a team of metaphoric diggers said, “reveal a fictional common ancestor creating as a way to integrate their community.”

“Anything else?” as my camel hair brush cleaned pottery shards.

“Well,” one on his hands and knees said sifting through valuable dust, “we surmise these images established a collective discipline among members of their community. See how the figures are holding hands? What do you see now?”

“I see a circle of movement. A connected unity, a language in space.”

“It’s more than that,” said an expert. “There are five rhythms in dance. You start with a circle, it’s a circular movement from the feminine container. She is earth.”

“Really?”
“Yes, then you have a line, from the hips moving out. This is the masculine action with direction. He is fire.”

“Ok.”
“Chaos is next, a combination of circle and lines where the male and female energies interact. This is the place of transformation.”
“I see. And then?”

“After chaos is the lyrical, a leap, a release. This is air. And the last element of dance is stillness. Out of stillness is born the next movement.”
“Ah, a space language.”

A language dies on the planet every two weeks. Humans sing oral traditions. They are memorizing seasons, celebrations, rites, magic and ceremonies.

Historians have the job of trying to understand what happened through time. My team of anthropologists have the job of understanding how people told their stories.

Mircea Eliade, a historian of religions, once stated, “Myths tell only of that which really happened.”

Busy doing my work, listening and collecting. Neurons are firing on all cylinders. Seven trillion human cells dance. It requires a mindfulness.

Corrections flash flickering beams of incandescent auras, pulsating magnetic fields evolving shards, dance, myths and evolution of intention.

Dancing Shards

Greetings,

Years later down in the southern province of Suhag in Egypt where King Scorpion lived 5,300 years ago I worked with archeologists discovering clay tablets recording taxes on oil and linen; a special material ancient Egyptians considered ritually pure under the protection of the goddess Tayt.

The hieroglyphics, line drawings of animals, plants and mountains, revealed stories of economies and commodities. Ancient writing.

In Nevali Cori we found 9,000 year old shards of pottery depicting dancers.

“These images,” a team of metaphoric diggers said, “reveal a fictional common ancestor creating as a way to integrate their community.”

“Anything else?” as my camel hair brush cleaned pottery shards.

“Well,” one on his hands and knees said sifting through valuable dust, “we surmise these images established a collective discipline among members of their community. See how the figures are holding hands? What do you see now?”

“I see a circle of movement. A connected unity, a language in space.”

“It’s more than that,” said an expert. “There are five rhythms in dance. You start with a circle, it’s a circular movement from the feminine container. She is earth.”

“Really?”
“Yes, then you have a line, from the hips moving out. This is the masculine action with direction. He is fire.”

“Ok.”
“Chaos is next, a combination of circle and lines where the male and female energies interact. This is the place of transformation.”
“I see. And then?”

“After chaos is the lyrical, a leap, a release. This is air. And the last element of dance is stillness. Out of stillness is born the next movement.”
“Ah, a space language.”

A language dies on the planet every two weeks. Humans sing oral traditions. They share seasons, celebrations, rites, magic and ceremonies.

Historians have the job of trying to understand what happened through time. Anthropologists have the job of understanding how people told their stories.

Mircea Eliade, a historian of religions, once stated, “Myths tell only of that which really happened.”

Busy doing my work, listening and collecting. Neurons are firing on all cylinders. Seven trillion human cells dance. It requires a mindfulness.

Corrections flash flickering beams of incandescent auras, pulsating magnetic fields evolving shards, dance, myths and evolution of intention.

Peace.

The Criteria for Beauty

"Your bike is dirty," she said when he pushed it into the elevator.
"Yes, isn't it just beautiful," he said smiling. "It loves nature."

"You have the criteria for beauty," said the Chinese teacher. We were going down. Neon red floor numbers practiced subtraction.

Her arms were filled with thin standard brown student exercise books. She'd finished grading them with her sharp red pen. The books dripped blood on her shoes.

"Beauty is it's own criteria, as it's own criteria," he said. The door opened. He followed her with his dirty mountain bike.

She carried the books to the guard shack next to the partially closed black gate. A tight squeeze. Inside, the passive guard was watching bland tame soap operas at a high decibel level. Reruns.

Her students would trek over to collect them. She passed her responsibility with authority.

