The Pen

I’ve seen talk lately (I interrupt this moment to reflect that my synesthesia is apparently in play). Starting again, I’ve seen talk lately that schools are considering bringing back handwriting as a subject for students. How remarkable, I think, my wonder betraying my age, again. I’m in favor of it. 

I would hate to see such an intimate form of expression become lost among the ashes of the Library of Alexandria. No matter how much healthy self-esteem we want to instill in our youngsters, sadly not all of them can or should become doctors whose handwriting cannot be read.

As wedded to the concept of crayons as I was with their 64 or more colors, writing was always the skill of power when I was a child. Could you? Your name first, then other words appeared. Did your d’s point the right way or were they b’s instead? Did you run out of room on the line? And you learn to judge space rather than have a machine automagically pop the last word over to the next line. Did you stay within the lines, the two solid lines for the biggest letters and the dotted line in the middle for the shorter letters? Did you hold your pencil correctly, the extension of the point of your dominant hand, meant to be the focus of your conscious self, the mind within?

I went to Catholic school starting my second grade year. We used pens and learned cursive writing years before our public school friends. We had Sheaffer cartridge pens to learn to write correctly. My brother became fond of Peacock Blue ink and even dyed a strip of my long blonde hair with it one afternoon while I nattered on unawares, far ahead of fashion. My brother struggled with left-handedness. I had the scribe’s ink-stained callus on my middle finger. We followed the guides and practiced curling letters over and over.

Mom offered encouragement, showing us antique pens, explaining the “Palmer Method” she had learned, an artistry of loops and whorls that, practiced over and over, became the exquisite “perfect handwriting” I identify with her generation. Her signature was perfectly readable, stopping just short of calligraphy with no extra flourishes but possessing an authority, dignity, femininity, artistic motion and unassailable finality and gravity that putting one’s signature to a document was supposed to have. I was awestruck by her handwriting.

My father’s showed the vestiges of the Palmer Method, but with the architect’s angular precision and confident ego, much like an artist’s signature in red at the bottom of an important painting. His signature betrayed his personality as much as my mother’s, attention-getting, bravado, bragging, essential, aggressive, visionary, the signature of the View of the World As It Should Be.

I began to realize that signatures and writing were such an intimate expression of personality as to be like a fingerprint of the soul, the revelation of the mind of the one who wrote it, as much as we see those signatures on the Declaration of Independence.

What would my signature be? Who was the soul within? These are weighty topics, especially by the time I reached third grade. That year, I decided to explore my inner self in my handwriting and especially signature. I went experimental. This was frowned on by my teacher, young Miss O’Brien, the “lay teacher” with bouncy black hair and blue eyes who wore sneakers to work in spite of the strict dress code. I received the only C on my report card ever. It was clear that artistic experimentation with expressing my identity was something I needed to do on my own time. I gave up and returned to conformity, so often the result when the values of achievement and responsibility dominate.

By junior high school, handwriting was no longer a subject taught and I began to find my own voice in a signature, readable at least but neither my mother’s perfection nor my father’s ego. One weekend around the kitchen table, we were looking at my parents’ high school yearbook. They were in the same high school class in Kansas, my grandfather was on the School Board, my father looking like he should wear a beanie and have tea with the faculty, my mother looking like she would have been Goth if Goth were a thing in 1929. I marveled at the lovely awkwardness, how they all looked older somehow than teens in the 70’s and yet more innocent of the world at the same time.

I saw a signature on the margin of the yearbook and showed it to my mother saying, “I don’t remember seeing this yearbook before, but look! I’ve written Daddy’s name here in the margin.” It was the most curious thing.

She leaned toward me at the large round table and adjusted the glasses on her nose, then smiled.

“You didn’t write that. That’s your grandfather’s signature.”

I was stunned. I had posited that signatures expressed the personality of the person. Now I had mistaken the signature of the grandfather I never knew for my own. A million possibilities flooded my head. This was Hal, Sr. not my dad. And would that mean that his personality was more like my own? He had committed suicide just a few years later, a family mystery full of shame and scandal. Was that…me? My life? My possibility? Did we inherit the signature patterns of our ancestors the same way a grandchild will have his grandfather’s walk or laugh or gesture?

The Ace of Wands in Tarot is the new project, the inspiration, the intuition, the fire in the belly, the life force. It is also commonly interpreted as the pen for writers, for who would pick up a stick and poke it into a dark and wet substance, then guide that pigment to form the translation of human thought? Who would contrive such a wonder but humanity?

That signature in the yearbook started many things for me. I was inspired to know my relatives, including the ones long dead, as people. I was struck by the connection, beyond the boundaries of physical space and across time, between people who never knew each other in life. It was not long after that that I experienced a ghostly visitation from my grandfather with his love, sadness, and assurance that while we had much in common, I need not choose the path he took. For all our commonalities, we were individuals, as unique as life itself.

Best wishes.

Striving Artist

It occurred to me how many of my friends are artists of one sort or another. My friend Beth Seilonen just spent ten days’ wonderful summer vacation with me. She spent much of the time in my back yard in the creative process, painting delightful one-of-a-kind boards, pins and boxes into “spirit boards” complete with little planchettes. More than just her own creative mind at work, her spirit of giving was in play too, since these items are all fundraiser items to support this year’s 2014 SF BATS.

We laughed at how I had her chained to the picnic table all week. In fact, my “artist in captivity” effort was a little more participative. We visited Michaels stores in three different towns, all with just a little bit different inventory of omigoshes and gotchas that inspired Beth to spend her days in the shade of my pink crepe myrtle up to her elbows in paint.

