Matariki

My daughter informed me that my wife’s birthday (July 14) falls on Matariki this year. I asked her what Matariki was when it was at home. It turns out to be the New Year’s Day or celebration for some of the Maori of New Zealand, occuring when the Pleiades is first visible in the southern hemisphere. It occurs in their winter, aligned with the Maramataka, the lunar calendar used by some of the Maori for 800 to 1000 years.  Now, why am I relating all this to you? It shows the kinds of connections that stretch out between ourselves and the whole world. These connections form a web much like what I’ve understood physcists to describe when they’re discussing gravity. It surrounds everything, drawing all things into their relationships with all other things. The connections I am describing abide in the commonality of essence that is between all people. For instance, all people count time because for every one of us time stops. It is finite. This fact is part of who we are.  Within these connections also are derived the designs that inform and expand our lives in our art and industry. The picture for today seen in one way is a design inlaid on a table top. It tries to exhibit the top as a space that will hold something, something which hopefully will complete it. It draws form and function (two other commonalities of our essence with all other people) together.  So, Happy Matariki.