Sidewalk Oracles: Week 4

Notes on Week 4 of Sidewalk Oracles by Robert Moss, Winter 2024

“Part of the secret logic of our lives may be that our paths constantly interweave with those of numberless parallel selves, sometimes converging or even merging, sometimes diverging ever farther. The gifts and failings of these alternate selves — with all the baggage train of their separate lives — may influence us, when our paths converge, in ways we generally fail to recognize.” Robert Moss, Sidewalk Oracles

A Willingness to Walk the Path

Each week, I will post some general discussion, reflection, and thoughts on the chapter or “games" from the week. You are invited to share your experience with this book in the comments section.

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Basic Information

📌 We are reading Sidewalk Oracles: Playing with Signs, Symbols, and Synchronicity in Everyday Life by Robert Moss.

📅 The reading timeline outlines a slow reading (with weekly discussion posts) for anyone who wants to read along.

📌 Weekly reading notes and discussion (the timeline links to the weekly posts)

🍥 I encourage you to go into this reading with an open mind and a willingness to consider what is being described/discussed.

🧵 I use the comment area for discussions rather than a chat thread. Neither would be private because this read-along is free to everyone. You are invited to comment on comments and interact with those reading together.

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From Within the Fog, Week 4

Week 4 of our Sidewalk Oracles read-along covers the second half of Chapter 3 and rules 7-12 of kairomancy. (We covered the first 6 rules last week.)

I think one of the benefits (or side effects) of a slow reading over time is that everything we are reading (and hearing from others) has time to “soak” a bit. When we read the six rules this week, we’ve had a week already to think about the first six rules. Reading the new ones is in some ways an additive process. There is a layering.

It wasn’t a profound week for me. You? (It’s hard to even believe a week has already passed!)

The one oddity in my week was one night when I was driving home from the hospital, and a bubble drifted past as I sat at a stop sign. Just one.  A child’s bubble, iridescent in the dim gray light of dusk. I didn’t see any others. I looked as I drove on, but I didn’t see a trail of them, no ant trail of glistening bubbles from the playground. Just one.

I noticed it. It caught my attention. But it didn’t really seem to mean anything.

It was just a lone bubble, a lonely bubble, a stray.

As Kelley has said several times (in the discussion), “sometimes a feather is just a feather.”

Some of the rules from this set of rules push my boundaries, stretch my willing suspension of disbelief. It isn’t that I completely discount the possibility of some of what is being discussed, but, at the same time, I’m not there.

I also found this section had several places where Moss slips into a realm of metaphor that strikes me as unnecessarily salacious.

“What is your field? It’s not work in the ordinary sense, or what your diplomas say you are certified to do, or how you describe yourself in a job resume — although it can encompass all of those things. Your field is where you ache to be. Your field is what you will do, day or night, for the sheer joy of the doing, without counting the cost or the consequences. Your field is the territory within which you can do the Work that your deeper life is calling you to do. Your field is not limitless. You can’t bring anything into creative manifestation without accepting a certain form or channel, which requires you to set limits and boundaries. So your field is also the place within which the creative force that is in you will develop a form.” Robert Moss, Sidewalk Oracles (76)

The Second Six Rules of Kairomancy

The second six rules outlined in Chapter 3 of Sidewalk Oracles:

7. By what you fall, you may rise — hidden within any failure may be a positive angle or a point of pivot or resolution. This is the “when one door closes…” adage or “look for the silver lining.” Or, as Rebecca shared last week, a mindset that encourages you to “look for the win.” (There is also a reminder that “sometimes the breakdown comes before the breakthrough.” (69))

8. Invoked or uninvoked, gods are present — “A kairomancer is always going to be willing to look for the hidden hand in the play of coincidence, and to turn to more than one kind of oracle to check on the exact nature of the game.” (73)

9. You walk in many worlds — whether you think of The Golden Compass (His Dark Materials), The Umbrella Academy, Everything Everywhere All at Once, Inception, Doctor Who, or something like Sea of Tranquility or The Time Traveler’s Wife, you’ve probably watched or read something about parallel realities or some form of multiverse. “It is possible that every choice we make spins off a parallel event track with different outcomes…. In this multidimensional universe, in our multidimensional self, we are connected to many counterpart personalities living in other times, other probable realities, other dimensions.” (74)

10. Marry your field — be “all in” with whatever you are passionate about. (This one, in particular, seemed less relevant to the entire discussion of kairomancy than some of the others.)

11. Dance with the Trickster — honor and invite the gatekeeper and the trickster. The Gatekeeper opens the doors. The Trickster is the “mode” the Gatekeeper sometimes uses. The Trickster reminds us to have a sense of humor. “We are most likely to meet the Trickster at liminal times and in liminal places, because his preferred realm is the borderlands between the tame and the wild. He invites us to live a little more on the wild side. He approves when we make a game or a story out of it when our plans get upset, our certainties scrambled.” (79)

12. The way will show the way — the only path is the one we are making…and we will intuitively know which direction to take and how to follow. “…Being ready to fall off the maps, and make an unexpected find when you do that, is a practice for a kairomancer on any day, even when on a tight schedule.” (80)

This chapter ends with “the oath of the kairomancer.” The word “oath” is a mnemonic device to remember the call to be:

“Open to new experience;

Available, willing to set aside plans and step out of boxes;

Thankful, grateful for secret handshakes and surprises and ready to

Honor our special moments by taking appropriate action.” (82)

Your Thoughts?

Thank you for sharing your comments last week. I know only a few of those reading have chimed in, and I appreciate those who have. I think you will find your own experience with this book more meaningful by having engaged with others in this way. Don’t leave me now!

• How did you respond to the rules covered this week?

• Do you feel you learned anything from the 12 rules?

• Do you feel (having not yet moved into the activities) that these rules are necessary?

• Do you have favorite books or movies about parallel realities?

• What are you thinking as we get ready to move into the next section?

Next week starts the exercises or “games” to explore kairomancy with more intentionality. By covering only a few a week, I hope you will have a chance to try some of these and see how they feel (or what you discover). Having said that…. don’t wait until the last day to do the reading! You’ll want to read and allow yourself a day or two where you might be able to give an exercise a try.

“Consciously or unconsciously, we walk on a kind of mythic edge. Just behind that gauzy veil or ordinary understanding, there are other powers, beings who live in the fifth dimension or dimensions beyond. To them, our lives may be as open as the lives of others would be to us if we could fly over the rooftops — and nobody had a roof on their house, and we could look in and see it from every possible angle.” Robert Moss, Sidewalk Oracles (73)

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