A recent episode of the television series “Nova” revealed that scientists are only confident of one celestial alignment present at Stonehenge, dismissing all the claims in recent years of the structure being some sort of celestial observatory. Stonehenge’s main axis, a straight line through the entrance, points directly to sunrise on the summer solstice, the longest day of the year. This means that the back part of the axis points to sunset during the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year. But what does this say about why Stonehenge was built?

Archaeologist Michael Parker Pearson studied burial practices in Madagascar, where stone monuments are built to the dead. There, it is believed that stone belongs to the ancestors. The realm of the living belongs to perishable materials, like wood.

Pearson invited an archaeologist from Madagascar to visit Stonehenge. He immediately saw the monument as a meeting place to connect with the ancestors. The stones were linked to the ancestors and, indeed, the so-called blue stones, the smaller stones, had been transported from Wales, monuments to the dead, perhaps, that the people took with them when moving from Wales to the area around Stonehenge. But where was the place for the living?

Two miles north of Stonehenge are the remnants of another henge, this one made of timber. It is identical in size to Stonehenge. The post holes were found where timbers were placed. On the morning of the winter solstice the front axis of the timber circle aligns to the rising sun, while at the end of that day the back of Stonehenge frames the setting sun. During the summer solstice, the front of Stonehenge aligns with the sunrise while the rear axis at the timber circle aligns with sunset. Cremated remains have been found at Stonehenge. At the timber circle, there is evidence of a yearly celebration. One circle is for the dead; the other is for the living.

Beyond giving the chief archivist the heebie-jeebies for one more mystery of the world to be so logically solved — why did that photo of the Loch Ness Monster have to turn out to be a hoax? and wasn’t it already so completely obvious from the footage that it was the skin of the Hindenburg that so rapidly spread the fire? — what does this mean for Heliopoli, which is oh-so-similarly a monument to a belief system long dead, whose buildings stand sentinel over a past we cannot grasp?

Heliopoli has no alignment to the solstices, but it is telling that the Sun Disk Monolith rotates slowly throughout the year so that it is always aligned with the sunset. There are perhaps two kinds of people in the world, those who prefer sunrise to sunset, and vice versa. But there can be no denying the power of sunset in Heliopoli when standing in the Central Plaza and the amber, autumnal light comes shattering down the avenues to ring against the bronze disk in the monolith.

The buildings are blue with coming twilight, sparkling and bright. The surface of the plaza shines for one last time in the day. There is a chill in the air. The sunset delivers — mysteriously, curiously — a devastating form of homesickness.

But the question remains: Was Heliopoli built for the living … or the dead?

I have been duly chastised by the excavators for neglecting an element of Heliopoli that if not included in the city’s description would be like trying to make seawater without salt, or to deny a firmament its shining stars.

There is no proper classification for this thing. It is not just a color or a cloth or a pattern, and its interpretation has changed over time. I am further hampered by not being able to find a photo I have permission to use as an example, and any samples in the city itself have so degraded with time that they are useless, so I have used different, though appropriate, images instead. This thing is locked in its own time anyway — its proper time — so its image is always brighter in memory than anything even a digital photo can reveal.

You might have been introduced to tie-dying in someone’s backyard, with buckets of dye and rubber bands and white T-shirts. The method has to be taught, can’t be learned from a book, like making tallow candles or blowing glass. Tie the rubber bands around the T-shirt, tighten it up, thus and so. There were some who knew how to make certain patterns, methodical, while others just waited to see; but when the rubber bands were taken off the shirt after being dipped in this dye and that, it was always a surprise; you never really knew what you were getting, and that was part of the fun –

a sunburst, always — or a star –

Then in the 1980s we got the manufactured kind, made in a factory, always the same stupid spiral, they all looked the same — which was never the point — and it became a fashion, a self-conscious referent, a wry wink to the past gabbled by New York types through their rectangular, black-framed glasses, snarkily summarizing culture — we are only observers — and stuffing all into a box labeled “Retro.”

That was never the point. And now it can never again be what it once was. We are all too self-conscious for that. It will never again be sunshine backyards amid grass clippings — the smell of cut grass — or “arts ‘n’ crafts” or rainbow colors hanging on a clothesline to dry. It will never again be a surprise sunburst. It will never again be a surprise. It is premade now, hanging in a store.

Wryness is death to surprise. Cynicism destroys optimism.

Snark kills voice.

Did you think we were stupid? Yes, we knew it was about psychedelia and where that came from — you were never taught how to tie-dye from a non-hippie, were you? — but it didn’t matter. We ignored that part. It was just cool. And fun.

For its sunburst and its infinite colors; for its encapsulation of creative and otherwise freedoms; for its obeisance, we see now, to chaos theory’s fractals and never-repeating iterations; for its dark genuflection to drug culture we can ignore; for its bright bursting optimism –

for its representation of an unself-conscious act now turned to stone –

the official something of Heliopoli is –

the tie-dye T-shirt.

Once upon a time, before there was rap, there were rap sessions. These informal discussions between those of like minds, initialized with the invitation “Let’s rap,” were often held sitting cross-legged and relaxed on cushy furniture. Earth-tone modular pieces were easily configured into a “rap pit.”

In the city of Heliopoli there are numerous alcoves and corners, nooks and crannies, within the buildings. The excavators call these “the empties,” empty spaces that seem designed to hold something, to be used for some purpose, but are now empty. One can see as one turns a corner a blank spot, a modular space, defined by what is around it. “There is where sculpture was,” says one. “There is where a planter stood,” says another. “There is where a mobile hung,” offers a third. But there are plenty of sculptures and planters and mobiles in Heliopoli. None exist in the empties.

On closer inspection, indentations left behind in the beige carpeting tell another story.

“Is this where furniture was?” asks one.

“Yes. No,” answers another. “This is where the people were, when they stopped to talk to each other.”

Not everything in the excavation at Heliopoli comes out of the ground intact, whole, finished. Sometimes it is broken, with no clear context from which to assign it purpose.

We set aside a number of these items in one place and asked the children, “What is this stuff?”

“A Martian Playground!” they yelled, excited. “A Martian Playground!”

“Why ‘Martian’?” we asked. “Why ‘playground’?”

They shuffled their feet, not knowing, only knowing it was so, and eventually looked at us defiantly for us not knowing it was so. And so it became the Martian Playground.

So now there is new meaning in these assembled discards. And one can see rocket ships and space capsules and circular forts and otherworld doorways in these tossed-aside shapes and broken-dream blocks … because we said so.

Today the excavators celebrate the one-year anniversary of the excavation of the city of Heliopoli and the start of this blog. According to its WordPress statistics, this blog averages eight hits per day. Three of those hits per day, on average, go directly to the post Tang: A Correlative History. It is the most successful (OK, only successful) post of the blog, with currently over 800 views, which is about 25 percent of total views.

You can rest assured that throughout the day, every day, someone somewhere in the world is curious about the instant breakfast drink Tang, entering such search terms as “Kraft Tang,” “Tang breakfast drink,” “Russian tea with Tang,” “history of Tang drink,” “Tang recipes,” etc. Who knew? These visitors do not click on anything else in the blog; the focus and intensity of Tang drink curiosity knows no bounds.

So, without further ado, the excavators and the chief archivist would like to salute not the city itself, but the official drink of Heliopoli: Tang.

We hereby raise a toast to Tang … with Tang.