The results are heart-warming, too. At the recent SF BATS Fundraiser event, three of the big boards sold, including a masterpiece friendly fruit bat board with a swirling lacy paper background layer. It looks like the whorls and eddies of the depths of divination.  One of the beautiful owl figural boards sold, plus a box (perfect for runes) decorated with bats flying around the sides with the familiar letters and numbers, Yes and No on the top.

Beth Seilonen's SF BATS Spirit Board 2014

Beth has just a few more of these available for sale, still with proceeds split to SF BATS, along with her joyous, jolly, irreverent Compound Tarot, a 78-card black and white deck featuring the denizens of the mythical Compound that is the Mother House for Daughters of Divination’s Facebook group. This Facebook group was recently made a secret group to facilitate its worldwide membership’s postings of fun and lampooning. One new member wondered where the divination was and we all chuckled reading the question. There are lots of social media groups dedicated to serious divinatory queries, business tips for professional readers and practice readings for students. This group, however, is the haven for diviners in serious need of blowing off a little steam. While a dedicated subgroup gets their spectacles steamed up over current favorite hotties like Cumberbatch and Hiddleston, care is taken to assure the whole thing does not go overboard into completely poor taste (although some would dandle dangerously close to the edge of that cliff), all in good fun.

In addition to having my visiting artist-in-residence for the last few days, my back yard has hosted the neighborhood children in their demand for Craft Day. First, I led my Ventura Street Irregulars in a slapdash paint-your-own-mini-birdhouse day with the kids on the block. Even the two-year-old got her hands into the mix, happily making handprints on whatever was in front of her.

Today, I had to work, but that didn’t stop Beth and her daughter Anna from having the kids over for another round of paint-your-own-box and everyone brought home a treasure.

It was little enough for me to devote my old picnic tables and plastic table cloths, a basket full of paint, glitter and sticky foam things to let artistic imagination run loose. Those were the days I loved best as a child. What a joy to give that to someone else!

I’ve always loved the idea of creating something beautiful. As a child, my favorite toys were crayons, Cray-Pas oil pastels, mosaic tiles, my father’s drafting tools, water colors, rubber stamps and stickers, looms and lanyard supplies. If you could make something with it, I loved it and spent hours making anything from Play-Doh ashtrays to troll doll quilts.

When I was in junior high, my father was smug and delighted to be able to enroll me in college-level art classes at the university where he taught. I was pleased to be treated like just another college student and worked hard for the A’s in my courses. While I faced the endless repetition of the same inaccurate history classes year after year during the regular school year, at least my summers were full of stretching my wings artistically. Dr. Acker taught me how to see, not just look at things, but to see light and dark, shape and motion, perspective and just a little abstraction. But there I also found my limitations and realized that as much as I love art, I’m probably not an artist. Perhaps more valuable than finding my limits was learning that I could help artists and bask in the creative glow.

One of my early “discoveries” was a young man in Illinois named Gerard Erley. He showed pastels in the summer sidewalk art shows. I loved his work. I bought lots of it. I knew he had “it” whatever “it” is. I gave him my sage advice, as a collector of art: “Gerry, you may do any kind of artwork you like, but if you want it to sell, you need to sell it to people who have not had the art education you have. They may not see the nod to Sargent in your portrait. But, if you paint landscapes and still life, something they understand, people will buy them. Because you make Illinois look like someplace someone would want to live.”

I think he laughed at me at the time. But I like to think something I said may have meant something to him. He grew in his artistry and now is an esteemed professor whose breath-taking work commands high prices from eager collectors. He makes this world look like someplace someone would want to live. And I am “house proud” of my collection of “early Erleys”.

Over the years, I’ve found wonderful friends in the arts. Sallie Evans is an artist and miniaturist whose impossibly tiny needlework has graced magazines and shows. My friends Kristine and Shotsie Gorman are both artists in multiple media, now living in Sonoma, California with their latest opening blending tattoo, tarot and painting to create a vibrant and open atmosphere for the arts in a beautiful place, a resort within a resort, Shotsie & Kristine's T.A.T. Gallery. Rebecca Wrigley, a former Disney illustrator, had the seed of an idea for a Tarot deck and while that project is still “in the works,” the spurt of creativity gave her one of the boosts she needed to complete her first novel. And my friend Nancy Truax is the art teacher at our local Catholic high school, leading her honors students to create lasting community art works such as mosaic picnic benches in a nearby public park, a mural to give community youth hope and inspiration and becoming Teach of the Year. And I have countless talented friends creating Tarot and Lenormand decks with their unique points of view, their special vision of the world and understanding of its signs and meanings.

What can I do? My own talents fall short of my wishes, but that doesn’t stop me from trying. I can provide that creative space for others, sponsor their efforts, showcase their beautiful results, and plant the seeds of possibility in the hearts of artists and their champions all over. I can be the Ace of Wands, the inspiration to keep going and growing, encouraging artists of all ages to flower in the expression of the human spirit.

You can too. Sponsor the arts. Turn your favorite starving artist into a successful striving artist today.

Best wishes!

The Tree Is Dead

This is the third and, I hope, final session that the tree removal people will have in taking down the neighbors’ poplar tree. I loved that tree and I mourn its loss. It was tall, provided lots of shade and shelter to birds in the neighborhood. It bloomed in the spring, a tulip poplar, they call it.

