High Summer

High summer holds the earth. 
Hearts all whole.
Sure on this shining night I weep for wonder wand'ring far
alone
Of shadows on the stars.

                               

     --James Agee, Sure On This Shining Night

It was warm today, warm, not hot. I got up early, not meaning to, but the sunlight would not let me sleep further. I had some plans for the day, a couple of readings and a rare trip shopping. Before then, however, I had to verify some software changes really worked.

It was too early for the software changes. My part of the working weekend was small and I was glad for that. As soon as they called me, I could make sure they worked, make sure the data looked good, make sure the changes didn’t break something else.

I checked up on Alice, a little close inspection just to be sure she was doing better. She is doing much better and seems better than she has in a long time. I think now that the antibiotics she took for her kitty-cat pancreatitis had an overall “sunshine” effect of clearing up just about anything that was ailing her. Further, I think she may have had some kind of low-grade infection for a while. I posted something funny on Facebook because people had been asking how she was doing, imagining that she, like some famous-for-being-famous-for-five-minutes person in too deep and too much in the public eye, woke up from anesthesia certain that she was drugged and given a Brazilian wax. Horrors by light of day!

The Sun in the Tarot is sometimes thought to be good no matter what. Even reversed, for those who read with reversals, the Sun’s positive light shines through just about everything. There’s no dark side of the Sun. Or is there?

The Sun is not welcomed by everyone. One of my classmates in high school had a skin condition that gave her an allergic hives-like reaction when exposed to the sun. That was a tough problem to manage in New Mexico, where sunlight was obscured more often by dust storms than rain storms. If the Sun came up in a reading for her, would it be good? Would it mean hide? Cover up? Set her life by the opposite of most of society and become safely nocturnal?

The Sun is good news and bad news for amateur photographers too. When the Sun is high in the sky, the breath-taking views of the Grand Canyon from the South Rim are washed out glare, dust and rocks and a reminder to stay at least your own height in distance from the edge of the cliff. White clouds sail across a light blue sky with little definition. It is hot in the summer there. There are stories of the numbers of people who go over the edge. The dry trees, some dead, some alive gnarl towards the edge of the irregular canyon, and provide one of my favorite experiences, the smell of pinon pine sap.

As the Sun falls low in the sky toward the end of the day, no longer glaring down on all it rules, the canyon’s colors come alive in reds, purples, oranges, blues and yellows with a last hurrah of the coraling curtains of clouds before it rests, and lets all others rest, for another cooling evening. Colors and creatures come out then. Do they flee the Sun, the Sun that brings life and cooks it to dust and ashes?

That evening at the Grand Canyon, the angle of light at Monterey Bay, California, the brilliant sunsets in New Mexico are all made possible by the Sun, the Sun in the right position.

The Sun can expose the truth, bring realization. It can also dazzle and blind, create mirages in the desert or a lonely stretch of blacktop road. It can warm; it can burn. A happy day can turn into a sleepless night of pain.

Is the Sun always good?

A reading like this, the 10 of Swords, The Sun, the 9 of Swords seldom makes a “sunny” message. A betrayal has come to light and is exposed, known, perhaps known to all, and the realization that all illusions are gone, dreams are over and nothing but the real world faces the person betrayed. It’s hard to call this a positive reading. The shadows on the Sun may be the darkest of all.

In a larger sense, though, while a betrayal never feels good, perhaps it may be best to know, to know for certain finally and to wake to a new day even in sorrow so that the Soul may progress on its journey. It may seem like the longest day, but we and the Sun rest and begin again tomorrow.

Happy Summer Solstice!

Remember

“You think you have a memory; but it has you!” – John Irving

My roomie at Readers Studio 2015 in New York is so bright and gifted. All she asked for was the bed by the window. I was happy to oblige; nearer the bathroom, nearer the window, both have their advantages. The New York LaGuardia Marriott has really comfortable rooms with perhaps the exception of not quite enough electrical outlets next to the beds for modern life’s plethora of gadgetry. We worked around it and were mindful of not getting in each other’s way.

