I thought this page was almost done
on Friday the 23rd except for 2 more updates and the addition of three
new sites. That should only have taken another hour or two and I could
then turn my attention to another deadline. Instead, when I awoke Saturday
morning, the practical Capricorn in me decided that as long as all the
Lunar New Year data was still fresh in my mind, this would be a perfect
time to create a file of raw art supplies so that updating future years
would go faster. As it is, I update each year based upon what I used the
previous year. But something wonderful from one year might come from a
site whose art for the following year just doesn't appeal to me. So I drop
that site and find something new. A few years later, however, the discarded
site might have something I'd love for a new lunar animal but there's never
enough time to go digging back through those earlier years. If today, however,
I could go back rapidly, year by year, and compile all the many once-loved
sources in one file, I would have a headstart in future years. It seemed
like a great plan.
I started this project around 10:30am. I planned
to work until noon and then return to this 2009 page and complete it. Some
sixteen hours later I'm still immersed in this project, which, along the
way, has led me in unexpected directions. For example, I began by randomly
returning to my 2002-2003
Water
Horse page. The opening horse image had a broken link so I tracked
it down and fixed it. A second horse image near the bottom of the page
was linked to a "China the Beautiful" page with a great many other links
I had never investigated before. I spent a few pleasurable hours
exploring that site and making notes in my new file for future reference.
I use a dial-up modem -- moving from page to page, artist to artist, and
allowing new images to load, takes a lot of time. Noon came and went.
When I finally finished, I uploaded the page
to the internet with the corrected opening link. I stared in disbelief
when I noticed the size of the page -- 67 KB. And it loaded in a
flash. How could that be? For as long as I can remember, this Lunar New
Year page has been huge -- hovering between 400-500 KB! Since I
had been focused only on the page's images, I now went back and looked
at the content. That's when I realized that there were no general sections
on Chinese Lunar New Year and nothing whatsoever on Lunar New Year in other
Asian countries. The page was all about the role of the Horse in Chinese
tradition, myth, art, culture -- everything was focused on the specific
animal for that year.
I couldn't remember when I had added all the
more general data -- it probably happened gradually. All I know is that
I wanted to return to the simplicity of that earlier page. Thus, I spent
the rest of the day gathering more data and images specifically focused
on the ox. After winnowing through what I'd found, I finally had nearly
two dozen new links that I still needed to grok (see bottom of this
page). This doesn't mean that I'll jettison my general information
links -- it's taken me years to compile a solid body of usually reliable
references. But I'm giving them a separate page with a new URL. The current,
on-going URL will remain the same and bring you my usual annual updates
along with a link to the new General
Data Page for those who wish an overview of Chinese astrology and all
twelve animals of the zodiac.
On a personal note, except for the ox and dragon,
I have seen all ten of the other animals in the Chinese zodiac: rat/mouse,
sheep/goat, pig, tiger, snake, monkey, horse, dog, rooster, and rabbit.
I consider dragons to be good friends, but I'm not likely to see one of
them any time soon <smile>. Actually, come to think of it, I probably
have
seen the ox/water buffalo when I lived for a few months in Hue, South Vietnam
with my father in the early 1960's, but I don't have a clear memory of
them, just a general sense of rural landscapes that must have included
them among the rice paddies. So I had to ask myself at some point today
why I would be turning this page upside down for the Year of the Ox?
Why couldn't I let well enough alone and save an immense amount of time?
There are two answers: (1) webbing, at least
for me, since I love sharing all these things, has an obsessive aspect
-- once I get the scent of a new trail, I can't let it go; and (2), I discovered
at some point today that in addition to other complexities involved in
Chinese astrology, which are beyond my cognitive powers, the month and
hour of one's birth significantly modify the year in which one's born.
I was born in a rabbit year. I learned today that the rabbit's hour is
between 5-7am, which is when I was born. So both my birth's year and hour
make me doubly a rabbit. But whenever I read descriptions of rabbit people,
I find it impossible to relate to them. A strong aesthetic sense, yes,
but happy? charming? cheerful? fashionable? social? lucky? Hardly! I relate
much more to the West's concept of the isolated Capricorn goat/sea-creature:
brooding, struggling against endless obstacles, dark, chilly, cranky. Rabbits
are sweet and docile but completely alien to me.
Then I found among the many links I collected
today that the month of January belongs to the OX. So my very birth-month
connects me to this animal. That makes it personal. I found myself unable
to look at Google's countless images of Rembrandt's butchered ox. Even
looking at images of oxen chained to mill, cart, or plow, felt painfully
familiar. Like many of us, I have often been trapped in deadend jobs. Oxen
we might be, but we all dream of a life that offers more than brute endurance.
Yet the ox has experienced culturally positive sides too, which moved me
to tears when I found those images. Thus, grokking new links for this page
has become part of my own journey. Perhaps it will also be meaningful for
others.
With apologies, this page will remain a work-in-progress
for at least the next week, so you might wish to keep checking back. Any
ungrokked links, however, will be at the bottom of the page for those who
wish to explore them on their own.
Blessings throughout this Year of the Ox,
Kathleen
25
January 2009
...The
ox also plays a major philosophical role in the famous Zen Ox-herding series
of paintings. [To be continued....]
..