December 13, 2009 - Nine of Quills (Nine of Swords)

A slightly new question today as I keep trying to refine what I ask. Of course it strikes me as I write this that consistency may not be the goal. Some days my path might dominate my thoughts and others, like today, my heart in all its incarnations -- physical, emotional, spiritual. So that's what I ask: What do I need to know today for the physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being of my heart?

Nine of Quills (Nine of Swords). Hmmmmm.

Swords as a suit, represent the element of Air, the realm of thought. The cards are often disturbing, the swords I think and the associations with battle responsible for the negative connotations. And our thoughts are often at war with each other, at war with us. Thoughts are powerful, as anyone who understands the mind-body connection can tell you. I can remember lying in the hospital before my bypass, hearing the news from my surgeon, my heart rate rising, my blood pressure with it, the nurse saying, "calm down, think calm thoughts" as the heart attack began and at that point fear and worry and pain swept me away.

In the Jane Austen Tarot, the suit of Swords is represented by Quills, in honor of Jane as a writer and the saying, "the pen is mightier than the sword." On the Nine of Quills we see Catherine Morland, the heroine of Northanger Abbey, in her bed, the candle lit and throwing indecipherable shadows against the wall. If you've read Northanger Abbey then you know Catherine has a love of gothic novels and an imagination which runs away from her. Her instincts are often true but her explanations for those feelings, are often ridiculous and get her into trouble. She is right to fear General Tilney. He does not have her best interests at heart, nor the best interests of his children either. When he thinks Catherine is an heiress, he welcomes her to his home, courts her for his son. When he realizes she is poor, he sends her away and admonishes his son to have nothing to do with her or risk losing everything.

Catherine though doesn't see the avarice. She sees malice. She lets her love of gothic novels rule her, run away with her common sense. She grows sure that the General has murdered his wife and so, along with the devastation of being expelled from the house, she also suffers the embarrassment of her own wild and baseless thoughts.

Like Catherine Morland, I too possess an active imagination, able to see the myriad ways things can go wrong and sure they will. Of course I hope for the best. Cn one be an optimistic pessimist? A pessimistic optimist? If so, that's me. I already knew everything the surgeon was telling me. The Cardiologist had come in and gently explained that a bypass was really the best and only hope. I had already met with the surgical nurse and the anesthesiologist. So why did the surgeon set me off? Maybe he made it more real. Maybe, with hours to stew, I was dwelling on all the things that could go wrong, sure they would.

And it's not just surgery. I have sen the "end" of relationships, sure they were inevitable, and find myself still involved with the person although our relationship has changed, sometimes markedly. Things change, that's true, but life seems to go on and we with it, and even the horror of open heart surgery fades over time. How can I help my heart in every way? Stay in the present and use my active imagination to solve problems as they do come, as opposed to dwelling always in the realm of possibility, dealing with problems that aren't mine, that don't exist, that may never occur. I've come to live much more in the present since my surgery. The Nine of Quills is my reminder to keep this practice, to stay present tense, to write my story as it unfolds instead of leaping to my ending.

So What Would Jane Do?

"There is more to fear in the trial and tribulations of society than in the goriest gothic novel. Being judged on social standing and properties rather than ones innate abilities, is more likely to result in physical, mental, and emotional suffering than any visit to a threatening precipice, or anything hidden in a cave or a closet. The things we fear most often never come to pass, yet our instinctive repulsions need to be honored, for what our soul shrinks at in novels may take more pernicious -- and mundane -- form in real life. An active and experienced mind will ultimately be able to discriminate between real and imaginary foes." (p. 115)

December 12, 2009 - Ten of Teacups (cups)

Posing the question is perhaps the most important part of selecting a tarot card. Leave it too open-ended and you get a nebulous response, something too general to act upon. Make it too specific and your hyper-focus blinds you to the larger picture and you miss something vital. Usually I ask, "What do I need to know for today?" It seemed a good compromise although without a frame I sometimes didn't know what I was looking for, how the card might work. I might get an "a-ha" or I might not.

