Just tossing coins for interrogating the I Ching seemed to trivialise what Jung clearly thought was a great way to approach the subconscious. (At the time, anything Jung thought was good, was ok by me.)

So, on a windy day, I cut myself some yarrow sticks. Over some weeks I taught myself how to use them. The leftover stalks burned bright in the cast iron stove in the weekend hut.  I didn’t pass them through incense or wrap them in silk, and store on a high shelf. But I did keep them on top of the fridge.

This sunny afternoon, on the verandah of a briefly rented house in Warragul (so that I could be closer to daily trains to the advertising agency in the city, and Marg could get still to Moe High to teach) I asked a difficult question and didn’t much like the answers. The ‘superior man’ seemed beyond my grasp but I liked the poetry in the Richard Wilhelm version, even though it was sneered at by John Blofeld, whose translation in paperback was all I could find on my shelf now. It was not going to end well. The kitten must have belonged to a neighbour, it just turned up on that verandah. The railway noises from the Yallourn brown coal transports were part of the town background ‘ambience’, usually late at night.