Happy Chinese New Year; Beginnings

Happy New Year! Yes, New Year, new look! And since this is just part of my experimenting phase with the what and how of the blog, there may be more cosmetic changes. It's just one new beginning. Meredith's was the first blog on which I saw a similar change, and then I found it on several more that same day. It's time, with gratitude for the inspiration/reminder.

from  http://tinyurl.com/asy56nz

I didn't make any kind of resolution/intention/goal/orienting-of-self-in-universe post around January 1st, or at all this year yet. I knew I'd be getting a second opportunity. Today is Chinese New Year's Day, although celebrations began about a week ago. The beginning is not always the beginning. This is also the Year of the Snake, the year in which I was born. The Chinese zodiac goes by lunar years rather than months, so the animals recur every twelve years. This is the fourth Snake year of my life, including the year I was born. The annual cycle also maps to the Chinese elements. I was born in the year of the Fire Snake; my brother, who was born when I was twelve, is an Earth Snake baby; my friend's son born in 2001 is a Metal Snake baby, and this is the Year of the Water Snake. Well, being surrounded by water sounds like a tricky proposition for a fire person!

I ran my date/time/place of birth through a Chinese Astrology interpreter and was given, among other things, a decade-by-decade analysis of how my fortune/well being would be; the "Rise and Fall Chart" of my life. 
Source

Age	0	1-10	11-20	21-30	31-40	41-50	51-60	61-70	71-80	81-90

The Blue Bar stands for the beginning Luck Level when you were born. Each Red Bar stands for the Luck Level for 10 years. When you are in luck, the Red Bar is longer than the Blue Bar. Your good marriage should be in the longest Red Bar or a longer Red Bar period during the marriage age. Your career should begin in a longer Red Bar too. Usually, you can find two consecutive longer Red Bars together, which are your best 20 years.

Well, that didn't work so well. It looks great in my 'writing' place, but not so good published. If you care, you can click where I put "Source" above and see it. Important points: my 31-40 decade, which I'm in the middle of now, is just about a flatline (and I thought my 20's were worse than now). 41-50 looks somewhat better but still poor, and the remaining decades look great, although you have to wonder if they've just been put that way because I won't be there to see them--why else would there be so many of them and so much better than any preceding?. The admonition is not to start anything important, like a marriage or a work vocation, until you have two good decades in a row. I don't get that until I'm 51! The beginning is not always the beginning.

It's always fascinating when astrological-type stuff matches up with what one's experiencing in life. But given that the descriptions of a Fire Snake's personality scarcely describe me (extroverted, charismatic, judgmental, guarded and suspicious (really?), ruthless in pursuit of success (really??))* I'm reminded to take all with the requisite seasoning. In so doing, I avoid considering any of the predictive stuff explanation or excuse, just like it's being increasingly understood that genes are not inevitable predictors of health manifestations. I had this new science of epigenetics explained to me succinctly and unassumingly by my parents' dentist, mine as a little kid; when I went to see him on a visit back there once. He commented that my teeth were in really good shape. I said I was grateful for it, reminding him that he'd warned me as a teenager that both my parents have issues with their teeth and I should take care. "Genetics isn't a blueprint, he said, "It's just something that may be more likely to happen. You still have control over how things turn out."
*For those of you who don't know me, extroverted is not the same as manic, and I'm not always manic. I'm decidedly uncharismatic. I'm not guarded--in fact, I'm notorious for talking poop with complete strangers. Well, if you read this blog you've seen how transgressive of normal "OK to talk about" lines I can be. And I seem to self-sabotage rather handily when it comes to desire for success, although that is changing.

So, supposing this decade of mine is as horrible as that table above suggests, it still doesn't mean I need to be in purgatory. In spite of the tendency created by the relevant positioning of planets and atoms (in which I do believe, btw), I can still move into self actualization, become a writer who is well-read and well-loved, continue to find ways to support myself that are meaningful and that utilize my particular and unusual expertise ("ruthless pursuit of success?"). I can come to a more peaceful place with the health issues that partially define the shape of my life. Most important, perhaps, I can create for myself a good definition of what is well being, success, happiness. Is there any more beautiful perspective on light than from the bottom of a well?

Happy New Year! And shaping up to be a(nother) year of immense change in my life. I don't yet know exactly how all the details are going to work out, but already, as misaligned and misbegotten and sick unto death as I have sometimes felt in recent months, I'm also already being fed from plants raised in that compost. Opportunities have presented themselves, offering completely new directions, and I am exploring them with open mind and heart.

Yes, last year I was also fixated on the "beginning is not the beginning" thing with my attempt at a "fifty first weeks" series. As a writer, and as anyone with spiritual inclinations, it's virtually essential that there be not just one starting line. And so, over and over, I mull on the first word of Genesis, b'resheet which means, not "In the beginning," as usually translated, but "In a beginning." One of many possible beginnings. The quantum version of the Bible! And meanwhile the oral tradition most in my head, that of the Homeric bards, comes in with the invocation to the Muse at the beginning of The Odyssey--to tell us of these things "starting from some point or another." So, in the context of a song/story/performance, a beginning can be made at any point in the story. We think of that more as a lyric impulse nowadays, but narratives structured that way are usually the ones I find most compelling. 

Why this is all so important to me is that the final year of my MFA program is heaving into view, which will be my thesis year. In the past month I've been getting clarity, at least in outline, on what that thesis will be. And the major theme, metaphor, story, lyric construct--yes, all of these, from which its stories, poems, reflections, notes, memoir--yes, all of these--will suspend is that of crossings, of passage, of movement from one place or time or inner or outer to another. Yes, it's all huge-picture excitement at this point. But--especially in a decade of anni horribiles such as I'm supposed to find myself, the only way I could possibly feel as much excitement about this project as I do is through belief shading into knowledge that there is no single beginning.

I'm writing about myself because that's what I don't-know most intimately. There are many other things this blog could be "about." I have a tongue-in-cheek and rueful yen to start including food posts if there is interest. And book reviews! I love to do those. And all the Alaska stuff, of course, and travels elsewhere in the near future...