Today I decided to change the question. "What do I need to know to move the right way along my path and to find happiness?" Yeah, I figured I had been The Hermit too long and it was time to end my brood-a-thon, waiting for happiness to find me, and start taking steps toward finding happiness for myself. Sound familiar? A bit too Sleeping Beauty for your tastes? Mine too.

So, this morning I shuffle the cards, hold the question in my mind, and then select my card by feel. It takes some time for the tingling that tells me "this one." That's not always the case. Sometimes cards leap out. But sometimes it takes time. I am learning patience -- with others, with myself, with the still, quiet voice that is sometimes hard to hear these days. And what comes is the Ten of Cups, the Ten of Teacups in the Jane Austen Tarot, an image that suits me, the small warm steady comfort of a cup of tea.

The Jane Austen tarot Ten of Teacups pictures Elizabeth and Fitzwilliam Darcy and Charles and Jane Bingley after their marriages, standing in front of a large home, a rainbow above, sun. The expressions on their faces are of deep joy, the kind of contentment that comes with true and lasting happiness. Jane Austen writes: "Jane and Elizabeth, in addition to every other source of happiness, were within thirty miles of each other." A truly happy ending, after much hard work on everyones part.

This card is an augury of love and happiness, but after being tested, trials by fire. The astrological correspondence of this card, Mars in Pisces, speaks to the hard work required to bring happy endings. We like to think they just happen but fairy tales tell us the journey to happily ever after is never easy. Well, maybe I like to think. You are probably wiser than I am. You probably don't wait for someone to save you, for circumstances to alter. You probably get on with the business at hand. I had forgotten how much work a happy life took, the best kind of work, loving work, but work nonetheless. I have never been afraid of starting over, of working hard, of doing what needed to be done. Time to remember what I come from, what I am capable of and to do the work I love for the people I love, including myself.

What Would Jane Do?

"A happy and loving marriage does not form in a vacuum, but is enhanced by the support of loving family and friends. If two people have the emotional and spiritual wherewithal to create a harmonious life for themselves, as well as the financial capability in which to live that harmonious life, their future is destined to follow that pattern, unless fate takes a malign hand."

December 11, 2009 - The Hermit

For the last few years, I've drawn The Hermit a lot. It has oddly suited my situation -- recovering from major surgery, weathering massive changes, navigating deep sorrows. It is a card of introspection and reflection, just what I've been doing, or trying. In the Rider-Waite deck, The Hermit is a bearded sage, holding a lantern (the light of knowledge?) aloft to light the path, his path but not solely. The Hermit is wise, certainly wise enough to know all that matters is the lighted path in the service of any and all who need it. The Hermit speaks of a desire to see deeper, to find meaning, to look beyond the surface to the soul of things. He also speaks of withdrawing from the world for a time to pursue this deeper wisdom.

Of course with every tarot card, there is a darker side, what happens when The Hermit takes his proclivity for withdrawal to extremes. There can be a kind of arrogance to this card, a cynicism that leads to a sense of superiority. The Hermit can love humanity in general, but not people in particular. And the retreat to reflect can smack of escapism.

In the Jane Austen Tarot, The Hermit card depicts Mr. Bennett, the father of Elizabeth and Jane, studious Mary, silly and giddy Lydia, and young, impressionable Kitty. Mr. Bennett is a scholarly man who married a foolish but beautiful woman. As the passion of his marriage fades, he retreats more and more to his study and books.

Mr. Bennett got me thinking about The Hermit in his less attractive aspects. Yes, he's a lenient father, but that's because he's not engaged. This parenting approach works well enough for three of the girls, but impulsive Lydia with her mother's influence to guide her, finds herself in devastating circumstances, faring as well as she does only because of the intervention of Mr. Darcy. Mr. Bennett makes me wonder if I am less engaged with my family or have been these last few years. The same is true with friends. Maybe there were good reasons for the withdrawal and distance, but when those reasons passed and the world called, I did not listen, held myself back, and The Hermits sense of isolation clings to me, sought perhaps but my state so long I'm not sure how to be different.