It was between my neighbors’ house and the house to the north of them. I liked to look at it through my office windows and other windows on the north side of my house. Blackbirds and crows, finches, tits and the occasional hawk would perch in it. Doves would call from it in the evenings.

Picture Postcard Tarot
(c) Copyright 2010 Marcia McCord

Yes, I have hugged a tree, lots of them. When I had the choice between taking down the live oak in my back yard and taking down the remnants of the summerhouse competing for space, I chose to keep the tree. There is something sacred about a tree that can never be matched, even if the summerhouse had been rebuilt. I would prefer the birds and squirrels, the acorns and the occasional spider.

When I had the chance to go back to my grade school in Orlando, it was a Sunday afternoon so naturally no one was there. No one, that is, but at least one of the trees that had been there when I was a child. Oh, welcome friend! I could not only rub the coquina-rock steps with my hand, a place I had stood and had my picture taken long ago, steps I had run down too swiftly only to halt at the curb, cautioned by the crosswalk guard, then walked purposefully away from to fly like a lark on the tall swings and leap from the highest arc to fly, for a moment, to the sand and grass below. I could not only touch those stone steps but I could also rub the bark of the old trees that shaded my memory palace.

I would hug trees, talk to them, hide my secrets in their branches, build tree houses and tree forts, respite from the weight of the earth below. I would stretch out on a sturdy branch and snooze, like a cat or a squirrel, and only come down when I had to. I would haul great pieces of wood, the bones of other trees, to make my sacred spots among the branches. I would apologize for my awkwardness, that I was not a bird or anything else more graceful or grateful than a child.

I climb no trees now for I am less graceful than a child, but more grateful for trees. So I mourn the tulip poplar I have watched from my office window for so many years. There is a reason to kill a tree, I understand. I just don’t understand what it is.

I am more pleased than ever that I chose as my ten-year work anniversary gift the planting of ten trees somewhere, anywhere, of any sort whatever. The tulip poplar had somehow grown to be a burden to the human world, too big a tree near too-close houses. My apology is the hope that new trees planted somewhere else, like the Ace of Wands, will someday inspire someone else to plant more and mourn the death of one tree, someday to learn its language to tell the others how sorry I was for the loss of my friend.

The uninterrupted sky is no welcome sight.

http://www.treehugger.com/natural-sciences/trees-communicate-one-another-connected-fungi-video.html

Best wishes.

By Blood

No, this isn’t a vampire story! ‘Tis the season for that, of course, but this is a Columbus Day theme marking the wave of immigrants to what has become the United States of America.

One of the things about being from the USA is that there is always more to that story. Very few of us are actually from the USA, at least when you start the Roots Tour. One of the sad phenomena of our time is that there are people who have forgotten their own immigrant (legal or not) roots who somehow think that other immigrants are not worthy to live here. But I promise not to turn this into a political discussion. No politics, no vampires. That’s almost a theme in itself.

The search for our roots is such a hobby, and for some a religious obligation, that entire businesses have sprung up to facilitate this search with software and websites. College programs sponsor efforts to put cemetery records online. We want to connect to our past and the twisting road where that leads us.

This American obsession with our roots apparently becomes occasionally tiresome. When my husband and I were in Scotland, our innkeeper asked why we were visiting. I thought, Why?? Goodness, it’s Scotland, for heavens’ sake. The land of kilted handsome dudes with that dreamy accent, isn’t it? But of course, I wanted to know more than stereotypes; I wanted full-immersion Scotland. What he meant was, Why would we come to that section of Scotland, a place not classically associated with the fantasies of Highland lassies.

“Well, one of the early mentions of my family’s name is a real estate transaction. They sold land to the Kennedy family,” I answered.

“Oh,” my innkeeper sighed, instantly classifying us as Those People, “a Roots Tour.”

I felt vaguely apologetic for bothering people with my personal interest. But it was my vacation then and I was going to soak up all the Scotland I could get. It was a fabulous trip, complete with the Tor House Ring of standing stones and the ghost in the bathroom.

It turns out, through DNA testing, that my Scotland roots are actually Irish. There always is more to that story! Funnier than that, there’s a good possibility that I’m actually related to my husband, if very distantly. But that’s actually what we are looking for in those roots tours, connections and belonging.

If I said I was Irish, however, that would be inaccurate. I’m an American mutt, like so many of us. There’s something in the patchwork quilt of ethnicities that creates an intricate puzzle for the compulsive researcher. I could amuse myself with English Protestant, French Huguenot, Bavarian Catholic, Austrian, Czech and Bohemian Rom threads to chase. I want to know what they thought, what they liked, what they were good at, what they chose and chose to let go of.

I’m fortunate to have transcripts of the diaries of my great-grandfather Henry who went on an adventure to the California Gold Rush, spent a year or two there selling meat to miners rather than panning for gold himself, then went home “to civilization,” leaving at least one brother in California to be part of the mystique of the cattle business and water rights that are part of the heritage of this state.

Henry went on to be Captain of the 111^th Ohio Volunteer Infantry in the Civil War. His diaries of his outfit’s travels through the country include descriptions of playing baseball while waiting for their next orders. His diary also proved to be a life-saver in his case. His book of his first two years of the Civil War stopped a bullet; my cousin owns the remnants of this souvenir of the war along with Henry's other original writings.

The most interesting parts of Henry’s writing are those that make him most accessibly human. When the North and South were trading stray shots across a meadow one evening, not actively engaged in battle but more a game of “chicken,” Henry’s observation, after one bullet went through the sleeve of his coat without touching him was that if these boys don’t watch out, they’re going to hurt someone.

