The Eternal Clock. Photo by Robbert van der Steeg, courtesy of Creative Commons

I hate New Year’s Eve. Just thinking about it puts me in a bad mood. All this build up just to watch the digital clock click into a new twelve-month cycle. All the TV stations showing the year in review, with inane summaries delivered by bobble heads. All the drunk kisses at midnight from people you wouldn’t think of kissing at any other time.

So I’m sitting here at 5 pm on New Year’s Eve frowning at the love of my life. “Why are you pissed at me?” he wants to know. I’m not really pissed at him but I’m crashing under the pressure to DO SOMETHING. I feel guilty that all I really want to do is stay at home, paint, and drink red wine. We have no red wine and he’s not offering to go buy any so I guess we have to GO OUT and DO SOMETHING.

I’ve already turned down a dinner invitation from my dear friend and her family. I don’t want to inflict my NYEM (New’s Year’s Eve Malaise) on them. It just doesn’t seem right. My husband suggests a movie and then finding a pub. I just can’t see myself faking gaiety with the drunks. But hey, we need to DO SOMETHING.

My attitude to New Year’s Eve dates way back to childhood. When I was 12, my grandmother committed suicide on New Year’s Eve, the same night that had been her wedding night in happier times. What a night to depart the earth. How could we ever forget even if we wanted to?

After my grandmother’s death, celebrating New Year’s always seemed counter intuitive. This was not a night of happy endings. It was a night of sadness. As I got older, I got stuck babysitting brats and watching Guy Lombardo while the grown ups got drunk. Later on in my teens, I also got drunk on New Year’s Eve but I never got happy on this annual holiday of hullabaloo. I only went through the motions, a slave to the Gregorian calendar’s turning of the year. Tick, tick, tick, clunk.

My husband doesn’t know how to deal with me so he disappears to the dungeon to his computer and guitar. I look at my cat who has no idea it’s New Year’s Eve. Doesn’t know. Doesn’t care. He’s obsessed with chasing his tail. But isn’t that what we are all doing in this cycle of years, chasing our tails around the calendar, hoping at some point to beat time at its game? Oh bloody hell, now I’m really talking rubbish. Time to DO SOMETHING.

I give in to my guilt. When my husband comes upstairs, I agree to go downtown to eat Tibetan food. If anything can lift my spirits it is surely eating potstickers while thinking of the Dalai Lama. Then I may go see a movie with the now-dead Heath Ledger in it and think about death. After all, 2009 is in its death throws. It’s been a hell of a year. Good riddance to bad rubbish. It’s time to DO SOMETHING.

PS: I just found something to get excited about. Tonight, on the edge of 2010, we are being treated to the second full moon this month, known as a blue moon. Now my night has meaning!

Just got back from seeing Avatar, the latest movie from director James Cameron. Now, Cameron is known for the great effects and plenty of action. Think of Terminator and The Abyss. I wasn’t expecting profundity, but that’s what I found tonight.

On one level Avatar is typical blockbuster, supersized with amazing animation. But it’s subtext is pure shamanic journey, from the world tree to the reverence for the universal mother, to rites of passage and animal guides.

The story takes place on a distant world called Pandora where corporate mining interest come face to face with wondrous 10-foot-tall creatures called the Na’vi. The Na’vi are highly reminiscent of Earth’s own indigenous cultures, intimately connected to the land, the animals, the energy and the ancestors. They worship a mother goddess called Eywa.

The Na’vi live in a world with trees taller than many of our skyscrapers, mountains  that float and flora and fauna that shimmer with colour at night. It is Eden, but just as in our world here on Planet Earth, there are those who would put profits before people and they are willing to destroy paradise for it. To that end, the company that is so aggressively mining Pandora has the military, a thinly veiled and effective poke at the USA’s protection of corporate interests in other countries.

During the past year, I have been learning more about shamanism. For me, Avatar was familiar in that it strongly resembled a shamanic journey in non-ordinary reality.

Yeah, I know this is Hollywood and I don’t want to demean my own practice by comparing it to computer generated odysseys. On the other hand, I applaud that Cameron is bringing an important message to people who might not otherwise care to learn about shamanism. Avatar is clear — we are all connected, to each other and to our planet, whether it’s Earth or a moon called Pandora.

James Cameron said that “the Na’vi represent something that is our higher selves, or our aspirational selves, what we would like to think we are” and that even though there are good humans within the film, the humans “represent what we know to be the parts of ourselves that are trashing our world and maybe condemning ourselves to a grim future”.

I will write more about Avatar after I’ve had time to think about it more (and get some sleep) but I am inspired and still a bit in awe of this movie. For three hours I sat there in my 3D glasses, exploring a fantasy world, thinking of our own world and wondering what is going to become of us on Planet Earth if we don’t find the strength and spirit to protect our planetary home.