The Year of the Earth Pig

Happy Year of the Earth Pig!  Today (February 5th 2019) marks the beginning of Lunar Year 4716 in the Chinese calendar.  I really meant to write more dog-theme posts last year during the year of the dog: how did it run off so quickly? But no matter…we can always write more about man’s best friend. Today belongs to the pig and, despite a somewhat grubby nomen, the earth pig has a great deal to recommend it!

In the Chinese zodiac, pigs are water sign animals. The easygoing and affable earth pig thus betokens a year of friendship, camaraderie, and social success.  Pigs love having fun together, so, in addition to social delights, the year will feature plenty of luxuries, treats and opulent spectacles.   Friendship and social bonding are one thing, but romance is quite another, so, although the year may be marked by new friendship and bonhomie, it is not likely to be especially happy one in terms of love and intimacy (which is fully in line with broad international trends).

Financially speaking, the Earth Pig moves slowly yet inexorably towards abundance.  The ground is the root of all wealth and this pig has all four feet squarely upon the earth. The online oracle which I consulted states “This zodiac sign has a solid work ethic and is willing to put in the hours to get ahead. Patience and willpower are the name of the game for anyone wishing to get ahead in 2019. And don’t forget the power of building friendly alliances with colleagues.”  I suppose that sounds pretty good, but I have been to farmyards and seen how things work out for pigs.  I would probably paraphrase this: your financial year will combine a great deal of hard work with some foolish lapses due to inattention, greed, and other people’s guile.  Be careful! The rewards of your labor could be enjoyed by someone else…

Sadly, all pig years come with an admonition not to overdo it with sweets, rich foods, and alcohol, but I hardly see how gluttony could be a problem here in [checks notes] oh…um…yeah, I guess we will also have to keep a careful eye on what we are eating.

Speaking of gluttony, no conversation about pigs would be complete without a mention of China’s literary superstar pig, Zhu Bajie, one of the three animal heroes of “The Journey to the West” (well, actually there are four, but the horse is usually just a horse and only jumps into the game in moments of true duress).  Zhu Bajie is an immortal pig monster with enormous strength and bravery…but he is also cursed with constant hunger, laziness, and a desire for other joys of the flesh.  Zhu’s earthy passions cause substantial trouble to both him and his sharper companions (although, ironically, the monkey, who represents intellect, will, and arrogance, usually gets in even more trouble by leaping out ahead of everyone).   This is of course o remind everyone that we need the intellect in the upcoming year, but we also need the tolerance, soft-heartedness, and the optimism of the pig.  Humans are monkeys after all.  Like Sun Wukong, the monkey god, we tend to be rather cruel to pigs.  Let the Year of the Earth Pig remind you to be more gentle and compassionate to our big-bellied curly toed friends…or even to yourself if love of luxury or your hungry belly leads you astray.  The great lesson of the Chinese zodiac is that we are all animals, but animals have a celestial magic! Be wary but embrace your inner pig and have a wonderful year 4716.

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The Solstice

Today (June 21^st 2018) is a sacred day.  In the northern hemisphere it is the first day of summer, the longest day of the year. I love each season a great deal…but I unabashedly love summer the most. At evening the sky is alive with fireflies and bats.  The garden is filled with roses, lilies, and hydrangeas which gleam like particolored stars in the long fluorescent twilight. As the weather warms the oceans, New York City is revealed to be a beach paradise. I live in a West Indian neighborhood and for a season it is like I live on a Caribbean island: everywhere there are stalls filled with tropical fruits, women in bright sarongs, bike rides to the coast and the dulcet songs of the islands lingering in the air as children laugh and cicadas chirp. Summer!

But there is a sadness to the solstice too, which I guess is part of life.  The first day of summer is the longest, and from there, the days get shorter and shorter.  If the winter solstice is the effective beginning of the year, the summer solstice is an end too.  Things have peaked.  Even as the nights get hotter they get longer.  Before you know it, it will be autumn and then winter again.  And all of our days are getting shorter too.

Lately I have felt sad.  Year by year my dreams slip further away from the tips of my fingers, and there is no going back to rectify anything, even if I wanted to (and I don’t want to: what else would I be? Some crooked banker who is ruining the world? An ignored ichthyologist discovering minute differences in triggerfish peduncles? The least popular literature professor in a miniscule liberal arts college somewhere?)  I have always felt a deep affinity for my nation, but lately I feel like a foreigner…even in Brooklyn, to say nothing of West Virginia! I have always felt that art was important…a guidepost to the numinous in our world of unfeeling stone, but lately it just seems like another empty battle for status.

