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Tuesday, January 02, 2007

Thus Spake Zarathustra...

Of all the titles I thought of while contemplating this post about my New Years, I felt that this was the most esoteric.

For those of you who think I am the be all/end all of existence, and haven't read this, I shall let you know a brief bit about my New Year's Eve. We ended going with friends to some house that was supposed to be in "the city" but ended up being just outside in an area called Bayview, most likely because of its view of the bay. For those of you unfamiliar with the area, if we had known it was in Bayview, we probably wouldn't have gone. But that would have been a mistake.

After getting off the freeway and driving down a few narrow streets that the term "ghetto" would more aptly apply to than "suburbs", we arrived a what appeared to be a small rundown, century old dwelling. After climbing a series of shallow concrete stairs that would've given a mountain goat pause we entered a magical wonderland of surprise. This house was much nicer than it appeared from the street, and much more spacious than you would believe.

It was indeed built over a 100 years ago, and has been in the current owners family since her great-grandparents built it in the early 1900's. The best part of it was the huge yard they had. There was an enormous treehouse that would make any 8 year old drool, a large cistern looking thing that was actually a sauna, numerous fire pits around the yard for warmth, and the largest Jade tree I have ever seen. The party was great, there was an interesting mix of people, yada yada yada.

Imagine this, but lifesize!

What I really wanted to talk about was the prevelance of a certain element throughout the night and how that may influence my new year. I've already mentioned the firepits placed about the yard, but there were also fire dancers there as well. Fire on sticks, fire on chains, fire on hoops and girls on fire, she put it out very quickly, don't worry. Maybe I was the only one who noticed all the fire, someone else could have pointed out the Bay, glasses of water, water in the toilet bowl, etc., but fire is what I noticed. Most likely it was my consumption of alcohol that led to my ponderance of fire, by the fire, but whatever it was, I couldn't help but wonder what all of this fire portends for my new year.

Throughout the ages, fire has been a symbol to many different groups and cultures for many different reasons, it can be a sign of wealth in Yiddish for example. It is often a dichotomy, a force of both destruction and creation, think of how forest fires destroy an area, but also leads to new growth. In Rastafarian-ism it is the base element for all beings, and a person, plant or animal that has died is said to have lost their fire; it is also the basis for the way they communication with Jah (pronounce the j as a y, then smoke a doobie and you'll be able to say it right). It is also what I use to light my cigarettes with.

My filthy, disgusting habit of smoking is meeting its destruction this year. Hopefully, in its ashes a Phoenix of good health will be re-born to cleanse that tar out of my lungs. And hopefully it will not cause me to wax poetic quite so often. It has been a long hard road of quitting, with many false starts, but I'm confident this time will stick. So it could be that my new year will be full of change and excitement, perhaps wealthy excitement. Fire has also been used as a symbol for passion and love. Of course, it could also mean that since fire is the basic element of life, that its time for me to get back to the basics and grow from there.

Whatever this new year holds, I'm looking forward to it. I've got a great job, a wonderful girfriend, four great pets, well a great dog and 3 mediocre cats, and this is probably the first New Years I've ever spent actually excited about what is to come.

Let's hope I didn't just jinx it.


Posted by timothy :: Direct Link 2 comments

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