As the company clerk and Captain, he ran the election voting for a fair and secret ballot. The election between Lincoln and McClellan in 1864 was more hotly contested than we are aware, since we know the outcome. But at the time, Henry’s comments on the political scene were fascinatingly modern, wondering if either of the two candidates could pull off what they promised, were sincere in their efforts or were even trustworthy since they were, after all, politicians. We think of “old times” as being idealistic and naïve when people were just as skeptical of leadership as we are in today’s election. Who knows? Will one of the people we elect as President become the legend that Lincoln is now?

I like Henry, a man I never met. My father remembered an old man with a long beard and a Scottish “burr” to his voice. He recounted that as a toddler he sat on this formidable and yet comfortable man’s lap, being in awe of him, listening to stories of the Civil War and of Henry’s little brother George who had been imprisoned in Andersonville, survived, had been a passenger on the ill-fated Sultana, survived and had gone on to become a U.S. Marshall.

These stories and others I would never have known if I had not searched for roots.

I’m on vacation this week and decided that some of it should be a bit of a roots chase. The least documented and documentable thread in my fabric is the Bohemian Romany.

The mention of Bohemian, notably without the Rom, at least gave me a season pass to my first husband’s Polish family. I went no further with the description of my many-hued personal fabric without realizing that had I finished with the “Rom” part, I might have been thrown out. In the USA, we romanticize Gypsies as carefree, musical travelers who may fix your pots and pans in exchange for a stop at your farm and perhaps tell your fortune by firelight. Like so many fairy tales, the more difficult parts have been omitted. The Romany people have not been so well-received, in fact.



Victorian Trade Card Tarot
(c) Copyright 2010 Marcia McCord

In the mid-1800s in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Roma were forbidden by law to marry each other, an earlier “benign” attempt at eliminating them as a people. My great-great-grandmother complied and married a Gadjo (outsider who is not Romani) even though in her culture it meant that she was no longer one of her own people. Their red-haired son, Franz, left Bohemia to come to the fresh start that was America and with his knowledge of farming, his father’s profession, started a grain company in Kansas. I have a tantalizing photograph from the 1870’s taken just before Franz departed the old country, never to return. Records say my great-great-grandmother was Marie but show no last name. Tragically, the Bohemian Romany, speakers of a specific Rom dialect, were all but wiped out in the Holocaust. Thanks to Franz and others like him, vestiges remain. But I have no children and neither does my brother.

I did not grow up with any Rom cultural customs. I laughingly say that my former “unibrow” which has naturally thinned over time to two fairly normal eyebrows could be my only physical characteristic on an otherwise straight-haired blonde and blue-green décor. When I started reading regular playing cards when I was 7 or so spontaneously, my mother simply did not stop me but said it must be my Gypsy heritage.

So, for my vacation, I’m doing a little Gypsy roots tour. With a Tarot buddy, I’m going to seek out a local Roma hangout and have dinner there for people watching and good food. And I am delighted to have found tickets to a Gypsy jazz concert this weekend. Something about the rhythms, the chord progressions, the emotion of that music stirs my blood, inspires me like an Ace of Wands, to seek both roots and connections and move forward to my peculiar, personal and satisfying creativity.

Best wishes!

Bioluminescence

The whales said to say hello! My friends and I saw them on their travels south past the California coast this weekend. Puff! Puff! Puff! Sound. When whales go by, they seem purposeful and thereby happier. It may be my imagining but I like the thought. They are in charge of their journey. I waved to the travelers out in the Pacific, beyond the roll line, beyond the rocks and almost to the horizon. Puff! Nothing else looks like that.

This past weekend my friends and I traveled to Ft. Bragg, California to a house Kaye had found and Ronda had rented for us. Kaye and I carpooled and met B. G. to take her SUV for the last leg of the trip. We agreed to listen to Team of Rivals after hearing B. G.’s review about Mary Todd Lincoln’s mental state of being either “in the basement” or “in the attic.” It sounded familiar. We all understood the idea of burning our candle at both ends, the Ace of Wands of new inspirations which can sometimes seem like the match that set the barn on fire. 

Tea Tarot
(c) Copyright 2011 Marcia McCord



After all, that’s why we have these “Goddess Weekends,” because we all need respite from the “barn on fire” thing that is modern life. We talked and never listened to the book on tape, interrupting Mary’s basement and attic for more recent history as the miles rolled by. It was still light when we arrived at the luxury house on the rocky cliffs on the south side of the California coastal town of Ft. Bragg.

Ft. Bragg has long been one of my favorite easy getaways. My husband and I have often gone there even when the weather was raw and loved it. But our Goddess Weekend met its promise for glorious October sunshine. The house! There were slate floors throughout, skylights and a wall of windows making the most of the ocean view. We had a hot tub, a fireplace and beach access. We were prepared: Little did Julie know that we had plotted celebration for her. And Kaye brought her telescope. We were rewarded with a moonless night and plenty of stars.

Telescopes sure have changed. Kaye’s new baby is a lot like a lightweight red tuba on a football tee. I pointed it at the bright thing in the southeastern skies.

“Look! You can see planets,” we were properly amazed. “Think we can stay up late enough to see the meteor shower?” The Orionids were due to light up the sky. What could be better? The Milky Way ablaze over rocky ocean cliffs and waves below, plus a light show!

