GreenOwl's guess about the missing mobile phone

[greenowl]

Here goes nuthin'. (Any points for bravery?)

The relating hexagram, 58 Joyful Communication, I'll assume represented the phone or talking on the phone.

The criteria is that the answer appear be what Freemanc described in the thread as "occasional perfect, fine-grained readings that are freaking wrong." (Love that.)

<u>What you THOUGHT the reading was telling you</u>:

The presumed location had some kind of prominent wooden object, and you had reason to believe you'd left the phone on, under, near, or in this wooden thing. Maybe it was literally a tree stump you'd been sitting on, or a tree you'd been sitting under.

Or, there was a wooden chair you might have dropped the phone under, or a wooden table with a bin or a drawer that you thought you'd put the phone in.

Also, this place was somewhere you don't go very often. (Or possibly it's just that you'd been looking for the phone for a long time.)

<u>Where the phone ACTUALLY was</u>:

In or near its charger-thingie.

Or, you had it in your hand when you went looking in your house for its batteries, and you absentmindedly (sorry...I do stuff like this all the time myself

) left it wherever the batteries were.

(NOTE: If it's not obvious by the use of the term 'charger-thingie,' I've never owned a mobile phone and I know hardly anything about them!)

 

[greenowl]

Am feeling guilty for hedging too much!

In order to fit the criteria as strikingly as what we're talking about, you had to have been under, on, or near a tree, tree-like bush, or tree stump - real or decorative, outdoors or indoors. In a place you don't go very often.

 

[hilary]

Not telling yet - someone else can have a go. Sorry, I didn't actually choose this one to fit your original thread criteria of the reading being absolutely spot on, only wrong. It was more 'pretty apposite with benefit of hindsight'.

I've never had occasion to consult Yi when something really valuable was really lost - maybe it would be more helpful if there was a 'need to know'.

I do remember a Diana ffarington-Hook reading where she asked where her keys were and received 48 unchanging. Want to guess that one, too? (Or do you own her book?)

 

[greenowl]

No, I've never seen her book but I know you've talked about it somewhere on your site.

If there's anything I could use practice on, it's finding lost keys! The Well, hmmm...

 

[greenowl]

Still need more pondering of the keys in terms of what we've been talking about.

One way it might fit is if she thought 48 meant she literally dropped them down a drain or hole...potty...actual well (!)...and then that would have to be WRONG.

*raises eyebrows dubiously*

(1) It's just a very unusual way to lose keys! Had this been a reading about a wedding ring it would make more sense, but keys are much larger, and jangly. To come to that conclusion you'd need a pretty good reason to think so, and then it seems less likely you'd be wrong, especially the way we're discussing.

(2) The examples in the thread rely on the obvious interpretation being wrong, and they also follow kind of a self-referential pattern: Question about stove => hex/line about a "stove" (cooking vessel). Question about lump on cat's head => hex/line that mentions (depending on the translation) 'taming,' 'headboard,' 'stunting growth,' 'horns,' 'budding horns' (Bradford's comments). Question about lost keys would have to yield hex/line about keys. Now, I suppose you could say 'Well = Source = Key' (as in 'the key point' or 'the key to the whole problem'), but it's not really the same thing. And would that really be the first thing popping to mind, even for an expert reader?

On the other hand, 48 is maybe a bit of a self-referential hexagram...*brain melts*

Okay, forget the thread topic for a minute and just think about it as if it was me losing my keys and getting that hexagram.

48 = Well = Source

Ideas that pop to mind reasonably quickly:

1 - down any kind of hole or plumbing fixture (assuming I'd been near anything like that with my keys on me)
2 - down inside the car engine (engine = 'source' of car's power) - but again, I'd have to have raised the hood in the first place

More commonplace key-losing scenarios that could fit with 48:

1 - left 'em in the ignition
2 - they're in 'the last place you put them' ('source' - sort of like getting hex 20 for lost-item questions, meaning 'Look' - Yi's having a little fun at our expense)
3 - they're 'in front of your nose,' aka 'if they had teeth they'd bite you' (I can imagine, for example, getting 48 if I did a reading to locate my sunglasses when they were parked on top of my head. Or worse - and it's not as farfetched as it sounds if you're a spacy glasses-wearer like me

! - asking where my glasses are when I'm actually wearing them)
4 - where they 'belong' (could be I Ching humor; could also legitimately be the last place I'd think to look if I thought they were lost!)

