Happy Chinese New Year!
Today is the first day of the year of the dragon! There hasn't been a year of the dragon since 12 years ago, and won't be another one for another 12 years.
Chinese zodiac （属相）is similar enough to the western zodiac to be translated as "zodiac" but different enough to make the translation seem incorrect. Instead of 12 star signs that change monthly, the Chinese zodiac is a list of 12 animals that change every year. This is the 4th year of the dragon for me, and I hope I can still see at least 4 more in my life-time. Dragon is by far the coolest one to be for your Chinese Zodiac. When I was a kid, I secretly wished I had dragon as my Chinese Zodiac animal. Instead, I'm a horse. I have learned to accept this fact now. Horse is definitely not as cool as dragon, but still better than rat, so I'm ok.
For this year of the dragon, we had the pleasure of commissioning the one and only Balloon Maestro - Sean Rooney, to create a dragon for us for our East Meets West New Year's Concert. It took him approximately 24 hours to put together and was displayed in the foyer of the Meridian Arts Centre, greeting the audience with its big cartoon smile as they walk through the front door.
Dragon is the only mythological creature on the Chinese zodiac. The others being snake, horse, lamb/sheep/goat, monkey, chicken/rooster, dog, pig, rat, cow/ox, tiger and bunny rabbit. Every time I come across a year of the dragon, I can't help but start contemplating what it means. Of course, due to my age, every time I encounter the year of the dragon I'm in a completely different state of mind and therefor my understanding of the dragon is completely different.
My first year of the dragon was at age 9. I was old enough to know that the dragon is not real, but I young enough to think maybe it's just really good at hiding from humans. I believed in the dragon like I believed in fairies and ghosts, I've never seen it with my own eyes, but at the same time I've seen too many pictures depicting what it looks like so it lived vividly in my imagination.
When I was 21, I came across the second year of the dragon of my life. By then I was quite sure the dragon is nothing but a time-honoured legend. That was the age when I thought I knew everything. I laughed at my ancestors who believed in its existence and feared it. I thought I was much smarter than them for knowing fiction from reality.
By age 33 came the 3rd year of the dragon of my life. By then I have completely dismissed the thing. I thought it was just another ancient myth invented to scare little children, which belonged in the same category as monsters under beds and horror movie clichés.
Now, at 45 I'm starting to appreciate the dragon once again, in a way not dissimilar to how I thought of it when I was 9, except 5 times more intense! I am starting to believe in dragons again, in the same way I'm starting to believe in fairies and ghosts again. I've started to question whether my dismissal of mythological creatures was too arrogant. After all, I now know that there's so much of this world we have yet to explore and know about. If all of my known knowns was the tip of the ice-berg, and my known unknowns are the ice-berg itself, then all my unknown unknowns would be the ocean upon which the ice-berg floats. As one of my magic teachers once told me: "All of your knowledge is but a raft floating on an ocean of endless ignorance."
This year I found myself contemplating the dragon in Chinese zodiac being a metaphor for the amount of fiction in our reality: as mentioned earlier, dragon is the only fictional animal on the list of Chinese zodiac creatures, the dragon represents 1/12th of time, from which I have deduced that perhaps the world we live in is made of 11 parts of reality and 1 part fiction. This translates to 2 hours per day spent dreaming.
Maybe it's a bit more than stories invented to scare children. Maybe it's a way our ancestors are communicating to us about the importance of fiction in reality. It doesn't need to take up a majority of your time, only 1/12th is enough. But we should always leave some room for it in our lives. The other 11 animals represent the mundane reality we face everyday, of mice and hens, horse horse tiger tiger. We know they're there, we seen them, there's no doubt, there's no wonder.
Then there's the dragon. Mysterious and awe-inspiring. We are not sure why we have it on our zodiac even though nobody has seen a real one. Then again, perhaps that is the point. It's placed there for us to not know, as a reminder that there are always going to be unknowns in life. Keep humble, respect that which we are not sure about.
Maybe dragons do exist, at least this one made of balloons did exist, for a brief day in the lobby of the Meridian Arts Centre.
Happy Year of the Dragon!
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