This Week's Writerly Tarot: The Wheel of Fortune

It's one of the more interesting junctures between art and science. It began in 1992 when author John Briggs observed that some of Jackson Pollack's paintings demonstrated fractal patterns, an observation later demonstrated in multiple physics experiments. Now there is some difficulty in defining what a fractal is, but one can think of them as repeating geometric patterns that can be split into parts, each of which is approximately a reduced-size copy of the whole.

Fractals are an important function of chaos theory (you know, the butterfly effect) and they are everywhere in nature, in pineapples and lightning bolts, in snowflakes and fault lines. They are easy to replicate using computer technology, but dang hard to create otherwise. Practically impossible. Pollack could do it, however. He could tap into the same random order that the Universe used to create a chambered nautilus. He was so good at it that fractal pattern analysis can be used to authenticate genuine Pollacks from forgeries.

And what is the Wheel of Fortune but an elaborate fractal pattern, Exhibit A in the deterministic but utterly random nature of the Universe. A dynamic system highly sensitive to initial conditions but not predictable in its final results. Round and round and round she goes, and where she stops...

Well, you get the drift. Sometimes we can peek ahead and see what's up, and sometimes the Wheel spins into territory that we could have in no way seen coming, but which can nonetheless be traced back to a single, singular action. We've been here before, of course. And we'll be here again. Such is the nature of all wheels, but especially this one.

What does it mean for you, dear creative friend? Methinks that this is a week less for pontification and more for pondering. Less for answers and more for questioning. Less about pulling back the veil and more about letting the veil cast its gauzy, hazy, utterly mysterious magic.

You won't be able to predict how your actions this week will spin out, so don't demand that your art conform to expectations either. Let your characters talk back to you, walk out on you, refuse to behave. Follow the side road into territory not on the plot outline. There is no satisfaction guaranteed—nothing is guaranteed this week. But I can promise you that learning to enjoy the risings and the fallings of this particular Wheel is a worthy goal.

There's a full moon on Monday, peaking in the sign of Aquarius. There's a partial lunar eclipse too. You can count on those two things. As for the results their energy will spin in manifestation...well, even the tarot will be nonplussed this week. And that is not a bad thing.