I was especially mindful of being an extrovert in a world where 50% of the people are introverts. Rattling on, even in a friendly way meant to bond with your roomie, can be a nightmare to an introvert who just. Wants. A. Decent. Night’s. Rest. We talked into the night the first night we arrived about Tarot, astrology, life experiences, travel experiences, recovery from injuries, youth and age. I liked my friend more the more I got to know her, to my secret delight.

You can imagine my reticence to have a roommate for the first time who is not adequately prepared for my “active” nighttime activities. Oh, it’s all completely involuntary. I at least warn people about the snoring. Snoring is such a mild term for it. Rain describes the gentle mists of northern California and the violent thunderstorms that would walk my toiletries off my dresser in Illinois. My snoring is so little like the former, so much like the latter, like the roar of jet engines and not like a glider, like the shriek of a banshee not the twitter of songbirds. Yeah, I snore.

My roomie also was “entertained” by the talking. I’ve talked in my sleep since I was little. My mother, the extreme introvert certain she had spawned a monster extrovert, would hear me in the night and my running monolog, sometimes understandable but always with its own context. She would come to my “rescue” to pick me up from the terrazzo floor where I had fallen from bed and ask, “Are you all right?”

“Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera,” I would proclaim in deep profundity and very sound sleep.

Her theory was that as an extrovert, that alien creature to her, the changeling the fairies had left when no one was watching, I had just never gotten everything said during the day and was obligated to finish up all conversation at night. All night. Every night.

But of course there was more. These are not particularly my memories, but rather those of my—shall we call them victims?

I come by it naturally, I suppose, I explained to my good and patient roomie. After all, both Mom and Daddy snored to beat the band. Mom would wake herself up snoring and hit Daddy, certain he was the reason for her waking. It made perfect sense to me why some married people slept in separate quarters. I considered it a matter of self-preservation. Mom could pack quite a wallop.

Somewhere along the way, I learned that my uncle was a sleepwalker and would appear in the kitchen or living room with a midnight sandwich, eat it—or not—and return to his bed with no memory of his adventures the next day.

I have wondered if the filters that should be on in ordinary people that are off in me and perhaps members of my family are part of the thing that helps me read cards. More likely, though, I just snore, thrash, laugh, whistle, chatter and occasionally cast out demons as just one of the “features” of my personal software. I don’t remember most of it myself but I still have stories.

When my first marriage began to fail, there were occasions when I either punched him or kneed him in the nose and woke up first apologizing, then giggling, then apologizing. Perhaps that was thinly-disguised resentment at being told constantly that I was inadequate. No matter. We divorced and both relatively unscathed.

About that same time, my father called me at work one bright day and asked, “Are you…OK?” “Of course, I said,” surprised and confused at his mid-day call and his note of concern. “Why?”

“You sounded funny last night,” he said. I could hear from his voice that he had set his jaw in his typical offset way that signaled there was more to the story.

“I didn’t talk to you last night,” I protested, doubt growing as I spoke every word so much that it might have been a question.

“Oh,” he started to snicker. “Oh, yes you did!”

To this day I don’t know what I said to him but I have the feeling it wasn’t particularly the sort of conversation a father wants to hear from his never-in-his-eyes-grown daughter. All I can say is, sorry about that, Pops!

A few months after that, I remember waking up to hanging up the telephone, once again talking to someone in my sleep. This time I don’t know who it was but as I was hanging up and laughing uproariously I had the strange feeling that it was a crank call with sexual overtones. I’m not sure if I hoped it was one of my friends or a complete but creepy stranger; I don’t know which is better.

I’m grateful that I don’t walk in my sleep like my uncle. That can be dangerous. I related all this to my roomie who had, wise woman that she is, brought hopefully effective earplugs after that first night of my “performance”. I explained that once, while I was living in southern California in a small apartment, as a big fan of ghost hunting shows, I determined to record myself all night to see if I said anything interesting. After 15 minutes of rhythmic buzzing that actually seemed to be the overhead fan and not my adorable purr, I turned the recorder off—in my sleep, of course. Oh, well.

