I’m more dubious about some of the stuff here, but I was thinking about how people indicate where they’ve been or where they’re going.
The pathways marked by the original choreographer consist of 108 stars. These have, in modern times, been broken up into 9 different “roads,” with each one named after a part of the body. Generally, when indicating a specific mapped star, a traveler will point to the appropriate body part, indicating the appropriate road, and then indicate with their fingers which star in that series they are referring to. So if someone points to their chin and holds up 3 fingers, they mean the third star in the “Chin” road.
Players mark which stars they have practiced traveling to by filling in the outer circle of the appropriate dot. They mark an established relationship with a particular star by filling in the inner circle of that dot. There will also be a bunch of dots on one part of the sheet for players to diagram their own roads.
Interesting idea for the etiquette there. How do you see people indicating the twelfth star on the calf road?
By: Daniel Solis on May 9, 2008
at 4:00 pm
Yeah, the stars past 10 are more difficult, because, if you’re in a hurry, you want to make sure you have both digits, not just the first. Perhaps there’s a hand signal for punctuation, to show that you’ve finished communicating, as in voice procedure?
Or, alternately, the Chinese hand signals for numbers go up to ten (unlike ours, which require addition after 5, using both hands), so maybe roads max out at 9 stars?
By: Jonathan Walton on May 9, 2008
at 5:37 pm
Oooh… If you used the Chinese hand signals, you could make the left hand represent 1-10, and the right hand 10-20.
By: Daniel Solis on May 13, 2008
at 3:23 pm