Mythical Critters – the Dryad

We have all heard of pieces parts of olde wisdom based on irrational systems of divination.  Examples include astrology, runes, tarot, the elements, fortune cookies, etc.  All of these, and many other systems, were attempts to explain complicated things, with a simple set of rules.  Though modern science mostly dismisses them as tom-foolery (poor tom always gets the short end of the stick), many of us have felt in their prophetic words, little bits of truth from time to time that seem more than just a statistical game.

Astrology is a great example – though science can easily prove that the doctor delivering the baby exerted a larger gravity or other effect than the other planets did, there are pieces to astrology that sometimes provide a template of understanding. Consider for a moment the origins of astrology though – that it was passed down from tribal elder to tribal elder for hundreds of generations – that during that time, these same elders knew when a child was born, observed them over the years, and perhaps from this data, they were able to come up with some generalizations that they passed down as well.  Over thousands of years, and tens of thousands of children, a statistical database unfolds, which though perhaps the “true” source of the differences is hidden still, there is some interesting generalization which we can at least look at with a cautious eye about the “Leo’s” and “Taurus’s” of this world

So, continuing with the theme of mythical archetypes, is the lovely Dryad.  I know a few folks that looking into them, the Dryad vision “sprouts” up – treelike, with deep roots, supportive and loving, with a curious mix of social in small groups, and a desire for time almost alone.  They typically don’t like large groups. 

With Dryads, the “elemental forms” are important.  They need water, and the flow that provides, but not too much or they wash away or rot.  They are rooted in earth – stability, grounded, solid. If the ground is too hard – as with the seed tossed in the crack of a rock, over the years, they can crack even a giant bolder under the pressure of their roots and the environment.  They are wood of nature, dynamic, creative, deeply living and feeling.  They can be a bit ponderous and set, but are able to bend without breaking, within limits.  They often have a tenuous relationship with metal and fire – both respecting and working with it, but also being leery of it, recognizing both the importance of having a place to grow, and respecting the danger that these elements (and technology in general) represent in terms of loss of social connection, personal value, and stability. They often have some scars from metal or fire.  Their relationship with air is also complicated – they love the thunder, even though it is dangerous (fire), they love the power behind the wind, but don’t like to always feel it. 

The Mythical Critters of everyday life

Over the last couple of years, I've come up with the theory that many of the historically common archetypes of mythical creatures, are based on personalities, and constitutions of people that we find around us in our lives here.  We talk about someone being “elf like”, or “dwarf” or “fairy”, but upon closer examination, these labels can really go so deeply into the parallels that we draw between daily life and the mythical world in the background, that we can gain some insight from them.

Barbara and I have done so much contemplation on this, that we wonder if there might not be a therapeutic model in correlating ones-self with a mythical archetype, just as there are so many other archetypes which can help people to understand or justify at least some portion of their nature.

On contemplation, we realize that the basic archetype can be limiting though.  Take for example the “fairy” – a tiny winged creature with magical powers.  First off, if we look “within” to try to intuit truth to a thing that we can’t really “know”, asking the question “is that all that a fairy is”, at least for me, results in a resounding “NO!”.  It appears, for instance, that fairies are often creatures that desire community, but for whatever reason often live a more singular life.  They often have little sense of time, or at least, little appreciation for its linearity. They often have a quality which may appear to be “entitled” – as if they deserve a comfy existence, just from their being. Also, often, they feel like they should be able to make things happen here more easily – that they shouldn’t have to “push” or “try” as hard as they do to affect a positive outcome.  This leads to a categorization as being a “dreamer” – but what if their nature is simply different… What if they are from a space where , in fact, life was “easier” – that manifestation was how things worked, you got stuff done by wishing for it to be done.  Imagine a world with relatively few beings, homogeneous in nature, no perdition, little competition for resource. It is a world of collective cooperation and planning – where every birth, every major decision is planned by the collective group, for the benefit of the all.  Food falls as dew drops – like manna from heaven.  Seasons are light, so the passing of time is marked more as a story, reenacted over the millennia, than as a warning for “cold times ahead”.

Thinking more about the fairies, it seems like there are different folks, different “clans” of the fairy folks. The air fairies, of above, are the most common example. But, perhaps mermaids are just “water fairies” – similar in so many other ways.  It turns out that there are not only salt water mermaids of the open seas, but also fresh water mermaids – bound to interface between the sea and the land.  I’ve come to realize that for whatever reason, I attract and love fairies – even though I’m not one myself. 