The 9 of Swords in the Rider Waite Smith tradition shows the sleeper has awakened, is sitting up in bed and has raised her hands to her face. Is she relieved it was only a dream? Was her sleeping life the real one and is this the illusion? Is her waking life the worse nightmare than her dream? At any rate, the card shows a change in consciousness, an awakening, a realization, an understanding of the objective truth compared to illusion.

To the aware mind, every new experience is an awakening and every new day is a chance to start over. All the past is not just a good or bad dream, but it is the past, now fixed in our lives like soft clay hardened in the kiln of experience. Work with the clay of the day, shape it to your will with the spirit of love and understanding. Remember the past, but do not be chained to it. And sometimes, bring earplugs.

Best wishes!

When the Worst Happens

I saw an article in the news. I won’t say what news or what article or when or who because, well, because like my other readings, I protect the confidentiality of my clients. But just to give the circumstances, the story was about a death, one that so far seems a little mysterious. It’s being investigated by the right people, apparently. And there’s also something about not interfering with an ongoing investigation. I won't.

Still, I had questions. I didn’t know the person and as far as I know I don’t have any connection to the person other than noting the story and the pang of sorrow I felt at hearing news of someone dying under a cloud, even a little cloud, of mystery.

There’s a lot of discussion in the tarot readers community about the ethics of doing a reading for a third party. You can imagine the kinds of questions that are common among the very young, the very heartbroken.

“What does X think of me?” “What did X mean when they said that?” “What will X do?” “Will X ever leave Y and be with me?”

These are common questions, like I said. And they have the characteristic of being, well, at best, snoopy. Generally, if you want to know what X thinks, ask X yourself. Of course, it isn’t that easy. But at least it is fair to you and it’s fair to X, whoever they are.

My ethics for privacy don’t just extend to my client. Hunting down Ms. or Mr. X, recording their thoughts with a tape-recorder or their actions with a video recorder or just spying on them with a home-made periscope is a violation of X’s privacy too. And if it’s important to you as my client to have privacy, think how important privacy is to your buddy X. After all, you came to me and asked for information in a reading; X didn’t.

I usually try to rephrase the question, occasionally to the disappointment of a client who really does want me to snoop on X’s most intimate thoughts or feelings. After all, if you really knew what people thought and felt, you might change your actions. Since you’re the client, I reframe the question to something like: How will things work out for you or will you be happy if X takes a certain course of action versus another? It’s pointing the focus of the question back on you without spying on the third party.

And really, it’s your reading, so it makes sense that the reading should be about you, not about anyone else. After all, what is the best thing for you to do in case of one action or another? What if the worst thing should happen, whatever scenario that is?

It’s my own belief that you can’t make anyone think or feel anything unless they decide to do it. Some belief systems augment that with a warning message, “…at least, not without some pretty severe consequences.” So, that old R&B song that goes, “I’m gonna make you love me, yes, I will! Yes, I will!” is at worst unrealistic fantasy and at best, well, the wrong response. If you have to make someone love instead of their choosing to do it themselves, is that really love? There’s a point where your fondest wish could be the other person’s feeling of oppression and worse. So, that’s not love.

Garth Brooks’ country song that says, “Some of God’s greatest gifts are unanswered prayers,” goes a long way. That’s probably the nicest way of putting the warning to be careful what you wish for. I usually say at the very least, next time I’m going to be more specific. Often what we want is our fantasy, and not the reality of the situation for any of the people involved. Fantasies are fantasies for a reason. They are often unrealistic, unsustainable, short-lived. They often serve their purpose and dissolve, the parts rearranging themselves into a new fantasy.

Fantasies serve a wonderful “what-if” scenario purpose for us to imagine outcomes. But you wouldn’t want someone else barging in on your fantasy to take photographs, at least most of the time. Fantasies are different from having a goal and a purpose for yourself. Fantasies are like reading the funnies in the newspaper. Visualizing yourself as achieving your own goal is much more like pre-planning, like figuring out your next steps towards your own changes.

