I’m chortling in a wry sort of way over my reading for this week.
I’ve spent the past umpteen weeks labouring faithfully over Change Circle. Planning, choosing technology and dreaming about what wonderful things it makes possible, fighting said technology, winning battles but losing the war. Starting over with different technology and its own set of battles. Finally getting a framework I feel really proud of, that gives me warm fuzzy feelings when I look at it. Remembering I still have about 40 hexagrams to add to the Wikiwing. (Gulp.)
I’d thought I was going to be writing to people by now to announce the doors were open. Not so… in fact, I looked at the ever-growing to-do list (I’m sure someone’s watering the blessed thing) and realised I have to postpone until the beginning of next month. This is Not What I Had Planned. Do I really have to leave it that long? Yes, I realise, if I want it to be complete and clear, I do.
Into this mix of delight that I’m getting there, and exasperation that it’s taking so unspeakably long, comes the reading for the week. Hexagram 47, Confined, changing at the fourth place to Hexagram 29, Repeating Chasm.
Hexagram 47 means ‘Confined’, ‘Exhausted’, ‘Oppressed’. If I think about the pressure of work, all these things are an overwhelmingly good fit.
‘Coming slowly, slowly,
Confined in a bronze chariot.
Shame.
There is completion.’
Chariots would be decorated with great quantities of bronze ornamentation for important occasions. (There’s a whole set of such decorations on display at the British Museum.) So on the one hand a bronze(d) chariot marks out the journey as unusually important. On the other hand, it’s not very fast or agile – not a very practical proposition if you’re in a hurry. I end up ashamed of being so slow (true).
The chariot is a perfect image of the work I’m doing, which is all about setting up the framework. I want it sleek and shiny, something that indicates how much I value the project and its future members, but this means the embarrassment of coming slowly, slowly. It’s not helping anyone while it’s still in development. But still… I’ll get there in the end. Lumbering great bronze chariots do have momentum.
Hilary, sorry to “spam” you this way but no matter how I word things, I can’t get your contact form to let me through.
Last Aug. you posted part of a poem I wrote and so I thought you might be interested in what’s available on my site now, which will soon be at Amazon UK as well if it’s not already there.
It’s like the poem, but more complete…
Please feel free to delete my off topic comment!
Thanks,
Paul
Hi, Hilary — All I can say at this moment is: If it’s as hot in your neck o’ the woods as it is in mine (temp = 30C with a humidex of 39C!), you’re likely to be moving like molasses … 😀
I understand your quandry — my own I Ching “opus” has been slooowly on the go since 1996 … !
In the meantime, your first Wikiwing offering of Hexagram 47 (hmmm! — there it is again…) is a lovely taste of what’s to come 🙂
Stay cool! 😉
Hi Hillary
Pay attention for any pain in the ears, head or back. If that happen, there are omens for you
Best
Paul – sorry you had trouble with the contact form! Normally it works fine, but it can take irrational dislikes to people’s computers or something. Grmph. And thank you for persisting and providing the link.
Jaliya – oh yes, that was 47 I shared, wasn’t it? Heh. The funny part is that after publishing this post, I moved on to the next item on the list: create audio-visual tours of social features, blog and WikiWing. Fought software A for an hour or so; lost. Moved on to software B; lost again. Decided this whole thing was a bronze chariot with square wheels and I seemed to be the horse. I hope no-one will especially object to having written guides with screenshots instead…
Jesed – I appreciate the advice, and find it really enigmatic! Can you say where it comes from?
Hilary, I do’nt want to be presumptuous, but perhaps the words that aren’t believed are our words–to you.
For example if most of us say–‘oh good, wonderful, more notes, more Hilary translations, and yes yes to Wikiwing’, 🙂 maybe you won’t believe it ’til you see it for real ( in action).(?)
Or, you’re not able (like you said), to feel more confident about your own work so you won’t/can’t listen to your own words..
I wonder if you must simply do your work without concerning yourself too much about what we think or will think, because no matter what folks are expecting or hoping for, it will only be real–well–when it is.:-)
I find the I Ching seems to exist and work on several levels, so it probably has more meanings too, but that’s what I thought of.
You definitely have a point. Possibly a whole hedgehog’s-worth. Thanks! 🙂
In an image of Hexagram 47 I dug a hole in my garden……..I called it the Hollywood Bowl in the winter it filled with water and stopped my garden flooding. In the dryer months is was empty of all water and filled with the most beautiful wild flowers. Either way it served its purpose……waters and lakes confined to the bowl were perfect in winter and the water draining down into the water beneath the Earth in the Summer months protected the water from the glaring sun. Being pregnant is also called a confinement and can be exhausting. Many variations on a theme of Hexagram. With The I Ching I find they pairings to be 1 with 2, 3 with 4 etc., so when you pair it with Hex 46 it feels like the past Hex 47 is the present and 48 yet to come. The odd number starts the pairing so Hexagram 47 partners with Hexagram 48. Could it be that you pair 0 with Hexagram 1 and thus even number comes first. Perhaps Hexagram 47 is literally exhausting you so do take time to sit in that walled garden with an Oak tree at its centre and stop the world and get off for a while. It works wonders. Loved your website and will look forward to reading more in the future. X
Thank you for sharing about your garden 47-bowl – perfect!
You’re right, of course: hexagram pairs are 1 with 2, 3 with 4 and so on. But you can also look, separately, at the sequence of the hexagrams – not for contrasting/complementary pairs, but for the story they tell.