Now add to this Mr. Bennett's rather cynical view of the world and a preference for the company of books to people. Sounds familiar, this isolation as both temptation and trap. Hmmmmm. A man if integrity, a philosophical bent, but not wise in the matter of the heart. My heart and I have had an interesting relationship in 2009 and I have come to realize I hardly know my own heart and so ignorant, have no hope of guessing the heart of another. A pretty sobering realization smack in middle age. Like Socrates, I have come to realize I know nothing.

I think this time around, my hermit's light is held higher, glows brighter. I see his good points but also his flaws. I know there is peace in seclusion but understand also that it keeps me from the wisdom that we are all connected, all one. Contemplation is important, but action is too. Yin and yang, word and silence, flexion and contraction, pause and reflection, these are what makes a full life. Rumi wrote: "Your hand opens and closes and opens and closes. If it were always a fist or always stretched open, you would be paralyzed. Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding, the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated as bird wings." Thank God for 13th century Sufi mystics who help us make sense of our sometimes senseless world.

What Would Jane Do? After revisiting the novels in describing the card, this is perhaps my favorite part of each tarot explanation:

"While you may be surrounded by folly and conceit, you not only recognize it, you find some amusement in it. However, the light you hold up to the world can illuminate your own flaws, if you are but willing to examine them with the same dry and discerning wit you apply everywhere else. It is wise never to take any thing too seriously, but perhaps your light will shine the brighter if you take yourself a bit more than you do at present."

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.

Shit Happens

*Warning: A scatological discussion follows. Shit will happen. It will be stirred and hit the fan. I will, and no doubt you will too, find yourself knee-deep in it. Yes it’s all a bit Freudian, but Dr. Freud has his place and fifty can be fabulous if you’re willing to get your hands dirty and do the work, compost yourself, see what seeds are waiting to grow.

I was a few days home from the hospital when it came, a sure marker of fifty -- The Colon Health Check kit. Even accompanied as it was by a friendly letter from my doctor (not to mention an 800 number to call if I needed any help, with poop, really?), given where I had been and all that happened, a stool sample was the last thing I wanted to deal with. So I let it sit there on the dining room table, let stuff settle around and atop it. I knew I’d have to deal with it some time, just not then, not quite yet.

Days turned into weeks, weeks into months. The dining room table groaned under all I piled on it. I saw my Cardiologist and was released back to work. A letter came from my doctor reminding me of the importance of a healthy colon. Yeah, yeah. I was back to work and as tired as they told me I’d be. It’s all about endurance and building it back up to what it was, maybe to more than what it was. Looking back, and I was doing a lot of looking back since the surgery, I could see how exhausted I had been, how I pushed myself to keep going, and how my poor body had finally pushed back. My colon would have to wait; it was all I could do to get through the day. The dining room table would have to stay piled just a bit longer. Resuming your life is a process. It takes time. And the rush and hurry of my days before somehow seemed wrong in this time marked after.

Of course the time came when I found I had enough energy to begin to tackle all I couldn’t for so long. The dining room table had become the measure of all I had put off for another day, all that could wait and now, at last, should, could, and would be dealt with. It took a while, but I found my way to the Colon Health Check kit. I opened it, finally, scanned the letter, reviewed the contents, thought soon, soon. A week later I looked at it again, noted a critical component missing (God alone knows what happened to it), and problem solved how to compensate. “Monday,” I said to myself. “Monday,” I promised.

When the toilet backed-up on Sunday, I didn’t think much about it. After all, it wasn’t happening to me. I wasn’t the one standing in my own shit, trying to get a handle on it. I offered to help but that offer was thankfully refused. I kept doing what I was doing, secure in the fact I had mastered what my significant other was just starting to deal with. I knew my shit. I had stood in it, sometimes knee deep, the past few years. I had found myself up my own shit creek without a paddle and had to find my way home. I didn’t need such literal messages, or did I? Hmmmm.

