FRANK SPINS A COIN
IT MAKES THAT SOUND
PHOTO : @JOHNJOLLYCAMERA
Frank is sitting at a plain desk in a big room that is mostly windows and shelves of books.
On one wall there is a large photograph of Cactus Saguaro standing tall in a desert sunset.
Frank is at the desk with a silver dollar in his palm, looking at the eagle.
He flips the coin and it makes that sound.
Frank can’t think of another coin that makes quite such an appealing ring as it is spun in the air.
He places the silver dollar on forefinger and thumb of his other hand and flips it again.
The dollar spins and rings its one ounce of silver up to almost touch the ceiling and then rings down again to where it started, in Frank’s hand. Tails again.
Frank notes this on a pad, the latest in a series of spins, heads or tails.
Every three throws delivers a series of three heads, three tails, or combinations of both.
The heads are Yang, the tails are Yin, and each set of three throws makes one energetic value.
Eighteen spins, six totals, and the horizontal line Frank has drawn next to each. Either a solid line or one with a break in the middle.
Each group of three lines making one trigram, all six together building a hexagram, the complete message.
Frank thinks of his shortwave transmissions in morse code, dots and dashes. A code to communicate across great distances.
He looks at the lines he has drawn, Yins or Yangs, grouped into two sets of three. Two trigrams of I-Ching.
Together they represent a complete moment in time.
Thousands of years ago it would have been bird bones thrown in the air with a shaman to interpret the result.
The central concept being that everything in life is connected in the moment and the picture formed on the ground by tumbled bones a snapshot of the entirety of creation in that split-second.
A genius or several, or some higher power, took this intuition and turned it into a poetic conversation. That’s how Frank sees it, talking wisdom.
They wrote it in a book, and replaced the bones with coins, turned it into a binary code.
Throw the coin for on or off, zero or one, yin or yang, there is no ambiguous third way.
Other than the unity that annihilates all dualistic talk. The mystery beyond the code.
Look see. Today he has thrown, sent out his thought and received the instant reply of the cast hexagram.
The I-Ching likes short conversations.
Frank leaves the room to make tea and consider what he has just been told. Chuckling at the response to his anxious question.
“These are the good old days.”
