When something triggers the strange workings of synchronicity -- or the Tao, or psychic intuition, or acausal connecting principle, or whatever other name it goes by -- to flow through your brain toward a seemingly random bit of understanding, it's not what you use as the jumping-off place that matters; it can be tea leaves, little sticks, clouds, playing cards -- or something that looks like a playing card. The important part is where you land once you jump off.
A few days ago I happened to be walking with my camera out and ready when I spotted this crow flying low across my field of vision, on a rising trajectory toward two trees. I raised the camera, aimed at the open space between the trees and pressed the shutter button at what I judged to be the correct instant (you have to click a split second before the target moment, to allow for the mechanical parts to actuate), hoping for the best. The result was pretty much exactly that. I was very proud of myself.
Then, as I was preparing to upload the photo earlier this evening, I was struck by the resemblance the image bore to this card
from the pack known as
Hwatu (화투), the Korean version of the playing cards known in Japan, where they originally came from, as
Hanafuda (花札). The whole set looks like this:
Anyway, I was told that when you tell fortune with these cards the flying bird image means you will soon be receiving a welcome piece of news. So I was going to hear from someone? But then I wondered, since the bird in the photo is flying in the opposite direction, did this mean instead that someone else would be hearing about me? And then I realized that it had already happened -- in both directions. A day after I took the photo I received an e-mail from a stranger -- a film producer from
Sweden Norway who saw one of my cloud photos on this very blog and wanted to know what I would charge to let her use it in a film project she was working on. How about that.
*Hwatu images taken from the internet
Related post:
A Well-Timed Shot