The first time your unconscious greets you with what you’ve been avoiding, at least in my world anyway, it eschews subtlety. It seems literal messages are what I understand best, so when I find myself in my life unable to take the next step, I get diagnosed with severe arthritis in my right hip requiring a hip resurfacing. I literally have to learn to walk again, from scratch. I have to fight for every step, hobble before I can walk, walk before I can run. When my heart breaks, it literally breaks, requiring hospitalization, surgery, a chest broken open, a heart renewed and revised since the old one just couldn’t manage any more.

So, here I was post-bypass, knowing I had to figure out my history’s lessons lest I repeat them, and slowly, surely trying to do just that. Or was I? Hmmmmm. True I wasn’t facing an overflowing toilet, but I still had deal with shit. The Colon Health Check kit was sitting there on the newly cleaned dining room table and Monday, P-day, was nearly upon me, tomorrow. I had faced the fact I was full of shit years ago, but that didn’t mean my dealings with my waste were past me. Nope, shit still happens and if there was any hope in getting mine together, I was going to have to do the work. It would be more refined this time, requiring ingenuity, detail work, excavation and exposure. I’d have to figure out how to give a shit, get it done, get it together and get it in the mail. And I’d have to wait, have faith, hope that this test, unlike the blood test that revealed my heart attack, would come up negative.

Of course I didn’t really put any of this together until I was sitting with my therapist, talking about the last few weeks. Maybe that’s why I have to be so literal. I don’t get it any other way. I have to start from scratch, learn to crawl before I can walk, have my heart break and piece it back together, bypass what can’t be gotten through. And I have to, from time to time, realize shit happens and then deal with it, get a sample even, let others look at it and tell me it’s a-ok.

So says fifty. Can’t wait to see what 51 says.

Last night, as I was sleeping...

Last night, as I was sleeping
by Antonio Machado

English version by Robert Bly

Last night, as I was sleeping,
I dreamt — marvelous error!–
that a spring was breaking
out in my heart.
I said: Along which secret aqueduct,
Oh water, are you coming to me,
water of a new life
that I have never drunk?

Last night, as I was sleeping,
I dreamt — marvelous error!–
that I had a beehive
here inside my heart.
And the golden bees
were making white combs
and sweet honey
from my old failures.

Last night, as I was sleeping,
I dreamt — marvelous error!–
that a fiery sun was giving
light inside my heart.
It was fiery because I felt
warmth as from a hearth,
and sun because it gave light
and brought tears to my eyes.

Last night, as I slept,
I dreamt — marvelous error!–
that it was God I had
here inside my heart.

Saying Goodbye

Saying Goodbye to Very Young Children

BY JOHN UPDIKE

They will not be the same next time. The sayings

so cute, just slightly off, will be corrected.

Their eyes will be more skeptical, plugged in

the more securely to the worldly buzz

of television, alphabet, and street talk,

culture polluting their gazes' pure blue.

It makes you see at last the value of

those boring aunts and neighbors (their smells

of summer sweat and cigarettes, their faces

like shapes of sky between shade-giving leaves)

who knew you from the start, when you were zero,

cooing their nothings before you could be bored

or knew a name, not even your own, or how

this world brave with hellos turns all goodbye.

I've been having trouble saying good-bye. It's not just love, not just friendship, it's the history, the loss of someone, perhaps the only someone who knew me almost from my start, and who taught me first hand how this world brave with hellos turns all goodbye. Of course he would do it again. It is his lesson and mine to learn. I have such trouble with them and so they must be forced upon me with the hope that maybe, given enough experience with them, someday I will grow to accept them, endure them, although I'm not sure I'll ever come to love them.

I wonder if that's why I had to be broken open. Maybe I believed too much in bone, in hardness, in whole. Maybe I had to face my own ending, my heart and lungs stilling under a machine hand, while someone desperately tried to patch me since they could not cure me. I had to face leaving this life, these loves, all the things large and little that bind us to this miracle called earth. If so, then perhaps it is time to learn not just brave hellos but brave goodbyes too. Perhaps we need to love the party with all of us, but be prepared to leave if it must be so. I don't know, but I'm finding out.