It’s our 19th year of getting together. Essentially we all know each other through Ronda. I happen to be the “newbie” since I met Ronda only in 1990. I was there for the initial weekend. It was the weekend Polly Klaas was taken from her bedroom window in nearby Petaluma, an unthinkable crime against innocence. Ever since then, our weekends together, now twice a year, have been dedicated to Polly. It is our candle in the darkness.

But the course of true relaxation never runs smooth and this year, to my barely suppressed annoyance, I was the Drama Queen. True, not everything that happened was about me. I can be grateful for that. Ronda’s dog Sofie expressed her upset tummy in a sudden way that was quickly cleaned up. Sofie’s a very gentle soul and we would never want her to feel like she was a bad doggie for a bit of personal business. We had sandwiches for dinner, told our stories and huddled around the fireplace while we listened to the ocean’s roar. We retired in comfort to our separate bunks, but then Ronda and I sneaked out to see if we could catch a meteor. In the quiet of the night and in our bare feet and pajamas we were rewarded with a single streaking blaze from Orion’s belt parallel with his sword. Satisfied with tagging our meteor, we retreated to slumber but not before I took a last longing look at the starlit beach and rolling waves which, with each roll glowed with churned bioluminescence. The response of nature to nature is to glow.

“Marcia, I heard you last night.” This is a recurring theme. As if I can control my snoring when I’m asleep! I had offered everyone hot pink foam earplugs the night before. Everyone had giggled but left their earplugs behind. Hey, both my parents were champion snorers. And I snored when I was a size 2 for those of you who think fluffy people snore more. It’s the slack jaw and sloppy soft palate, folks. Think of it as the musical accompaniment to the night.

B. G. made a de-lish couple of breakfast quiches with fruit and we were ready to start the day. Almost. I realized as I had gone to take my morning prescriptions that my blood pressure medicine was not in my bag. That rattle when Kaye had hit the brakes for a surprise stop must have sent them flying under the seat of her car, the car that we left in Ronda’s driveway when we consolidated to carpool. Now I had to figure out how to get a couple of tide-me-overs for the weekend. Fortunately, both my insurance and the local CVS pharmacy were willing, although it took hours to pull it off. And we got a chance to sneak a little shopping into mix. I snagged a couple of African market baskets (to put tarot cards in, of course) and some beads that looked like beach glass for a project I have in mind. It was a modest splurge as they go.

On the way back, we practiced our special song for Julie’s celebration while Julie rode with Ronda and Sofie. We continued in the acoustics of the vaulted ceilings in the living room of our luxury beach house, perfecting our harmonies, tweaking our arrangement while the guest of honor was delayed at Harvest Market. Julie was in charge of dinner and served us an Italian meatball soup worth writing home about. (Read: John, this is what your “snot soup” wants to be when it grows up, seriously.)

We held our celebration for Julie’s croning without setting ourselves and the house on fire, reading our poems and singing our songs. Julie is wise and drop-dead gorgeous, with an enormous heart in that well-tended body. She is a Big Sister to a little girl whose life seems to be turning a corner. She is a woman who Makes a Difference. We think that’s what Polly might have wanted.

I read tarot for everyone and we discussed the serious topics the cards nudged us into, life, love, work, health, home, future. Half the ladies landed in the hot tub for a midnight soak in the cool night air. I changed into my jammies and wandered out to say good night and salute the Milky Way once more. And then I discovered I had locked myself out of my bedroom, the bedroom for which there was no key, the bedroom where my glasses, my prescriptions, my book, my clothes, my tarot cards, fer goodness’ sake, were safe from every creature save a bug that could clear the doorsweep. Tired, we looked for a key, useless as it was. We attempted picking the lock and even Googled lockpicking, hairpin in hand. No luck. I gave up and called the housekeeper who promised to come the next day at 8 am. I sank into the couch with more waves against the sand, more reports of snoring the next morning.

Does trouble have to come in threes? Or fours? Or all at once? We realized we wanted to tidy up for the housekeeper’s arrival and there they were. The pumpkins Julie had selected and hollowed out for us to carve as jack-o’-lanterns had collapsed in an ooze of mold from the heat of the fireplace. The remains dispatched to the yard waste bin, I broke the news to Julie.

“The pumpkins died.”

“Died?”

“Died. Really dead. Ooshy-squishy dead. Runny puddles dead. They are pumpkin roadkill.”

Housekeeper Alma, good soul, arrived, unlocked and I was rescued again. Kaye and I made breakfast, bacon and French toast, something none of us would ever eat ordinarily. We cleaned obsessively and all at once it ended.

We’re thinking Hawaii in 2013. It seems like a good place to visit after the end of the world, Mayan time. We’ll light another candle for Polly. And for all of us.

Best wishes.

Eggshells

The funniest thing I’ve seen on Facebook recently is a woman telling the story of how a conversation with her 8-year-old daughter about a school lesson on eggs, tadpoles and frogs quickly slipped out of the realm of simple answers. I laughed until I cried. I won’t go into “overshare” myself but it’s the kind of funny that makes your coffee come back up your nose. It reminded me of the probable reason I didn’t have kids, which had little to do with biology or perfect timing and probably a lot more with the universe realizing I would have a difficult time keeping a straight face.

