Embracing My Inner Monkey

This month is going fast already, and (again) I've been neglecting my blogging and several other things.  I must get my act together. 

Which reminds me of two favorite sayings—"dog and pony show," and "not my circus, not my monkeys."

Unfortunately this year it is my circus, and my monkeys.  In fact I am the monkeys.  The Year of the Monkey—mine.  And monkey mind too—mine.  (All of those busy thoughts, unsettled, capricious, whimsical, chattering, clamoring for attention.)

I've been writing the last few days about the blue monkeys of the Minoan frescoes, both at Knossos and at Akrotiri, blue monkeys gathering saffron from crocuses to give to the goddess.  One was originially misidentified as a woman, the tail ignored, the incomplete fragments restored into a wrong whole.  

What this says about monkeys and women and archaeologists I'm not sure, though I've used the story different ways.  Maybe only that being unsettled is common?  Or that some of us have those blue monkeys in place of what we believed we were?  As attendants to priestesses, that's not such a bad thing; and the Chinese as well believe the monkey connected to wisdom and to gold.

Gathering saffron is a good task to assign them (us), the capricious creatures that otherwise distract and even drive crazy.  With crocus pollen I can make fragrant paella, I can dye cloth sunny yellow or the orange of Buddhist robes.  I can use it in therapies, in healing, as an anti-depressant.  Gathering (something I do instinctively, you will have noticed) is a calm pursuit, holy pursuit, allowing me to see things through without having to utilize all three rings of the circus, let alone the flying trapeze.

images:  Minoan Blue Monkey Fresco, Palace of Knossos

Zazzle Japanese Monkey