Magda Szubanski, Rainbows, The 2016 Byron Bay Writers Festival, Jung and Synchronicity

On Friday I drove down to the 2016 Byron Bay Writers Festival after staying in Brunswick Heads the rainy night before thinking what a terrible gloomy weekend it was turning out to be weather wise, as it was bucketing down as I made my way to the Festival grounds and the weather forecast was for rain all weekend.

But as I got to the Byron Bay turnoff from the main highway, I saw a rainbow to the right-hand side of my car. 

I tried to snap some photos of it with my iPod camera from my driver's side window when the traffic came to a standstill while waiting to turn into Byron Bay from the freeway.  

It was a double rainbow, as well

I noticed that I could actually see the end of the rainbow and snapped a picture of it to prove to my friends that I had seen the end of the rainbow.
Being into Jung and synchronicity I took this as some kind of sign, but I didn't know what it meant, other than maybe there is a pot of gold waiting for me somewhere, maybe that Powerball quickpic I took yesterday?

When I saw that rainbow, I knew I was in for a great weekend, but I had made the trip down looking forward to seeing Cheryl Strayed and when I got there, I found out that she was not coming because of some family emergency.
Well, Déjà F#cking vu I thought, as she was my main reason for coming down, as the year before I had written to the festival organizers suggesting Cheryl Strayed would be a good draw-card for the festival because of the movie 'Wild', only to be told in an e-mail back that Cheryl had already done the BBWF and that they didn't invite back people who had already been there?!

A sculpture at the 2016 BBWF called 'Wild Woman'

Which puzzled the f#ck out of me, as I had been a regular festival goer over the years and didn't recall ever seeing Cheryl Strayed on the program.

Magda Szubanski in the "Yellow Brick Road" Pavilion
 at the BBWF

I got to the festival an hour later than I hoped to because of the traffic congestion off the freeway to Byron Bay, which took an hour to drive about 3 kilometers up the road.
If I had of had a sunroof in my car my blood pressure would have been going right through it, if you know what I mean? 

Magda Szubanski in the "Yellow Brick Road" Pavilion
  at the BBWF

When I found out the 10 o'clock Cheryl Strayed session was a "no show" I rushed up to hear Magda's talk only to find out it was a full house.

I thought to myself that this weekend was turning into a disaster and remembered back to my first time down here at the writer's festival when I came down to see the king of the synchronicity novel James Redfield and he didn't show up either because of a spider bite, which prevented him from flying to Australia -
Behind the Door at Byron Bay
This time though I thought my luck had run out and synchronicity had let me down, but if anything this was a "tell God your plans and God will laugh at you" kind of weekend, because this weekend turned out to be just as eerily synchy, if not more so than that first weekend I attended my first BBWF when I felt let down because of the James Redfield "no show", and it turned out to be one of the best weekends of my life ... not that I could see it at the time.

Surfing through the eye of a needle,
or out of a vagina and into life?-)

With this big hole in the program for me because of the Cheryl Strayed no show I went for a walk-about around the grounds and went to the bookshop and grabbed Magda's book knowing that I would be first in line when Magda had finished her talk at the 'Yellow Brick Road Pavilion' and headed over to the signing tent.   

Just keep swimming?
Go with the flow?

Magda signed my book and then I went and had breakfast/lunch after getting a delicious Margarita pizza, after looking at the artwork scattered about the festival site.

My two food favourites of the BBWF
were the pizza and the coffee

Best coffee I've ever tasted in my life

Which led to what I thought was a spiritual experience with a butcher bird, which I'll expand on in this separate post in the link below with photos to tell my tale - 
Another Orb at the Byron Bay Writers Festival?

The Butcher Bird at the Byron Bay Writers Festival on Friday

I caught Magda in a talk with Mandy Nolan, Rosie Waterland and David Burton called "Growing Up", which dwelt on the pain of adolescence and growing into adulthood.

A rainbow over
'The Yellow Brick Road Pavilion'?

The synchronicity here though was while walking back to the signing tent to grab a copy of Rossie's and David's book I captured a rainbow over 'The Yellow Brick Road Pavilion' where Magda had given her first talk of the day about her book on coming out, and her deceased father being a Polish assassin.

And the festival grounds were a
WATERLAND, too:-)

Rosie likes to draw vaginas in her books

For the record, I'm not gay, but I do like rainbows.    
The 42 Degrees of Bacon
While I don't know how many degrees Magda's away from Kevin Bacon, as far as starring in movies go, I do know that she was in a movie kind of about degrees of bacon;-)
Is 2016 the Year of the Pig in Byron Bay ... or For Just Getting Stoned?-)

A scene from the movie 'Babe'

Rusty Miller's Byron Bay Guide
 (click here to read it online)

That night I picked up a small magazine to read when I was waiting for the pizza that I wrote about in my last post -
Hiroshima, Pizza and Other Strange Things

and saw that there was a double rainbow featured in the magazine with a poem written by an American woman reminiscing about her friends in Byron Bay.  

The magazine with the rainbow in it sitting in the Legend Pizza shop

Magda would tell the audience at her talks how she was a big fan of Jung and concepts like synchronicity, but I was a convert years ago when it comes to Jung, because he is a real legend in my book ... or magazine:-)

The double rainbow touching the ground
 at Byron Bay Friday morning

On another synchronistic note 42 is the number associated with rainbows (not to mention the meaning of life;-) because, "... a rainbow is not an object and cannot be physically approached. Indeed, it is impossible for an observer to see a rainbow from water droplets at any angle other than the customary one of 42 degrees from the direction opposite the light source."

4/2/1947?
Lord Byron?

Magda opens her book with a Lord Byron quote which her father wrote on the back of a photo dated 4th of February, 1947.
In Australia and Britain we would write that date as 4/2/1947;-) 

And on page 42 of Magda's book she writes how her grandfather's watch stopped working at the time her grandfather died.  

Rainbow dollhouse doorway (?) in a scene from 'Babe'

"... a rainbow is not an object and cannot be physically approached. Indeed, it is impossible for an observer to see a rainbow from water droplets at any angle other than the customary one of 42 degrees from the direction opposite the light source."