Mom had trouble keeping a straight face but it wasn’t the same problem as mine. Hers would collapse into abject horror or disgust or despair instead of hopeless giggles like mine. It wasn’t that I couldn’t be shocked. I could. I was. But my reactions to life ranged more from the funny-peculiar to the funny-“haha.” Mom’s were of a higher pitch and decibel level. For an introvert, she could be loud. When she let loose, it was an “everybody duck” situation. I knew I was different from my mother. We all knew to step lightly around her and my father put a lot of energy into the entire dynamic of “Don’t tell your mother.” Damaging as that was, there was a practical aspect to a little peace and quiet when things were quietly slipped under the rug.

She took pleasure in crafts and decoration as an escape. She took us to ceramics class when we were little. We worked on little things. I made an ashtray for her with pink flowers and light green grass and scratched an inscription on the back with the date. She gave it back to me when I was in my 20’s. I was glad she kept it but sad that she gave it back to me, a little rejected.

While we worked on our little projects, she experimented with different glazes and created a magnificently and complexly colored rooster which earned her a blue ribbon at the county fair. It was clear that blue ribbons were the only ones worth earning. I broke it one day horsing around with my brother, knocked it over with a swing of my hand onto the thick sand-colored marble top of our round kitchen table. Daddy tried to hide it, to glue it back together so she wouldn’t notice. But Mom had sharp eyes. She was devastated. She screamed and cried over her lost masterpiece and threw it in the trash. It was tragic for her that the rooster was broken but so much worse that my father had tried to cover it up, to make it better. We were all lost that day.

The process of creation for her could be soothing though. I loved Easter egg day which was usually Easter Saturday, just like today. We would get our Pas Bunny kits with the wire egg holder that never seemed to fit the eggs and the cups with vinegar and tablets of color in each. We all wanted the blue one, so light like a robin’s egg that with layer on layer could go towards teal. I experimented with the dyes to create different effects, most of them coming out somewhere between “camo” and mud. Every once in a while, I’d get something I liked, a pink, white and yellow striped one or something and set it into the cardboard holder to dry.

I loved eggs. I liked them boiled, scrambled, over easy and especially sunny side up. My favorite treat for starting out a vacation was to stop at the Royal Castle for a breakfast of sunny side up eggs, grits and French fries. It was the south. It was the fifties and sixties. We didn’t know what cholesterol was. We didn’t know why people had heart attacks. Things like eggs and grits and potatoes were good for you then.

“Mommy, baby chicks come from eggs, right?”

She stopped in dread. She did not want to have this conversation, not with a 5 year old. The Ace of Wands, the essence of life, growth, new projects, the beginning of beginnings had sneaked into the conversation and was there blazing before her like a torch held by angry villagers pounding on the door of the fugitive. She had been chased down before she was ready to be caught.

Art Postcard Tarot
(c) copyright 2010 Marcia McCord

“Yes,” she said slowly, stopping whatever housework she was doing at the time and turning to me. I could tell she was afraid. I couldn’t tell why. Baby chicks weren’t scary. They were fuzzy and yellow and cute and peeped and had bright black eyes.

“Not all eggs have baby chicks. Some of them are just eggs, right?” After all, I’d eaten a lot of eggs by then and never once found a baby chick. Wouldn’t that be a surprise? It would be the jack in the box of nature, to find a baby chick as a surprise in your Easter basket one morning.

“Yes,” she said, a little more confident, hoping we were just on the topic of baby chicks.

“And the mommy chicken sits on them and keeps them warm until they hatch.” I had a vision of a clean wooden crate with nice clean straw, a box just high enough for a chicken to step into in a clean dry place, sheltered from rain, safe from predators.

“Yes,” she said, a little more relaxed. At least we were going forward with the nice, caring mommy chicken and the fuzzy baby chicks and not backward to the origins.

“Did I come from an egg?”

I had in mind something like an Easter egg, something with a pretty shell with lots of colors, not just pink like my Mom always picked out for me. I wanted yellows and blues and greens and oranges too. I was pretty sure I wasn’t boiled first because then, well, I wouldn’t hatch.

On guard again. “Yes.” Her eyes opened wide with their storm-cloud blue sparkling a little with laser beam focus. We were suddenly in dangerous territory again. She inhaled one long deep breath and held it.

“Did you sit on me, too, like the mommy chicken?”

She looked at me and blinked and suddenly laughed. “Yes,” she said. I laughed too. I couldn’t imagine my mother sitting on a box with hay in it. She was much too proper to do that. Her dresses would get hay on them and get dusty. How she must have suffered so to have me! But she had kept me warm until I hatched so that must mean she loved me. I was satisfied.

“I think I’d rather have a baby duck instead of a baby chick, Mommy.” And I went back to my stuffed toys and the stories they told. My mother resumed breathing normally.

My day was sunny side up, and I was satisfied with my origins.

Best wishes.

The Ace of Round Oak Tables




I’ve been hit with the inspiration stick again. I thought this was just an anomaly and that I had recovered from last year’s overdose of creative juices. But, no.

My new deck, the Tea Tarot, is at the printer now and I hope to have it available at the end of April. My goal is to drag some copies to the Readers Studio 2011 in New York that last weekend.

You haven’t heard of the Readers Studio? I went for the first time last year and was treated like a queen. It did help that my banquet costume was the Queen of Pentacles. Sometimes, if you want to be treated like a queen, you do need to wear a crown. And a regal gown helps too. I was the Queen of Indulgence last year, dressed in my crimson and gold. There were several other Queens of Pentacles last year, too. One of the nice things about fun times with a large group of tarot readers is that we really don’t care if there is more than one representation of a card.

