In this free sample from Two For the Road, by J P Dooley, Jaymo and Lee demonstrate one can get high from how fate likes to play jokes on us:
"Nearing Tok Junction in high good spirits, we went through our gear, tightening down our packs, and Lee pulled out the book. A last oracle before being on our own again; we each threw separately.
Girard went first.
41. Sun/Decrease. “Six in the third place means: When three people journey together, their number decreases by one. When one man journeys alone, he finds a companion.”
He handed the coins to me, and I threw:
64. Before Completion. “Success. But if the little fox, after nearly completing the crossing, gets his tail in the water, there is nothing that would further.”
From Tok it was still five hundred miles to Ninilchik, three hundred just to Anchorage. A weary feeling of having it in the bag, and I had to remind myself that every hitch is a roll of dice, and that we are all but out of money.
Lee held the book to her head, put it down and shook the coins thoughtfully before dropping them. All broken lines until the last, the hexagram of Splitting Apart.
“Six in the fifth place means: A shoal of fishes. Favor comes through the court ladies. Everything acts to further.”
Commentary: “Splitting apart means ruin.”
Three were about to become two; separation and ruin followed by a bride delivered by her court, still some way in which I can fail to make the crossing, and I’m wondering if it’s going to be Girard and Lee hitching off into the future and me going my way alone. Impossible to vibe it out: Lee was capable of anything, always ready to leave the past behind and step boldly in some new direction.
Still before noon when they dropped us off at the junction across from a gas station, and we watched the One World Land Transect Expedition chugging off up the grade towards Fairbanks in bright sunlight. “That was definitely weird,” Lee said as we slung our packs and crossed the road.
Great to be free of them but I felt uneasy, contemplating the oracles and how the images might be fulfilled.
Before we even had a thumb out, a car pulled up slow and stopped. Three women inside.“We’ve got room for one,” the shotgun passenger said, and they were all looking at Lee.
It was not the way I thought the moment would arise, so soon, and reviewing the hexagrams, saw the permutation I had not considered, that she would climb in and leave us both behind.
“Well, I did think about it,” she told me later.
“Thanks,” Girard said, and slipped into the back seat, his pack on his lap and the door shut before they could change their minds. “See you down the road,” he said, waving through the window with a cheerful smile.
Suddenly it was just Lee and me and the highway, and I’m feeling entirely unburdened, rapturous, fancying that everything has been fulfilled: a splitting apart, three have become two, and I am with Lee, my only destination, the other side of the river. We kiss and eat peanut butter sandwiches.
After noon, in spite of the bright sun in a clear sky, the temperature dropped sharply, and we could hear the wind, low on the mountain, rushing like surf in the stands of slender young trees, stirring a meadow of dead fireweed, an acre of dry flowers drifting away into the air. People passed and waved, a cheerful mood all around but no one stopped."
No comments:
Post a Comment