Pineal Forests

Book preface by Michael H. Kew

What's your year?

Perhaps it's another chunk of school—an anniversary—a big fill-in-the-blank holiday—another ritualistic weave of planning, plowing, planting, harvesting—always more sunburn and fever of cabin.

Perhaps it's a lenticular spell of box-checks—tax file, insurance premium, auto reg, membership and subscription due, union due, interest, credit card fee, 12 mortgage or rent, property tax, medicinal copay.

Perhaps it's a scintilla of baseline millennia—calendars lunar, solar, lunisolar. All future anthropologies and archaeologies of you and me.

Ancients would link cyclix with star trails for the first known traits of timekeep. Moon as metronome. Lunar vibes were absorbed later into the Islamic and Jewish year. Later still the Egyptians adopted solar, rooting their new 12-month almanac in the pre-dawn rise of Sirius (Greek: "glowing"), then and now the brightest of eye stars.

In the West (specifically Italy), Romulus's 10-month chronology was circa 45 BCE lengthened by Caesar whose version was circa 1582 CE revised by Pope Gregory XIII whose version is now Earth's permanent civil calendar.

Oh, the corrugations. Always two equinox, two solstice. Recurring cyclix of light and dark—the holy calligraphy of seasons. Numerology, theology, astrology, mythology. Noise and the eloquent ring of silence. Life's ordinary and extraordinary. The churn and seethe of crises, conflicts, blisses. Sickness and wellnesses. Rites of passage. Births, deaths, starts, and stops.

So—what's my year?

In your hands lies '23 loosely. Twelve beads strewn upon a heavily soaked rope—wet with rainfall, snowmelt, sap. Dripping with tears. With river water, ocean water, springwater. With coffee, nectar, booze, and sweat.

Signed copies of Pineal Forests are available via the ‘Books” link on this site. Also via Amazon and select surf shops.