Seeking the Manuscript in DC

Mission: to see the Chu Silk Manuscript in the Smithsonian’s Sackler collection.

First call, discovered that I would need an accession number, which I might find at the research library.

Librarian was nice but nervous, self-conscious in that way of high-end librarians.

Found beautiful images of the manuscript in their catalogue:

Three-headed man, twined serpents, the script all vines and flowers

Chris asked me: what is it about?

About the mythical significance of the turning of the year

About the meaning of time and the natural world

About dreams, visions, monsters

About the pleasure we take in our own minds and in silk, writing, painting

About a story we tell ourselves.

In Senator Inouye’s waiting room in the Capital:  animals of the zodiac painted all around the lower edge of the vaulted ceiling.

Animals and spirits are the same thing:  Anima, soul, animism.

The twelve gods of Chu dance through my dreams. 

I proffer my doctorate to propitiate the guardians & on my last day in Washington DC am granted access.

Seeing the manuscript is like meeting the finest edge of a forgotten world.  In the warp and weft of the silk is the wear of its two thousand years  of waiting in the dark.  Pigments have migrated, edges have frayed, dissipated, been lost into nothingness.  I am stunned by the beauty and precision of the calligraphy, how the ink has not faded but must be nearly as clear as the day it was written.  Also by the geography of each character, how much closer these characters seem to speaking of a numinous world.  They are graphs of concepts, not so much linguistic representation, but closer to the grail ­- to a drawing of cosmos in time, space, imagination, intellectual structure.  Each graph is a talisman and a knowing, a recognition of the possible structure of the world.   Each one has been won by a great effort of thought.  Each one is a theory. 

Flight to Albuquerque.   Beneath the airplane the vast landscape of the Mid West slides by.  Endless fields.  It is stunning to think that less than 2% of the population of the US farms these uncountable fields.

Great Conversation

http://www.chrismartenson.com/page/transcript-charles-eisenstein

Generation X represent!

Family Traditions

I'm lucky I only broke my ribs on the right side in 10 places, snapped my collarbone, and collapsed a lung.  It could have been much worse.  I hit the ground at very high speed and from a bit of an altitude after things went suddenly very wrong while riding a young horse this weekend.  It hurt much worse than giving birth, I can tell you that.  I count over the places where I might have decided differently and avoided the experience.  And yet this too is what it is all about, my life.  My parents and I compare notes on broken collarbone, broken rib experiences. My mother took a big spill chasing wild goats at South Point when I was about five. My father got bucked off his big red half-draft mare (the ranch's all-time top bone-breaker) and went back to work in two days, back to roping cattle two weeks later.  He's unbelievably tough, but he didn't break as many bones as me.

Warhorse

It is dusk and rains come across the Ka'u Desert.  The horses stand at the gate, hoping I will open it onto the new pasture, but they must wait.  This morning I went to see if the old gray mare, my father's "warhorse" in former days, had passed.  I hoped so.  She had fallen and could not get up.  Her time had come, but she had lingered, lying there under the sky.  I had put my hand on the gun to put her down, to put her out of her misery, there on the ground.  But a voice inside me had said no, that she would find her own way to the other side. Strong-willed horse, you were never afraid.
When I told my mother, who had fed her daily for the last three or four years and who could not bear to see her dying, that she had indeed gone, she said: "So she made the leap."
"Yes," I said.

Multi-dimensional

That is ranch life.  The day before yesterday I spent the entire day saddling colts.  Today, blessedly, it is raining.  I celebrate by gathering electronic and paper documents for our annual workman's comp audit. Click, click, click, scan, convert, download, send.  Resend.  Usually I turn Pandora on to get through the robot dimension. "God Doesn't Take American Express."
My daughter and I have decided that there are a lot of similarities between Pomeranians and I Pads.  They are both amusing, clever little pets.You buy them so that you can take them around and show all your friends.  You buy them cute  and expensive costumes and accessories.   Marketing genius. 
I have a lap-top.  It's not so cute.  It's more like a hound dog.

Saddling Colts

This is as close as I get to a spiritual activity.  It is also emotional, physical, and intellectual.  It is something that you do with your whole body and mind.  With your energy and your alpha waves.  With your compassion, your creativity, and your strength.
You are offering them a culture.  Your personal cultute.  Your version of reality.  Your way of life.  It had better be a good way of life.  So getting a saddle on a colt reaches deep into your life. The young horse will question you in their wordless way, and you must have something to say for yourself, for your species, for the order of the world. 
They come to this willingly.  They give you the benefit of the doubt.  That is the miracle of horses.

Doing It

Rode hard for four days last week.   Blissful, punishing. On Wednesday we moved herds, on Thursday we sorted cows that had gotten mixed up and moved them back into their proper pastures, Friday we walked 400 mama cows and calves 3 miles to new pasture, Saturday we had a little branding -- 125 calves or so, lots of British Whites.    On Sunday I cleaned tack and in the late afternoon rode some of my young horses that are not quite ready for the high pressure situations that come up routinely in ranch work.
Yesterday, Monday,  did Honolulu, a farm-to-table demo with Chef Mark Noguchi and farmer Shin Ho for the American Farm Bureau annual convention. Met Andy Tranh and Amanda Corby.    Mark broke down a short-plate on stage, which is a little bit like mud-wrestling only with tallow.