On Education

I had a great conversation today with a local Tech Guru and Educator, Ken Arnold, talking about education, society, budgets, long term planning, and students.  So many things that are broken in the educational system, and at the same time, so many things that we could really do to quite literally change the world for the better right now.

In driving back, I did some thinking and came up with a thought:  Educational Institutions - weather public schools, private universities, technical institutes or community colleges should all be graded on the return of investment that their pupils experience that is due to the education that institution provided them.

This needs to be systemic - colleges that are promoting a degree in a field that is already flooded, and so jobs are either not available locally, or the wage has been driven down to an unworkable level, have failed in their duty to provide a return on the students investment. Even if they have educated the pupil, they have failed in the higher goal of promoting their students to a better position in life, a return on the investment of money, time, and opportunity that the students have (and in many cases, will continue to) paid.

Any educational institution that measures its success by its investors return on investment, instead of its students return on investment is totally missing the mark, and I would argue is only being a leach on society.

Technology, Compression and Life...

Being an engineer, and having been a metal-smith (which were one of the earliest adopters of technology and tools), I work with technology and tools a lot. Recently contemplating on the nature of stuff, it occurred to me that almost all of technology, almost all tools, are means of "compressing" some aspect of life - increasing their "density", or "value".

Tools "compress" effort, and allow you to do more work in a unit of time. The multiply or "compress" force to give mechanical advantage, or shear or otherwise push a lot of work into a small "thing".

Agriculture is about compressing the amount of food into an area of land. That couple handful of berries from a random wild bush is compressed a thousand fold in a modern farm, with bush after bush of plants bread for volume (some times at the expense of taste).

Transferring power "compresses energy" so that you can transport it - so that the spinning 100 ton rotor of a power plant can provide a tiny amount of its energy to spin up the motor on your house vac.

Information is all about compression. Taking vague concepts and reducing them symbolically into utterances we call words, which we break down and spell with letters, which we can encode with ones and zeros which we can further reduce by coding statistics (replacing a common word with a shorter code).

Even the media of the information continues to be compressed - to increase in density.  My first Hard Drive could store 5MB - 5 million characters of information. A typical typed page is about four thousand characters - so it could hold over a thousand pages of text! It was a monster weighing close to 50 lbs, and being physically larger than my computer.  Now days, you can buy a micro SD card, smaller than your thumb nail which has 64GB of data - more than 12,000 time the capacity, on something about 1/12,000 the size...

But at the same time, I think more and more people are realizing that "it" isn't just about the compression any more.  Instead of food per unit acre, people are realizing that there are other metrics - the taste of something grown and prepared with love and intention.  That instead of using a power sander which could do the job in a few moments, that using a piece of sand paper allows you to feel the thing you're working on - to have a relationship with it.  That even in the world of PDFs and download books, that there is a certain pleasure in touching the pages, of flipping them - of seeing the dog eared pages, and signs that someone else has appreciated this book - shared in it's pleasure.

Perhaps the Luddites were on to something after all...

Desert Flower

It's easy to be in a place of familiar, of logic, of the known, and understood. It's easy to stay in your circles, with the people that you know - even if they have changed, and you have changed; at least you know them, or knew them, or can pretend.

It's harder to step out, to reach out to someone new. Someone that at first you don't understand, because they are so different. Someone that requires an investment of energy, of curiosity, of joy for the different-ness of them.  But if you can stick with it, you get the gift of sometimes seeing through the eyes of a very different person - to see their world pieces, their constructions.

Such is the world of the Desert Flower...


Desert Flower

There you were, like a desert flower, blooming in a moment's glory,
Bright profusion, on an arid background, solitude hints at the story,
Tiny blooms, like fairy's wings, scattered on the deserts winds,
Drops of living colored life, and in the sun they start to dim.

But the roots run deep, they know what to do,
Hold on tight, and wait it through,
From above, this dark sad form,
It just awaits a summer storm,

To loosen up this hard crust of earth,
To clear the way for a new rebirth,
Each drop of rain, like memories,
Of how things are supposed to be...

So you can bloom - bloom,
Anew - anew
So you can bloom - bloom,
Anew - anew...