He pedalled away toward a dirt road in the mountains and beauty's natural criteria. Where he would sit in silence hearing wind sing through evergreens.

The Day of the Dead

Her Cadiz map was useless now because she knew every part of it.

Her ancient chart held lifelines, dashes, angles, seven magic symbols, dead ends, detours, forests, high rise apartment buildings, tourist offices, oceans, parks and pealing cathedrals.

Her word worn projection designated plazas, beaches, monuments, theaters, parking lots, banks, cafes, hotels, hostels, hospitals, libraries, universities, markets, bus stops, taxi stands, railroads, bus stations, antiquities, cemeteries and Benjumeda #3, Apartment #2, Cadiz, 11003 where she worked on her loom.

On the Day of The Dead white haired widows waited for a bus marked ‘Cemetario’ at the COMES station near the harbor. Shrouded in black they carried bouquets of fresh carnations, daisies, daffodils, roses, white forget-me-nots and food to share with their dearly departed soul mates.

One ancient woman juggled wine bottles. They talked in muted voices and paid their fare. The bus rolled past a heavily armed statue of a Spanish soldier on his bronze horse penetrating the sky with his saber discovering Central America.

The Atlantic Ocean edged into Spanish alleys sniffing at Roman ruins. Clouds danced above the ocean giving birth to small powerful tributaries searching for a source of renewal.

Wool Factory, Lacilbula, Espana

He wrote a simple letter to Melody living at The Future.

Truer sentences were never written in their loving relationship. Neither of them were on the net and the map was not the territory.

She’d sold the house after 40 years and moved to a retirement complex where she lived in peace and quiet. Her long term creature comforts were guaranteed for $2400 a month.

He sent her a thick white wool scarf and green hounds-tooth shawl for Christmas. He worked under the table with Spanish elves doing their end of the year labor.

It was produced in Lacilbula, an old Roman pueblo in the Sierras. The 18th century woolen factory originally ran on water power from a mill. People who controlled the land controlled the water. The mill went under.

Thirteen obsolete mills in the valley were sold to locals or European investors and renovated for guest houses. The weekend get-a-way plan at $500 a week allowed guests to furnish their own towels.

In this part of Andalucia they said, “rich land, poor people.”

This was a lie. It was poor rocky land. Suitable for olive groves and grazing sheep and pigs.

Village men spent their lives laboring over small isolated plots of land or stood around the plaza studying their shoes, talking with fellow unemployed men waiting for their pension checks. Some worked in the village tearing down old homes and renovating them.

Many homes were in a bad state, with no insulation or central heating. Tight local architectural regulations restricted the amount of interior light. Village people preferred living in dark cramped spaces where sin and guilt multiplied, fostering acceptance and mellowed with regret.

The wool factory in Lacilbula was two long whitewashed buildings on a hill at the west end of the pueblo. Part of one building had a small sales area.

Old obsolete weaving machines collected dust. They had big iron wheels and treadles on rails for rolling back and forth. Industrial revolution memories. Large brown and red functionally finished rusting machines. They’d done their job after people made them and used them.

The factory still produced shawls, horse blankets, ponchos, scarfs, blankets, capes and serapes on two remaining machines.

A woman working under a solitary light bulb at her table sewed a factory tag in the corner of blue wool scarves. After running the needle up, down and around tag corners she lifted it and severed threads with her scissors. She adjusted her thread, a new tag, scarf, and got the needle moving again.

A man loaded wet wool blankets into a wooden machine, released two long metal handles to start two iron wheels turning. He picked up a slab of wood and wedged it between the metal bars to keep them tight and running. The wheels rotated two giant wooden hammers on an axle spinning up and down smashing brown and white blankets against the wood. Pounding water out.

He grabbed an old earthen vase off a wall, took a long cool drink of water, resealed the container and joined another man outside where they attached fresh cleaned wool blankets to long porous supports to dry in the wind. The smell of wool was thick and delicious.

Local people didn’t wear these wool products. Women walking to the Tuesday morning vegetable, clothing and plant market, small shops, or talking with their neighbors in cold January air wore somber black crocheted shawls. The wool from the factory was sold in local tourist shops and exported to Mexico and South America.