s w i f t s  &  s l o w s: a quarterly of crisscrossings

Meditation on LUCK
Christine Hughes & Yuko Otomo

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Meditation on LUCK: Take Care

I was walking in some unfamiliar landscape. I had no idea why I was there. I looked up to the sky that was blue, not gray. OK. That’s good. I thought. For some reasons, I needed something clear above my head to keep on walking. Strangely, I realized that I did not see any humans around me. That’s very good, I thought again. I had been tired of my fellow species for quite a while. Our overly enthusiastic eagerness for self-serving, self-indulgent, self-seeking complexities, mine included, was too much to deal with for obvious reasons that didn’t not need any explanations even to myself or to the others. Ah. I was tired. I was tired, not from walking. I was deadly tired, not from being in a strange unfamiliar surrounding, but from being “human”. I kept walking & walking & wondered why I did not get bored walking in this nothing landscape. Give me some luck! I talked to the sky. What luck? The sky bounced my question back at me. Let me be something else, or anything but a human! I answered, knowing the sky was just an empty void. Suddenly, a bird flew above my head out of nowhere. It was so fast that all I saw was a quick impression of its swift movement. I heard it say, “Take Care” as it flew by. Of course, it didn’t say anything. I imagined that I heard its voice. I made it all up. But it didn’t matter. Thinking of a bird wishing me a good luck on the long unknown journey was a good start. I felt good & kept on walking.

Meditation on LUCK: Catastrophe; Cataclysm & Culmination

Felicity. Blessing. Godsend. Providential Occurrences. Prescribed Superstitions. Sacrifice. Circumstantial Accidents. Fallacy. Destiny. Ritual. Belief. Prophecy. Principles. Folklore. Optimistic Attributions. Stimuli. Subliminal Messages. Divine Practice. Omen. Improbability. Positivism. Negativity. Fate. Synchronicity. Meaningful Coincidence. Different Fields.  Alternatives. Sovereignty. Arrows. JOB. Randomness. Synonym. Antonym. Calamity. Prosperity. Defeat. Troubles. Metaphysical Naturalism. Sorrow. Lapse. Bad Coffee. Boring Conversations. Bad Jokes. Multi-Components. Of What. A Stroke. A Whip. Let Down. Festivals. Prefixed. Adversity. More. No More. & More No More. Appraisal. Merits. Forbidden. Ignorance. Deity. Unfavorable. Gambling. School Picnics. Field Day. Gain & Loss. Anxiety. Entailment. Disambiguation. Prologue. Epilogue. Piety. Patriarchy. Matriarchy. Hierarchy. Musical Instruments. Voices. Heard. Unheard. Sheep. Shepard. Dog. Double Trouble. Author. Reader. Publisher. Comfort. Knowledge. Justice. Words. Beyond Words. Murder. Past. Present. Favorable. Class Rooms. No Future. Eccentricities. Natural Laws. Offerings. HOW. WHAT. WHO. TO WHOM. & WHY. Dove. Cinnamon. Danger. Last Word. Manifestation. Symbols. Celebration. Wealth. Grace. Fortune. Beauty. Conflicts. Effortlessness. Inner Peace. Paradigm. Oath. Happy Ending. Legend. Streams. Mercy. Sailboats.     

 

Meditations on LUCK: To Carry

In my mother tongue, Japanese, LUCK is written 運. Our language, especially written forms, has developed borrowing Chinese language. We even modified it to create our own alphabets. Strange to think Japanese didn’t have its written forms until it adapted them from Chinese. We imported many actual Chinese characters into our language system as well. So, the written form of Japanese is a mixture of invented alphabets & directly borrowed, sometimes slightly simplified Chinese characters. Interestingly, not just characters, but we inherited many concepts such as 愛 LOVE which did not exist before. We had a concept of 情 EMOTION, but not 愛 LOVE.  How fascinating it is to read Waka, thinking of their love poems are not about LOVE but about EMOTION. Going back to 運 LUCK, the character has a symbol of a “wheel” inside it & it literary means “To Carry”. To carry what? I wonder. If you combine 運  LUCK & 命 LIFE, it becomes 運命 DESTINY. To carry life. What life? I wonder again. Like in English, we have 幸運 GOOD LUCK & 悪運 BAD LUCK. 幸 means HAPPINESS. 悪 means BAD & EVIL. Then, what does HAPPINESS mean? What about EVIL? I keep wondering. I don’t think of LUCK/UNLUCK too much, but I think of HAPPINESS/UNHAPPINESS quite often. It is much easier to associate the feelings of HAPPINESS/UNHAPPINESS since it is my own sensation. I always feel lost dealing with LUCK/UNLUCK since it is beyond me. I have no control. LA CHANCE. I like the French version of the terminology the best since it tells of its abstraction in such a direct depiction. BON CHANCE! How lovely it sounds, being so “matter of fact.” But then I wonder again, what is CHANCE? Sweet Cake? Milagro? Oracle Bone Scripts? For me, it is about having a house & a boat. So, I can sail out anytime to anywhere to come back to rest & to sleep till the next morning.

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This series “Luck Drawings” by painter Christine Hughes is based on a system of chance to determine the placement of forms. The intent is see if it’s possible to convey luck to the viewer in a  fashion similar to a sygil.  She studied at Detroit’s Wayne State University and worked as a consultant in helping to build a collection of visionary self taught and contemporary art. Her recents show have been with Art 101 in Williamsburg and John Davis Gallery in Hudson.

Yuko Otomo is a visual artist & a bilingual poet/writer of Japanese origin. Her publications include Garden: Selected Haiku (Beehive Press), Genesis (Sisyphus Press), Small Poems (Ugly Duckling Presse), The Hand of The Poet (UDP), STUDY & Other Poems on Art (UDP), Elements (Feral Press), KOAN (New Feral Press) & FROZEN HEATWAVE: a poetry collaboration project with Steve Dalachinksy (Luna Bison Prods).