I’m not sure what I’ll be treated like this year, if it’s dependent on my costume. But I know based on the people I met last year and those I know through various social media that the gang is a nice bunch. Some are shy and some are bold. Some read professionally and some read just for themselves. They may be history lovers who crave old images of the Marseilles-style decks. They may be Crowley-Thoth fans. They may love the imagery from the Rider-Waite-Smith decks and their many, many clones. They may be Manga fans, Steampunk-knowledgeable, Lenormand-lovers and there are at least three GO players. Some have encyclopedic knowledge of symbolism, history, color, costume, psychology, metaphysics and beliefs. Some are new to it all. But they all have in common a love of tarot and a thirst to learn just a little bit more.

This year we’re going to have a parade of tarot for those of us brazen enough to be part of the pageant. My fond wish would be that we had a representative from each of the major arcana to echo the procession of triumphs from northern Italy. I was brave this year and determined to be one of the major card characters. I have the dress, the props, the whole catastrophe. I’m ready!

I’m almost ready, anyway. I did make significant headway this evening after work with a brief trip to my local craft chain store where they had what I needed, thank goodness, for both the outfit and the packaging for my new deck. I’m steering clear of releasing details, you notice. It’s not easy when you’re about to bubble over with excitement.

But that’s what happens when I get inspired. It’s that Ace of Wands thing that sets off a chain reaction of all kinds of connections and ideas. It can be like a great big match that sets me on fire with ideas, big and small, details and broad brushes. It usually means that I stay up late and wake up wishing I had not stayed up late.

This is really an Ace of Wands time of year, too, when spring tugs at the earth. Whether you are in a milder climate like mine where my lilacs, calla lilies and freesias are blooming or if you are just now suspecting there are crocus under all that snow, new growth is happening. There will be spring. There will be flowers. There will be green leaves on those trees. The robins and cedar waxwings have stripped all the red berries from the shrub outside my office window. The snowball bush is leafing out. The camellias next door have bloomed and browned. The finches have run out of birdseed twice since Christmas, at least the part the squirrel-acrobat did not steal. There will be spring.

A couple of friends and I got together for what was supposed to be our Christmas get-together last weekend. We had been trying to exchange Christmas gifts and circumstances conspired to delay our good time. But we sat down for a fabulous forbidden Benedict at the counter at Marvin’s in Novato, waiting patiently outside in the not-quite-drizzling weather for a seat. We exchanged presents and hugs and talked about our fast-approaching weekend getaway in the Northern California redwoods.

Like some flowers, some ideas grow only on new growth but some grow only on old stems. We have been friends for 20 years and every year we give ourselves a project, something just for ourselves. This year, the idea stemmed from the terrible recent events in Japan and the knowledge that we all live in an earthquake zone, all under the warnings of “The Big One.” That inspired me to suggest that we all create, and decorate of course, our own home emergency kits. There are some excellent lists of things to put in this kit. We all agreed that we would need to “bling it up” to personalize our kits. To meet the sometimes beer budget with always-champagne tastes, we determined we would let each one purchase her own carrier. I found a perfectly good one at the local drugstore for $6 but I’m sure I may see something far classier than mine. I suggested that along with the requisite sparkly stuff, glow-in-the-dark decorations were likely in order. After all, in an emergency, I’m going to want to find that bag and there may not be electricity.

We turned to thoughts of spangles, beads, glitter and glue-guns and determined that the antique shop down the street could have some elegant old rhinestone pieces or interesting buttons to add to the project. And there I saw it. No, not a sparkly! It was my very own Ace of Wands. It was the round oak pedestal table with the lion paws I had envisioned for years in my dining room, complete with 4 leaves. And while it wasn’t quite a song, it was a price I was willing to pay. Happy dance! I have found my birthday present to myself!

So in honor of spring and inspiration and my new table, which seats 6 comfortably without even using the leaves, I made a card for a deck that doesn’t exist. It’s my very own Ace of Wands, now sitting in my dining room waiting for its first meal, or game of dominoes or tarot spread.

May inspiration grab you by the shirt-tail and swing you around in the spring air so that you soar to new heights and feel the buzz of new life, whether your stems are old or new!

Best wishes!

*** *** ***

Find out more about the Readers Studio 2011 here: http://www.tarotschool.com/RS11/index.html

And for more information about the Tea Tarot and my other decks, visit http://marciamccordtarotreader.blogspot.com/p/tarot-decks.html

The Inspiration to Quit

The Ace of Wands is a card that signifies energy. It’s the new inspiration, the new project, the start of something big. It’s not just an idea or thought but the urge, the surge of fiery energy that pushes us into something new and different. OK, yes and sometimes it’s that 2”x 4” that we hit ourselves over the head with to get our own attention. It’s the match that lights our attention, helps us warm to a concept. It’s the lightning strike of impulse. It’s the “grip” when you get a grip on things. It’s life force itself.

This Monday morning, it’s a cup of very strong tea to give me the jolt I need. I think I’m still recovering from Friday night’s Day Job festivities that didn’t end until 2 a.m. Saturday. At 2 a.m. the veneer of civilization had worn off for me and when the team, who had been working every bit as long as I had and more, asked for my input I blurted, “I AM DONE!” At least everyone laughed. I had voiced the common thread for the evening.