Just in case the client’s question is about another person and that situation dissolves into something less meaningful than it might have been had things turned out a different way, well, it’s just plain rude to snoop. I have to respect their privacy as much as I respect my client’s privacy.

But when an event is reported publicly as part of the news and, filtering out speculation from facts, you might ask yourself why? There is no way to know first hand what that stranger in the news story was thinking or feeling that led to what appears to be a tragic end. At least, not for me.

I was still moved to wonder what happened though. Since I read tarot, I shuffled my deck and drew three cards. And my first reaction to them was, “Ah.” Ah, I see the sadness and heartache, the realization of truth that was so difficult but taken to heart.

I drew the 9 of Swords, a realization, a wake-up, a truth revealed that dispels all illusions, both good and bad. I drew the 10 of Swords reversed, an inability to end a train of thought or to bring a situation to its logical conclusion, and often with a sense that the truth has somehow betrayed rather than released. I drew the 3 of Swords, three swords of truth piercing a heart in the rain, sadness, sorrow, the need for comfort and succor in difficulties.

Taken all together, I hear the cry of the unhappy person who realizes that in fact this sorrow was not going to end, which renewed the sorrow all the more.

I don’t know if this person’s life ended by their own choice, by accident or at the hands of others. For one thing, that’s what other people are paid to find out and are much better at doing than I am. But in my reading, I read for myself in the end. I wanted to know what happened here and got an answer that was, for a tarot reading, the equivalent of the 2x4 between the eyes.

They’re gone, is the answer. They’re gone. And I’m sorry about that, for a stranger I never knew.

Best wishes.

Underwear: Revenge of the Lycra

I found myself watching one of the Underworld movies while the hubby went to check on the rugby team and the pitch. He gets a little agitated when I watch scary stuff. Sometimes it's his concern over nightmares. He can have some humdingers. Sometimes it's the believability factor. It reminds me of my brother when we were little. I would thrill to One Step Beyond just as long as my older brother could take it. Then he would turn the television off to my protests and my mother, good mom that she was, backed him up saying no one needs any more nightmares. Very disappointing at the time. No 9 of Swords for me, nightmares, then waking up from nightmares. If I had nightmares, they happened during my waking hours.

Victorian Trade Card Tarot
(c) Copyright 2010 Marcia McCord


It did spark my interest in finding good scary stories though.

A little later when my brother was less prone to nightmares and entirely too proud to turn off the television, we both loved Rod Serling's Night Gallery. He liked "The Girl With the Hungry Eyes." I liked that one, plus one starring Richard Thomas called "The Sins of the Fathers/You Can't Get Help Like That Anymore." There was something about customs from a time untouched by television or cell phones or even indoor plumbing that was fascinating, even if it was fictional. My favorite, though, was "Silent Snow, Secret Snow."

I wasn't sure then why I liked it so much. It was more eerie than anything else. There were no Kate Beckinsales with tossled hair and color-changing eyes. There were no ghosts to speak of, no monsters, no otherworldly dripping jaws smiling and sniffing while your hero perspired in fear and determination. There were no cute dragons or gremlins, dry or wet. There were no fangs or claws, no decapitations or suddenly animated inanimate objects. But it was scary to me, scary and delightful.

There was just a little boy whose fighting, bickering, battling parents were terribly concerned because the little boy would not wake up. He drifted in and out of consciousness, in and out of reality, preferring the quiet and cold of the snow to life on his parents' battlefield. The snow was so ordinary and yet so seductive. The frightening part was that it was so ordinary and to me so familiar.

I realized that the scary stories I liked the best were those where nearly everything was normal. Even my favorite non-scary stories were those where nearly everything was normal. I loved Edward Eager's Half Magic, so much so that I still own at least two copies of the childrens' book today. The children had a normal life, but not quite; they found a nickel that wasn't exactly a nickel and made wishes that sort of came true. Halfway. And I loved the Barbara Sleigh Carbonel series, two children and a cat whose language they could understand with just a drop of magic.

