Old Goat Plunges into Another Year

Fifty winters after my emergence on earth I climbed up a dune and surveyed the beach below. Over a hundred primates were reveling near the frothy hoof of Neah-Kah-Nie Mountain. Half were splashing in the cold Oregon surf, hollering amid the elements. Others kept to dry sand, recording the briny romp with little gadgets.

This New Year’s  event is a growing attraction on America’s west coast and other parts of the world. Spirit hasn’t moved me to get wet yet, but my family often lures me out to hold their dry clothes.

The scene below was a living diorama, recalling depictions of how some terrestrial critters evolved by returning to the ocean. Whales and dolphins come to mind. Will this annual caper evolve into a mainstream holiday tradition? Could the words “polar plunge” become as familiar as “ball drop” and “bowl game?”

Surely some herd impulse is part of what calls folks into the waves. I suppose the timeline of human events could be explained as a serial tug between spectators and spectacles. One starts at the periphery, an accessory to full-on participation. Then at some point, even landlubbers like me are prone to shed our threads and merge with the raving mass of seabillies.

Yet is a deeper influence also at work here? Does some cosmic compulsion draw out our kind to cross that shoreline and christen the New Year?

I moseyed down to the beach, looking for insights. After weaving through the whimsically costumed crowd of celebrants I found myself standing with my friend Winston beside a big driftwood fire. He wore a towel round his neck like a prize-fighter, smile big as Saturn, post-plunge vigor radiating from his mien.

The last time I’d seen Winston, a week or so prior, he was holding forth as Scrooge at the Cannon Beach Coaster Theatre. I asked him how it felt to be done with Dickens, finished with the shift from greedy fiend into Father Christmas.

“Oh, half and half,” he said, reflecting on one of many lead roles he’s played as a respected local thespian. “It’s good to move on, but I always feel a bit let down when I think of ways a part could continue improving.”

I can relate, having participated in smaller ways with community productions. Acting can be a gratifying ritual for a cast and stage-crew. When all the lines and movements come together, magic fills the theater.

Winston told me he was on the receiving end of that alchemy over the holidays, when he watched the new cinematic premier of Les Miserables. Said he sobbed through the whole thing. I asked what motivated him to stand in line when a movie first comes out. Is it a social thing?

“No, not really,” he said. “I don’t go out to see people or be seen. There’s just something compelling about being there at the time of a new release, participating in the cultural rhythm.”

The urge to surf that current contributes to social trends, he admitted. But he said it can’t fully account for the tide of our collective behavior. What happens in society isn’t merely the result of patterns prescribed by individuals. He illustrated with the example of clothing, saying his mother worked as a designer. According to Winston, professionals know changes in dress aren’t just determined by insiders who’ve ascended the industry pyramid.

“Fashion is more than the sum of our social connections” he said. “There’s a greater funky flow to it.”

We touched on how that flow is influenced today by high-tech communication, how events are shaped immediately by social media. People seem so wired into the hive that it’s hard to distinguish the cellular person from the superorganism. Winston said he was speaking with someone the previous evening about a line from Midnight Cowboy, but he couldn’t remember it exactly, which was very frustrating. “Soon,” he predicted, “people all over the world will have the power to instantly retrieve all such information.”

Here’s to more storage and speedier access. Yet how will we fit everything together? Toward what ends will we integrate all that power?

Winston and I gazed at the fire, ruminating on the forces around us. What a wonder, the way winter brings us together while turning our awareness inward, concentrating our attention. Crackling flames and chatter fused with the rolling rumble of breakers, extending the soundtrack of a molecular fusing that began long before there were cell phones or hemlines or single-cell earthlings.

It all looks different from the top of Neah-Kah-Nie Mountain. People become specks in the squiggly lines of suds expelled by waves that rove shoreward from the depths, out there on the horizon, where whales now lumber forward on their way to give birth. Zoom out farther and creation becomes even more magnificently interactive, every speck dancing with the heavenly spheres.