While a long Friday night like that can lower my I.Q. for an entire weekend, I did still find the energy to do some things I wanted to do. Saturday afternoon, I zipped over to ArtCentric in Benicia, California to execute a ceramics project that had stirred my imagination. While I was there, I was inspired to ask the owner about alternatives to a half-formed thought that been bouncing around in my head. Then I hit the office supply store for a couple of experimental Avery labels. And, since it was so close, I dropped into Michaels to solidify an artistic impulse which manifested itself into a Fiskars paper trimmer, very handy for future creative efforts too and perhaps just the solution to my label situation. Avery may make a million different labels but the size I am looking for is just a little smaller than what I found. Inspiration! Trim!

My father used to complain that I was burning my candle at both ends. Being a true fire sign, I was annoyed that there were only two ends to burn. I wanted to do more, not less. But my energy runs out like everyone else’s. It’s just when I’m done, like Friday night, I’m really done. An old boyfriend used to tell me I had two speeds, On and Off. Well, that seems clear.

Not all of my impulses are creative of course. I used to smoke. I can’t imagine smoking now, but I smoked on and off for almost 15 years. And then I quit.

Like a lot of teenagers, I started smoking my mother’s brand of cigarettes because they were “handy,” meaning I didn’t think she would notice if I took a pack of her Pall Mall Menthol Longs from the carton. I had pretty well convinced myself that my smoking wasn’t just to look cool but it probably was. I smoked instead of eating. I gestured with my cigarette for dramatic emphasis. I Bogarted my filtered cigs while playing cards in the university student center. Smoking was “normal” when I was a child. My mother always had one lit in the ashtray if not being actively smoked. But I also remember being horrified watching my father, who did not smoke, light a cigarette to use for 4th of July fireworks the summer I was 13.

I would stop for a while, then start again. One time when I was a reporter for the university student-run radio station, I had returned from a particularly unproductive student council meeting. I was annoyed that the student council had chosen to table discussion of anything meaningful in deference to some trivial topic. I roared into the radio station newsroom, headed for the teletype room, flung my coat on the floor and stomped on it. One of the DJ’s came out to see what the commotion was, a cigarette dangling from his lips. I looked up at him and glared, “Throckmorton, GIVE ME THAT CIGARETTE.” He did, without hesitation. He apparently could identify a dangerous animal when he saw one. He had no wish to be collateral damage. And I smoked again.

In my mid-20’s I switched brands a couple of times and landed on Arctic Lites. They were long, menthol and “lite,” that lie we told ourselves about a cigarette actually being healthier than another. I went on my first international trip, to Bermuda, and was scandalized by the ridiculously high prices of cigarettes there, $1.00 per pack. Arctic Lites had a peculiar manufacturing flaw that contributed to my quitting smoking altogether. About halfway through the cigarette, the burning ash would fall off. This happened at the least convenient times, most memorably into the skirt of my then-favorite dress while I was driving on the Interstate. My dress was ruined, of course, and chasing a wad of fire while you’re driving is something like having a bee in the car. I lived, at least, and no other drivers were harmed in the process.

Cigarettes were a crutch for me like they are for anyone who smokes. They got me through a bleak moment when I had agreed to help my landlord boyfriend clean up one of his student rentals. I took the kitchen and discovered the boys from last semester had left a can of frozen orange juice in the unplugged refrigerator freezer. By the time I got to it with my rubber gloves and cleaning potions, the cardboard sides of the once-frozen now long-thawed OJ were moving, seething, undulating with (God help us) maggots.

The refrigerator was next to an open window and all I had to do was reach in, seize the horror with my Playtex Living Gloved-hand, make a 90 degree turn and drop the thing out the window. It took me three cigarettes to get up the courage to do that. Mmmm, maggots. To this day, I don’t know how I did it.

However, the dress incident and others were starting to weigh more heavily on the “con” side of smoking for me. There were all the places I would not smoke. I wouldn’t smoke in my car anymore because of the falling ash trick. Even though we were still allowed to smoke in the office then, before it was banned, I didn’t want to smoke at my desk. I didn’t want to be the girl at work who set her desk on fire. One of the professors at the university had done that, solidifying his “Mr. Magoo” reputation. That’s all I needed, to be Magooed.

Finally, my eyes went bad. It wasn’t because of the cigarettes, of course, just genetics. I turned 30 and my vision deteriorated so rapidly that my optometrist started to worry I might go blind. When my eyes stabilized, I treated myself to those newfangled plastic contact lenses. And something about getting contacts and smoking just didn’t mix well for me. I started to count all the reasons and places I would not smoke anyway and figured out that the price of my cigarettes would pay for my contacts. Add to that, the incidence of heart attack and other bad things happening to most women who smoke takes a steep climb at age 30. Halfway through a pack of those unreliable Arctic Lites, I quit, never picking them up again.

Later, diagnosed with asthma, I was glad I didn’t prolong my self-destructive and expensive habit. I’ve come full circle and am now one of the folks who are horrified when people do smoke, although I still have sympathy with my smoker friends. I do remember what it was like.

A few years ago, I had the chance to be a judge at the local junior high science fair. One young man had done a survey to find out the most effective reason to quit and the most effective method of quitting. He had a personal stake in the study. His mother had agreed that once he found out the best way to quit and why, she would. This good kid, not particularly nerdy or scientific, was inspired by his love for his mother and his desire to keep her with him as long as he could. He surveyed many people and tabulated the results: The best way to quit and stay that way was, he found, to quit “cold turkey” for health reasons. And his mother quit. I gave him the highest marks for his project, not because he was the most scientifically advanced, but because he had used inspiration and love to employ the tool of science to improve the lives of those around him. Now that’s a project.

Best wishes.