Over the top movies with a gorefest never appealed to me. My apologies to Freddy and Jason, but they just never were my cup of scream. And I generally preferred reading to movies anyway. If I wanted over the top stuff, all I had to do was dip a toe into H. P. Lovecraft's New England. Now something about Howard himself wasn't quite right either, but he was deliciously weird, a guy who stayed up all night and lived with his aunts, a guy who married another author and then agreed they should continue their relationship "by correspondence." We even have a cat toy I call Baby Cthulu for its combination of cute and, well, Lovecraftian yumminess. Gotta love that Howard. I figured if he wrote it, I "Dun-read-it." I even wanted to do post-graduate studies on Lovecraft but my English department wouldn't go for it. Such is the stuff of turning points in a life.

It's not that I can't be scared. I can. Reading Blatty's The Exorcist I had a case of goosebumps that would have impressed James Michener's Onkor the Goose in Chesapeake. By the time I saw the movie, either all my friends who wanted to see it had done so already and those who hadn't didn't want to. So I went by myself. I sat in the back row. Oh, I remember the stories of people running screaming from the theatres during the movie. Nope, not me. There were only a few of us there that afternoon and I sat in the back and laughed. Yeah, that was me. And I apologize to the other eight people at the movie that day wherever they are. The pea soup scene was especially funny because, well, because it wasn't ordinary enough for me.

I know everyone loves that darling little girl saying, "They're back!" in Poltergeist, but my favorite scene was the steak scooting across the counter. Aside from being sadly misnamed as a movie for the most part, I was a little disappointed in the goofiness of the medium (although she was cute) and most disappointed at the depiction of the ghosts. Seriously, just seeing something or someone that isn't supposed to be there is scary. They don't have to make them oozy skeletons. What if they had strollers and wore hats with flowers and carried umbrellas and woke you up while you were trying to get a decent night's sleep just to talk? What if Super 8 were just a scary motel with bedbugs or amorous neighbors instead of alien technology? What if the bugs started talking to you or worse, the sweethearts next door started calling your name? OK, that's scary.

One of my favorite ghost movies is Ghost Story where people connected to the callous treatment of someone they supposedly cared for suddenly became the victims of a very purposeful haunting. Normal stuff becomes abnormal. People start remembering things they wish they had forgotten. What first seems to be the "bad" ghost becomes a sympathetic character whose actions are at least understandable, well, until things go a step too far. Then you're glad to switch your loyalty back to the hero.

So for one of my very first comparative literature papers in college, while I had the chance to pick what I wanted to read instead of what they wanted me to read, I wrote about Conrad Aiken's Silent Snow, Secret Snow and one of his lesser known stories, comparing them. Both concern the wish of the child to escape his parents' terrible fighting, but while the child chooses escape in Snow, he chooses to move past this trauma and become his own person in the other story. I could relate. And I realized what was frightening about Snow was that the child chose to bury himself in his own mind, to become lost in the snow. Well, that paper got my teacher's attention and it wasn't to send me to therapy, thank goodness.

I'm older and wiser now. The things that scare me are wardrobe failures and departmental reorganizations. They are almost normal. Almost.

OK, so the really scary part is while I was writing this, the University where I wrote that paper on Conrad Aiken called me up as one of the alumni and asked me if I wanted to donate money to their English department. I laughed and told the student that when I went there, there was no such thing as an English department there. It was engineering only and I could only barely declare a major in English. Why, oh, why did my parents think that having me living at home while trying to major in English at an engineering university was "safer" than letting me go up the road to the next university where there was actually a college of liberal arts?

"So you're a student there," I tortured my caller, turning his interruption into my entertainment. "What's your major?"

"Electrical engineering," he said tentatively. It's not so much fun when I pry into your life, is it?