None of this fits with what we're talking about though. Maybe sleeping on it will help....

 

[greenowl]

One more, 'cause keys aren't just CAR keys after all (duh) -

Down in the basement of the house (basement is source/well/foundation of house)

That could probably open up another stream of ideas, depending on exactly what kind of keys you're actually talking about - like if it's your suitcase key, it's in the suitcase...if it's the key to your filing cabinet it's inside the filing cabinet...

Slight variation on that - the keys are LOCKED INSIDE whatever they're supposed to open, if for example you have car or house doors that can be locked without using the key...

This is fun! - though I'm probably off on wildly wrong tangents, besides none of it still has anything to do with the thread topic.

 

[greenowl]

Guess it could pertain to the thread if you thought the answer was ONE of those possibilities, and the real answer was a different one from the list.

(am in EDT; time for bed!)

 

[hilary]

Thought I had already confessed to not pertaining to the thread very much? (*sheepish grin*)

Mobile phone: fallen from a pocket onto an armchair, and slid down out of sight behind the seat cushion.

Diana ff-H's keys (I'm not sure, maybe they were car keys) - in the airing cupboard. Which presumably contains the nearest thing a modern house has to a well: the hot water tank.

Hindsight is a great thing - I wouldn't have stood a chance with either of these without it.

 

[greenowl]

<blockquote><hr size=0><!-quote-!><font size=1>quote:</font>

(Hilary): Thought I had already confessed to not pertaining to the thread very much?<!-/quote-!><hr size=0></blockquote>You did. Time for my own sheepish grin...

Besides - 'reading incomprehensible without hindsight' might be just another way to state the topic.

Am going to post that over there, in fact (hope you don't mind).

Well...I'll hold off on that. Would you be willing to answer something for me about this, based on having the hexagrams/lines pretty much on the tip of your tongue? (If you'd also be willing to not slash my throat for asking an impertinent question...

)

For any of these questions, can you think of any hexagrams or lines that, had you gotten it/them, would have been more illuminating of the actual answer?

My motivation here is not really to 'criticize' the I Ching as much as it is to try to figure it out a bit.

If there's a reading we think would've been more helpful, and Yi didn't give it to us, and we assume Yi says what it wants to say and is WAY smart enough to know how to best accommodate us - in all sincerity why WOULDN'T it give us the more illuminating reading?

Thanks...

 

[hilary]

Maybe hindsight makes it harder to think of a 'better' answer, also. If I thought primarily in trigrams, then I'm sure there would be something better - but I don't, so much.

What hexagram or line would make me think of looking behind a seat cushion? Not those 'under the stand' lines in 57, those would get me searching under beds or tables. Not 'flee to your support' of 59.2, as then I'd be looking for one solid thing in an open space. (Not that there are any open spaces in this house.)

No - 47.1 says 'small space' and 'where your backside goes' and 'out of direct light' and 'somewhere you don't often go'. I think it's about as good as you could get. The only part that doesn't help much is the 'wooden' bit - the chair has a wooden frame under those cushions, but so does pretty much all the furniture in the house. That, and 58 - reasonable picture of a phone, but nothing (that I can see) to do with where it was.

 

[greenowl]

"(Not that there are any open spaces in this house.)"

Sounds like my apartment!

Thanks for the analysis - this sounds like one of the ones where the I Ching's vocabulary constraints were the problem, simple as that.

But now we know one defn. of 47.1 is 'chair'. That's a good thing!

 

[greenowl]

'cushions'

What if you'd gotten 28.1?

Wilhelm says 'to spread white rushes underneath;' Bradford says 'For cushions, using white thatch grass, make no mistakes' and 'Cushioning with white thatch grass: The flexible is on the bottom.'

No idea if this would get me digging in the upholstery or not...maybe, if it'd get me to first remember I'd been sitting in the chair, etc. etc. etc.

Long shot?

 

[hilary]

Maybe. Though I'd mostly be worried my great weight was breaking the chair!

 

[greenowl]

HAH. 'Celling burns up way more calories than, say, French horning, which is what I used to do (way back when...)

<<< calories floating away disguised as notes

 

[hilary]

If we could hear this forum it'd be cacophonous. Two 'cellos, not sure how many electric guitars, faint notes of an Indian flute, and now the brass are moving in! Anyone else?

 

[soshin]

Jodelling and singing with overtones here...

No instrument well enough to mention...