The summer solstice is a day when you can see the past…and the future too, shimmering like Fata Morgana above the pink ocean waves.  It is possible for a second to hear the horse carriages and trolleys passing up old Flatbush…or even to imagine Brooklyn as a patchwork of farms, or a forest with a few hunter-gatherers…or as the terminal moraine of the Wisconsin Ice sheet.  Think of it! a wall of ice taller than the skyscrapers was here. Or you can look the other direction and imagine the sun setting beyond cities of tumbled down towers and ruined concrete cenotaphs.

The solstice reminds us of oceans of time all around us.  Cronus is standing at our elbow with his scythe and hourglass (or is that bearded old man a druid? Or is it the mirror on my dresser?) We have to catch this fleeting moment as the years wheel away. We have to do something important!  But what?

Ultraviolet!

Hold everything! Today is the day when Pantone announces their trademarked “Color of the Year” for 2018. To quickly recap, Pantone is a private color-consulting company which helps consumer-facing firms select yearly color palates which work together at the store.  When you go to a mall (kids, this was a large building containing many individual different retail stores) and see that all of the clothes and gadgets are the same colors, Pantone is behind the convergence. They chose a real winner last year—a magnificent mid-tone green that looked like it came straight from the idealized cabbage patches of some fantasy “old country” (but also simultaneously seemed to reference money and environmentalism).  Can this year continue the trend or will we face another perplexing chicken-liver year (or the wishy-washy dichotomy of election year 2016 when we were presented with two opposite gendered tones)?  Without further ado, the Pantone Color of 2018 is…“Ultra violet” a bold rich purple! (maybe you already guessed based on the bar of pure purple above).

I love this color.  Purple is one of my favorite colors (it might be my favorite) and this tone evokes the best things about purple!  It reminds me of a medieval king’s tunic or a spooky Queen Anne house in a Halloween poster.  Kudos to Pantone for the solid choice.  We will say nothing of Grimace and the shadow his amorphous purple form has cast over a generation of culture mavens and style moguls.

For its part, Pantone seems to be making a quiet and uncontroversial political statement with its selection. The executive director of the Pantone color institute spells this out in her pronouncement: “It’s also the most complex of all colors, because it takes two shades that are seemingly diametrically opposed — blue and red — and brings them together to create something new.”  The company’s literature further emphasizes purple’s mystical and cosmic connotations…and how dear it was to beloved yet lost entertainment icons like David Bowie and Prince.

Pantone also claims that “ultraviolet” evokes an idealized future (which makes me wonder if they have read “A Clockwork Orange”).  Maybe they are subconsciously projecting the preferences of a highly networked consulting company of global influence since  Ultraviolet is a purple which definitely leans towards blue. It’s fun to reminisce about all of the beloved icons and styles from the past and to make metaphors out of color, yet the colors of the year really do reflect larger patterns and trends. When the economy is doing well, Pantone executives and art-directors feel free to choose more bold and colorful choices.  These become increasingly extravagant until a recession comes along—when they all get reset to monotones, dust-colors, and similarly basic palate choices.  Ultraviolet is clearly leaning towards the more flamboyant side (I seem to recall a similar dot-com purlple back in the nineties just before the bubble burst.  This bold purple reminds us to look towards a brighter future and to enjoy the sugar rush, but it makes me wonder if there aren’t some grays and beiges in the immediate future.

The Year of the Fire Monkey

Happy Chinese New Year! It is year 4713! The Year of the Fire Monkey. Monkeys are intelligent and clever but mercurial and swift. Our in-house oracle thus prognosticates that this year will be intense and intellectual…yet scattered and jumpy (and, it goes without saying, that it will rush by swiftly). 2016…er….4713 is therefore a good year for fresh starts and running leaps. However scrying is not really this blog’s metier: let’s talk about monkeys!

One of Ferrebeekeeper’s favorite and best topics is mammals, however I have (largely) avoided writing about primates. This is not because I dislike primates (although some species of monkeys and apes dwell in the uncanny valley where they are simultaneously so human and yet inhuman that the effect is deeply disconcerting), but because primates are very difficult to write about. Not only are they generalists who make their living through a wide range of complex behaviors, they also have elaborate social lives which require attention, sympathy and discernment to understand and present. Even primate taxonomy is complicated. There is a great divide between prosimians and anthropoids (which is now being reconceived as a divide between wet-nosed primates (non-tarsier prosimians) and the dry-nosed primates). There is a great geographic divide between New World and Old World Primates. There are 72 genera and hundreds of species–and that is only the ones that are extant—I am leaving out the extinct fossils.