"Ah, not English. But Double-E is OK, right? You guys are usually pretty smart but not as swell-headed as the Chem Engins or the Ceramics." He snickered. So after determining that I was more interested in donating to the university radio station where I spent most of my free time while attending that respected hall of learning, we bid fond adieu.

I laughed. Coincidence, right?

Best wishes.

Postcards to the Edge

I know not everyone has a good story for, “How did you spend your Grand Cross/T-Square/Perseids Meteorite Shower this year?” but I’m very thumbs-up about my own. Like a lot of fire sign people, sometimes I just start doing something and it turns into a project. That’s happened to me this summer. I created my own tarot deck.

Actually I started creating a tarot deck last year from photos I’ve taken over the years. I had the Major Arcana down pretty easily but the Minors were another thing. That’s a lot of photos. And I didn’t want to resort to “that’s a picture of heather in Ireland and heather looks warm and fiery so this is a wands card.” I wanted images that really spoke to the meaning of the card without being actual posed models of the Rider-Waite-Smith deck.

There are some decks I really admire for their creativity and simultaneous alignment and departure from the RWS images. My favorite decks are those that make me think twice, that have multiple layers of meaning and that are a little ambiguous. Life, after all, doesn’t come with an instruction book.

I love Beth Seilonen’s decks, as I mentioned before; there is something dark and scary under the gentle whimsy that makes me take her work very seriously, even if the decks feature Nestor the Jester or Balthazar the Frog. Her Isabel Snail Tower is one of the most eye-popping “something big is about to happen” cards I’ve ever seen. Another recent purchase is Bethalynne Bajema’s Sepia Stains A Tarot Deck, a delicious mixture of sensuality and bug-creepy. I adore (and have multiple copies of) Patrick Valenza’s Deviant Moon, a sort of carnival out of control. And I love more traditional images, like Kat Black’s stunning Touchstone Tarot and Golden Tarot. Then there are some decks I have for reasons I don’t understand other than I connect with them somehow, like the many copies of the Maddonni Tarot I have squirreled away. I don’t want to discount the other decks I read with on a regular basis, too, like the RWS, the Hanson-Roberts and James Ricklef’s Tarot of the Masters. They are beautiful and they work for me.

So why, if I have too many tarot decks as it is, create one of my own? Well, partly because I couldn’t help myself. I see photos, images, ads, TV commercials any visual medium and think, OMG, that would make a GREAT Page of Wands, or whatever. OK, I don’t think “O-M-G,” I just see those letters in a crawl line on the marquee of my personal theatre.

While I was busy thinking I was creating a deck with my own photos, which in fact I probably still am doing but the distance between concept and fulfillment is rather wide, I stumbled across images that I could not resist. Piling up in my favorite things to view were picture postcards from 1900-1909. Postcards during that time were the Facebook, email, Twitter and cell phone of their day, a snapshot of human perspective. And the perspective came with pictures! I started accumulating them, then pursuing them. I quickly realized I had a deck of tarot cards, no, actually more than one deck. I began to organize them, crop them for ideal focus and give them some standard naming pattern so I could find them again. And the project grew.

I realized I had more than a slide show of fun images. They started to gel into a vision of what a deck like that might look like.

The backs would be, say, like the back of an unused postcard, the old-fashioned kind true to the time of the images where there was room only for the addressee’s name and address. Early postcards required that the back be used only for the address. The message had to be written on the front somewhere. I’m picky about the backs of tarot decks. I don’t want visual cues in advance whether the card I’m turning is reversed or upright, so I like symmetrical back images. So I figured out how to make my postcard back symmetrical.

My images were a mix of photos and artwork, color and monotone. So I sorted them into two groups, photos and artwork. I started, randomly, to work on the photos. Just by picking out pictures from postcards that I liked, I had about 60 of the 78 cards already, so the hunt was on to complete the deck. The hardest one was The Hanged Man.

