Causal Contingencies (1)—I ♥ Double Seven

Click here for the introduction to the Round and Square series Causal Contingencies (coming soon).
A year ago on Round and Square (14 August 2012)—Rural Religion in China-10

Two years ago on Round and Square (14 August 2011)—Hurtin' Country: Cheap Whiskey

[a] Moments Earlier, Up the Path RL

This series will have brief entries that don't try to explain too much (regular readers of Round and Square might have heard that before, without seeing a great deal of textual shrinkage with the morning coffee). This one might work, though. The whole point of showing these "causal contingencies" is to illustrate how some stuff just comes from straight our of nowhere. And yet...and yet...it can usually be explained in some fashion. And yet...and yet...a stubborn sense that there is something we don't understand lingers. Historians think they study contingency. They actually spend a great deal of time studying things that are predictable, structural, and understood quite thoroughly with causal explanations. These posts "just happen," and I (mostly) let them speak for themselves. Read the introduction to the series to get a full sense of what "we" are doing in this series. 

I ♥ Double Seven
O.k., people, I haven't even written the introduction yet, but this series has to get underway. I have been thinking about it for some time (and have several "contingent" events for you, ready to go). This one just happened yesterday, though, and it is too weird to leave to a future date. You see, I spent all of my day wandering the nooks and crannies (and they are many) on the top (this is a vast area) of the southern sacred mountain 南嶽衡山/南岳衡山 in Hunan Province (China). Up I climbed to the South Heaven Gate. Still higher I trekked to the Zhurong Temple at the peak. Then down to the east to the "Meeting Immortals Bridge" and down, way down to the west, on my way to the Guangji Temple.

And then it happened (although I did not know it until I downloaded my photographs several hours later). I snapped a picture of my trail as I descended, and kept on going. I often do this as a mnemonic for my writing, sometimes taking seven or eight hundred pictures a day (mostly of the trail). I had no idea what I would find when I looked at my pictures.

You see, it is Double Seven Festival (七夕節/节) in China today, and everyone is enjoying the fact that the poor little herdboy and the pining little weaving maiden are having their annual assignation. I'm a bit of a literary romantic, but I never saw this one coming. Here is the picture. It is as though east met west, and the twain didn't quite know how to handle it.

How'd that happen?

I shall say no more (other than that the photo is untouched).

Comments?

[b] Heart-mind, Western-style RL