An offbeat possibility for Hexagram 51, SHOCK

Art is not cosy and it is not mocked. Art tells the only truth that ultimately matters. It is the light by which human things can be mended.

Iris Murdoch, The Black Prince


... Is this light ... lightning?

What explodes in an artist to shock beauty into being?

I see the contradiction between the image I've chosen for this entry, and the words ... "the light by which human things can be mended." As the oracle teaches, destruction and creation are two forever-bound aspects of the Yin/Yang, and of Life.

It took me more than seven years, after my mother's death, to begin composing a memoir in honour of her and our shared story. The shock of her death rendered my pen mute for all that time ... and then the story began to coalesce. I had to draw back and allow the telling to evolve in its own time.

Shock comes ... and salving eventually arrives in its wake. The forest, reduced to ash, will green again ...