Primates have a similarly complex place in society, art, and mythology. Just look at Sun Wukong AKA Monkey King, the trickster god of classical Chinese mythology who is simultaneously Buddhist and animist, wicked and saintly, immense and infinitesimally miniscule. The Indian monkey god Hanuman is similarly protean and complex. And these are only the two monkey gods…the nimble arboreal creatures are found everywhere in religion, literature, and art.

Finally, and above all, we..the readers and the writer…are primates. When the silverback from marketing comes by and harasses the trapped office women before displaying his dominance by making me move his stupid credenza around, I tell myself it is just the world economy. That may be true, but it is really all stupid monkeyshines. History is an intricate tapestry of primates desperately contending for privileged status. Here in America we are seeing lots of primate behavior—after all, it is an election year, and primates are ferociously hierarchical and tribal. Primates are also stupendously aggressive. Sometimes this trait combines with that big brain to make for horrendous violence. We are going to start unpacking some of this throughout the remainder of this week, which I dub “Primate Week” in honor of the fire monkey.

Sheep Mascots

A commercially available lamb costume

Last week was sheep week on Ferrebeekeeper. I was surprised by the extent to which sheep farming and wool production have been woven into humankind’s language, religion, and culture since time immemorial. Unfortunately, I became so impressed with these ancient ties, that I forgot to include my special bonus post—a gallery of silly sheep mascots just for fun…

Hopefully you are still celebrating Chinese New Year, because here, a week late, are the sheep mascots. There are so many, and they represent so many different crazy organizations!

Rameses, a live Dorset ram, is the mascot of the North Carolina Tar Heels. look how magnificently his horns are painted!

Lance Corporal William Windsor (a regimental mascot in the armies of the Queen of England)

A black sheep costume

“Shaun the sheep” at a mall looking skeezy

“High Quality Angry Sheep Mascot Costumes”

Oh dear…

Cam the Ram–Colorado State Mascot

Dodge Ram Logo

Stock Ram Logo…

There are ever so many more, in every shape and with every expression… i sort of gave up on making a comprehensive list. I am struck anew by how much people love sheep–even as the symbol of an organization or a product (although maybe its subconsciously appropriate for organizations trying to gain followers?)

There’s even a professional football team. Look how angry his face is!

 

Happy Year of the Horse!

Happy Chinese New Year! Last year was the reptilian year of the snake, but this year things get all mammalian again—and what a magnificent mammal! Lunar Year 4711 is the year of the horse!

Tang Dynasty Horses at the British Museum

Ferrebeekeeper has shied away from writing about horses because the majestic animals have played such an important role in military and economic history (also I don’t want a bunch of patricians shouting at me about the finer details of fetlocks and snaffle bits), but, since it is now the year of the horse, I would be remiss not to post some equine highlights from those 4711 years of Chinese culture. Horses were (probably) domesticated in next door Kazakhstan about five thousand years ago, and they have had an unparalleled position in Chinese culture.  Not only is Chinese mythology replete with horses, throughout the entire history of the Han people, the great perissodactyls have been pivotal as labor, military mounts, transportation, pets, status symbols, and food.

A Cermaic Horse from the Tang dynasty (618 AD-907 AD)

There are numerous artistic masterpieces which celebrate this long alliance of man and mount. From ancient Zhou bronzeware vessels, to terracotta tombware from the Han dynasty, to deft Sung dynasty brush paintings, to elaborate Quing jade carvings. However I have chosen to celebrate the year of the horse with a gallery of earthenware porcelain statues from the far-flung Tang Empire (which stretched farthest towards what is now Kazakhstan, the original home of domesticated horses).  The Tang was an overland dynasty which looked west along the Silk Road for trade ties, artistic inspiration, and conquest.  It was an era of cavalry patrols, mounted merchants, and riders of all sorts.

Tang dynasty Ceramic Horse

Tang Horse

The Tang dynasty was also an era when porcelain glazes grew in color, depth, and complexity—yet the calligraphic exactitude of Ming glazes was still unknown.  These sculptures each seem like a perfect depiction of a proud horse simultaneously coupled with an abstract painting of brown, yellow, orange, and green.  What could be a better metaphor for a new year?

A contemporary knock-off of a Tang Horse

Hopefully you will enjoy these images as you go about your New Year’s celebrations! Start a cultural dialogue with the local constabulary by lighting off some red fireworks! Enjoy “Buddha’s Delight” (a traditional New Year’s Dish made of black algae). Pack some decorative red envelopes full of cash and give them to your loved ones (or your favorite eclectic blogger!).  But as you go about your new year celebrations keep the horse in mind (and spare a few moments of thought for the matchless artisans of the Tang Dynasty as well).

