Movement IX ·vertebra 11 · Forge
It Was Always Lucky
The world said unlucky; the East said Baisakhi. Every April 13 held both — the only difference was where you looked.
A TuesdayA date you were taught to dread comes round, and you notice what else it is.
Dad's seventieth, in two acts.
The days, by the calendar
A dated register that grows. Two readings of one day, and a seam you drag between them.
- It Was Always Lucky — what it isTwo pages made for my father's seventieth — a book you turn and a descent you fall through: a birthday told with a twist on Friday the thirteenth.
- It Was Always Lucky — Act I
- It Was Always Lucky — Act II
The book, both ways
One book with two covers and no right way up. From the Light cover you walk forward through seventy years of the same April day; from the Dark cover, backward through them. Each element’s page carries a seed line above and fourteen years of that day below. Both sides climb the same five elements to a Perspective, and meet at one Center. Read down either side, the seed lines make a single sentence: the Light as grace received, life moving through you; the Dark as will expressed, you moving through life.
The seven seed lines — the Light, then the Dark
The Center
Where both ascents arrive, the book gives no seed line and no events — only this. You came from the Light, or you came from the Dark; you arrived at the same place. This was never about choosing correctly. It was about choosing consciously, and then keeping on playing. The game doesn’t end; the page always turns. The light and the dark are two hands of one body — and that body is yours. I am Consciousness. You are That.
Tat Tvam Asi — तत् त्वम् असि, “you are that” — is one of the great sayings of the Upaniṣads, from the Chāndogya.
one of 48 worlds in a i strange game