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It started with the whales.

It was January 1. We met with friends for dinner, and to join in their New Year’s traditions.

The first tradition is from Germany. Called Bleigiessen, it involves melting a small lump of lead over a flame, and then pouring the liquid metal into a bowl of water, where it solidifies upon contact and forms a shape that can be interpreted as a symbol of what the new year will bring.

My Bleigiessen lump, like all of them, was basically indistinct, although there was a protrusion that looked like nothing so much as a whale. I kept this opinion to myself until I could find out what whale might indicate in the Bleigiessen tradition… if whale meant something bad, like “your savings account will develop a blow-hole,” I’d be inclined to quietly change my initial interpretation.

Shortly afterwards we shuffled a deck of Native American Medicine cards, and each drew a card which (as with the Bleigiessen) would be a symbol of what we could expect for the coming year. My card showed a whale.

Had we done Tarot or tea-leaves or shadow puppets on the wall, I’d have seen whale, whale, whale. The message was clear. But what did it mean?

I read several pages about the whale card in the Medicine Cards guidebook. One recurring theme was whalesong. I took it this way: 2004 will be a year of music.

Over this past weekend my wife and I completed Tony Robbins’ new-year exercise. It was a lot of work — about eight hours’ worth. But at the end we had four goals apiece… goals to achieve this year at any cost. Goals we’ll look back on a year from now and be ecstatic to have achieved. Goals to help us “design a compelling life.” Goals to prevent that year-end “boy am I ready for next year” syndrome.

Two of my goals are about music. I’ll tell you one: I’m going to get my drums back onstage this year. I will find a band and start gigging again. It’s been too long. Just ask your neighborhood whale.

For my wife’s part, she’ll be jumping out of an airplane.

No, she didn’t decide to jump out of an airplane after I said I’d start playing my drums again.

Max is on a liquid diet. Kudos, I say. And even: solidarity!

I’ve done one-day juice fasts in the past. Today I did another one. I’d been thinking about doing it again anyway, maybe even one Sunday a month, as a gesture of appreciation to the body that’s gotten me through the past 35+ years. Bottoms up, eh?

It is an expensive habit. Granted, we went to the most expensive store in town, a store I’ve heard called Whole Paycheck in two states. Still, the grocery bill was over $30. I could have bought steaks for that. Not that they’d have done too well in the juicer.

The official bio of US Attorney General John Ashcroft claims Ashcroft has pledged to “reduce the incidence of gun violence and combat discrimination so no American feels outside the protection of the law.”

Yet Ashcroft is a lifetime member of the National Rifle Association, and once appeared on the cover of the NRA’s magazine, America’s 1st Freedom. The magazine described Ascroft as “a breath of fresh air to freedom-loving gun owners.”

How exactly does arming the populace reduce gun violence? It doesn’t follow. If you wanted to reduce gun violence, it seems to me the first thing you’d do is take away all the damn guns. But Ashcroft opposed a ban on the sale of assault weapons.

According to Vanity Fair, Ashcroft is as dishonest about discrimination as he is about gun control. VF quotes Ashcroft’s interrogation of nominees to the federal courts: “What in the Constitution guarantees rights to homosexuals?” His question seems to imply that gays don’t qualify as Americans — that they’d need to be specifically mentioned in the Constitution, else they don’t inherit the same rights as non-gays. I think it’s safe to say that in Ashcroft’s America, just about all gays would feel “outside the protection of the law.”

Here’s another great quote from the Vanity Fair piece:

When, in 1985, a young man named Paul Offner applied for the job of head of Missouri’s social services, Offner tells me, [then-governor] Ashcroft said, without preamble, “Mr. Offner, let me start by asking you if you have the same sexual preference as most men.”

If that’s not discrimination, then I guess I don’t know what discrimination is.

Shot from the deck of the Blue Star Ferry at the port of Santorini, September 15, 2003.

I like the juxtaposition of the sizes of the ship, the dockworker, and the rope. The ship is huge. The dockworker, in his way, is also huge. The size of the rope between them depends on your perspective. Imagine lifting it.

This was supposed to be an action shot. I wanted to capture the image of the big guy struggling with a heavy rope holding back a million-ton ship. I watched through the camera for about five minutes. At some point I blinked… and the rope had jumped. For a big guy, he moved fast.

But then he just stood there. He’d moved the rope off the peg. His job was done. But he was as still as before. I never did see him walk away.

The other day I heard a radio commercial open with this line: “Have your New Year’s Resolutions gotten the better of you?” I flipped off the stereo with disgust. They have not, I thought.

I guess most people make resolutions with no real intention of acting on them. I feel no sad, self-pitying camaraderie with such people, nor with vendors who appeal to radio listeners’ feelings of failure and disillusionment in order to market their products.

Our society conditions people to think of January as a new beginning. Why not take advantage of it? There’s not a person on this planet who wouldn’t like to make a change, to do more of some thing or less of some other thing. Sure, we could all make changes any day of the year. But why not make some now? You’ve probably been thinking about it anyway.

I make resolutions every year. I try to keep the list short — to pick two or three items I feel strongly about. I’m somewhat successful, although not as successful as I’d like; the big items usually get done and the minor ones get forgotten. Part of my problem, I now realize, is a lack of strategy. Simply wanting something isn’t enough to make it so. One also needs a plan. And more than that.

It was with these half-formed thoughts that I listened to an “e-seminar” by Anthony Robbins. The timing was ideal, for his topic was “New Year, new results.” During his intro he said the same thing I’ve been thinking:

There’s a unique aspect to the New Year. The New Year is completely artificial … [but] it gives us a chance to start fresh. We make it up in our heads because we could do this any day of our lives, but my view is, as long as we as a culture have this hypnosis that says, “it’s a new year, I’ve got a chance to start fresh, to make it the way I want it,” why not take advantage of that?

Why not, indeed?

The great thing about Robbins is that he always provides a plan of attack. As I wrote once before, you cannot follow his advice and fail to take action. This is so much better than beginning every resolution with “I really should do this…”

Robbins’ presentation (a 75-minute frenetic monologue) has been archived for playback over the Web. His seven-step process for “maximizing” this new year has been made available as a PDF document, a worksheet you can print and follow whether or not you spend the time listening to his speech.

I would link to it all from here, but I’m not sure whether this content was intended for free access to the world. On the other hand, the invitation appears to have gone out to everybody on the anthonyrobbins.com mailing list, from where it was no doubt forwarded widely. And anybody could have called in to listen to the seminar over the phone. As a compromise I’ll do this: if you’re interested, send me an email and I’ll send the access info to you.