The Color of 2014

No doubt you have noticed how different clothing stores have the same color palette for their wares.  If you walk from Banana Republic to Uniqlo to Armani Exchange, you will see remarkably different garments at wildly different prices…and yet the colors are all the same (and the opposing colors suit each other beautifully).  The effect even stretches to kitchen and home goods stores: so if you are particularly obsessed you can probably match your underwear, your blender, and your divan—as long as you buy them in the same year (and also assuming you buy divans). The reason for this phenomenon is that every year the mughals of fashion, trendiness, and color itself get together and proclaim a color palette for the year.

In practice, international corporations tend to defer to Pantone, a company based in New Jersey for this palette.  Every year Pantone (allegedly) convenes a secret quorum of fashionistas, artists, Illuminati, scientists, sorcerers, and what not in an unknown European capital to choose the color which most accurately expresses the zeitgeist of all human endeavor for a year. [When I was imprisoned in the legal industry, a strange coworker who was really “in the scene” during the eighties confided that what all this really means is that a gay man with a sharp eye chooses the palette, Pantone reviews it, and everyone else gets told what colors to use.  This sounds quite plausible, but I have no way of verifying the truth of the allegation.  Pantone has grown much savvier at marketing nonsense since the eighties…as indeed has everyone except for me, alas].

Anyway, the official color of the year of 2014 is [insert royal fanfare with horns] “Radiant Orchid” an extremely pretty mid-tone purple/lavender.  To celebrate, I have illustrated this article with radiant orchid pictures (at least to such an extent my computer’s ever changing screen and my own eyes can replicate the hue).  Undoubtedly the other colors you see at shops this year will all perfectly match radiant orchid. Pantone announces the color of the year for free, but if you would like to see the associated palette you will have to order the proprietary information from Pantone View.

As you can probably tell from the tone of this post, I feel that “the color of the year” is a bit silly (not radiant orchid, which I find very fetching, but the concept itself), yet I do like the idea of a unified palette and I like the fact that favorite colors change with the era in accordance to a larger consensus of human taste.   Perhaps someday we will all smile with bittersweet nostalgia as we think back on 2014 with its mild lavender in the same way that my parents talk about mustard and avocado or my grandparents talk about baby blue.  In the meantime, if purple is your thing you should feel happy, and if not you should start pulling strings right now to influence the mystery color of 2015.

The Year of the Water Snake

by Zhang Da Be (from InkDance Chinese Painting Gallery)

I’m extremely excited that Chinese New Year is here at last!  A dozen times I have started to blog about Chinese snake paintings and stopped because I was waiting for the year of the snake—but that finally arrives on Sunday.  To celebrate the advent of year 4710—the year of the water snake–next week is devoted to snakes and serpents of all kind (a longstanding favorite topic here at Ferrebeekeeper).  Because they are one of the twelve zodiac animals, snakes have long been celebrated in Chinese art.  Additionally their sinuous form adapts beautifully to Chinese-style brush and calligraphy work (as is evident in the art works below).

Snake (Yang Shanshen,
Ink on paper)

People born in snake years are said to be graceful and reserved.  Although they are successful at romance and have an innate intelligence they are also reputed to be materialists with a dark mysterious side.  The snake does not suffer the same stigma in China as in the West and the benevolent creator goddess Nuwa was a serpent goddess. Hopefully the year of the water snake will bring you every sort of happiness and success.  Tune in next week as we break in the new year with a variety or remarkable snakes and snake-related topics!

Red Snake by Zhang Daqian(1899-1983) from China Guardian

One Stroke Calligraphy Snake (from Chinese Calligraphy Workshops with Tom Chow)

Painting by Jiang Tao, Painted on:
Chinese Rice Paper (from InkDance Chinese Painting Gallery)

Chinese Papercut

Vintage Chinese Cloisonne Porcelain Teacup

Zodiac&Snake – Chinese Painting (from Artisoo Chinese Painting Blog)

The Leap Month

Happy leap day!  Every time one comes around it makes me cast my mind back to where I was on past leap days—grinding through elementary school; about to graduate high school; about to graduate college; working without meaning at a parasitic bank, and so on.  Four years is a convenient marker in human life and there is something memorable about the end of winter as life takes a breath before flinging itself into spring.  However, if you keep leaping back over the century and millennia, eventually the leap years run out.

