Jane Merryman

Bolen, Jean Shinoda. The Tao of Psychology: Synchronicity and the Self. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1979.

 
       At the night market of Kowloon, in a corner near the jade sellers, a crowd perpetually gathers around the bird man. You pay him a Hong Kong dollar, then point to one of six tiny bamboo cages stacked on the table. He slides up the bars and out hops a little yellow finch. The bird pecks through a pile of battered white cards, pulls one out with its beak, and throws it down in front of the man. A susurration passes through the onlookers. The bird man hands the card to you—this is your destiny. You read it, look pleased or perplexed, and hand back the card. The next person steps up with his dollar.

I watched this ritual but did not participate—not so much because the cards were printed with Chinese characters and I hadn’t brought along an interpreter, but because I thought it a ridiculous concept, a tawdry carnival game. As if . . . as if a tiny Asian bird could give me any clues about my life. A few months after I returned from Hong Kong, I came across—and I don’t remember how—one of the few books that have changed my life. The Tao of Psychology: Synchronicity and the Self, by Jean Shinoda Bolen, sounds hopelessly complicated and full of psychiatric jargon. But in its straightforward hundred pages I came to understand how we ourselves make the meaning in our life. Then the tarot, the I Ching, the Oracle at Delphi, and the little finch all fell into place. Bolen is a Jungian analyst with a practice in San Francisco. I heard her speak at a local bookstore and discovered she is the grandmother I always wanted to have. In person, she’s warm, comfy, and wise. Her little book is the same. 

I no longer scoff at newspaper horoscopes. Hong Kong has gone back on my list of travel to-do’s. Next time, I will hand the bird man my dollar and point to one of the tiny cages.

(This review appeared in the Redwood Coast Review.)