Bookworks Presents Shelf Awareness for Readers: The Span of Luck

There are as many aphorisms and beliefs about luck as there are ways of attracting (or repelling) luck. While many of us are familiar with some of the most common totems--the rabbit's foot, the black cat, the stepladder, the hopefully-not-broken mirror--there's a history of luck, spanning cultures, continents, generations.

One day artist Mark Menjivar found four four-leaf clovers pressed inside an old book. He said, "Finding them made me incredibly curious about luck, and I began to talk with people about their thoughts and experiences about it. The stories people shared and the things people began to give to me deepened this curiosity as I began to look at them side by side. So I decided to go on an exploration of how the concept of luck intersected with belief, culture, superstition and tradition in people's lives. I have been archiving everything along the way and now have over 450 objects, stories and photographs." He has collected them in The Luck Archive: Exploring Belief, Superstition, and Tradition (Trinity University Press, $24.95). But his interest isn't ending with the book: "The project is on-going, and there is no end in sight."

We asked if he was now luckier for all his curating and immersion. "Ha! It has been a really good year! The project has never been about trying to define what luck is. It is more of creating a structure for it and inviting people to participate. I have my own rituals that I like to partake in--putting on my left shoe first or wishing when I see 11:11 on a clock. I am not sure if they make me luckier or not, but most days I tend to slow down and find meaning in these simple acts. Other days I feel more closely aligned to the saying attributed to the golfer Gary Player: 'The more I practice, the luckier I get.' I guess I enjoy holding the tension between these two schools of thought." --Matthew Tiffany, LCPC, writer forCondalmo and psychotherapist

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