Prior to Julius Caesar, the Roman calendar was 355 days long.  Following such a calendar for any length of time caused the months to drift out of alignment with the seasons, so the ancient Romans sporadically included a leap month named Mercedonius, or Intercalaris.  Mercedonius, when it happened, was 27 days long and followed February.

February was named for the Latin word februum, which means “purification.”  Romans did not like even numbers (they regarded odd numbers as lucky).  February was the one month of the Roman year with an even number of days and so the Romans thought of the winter month as a time of purification and cleansing.  The Romans did not care for cold dark February, so they made it shorter than all other months—28 days.  Whenever Mercedonius was declared, February became shorter still—shrinking down to 23 days (at least this is probably what happened—contemporary classicists are still arguing about the precise mechanism of the ancient Roman calendar).

The pontifex maximus, the highest Priest of ancient Rome, was responsible for deciding when to insert Mercedonius into the calendar.  Throughout most of the history of Rome this worked well, however it broke down badly at least two times.  During the second Punic War, Roman society was so badly damaged by Hannibal’s invasion that the Romans lost track of Mercedonius and literally did not know what time it was.  After the battle was won, order was restored with the reforms of the Lex Acilia in 191 BC (the nature of which are unknown—but which seem to have solved everything).

"Excuse me, but do you perhaps know today's date?"

The second breakdown occurred during the years of confusion leading up to Julius Caesar’s ascendancy as dictator for life.  The pontifex maximus was inevitably a powerful citizen who was deeply involved in Roman politics.  He could interfere with the length of time other elected officials served by shortening or lengthening the year.  As civil war enveloped Rome, the calendar became a political tool and Romans again lost track of what day it was.  The confusion was only solved when Caesar took supreme office and proclaimed himself pontifex maximus.  He reformed the addled calendar into the Julian calendar, which abolished Mercedonius, the haphazard leap month, forever.

The "Tusculum bust" of Julius Caesar, possibly the only survivng portrait from Caesar's lifetime

The Year of the Water Dragon

Today is the first day of the Chinese New Year! Happy Lunar New Year to everyone! It’s time for dumplings and fireworks!  This is the year of the Water Dragon—an auspicious year (if astrologers are to be believed).  Since being born in the year of the dragon is regarded as fortunate, Chinese demographers are projecting a larger than normal number of births this year.  If you are looking to have children maybe you should hold off on the partying and go work on that right now.

The dragon is the de facto symbol of China (and has been so for a long, long time). The mythical creatures appear everywhere in art, architecture, clothing, advertising, and even drawn indelibly on people (as above). Snarky political cartoons about currency manipulation represent China as a dragon in the same way that the United States is always shown as Uncle Sam or an eagle.  Five clawed dragons symbolized imperial authority during the era of the emperors. Even in pre-dynastic China the dragon was a central symbol. Dragon statues have been discovered from the Yangshao culture (seven millennia ago).

A Chinese porcelain blue and white 'dragon' jar. Ming Dynasty, Jiajing period (1522-66). Photo Gibson Antiques

Although symbolic of power, strength, and good luck, Chinese dragons are also inextricably linked to water sources.  In various myths, dragons represent control over oceans, rivers, lakes, and ponds.  They are also linked with stormclouds, rainfall, floods, and rainbows. Some scholars and folklorists believe that the concept of dragons was originally based around actual aquatic animals like saltwater crocodiles (which ranged along the Chinese coast in ancient times), large snakes, and huge catfish.

Bronze Dragon from the Summer Palace, Beijing

Because they are composed of features from various real animals, Chinese Dragons perfectly suit the themes of this blog (which has a history of admiring chimerical creatures). Dragons have the body of a serpent, the claws of an eagle, the legs of a tiger, the whiskers of a catfish, the antlers of a deer and the scales of a fish.  According to legend, back in the depths of time, the Yellow Emperor, a semi-divine magician, unified China and became the first emperor.  The Yellow Emperor’s standard was a golden snake, but whenever he conquered another fiefdom he would add the features of their heraldic animal to his own.  As the emperor’s army conquered more and more of China, the snake acquired antlers, talons, fish scales, and barbels.

The Yellow Emperor (Illustrated by Blue Hsiao)

People born in the year of the dragon are supposed to embody a mosaic of noble traits.  Dragons are said to possess intelligence, energy, self assurance, passion, and courageousness. Allegedly water dragons combine these virtues with patience and understanding. I’m not sure how much faith I put in astrology, but I certainly hope this year combines some of these good things.

Gung hay fat choy!