I love The Hanged Man as a card. When I first started with tarot, I had trouble with it. “Sacrifice,” most little white books say. OK, so if you get him right side up, it means you give up something for something more important, or maybe you’re a sap. But the guy’s got a halo in RWS so it’s noble sacrifice, something like Dickens Tale of Two Cities, “’Tis a far, far better thing I do…,” and all. So does that mean that reversed, you didn’t have to give anything up? It was problematic for me. As I studied tarot more, a richer picture of The Hanged Man has come to me. For instance, in my first blog post, I used to hang by my feet from the swingset trapeze and jungle gym just to view the world from a different perspective. My little yellow bird is a representation of The Hanged Man, the idea of looking at things from another point of view. Rachel Pollack gave a wonderful talk on The Hanged Man at the 2009 BATS, explaining that hanging people by their feet was a punishment for traitors. It seems you can look at The Hanged Man from an objective point of view with sympathy for his plight or scorn for his crime or you can look at him as a reflection of yourself. And that goes deeper. The Hanged Man has a halo because he has chosen a path, a stance, a point of view which does not conform to that of others and for that he is separated, even persecuted. But he has remained true to himself. Reversed, he has given up his own values and ideals and sublimated his will to society, choosing to fit in rather than to be himself. That puts the idea of sacrifice in a more thoughtful light for me.

Well, now, how do you find a photo from 1900-1909 that says all that? The first one I found was of a real hanging, an execution of a Chinese man at the hands of Russians during their conflict at that time. The hanged man’s face in the photo was overexposed, almost white-hot, which was like the idea of the halo in some ways and like the anonymity and depersonalization of being executed because you were “one of them” instead of “one of us.” But it was ghastly. It took a long time to find an image that was a little lighter, a little less political, a little less horrifying. But that first image will stay with me for a long time.

Late in the process it occurred to me that other people might think this was a fun thing too, so I contacted people I knew who might be interested in sharing the cost of printing and got a fantastic response. My very first tarot deck is at the printer now waiting patiently in line with its little white book to be printed as a numbered and signed limited edition of 50. Just 50 decks of 78 cards are all I intend there to be in the whole world.

Like the 9 of Swords, sometimes when you wake up from your dreams, you’re just so glad it wasn’t real and you’re back to normal again, whatever that is. I think my husband will be glad in some ways when this is done because of the intensity of my attention to it. I’m just hoping that it doesn’t turn out to be a flop, a disappointment, kind of like my 9 of Swords guy who woke up from his dream to find out that he really did have a bed full of fish!

Best wishes!

Waking Up

You wake up one morning and *bam* like one of Emeril’s recipes you’re suddenly a year older. I know I should be devastated, if I am to believe in the American Dream. There isn’t exactly a list of things I’m supposed to aspire to but being young, rich and thin are among them. “Crud-hoppers!” as one my high school classmates used to say. Strike three and I’m, well, I’m different from the perfect formula. We make much of being “PC” or politically correct, but I’d like to explore the “AD” or American Dream for my birthday.

For one thing, it’s not AD to like your birthdays because in the rules of AD, “Old is Bad.” Oh, and “old” is defined differently by everyone I meet. I remember talking to an employee of the student radio station I worked at my first two years of college for some reason. I was the ripe old age of 25 or so and the teeny-bopper I was speaking to said, in all innocence, “Oh, you mean a LONG TIME AGO you worked here?” Yes, whippersnapper, I snarled, a whole 5 years ago, more than 25% of your entire life.

AD also says that “old” happens to other people. If you don’t believe me, just go to one of your high school reunions. That tall, rangy, shy redhead you dated for all of 3 weeks has been replaced by a short, round, jovial father of a number of children. The only thing remaining of that underripe hippie you knew is the smile. But, no, dear, YOU haven’t changed a bit.

I had actually grown used to being teased about being the youngest. When I got a reprise of the measles while working at my first job out of college, my co-workers smirked that I was still going through my childhood diseases. When I lectured on antiques and gave an identification seminar similar to Antiques Roadshow at the local junior college, the students were stunned that a 27-year-old was the teacher. It seems with antiques, it took one to know one in their eyes. By the end of the class, they accepted me even though I was the age of their children for the most part.