Last year’s plunge marked a big turn of the cosmic wheel. It was the beginning of a new cycle in the Mayan Long Count calendar — an interval of time slated to span four more centuries. Some days it’s hard to believe humanity will last even four more decades, given the oceanic consequences of our sins.

Can we begin again with the new year? Can root resolve arise from our sum-being, to repair human culture and re-connect us with life-sustaining cycles?

Now is the season to delve and inquire, for old forces work in the weeks following winter solstice. Our planet is nearest the sun in the beginning of January, though that influence often goes unnoticed by modern residents of the northern latitudes. Because of Earth’s tilt, solar rays fall lower in our skies. Yet deep down we feel Sol’s proximity, and days are growing at a freshening pace, even when it’s cold and dark. Nature’s stage is set to rejuvenate, building energy for lean months ahead. Thus winter has long hosted holidays.

Ancient nerds knew this stuff, apparently without the help of hi-tech gizmos. They understood the 26,000-year wobble of the earth’s axis and were able to build structures that they were both geometrically elegant and astronomically aligned. How they came by such knowledge is a mystery, but some of their thinking is stored in signs that mark our calendar.

In winter the sun moves into a portion of the heavens star-gazers call “the Water” or “the Sea.” The name was given to an assortment of aquatic-themed constellations, the foremost being a mythical critter that’s half goat and half fish. Why did ancient geeks pick Capricorn to launch this celestial cycle?

Some authorities pair this astrological sign with Pan, a goatish Greek demigod that had an affinity for fields, wild places, reed pipes and so on. One story of Pan says he dove into the waters and became half fish in order to escape a monster king. A similar tale of escape is linked to the goat-fish Aegipan, who helped Zeus overcome titanic adversaries.

Not much to go on, but apparently the image of a goat-fish preceded the Greek myths. Capricorn is one of the oldest signs, despite being the smallest constellation in the zodiac. Some semblance of this sign has marked the winter solstice since the 21st century BC, when it was associated with Enki, a Mesopotamian deity of rituals, magic, wisdom, crafts, and some say mischief.

Somewhere in the churn of online info I read that Enki was called “Antelope of the Sea.” He was rumored to reside in a great body of water beneath the earth, perhaps an extension of the oceans. On occasion he would surface to teach.

Many years ago, an astrologer advised me that Capricorn is an ancient symbol for cetaceans — the family of creatures that includes whales and dolphins. He claimed those intelligent creatures govern portions of the earth that are covered by water. This struck me as immensely cool, being born under that constellation. Yet most horoscopes I’ve read cast Capricorns as a rather dull plodding lot, nose to the grindstone, tending toward conservative in the extreme. Perhaps that’s evocative of whales, because we think of them as slow moving giants.

Yet goats seem more like dolphins, in my farming experience. They’re the wild cards of herd animals, persistent and crazy-making when they try to get at the feed. They’re also quirky, and goat kids are the most adorable critters on earth. One moment they’re just browsing along, then suddenly they leap and spin around, or climb a tree (how they got so sure-footed with cloven hoofs is a profound puzzle to me).

This capacity for quick shifts in behavior probably gave rise to the word “caprice,” which isn’t exactly the same thing as “mischief.” It may also have some bearing on the word “panic” — that feeling of imminent danger that can cause crowds of financial speculators to stampede.

In spite of these traits, herders of mainstream horoscopes decided somewhere along the line that Capricorns are courtesans of convention. People must strive together to make it through winter, after all. Yet we must also innovate, inspire, instruct, and entertain. To keep the wheel of humanity turning, we can’t just repeat old rituals. We must transform antiquated rules that don’t serve the common good. Fresh dreams must be injected into life’s disciplines. New traditions need seeding.

So whenever I read a drab diatribe about old workaday Capricorn, I refer to this list of famously generative natives.

