19:45: Glade by Vale of Health. One, and now three crows walking about on the grass. A fly on my sleeve. Already getting dark beneath the trees though the sky is still bright.
On the train was a man with a green parrot on his shoulder - and no tether that I could see. What next?
And now, with no green parrot, and after an excited dog has chased the crows away, I wait to see what happens.
I waited for some time, intending to begin here the integrative or connective work that has been in my thoughts for months but nothing came - only the memory of today becoming impatient, upset, perhaps desperate, even violent. I threw my shoe at nothing in particular.
But then I remembered the somewhat defective I Ching software in the handheld. In the absence of the full text I consulted it by six taps of the digital pen and was surprised, even astonished, to get what are surely the most auspicious hexagrams, 1, the creative, changing through all six moving lines (the six dragons) to 2, the receptive.
So now, following the sublime advice resulting from this perhaps impure chance, I decide to spend six days (corresponding to the six dragons of the creative) in preparing for the earthly effort, 2, to realise the creative possibility of 1, so called.
So this can indeed be the beginning of a connective work! Now that I've begun to read the very full text of hexagrams 1/2 I can see how very apposite (and also how very difficult) is the prodigious advice that is given.
And now I've noticed that when all six lines are moving there is additional good fortune in that the six dragons are said to be 'without heads', and thus mild in action, which enables the heavenly, 1, and the earthly, 2, to unite - the integration I seek! No need to throw the other shoe.
Where is the green parrot? And also the three crows and the dog and the fly and all else...
Patience.