A New Direction: To Boldy Go......

There's much I don't know about the world, about myself. One thing I have come to understand at 51 is my dialogic nature, both in the sense of dialogue/conversation, and in Mikhail Bakhtin's sense, that "all language is dynamic, relational and engaged in a process of endless rediscriptions of the world." It's no surprise to me, my relational proclivities. And if you know me well, it won't surprise you either. Walk with me, talk with me, read with me, take a class with me, and you know. It's not enough to take in, to absorb. No, I have to be in dialogue as David Bohm describes it, "each person does not attempt to make common certain ideas or items of information that are already known to him. Rather, it may be said that two people are making something in common, i.e., creating something new together." (from On Dialogue) I want to be open and malleable, willing to be altered even as that which I am in conversation with, is open and malleable with me. Each time I come together with people, books, ideas, conversation, my neighborhood, the world, I view it as a collaboration.

So when I decided to make the Tarot a daily practice, of course I'd have to take a dialogic approach. What follows then is my conversation with the Tarot, specifically The Jane Austen Tarot since this is the newest deck to come my way, although I suspect new decks and old will find their way to me and me to them, when and if I need their particular wisdom. For decks speak a common language of symbols but in the dialect of their creator/subject. According to The Jane Austen Tarot author, the message of Austen's novels and of this particular tarot deck, is "the vital importance of balance in our everyday lives." Since my intent this year is equanimity and my Libran challenge is always balance, this deck seems a divine gift, surprising and thought-provoking.

Mary Oliver's poem, The Journey, holds a particular resonance as I embark on this virtual journey:

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice - - -
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
'Mend my life!'
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.

You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations - - -
though their melancholy
was terrible.It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.

But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice,
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do - - - determined to save
the only life you could save.

May this journey be a fruitful one and may the life I save be the only one I can save -- my own.