what have i asked the yijing?

place: P's home in highgate

me & P were together from early december to mid february, after she left me i had a manic few weeks in which i discovered the work of terence mckenna, in particular his timewave theory, based on the kingwen ordering of the hexagrams in the yijing, just prior to this meeting i'd finished the man in the high castle by philip k dick, in which several of the characters consult the yijing...

i went up to hers on a friday night after walking up the disused railway to highgate - listening to allen ginsberg & wayne shorter, she'd phoned me a few days earlier, i hadn't seen her for about a month.

she was on acid, she'd taken half a microdot about 5 hours earlier...

i was sipping tea and i noticed that she had a pocket i-ching, i asked her how it works, she showed me and i asked it a question...

the question:

it's a long story,

i'd recently finished a piece of music which i'd started writing almost a year earlier after a conversation with K on her birthday, P leaving me had been the catalyst for finishing it.. the second verse is about P leaving me, it also has a slight note of optimism that came from K telling me that she'd broken up with her boyfriend, just after it finished with P...

i noticed once it was written that i'd finished it close to the spring equinox...

18 months earlier i'd written a piece of music for A when she left me, i had just met K for the first time and there was a note of optimism in that one also, related to meeting K and being drawn to her... this was written almost exactly on the autumnal equinox...

over the next 3 months i got to know K and liked her alot, although we didn't get together, i wrote her a song which she still doesn't know i wrote for her, it is written for her but from the experience of wanting her, rather than from being with her, i finished this almost exactly on the winter solstice...

so for a time after P left me i was hopeful about me & K, and i was struck by the similarity of songs written on the equinox's, both with a note of optimism relating to her, i had the notion that maybe we'd get together and i would write a song in three months time, on the summer solstice, for K, but from the experience of being with her, the four songs forming some kind of pattern...

this didn't last long as it became apparent that K had met someone else, or so it seemed to me...

so the question i asked the yijing on this friday night that i'm talking about, my first reading, was quite vague, what is going on in this world of writing and singing songs? - or - who will i be singing my summer solstice love song to? not K & not P, so who?

i threw the coins - she had some old chinese ones, i got:

7 6 8 6 8 7



which is hexagram 27 with moving lines in the 2nd & 4th giving hexagram 38.

27 The corners of the mouth (providing nourishment)

The corners of the mouth.
Perseverence brings good fortune.
Pay heed to the providing of nourishment
and to what a man seeks
to fill his own mouth with.

27/4:

Turning to the summit
for provision of nourishment
brings good fortune.
Spying about with sharp eyes
like a tiger with insatiable craving.
No blame.

38 Opposition

Opposition. In small matters, good fortune.

now i've only written the judgement - the zhouyi part of the yijing and this is what i'll do from here on in, the commentary is valuable but i'm not going to write it all out, in this case the commentary for opposition in particular was very distressing, don't attempt anything big in this time, only attempt small things... this representing my future in this romantic world of songs, made all the more upsetting by being in P's place where i'd last been loved...

after i got home that night i emailed a friend who i'd met online a few weeks before when i'd been checking out the timewave theory, he is the closest thing i have to an authority on the yijing, his response drew my attention to the moving line judgement, 27/4, being the most important part, he also gave me rules for deciding which moving line to take note of.. even so the dark cloud of that opposition haunted me for a few days...

the judgement for 27 as a whole made sense to me in relation to my question, having spent some time with P where our energies were so different, to look closely at what nourishes me, also to look for what nourishes others, in particular the one i want to find...

the 27/4 judgement, which the commentaries talk about in relation to someone no longer concerned with their ego, finding followers, P's pocket i-ching had it in different language that had the tiger voraciously striking when it had been looking intensely... in terms of my question, about who i'd be singing my midsummer song to, it makes sense to me that i need to look hard for this person, and act quickly when i see her... this is how i relate this to my life...

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