Muhammad Ali, Steve Allen, Joan of Arc, Isaac Asimov, Rowan Atkinson, Sheila Atim, Joan Baez, Syd Barrett, Clara Barton, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Shirley Bassey, Simone de Beauvoir, Pat Benatar, Victor Borge, David Bowie, Anne Bronte, Terry Brooks, Jimmy Buffet, Jim Carrey, Carlos Castaneda, Paul Cezanne, Charo, Mary Higgins Clark, Shawn Colvin, Jim Croce, Iris DeMent, Marlene Dietrich, Bo Diddley, Maureen Dowd, Dian Fossey, Benjamin Franklin, Ava Gardner, Kerri Green, Kahlil Gibran, Romy Haag, John Hartford, Stephen Hawking, Harlan Hubbard, Zora Neale Hurston, Janis Joplin, Valerie June, Andy Kaufman, Danny Kaye, Diane Keaton, Rudyard Kipling, Eartha Kitt, Aldo Leopold, Jeff Lynne, Martin Luther King, Ann Lennox, Shari Lewis, John C. Lilly, Jack London, Gabor Maté, Henri Matisse, Ethel Merman, Henry Miller, A. A. Milne, Mary Tyler Moore, Haruki Murakami, Isaac Newton, Joanna Newsom, Michelle Obama, Odetta, Dolly Parton, Alice Paul, Edgar Allen Poe, Elvis Presley, Paul Revere, Gregori Rasputin, Charles Nelson Reilly, Betsy Ross, J.D. Salinger, Carl Sandburg, Earl Scruggs, David Sedaris, Taja Sevelle, Harry Shearer, Patti Smith, Susan Sontag, Sissy Spacek, Kandace Springs, William Stafford, Jean Stapleton, Fanny Steloff, Donna Summer, Donna Tartt, J.R.R. Tolkien, Wat Tyler, Tracy Ullman, Ronnie Van Zant, Betty White, Camille Yarbrough, and Frank Zappa.

These constellary kin would make invigorating company during the holidays. Just think of the toasts and side conversations. Imagine Sir Newton discussing cosmology with Syd and Lamb Chop, then being suddenly entertained by that festive duo, Ronnie and Wat, arm-in-arm belting out new revolutionary verses to “Simple Man.”

The most famous sea-goat of all was Jesus, of course. It’s significant that Christmas is celebrated after the winter solstice. In ancient Rome this was the time of the Saturnalia, a festival of social reversals when people of lowly station were treated as nobility. A similar switch was celebrated in England, on Twelfth Night, commemorating the arrival of kingly Magi at the barn where Jesus was born.

People who reject any connection between Christ’s birth and older stories are discounting these wise men — Mesopotamian astrologers who presumably saw the event in a pan-cultural context. Perhaps some related insight prompted priestly geeks in Rome to link the nativity with a legendary golden age of comfort and joy.

Even if Jesus was born under another sign, as some suggest, society would have found a way to turn him into a scapegoat. He exposed something troubling about human predators by playing the same role goats were forced to play in old sacrificial rituals. In earlier times people were commonly cast for that part: often disabled or poor folks or prisoners. At the end of each year these conscripted actors were killed or banished to die in the wilderness. The annual event was believed to ritually cleanse a tribe of sin.

With the exception of one word, traced then quickly erased in the sand, Jesus never wrote anything. His teachings were transcribed from oral accounts of his actions and parables. Gospel authors gave us a tiny glimpse of his capacity for moral instruction. They paint him as someone who’s completely consumed by his work, seldom if ever playful, stoic as a Hollywood Indian.

Maybe Jesus led plenty of quirky escapades that were never written down, partly for lack of space (data storage and access being what they were), partly because writers were afraid of being scorned or stoned or fed to lions. Yet it’s clear from what’s scripted that Jesus was an amazing storyteller. There’s every indication he’d hold our attention round the fire in midwinter.

When magic flows, it moves us toward inspired beginnings. Will we learn to treat the least among us as we would treat the lamb of creation? Escaping doom will take a lot of merry work and many new rituals.

Imagine Jesus at a polar plunge, splashing around and yelling to high heaven. Maybe he’ll show up here in person one year.

If so, by Jove, I’m getting wet!

– This is a revision of something I wrote that was first published in the Upper Left Edge on January 6, 2014.