Strangely, in spite of all urgings to the contrary, I rather like my birthdays. I figure I was going to be this old this year anyway, so wottheheck, enjoy. As I said to my sister, it’s the right side of the ground. I’d rather be here than, well, I’m just sure I’ll have lots of company wherever I go later.

I remember getting ribbed about going back to college to get a second bachelor’s degree and being an “older student.” I wanted to do something more than office work, something more than to depend on being someone’s favorite for getting something interesting to do and certainly more than hoping to marry some guy for his money. I wanted a little financial independence. When I applied to the Applied Computer Science program, they asked for either an SAT or ACT score. My school in New Mexico didn’t do the SAT, so all I had was that ACT score. But I had to laugh at them asking for it. Did they know how long before then I had taken that test? I was approved and got my degree, even though I felt like the Old Broad of Computer Science. Even then I had said I was going to be this old this year anyway. And that was 25 years ago.

I did meet my goal of getting something interesting to do and a little financial independence. It’s nowhere near requirement 2 of the AD, nothing like rich. I have worked hard to maintain my loathsome plebeian second rate status and I rather like it. I can talk to just about anyone, at least in the manner that a cat may look at a king. My husband and I like to say that people go on cruises or to luxury resorts just to get away from people like us. We say that with satisfaction and perhaps a little pride. There is so much obligation that goes with being truly wealthy. One must either be difficult and famous or else be open-hearted and generous in a very public way. I prefer to be difficult only with my dearest friends (you know who you are) and aspire to slip into anonymity as open-hearted as any great benefactor. I prefer to give myself to others, which is my only treasure. I love my work, both the Day Job and my tarot reading. They are vastly different from each other and yet stem from the same urge to be of some assistance where I can. I suspect not having all those public appearances and obligations gives me time to fulfill those urges. I’m good with that.

And, horrors, I’m not thin. I was thin once. People say that like they mean they started out thin. That’s not what I mean. I was always a strong, healthy kid. I was the arm-wrestling champion of the junior high two years in a row, not exactly the honor making me the most datable girl in high school. I grew up quickly, physically, so that my brother’s friends’ transition from intense interest in baseball to a more intense interest in getting to second base took me a bit by surprise. I did the yo-yo diet thing that young girls do but stopped well short of anything drastic like bulimia. I was used to thinking of myself as a Big Girl. But I was thin, once. When my first marriage was failing and I was so terribly angry about that failure, the effects turned inward. Basically, I failed to eat for about two years and this coincided with persistent insomnia. It’s remarkable how much weight you lose when you don’t eat and you don’t sleep. I got down to a very fashionable size 2 and my father started complaining that I had to stand up twice to make a shadow.

This started another nightmare. I was barely separated from my first ex when all of a sudden men who had not given me a moment’s notice before came out of the woodwork and landed on the edge of my desk, men I did not like, men I was not attracted to, men I did like, men I was attracted to. And I became very, very angry at superficiality. I was the same girl as before, suddenly made different by a Barbie Doll figure. So THIS is what it was like to never know if the people who liked you liked you for that or for yourself. This unhappy state has over time remedied itself and I no longer fear friendship for superficial reasons, having traded Barbie for something more like Mrs. Santa Claus as a model.

So, all in all, life has worked in my favor. I’m no longer teased about being the youngest. I move about freely in the modest middle class, friend to rich and poor alike. And I am relieved of the burden of being lithe. Dogs, cats and little kids still like me. I’m no threat to my women friends and, since I have retired from arm wrestling, no threat to my men friends either. Even with a bad knee, I can still flirt with little old guys and feel confident of being able to outrun them. I’m not waking up to a 9 of Swords realization and remorse every day, thinking I’ve wasted my life or taken the wrong path. I know it’s not the American Dream, strictly speaking, but this life is my favorite birthday present every year. I think I’ll get up early this year.

Best wishes!