Mellifluence

It's In the Cards

At the office holiday party, we had a nice young tarot card reader tucked away in the corner of the bookstore who would do a simple, 3-card reading.  Of course I had to partake! I love that kind of stuff. My position on explorations of the divination kind is that regardless of where the information is coming from, it can all be useful. I don't know if the cards (or the palm readers or the crystal-ball gazers) are really tapping into something otherworldly, but I do know that when I've had my cards read, I've inevitably gotten useful information. This time was no exception.

There were three cards - what to hold on to, what to let go of, and what to look at for the future. I'm not actually clear on how she phrased the position of the third card, but it's not that important.

The first card, that reader said (there was no exchange previous to this except for discussions on how I was to cut the cards) told me that I should hold on to my ability to grasp all the complexities of life, and to help people see and understand those complexities. That was kind of a mind-blower, considering that this ability - and support for it -  is something that keeps coming up again and again in all of the inner work I've been doing for years. It's what I try to do on my blogs. It's something I've struggled with, as I continue to get messages from others that I should just think happy thoughts and be happy and that all this complexifying is just a downer. But the cards said it: don't let go of this ability to see life for what it is - infinitely nuanced and mysterious!

Wonderful! After this last couple of years, getting a divine confidence boost like that was nice.

The second card - what to let go of - pictured the Hermit. Uh oh. "You need to stop spending so much time alone." she said. OK. After the breakup, I went into lockdown mode. I shut myself off from everyone except the people closest to me, and my coworkers, who I see everyday. Granted, I've had a bad cold for about the past week and a half and that's intensified it (I think I fell in love with Netflix Instant Play) but for the past two months, I've really not wanted to be around people. This one both rang true for me and also made me squirm in my chair. What? Leave my safe cave and go back into the fray?

The third card made me laugh. "Now is not a good time to be vulnerable," the tarot lady said. Ha ha! That's a good one. Ha ha. Funny. Wait. What?? "Now isn't the time for intense self-reflection," she continued. Alright, now look, I almost replied, I am the queen of vulnerability. I write a blog about my own depression on a website filled with psychologists. I've written about my most intense, opening, often painful moments, on a public blog, for years. I still use Blogger fer godsakes!! And before that, in a zine. A ZINE!! So how am I supposed to not be vulnerable, to not be intensely self-reflective? It's what I do, it's in my bones. My gravestone will have to have a screen embedded in it so I can update my blog from the Afterlife.

But it all made a kind of sense, and the more I thought about it, the more sense it made. So I told myself that, after I got over this @#$%$ cold, I'd reenter the big, bad, dangerous world and make it my bitch. Errr...sorry, my oyster. That doesn't mean no self-reflection or vulnerability or alone time, but maybe it means taking greater pains to reinvent myself, to try new things, and to let go of the past as much as I can without denying my natural grieving process. To laugh more, to let go of expectations more, and to let the moment in more. To be present with whatever's happening, and to meet the people around me with less in my head and more in my heart.

To that end, I'll be adding some new stuff to this blog, shaking things up a bit, and, at least somewhat, participating in the #Reverb10 meme, which is what I was planning to write about in this post before it got hijacked by this tarot card post. But not tonight, I'm off to meet a friend for a spontaneous drink on a rainy night.