Reading for Myself

So many tarot readers say they cannot read for themselves. In fact, in the many Tarot “myths” abounding, one of the more popular ones especially about 40 years ago and persisting today is that a Tarot reader “shouldn’t” or “can’t” read for themselves.

In an effort to bust myths about Tarot, Mary K. Greer wrote a classic called Tarot for Yourself, published in 1984. It’s still available and a good workbook for Tarot readers who want to do the work, the real work of The Hermit’s introspection. There are exercises, meditations; we’re talking homework here. But like some of the other best Tarot exercises, when you can feel those muscles at the end of the workout, you know you’ve learned something. And you probably can read for yourself.

I’ve taken a trip through older books lately, so I can’t really classify Mary’s book with the oldies from the 19^th century, but in the 1980’s, Mary’s book was trailblazing as part of the modern Tarot movement. We give “props” to Mary for this and her many other books and contributions, perhaps not enough props!

I thought I’d draw a few cards for myself about my Tarot experiences over the years.  I drew three cards.

Before we get to those, I should say that I started out first reading regular playing cards as a child to amuse myself. I particularly liked the Queen of Clubs. When I bought my first Tarot decks, like most other people I stuck pretty closely to the little white book that came with the Rider Waite Smith deck and David Palladini’s Aquarian Tarot. It took a while for me to let go of the training wheels. One of the features of most of those earlier Tarot instructions was a large spread called the Celtic Cross.

Even the name sounded like mystical powers! Ten cards in a spread started out, “This card covers you,” signaling the topic of the reading and perhaps noting the quality of the card that could help you; then, “This card crosses you” went on to represent the challenges and hurdles to be overcome.  The Celtic Cross proceeds card-by-card with each position of the spread representing a unique aspect of your situation.

I probably used the Celtic Cross spread for the last time about 30 years ago, maybe more. The items covered in that spread can be a pretty good comprehensive reading but I quickly found that, reading for myself, I may not care to go through each position and ponder, say, the past influences on the current situation, or what other people think about it all in my reading. For instance, if the topic were my cat’s health, I really didn’t care if people thought I was an insane Cat Lady. Bless them all, each and every one, but the topic was what are the best things I can do all around while my cat is ill. Peer pressure had very little to do with that.

I think it’s this comfort zone readers come to when they realize they probably don’t need a 10-card spread to tell them what they need to know. Many professional readers will use 2- to 7-card spreads for just about everything.

There are exceptions of course. My friend Kristine Gorman (catch her weekly radio show Visionary Woman Tarot with Kristie Gorman on Mondays, streaming live on KSVY FM http://sunfmtv.com/) uses variations of the Celtic Cross and 3-card spreads, dealing cards on top of cards as the reading unfolds. She’s a great intuitive reader and someone I go to for readings when I want a second opinion.

Robert Place showed the Readers Studio attendees a mind-blowing spread of three cards per chakra, so do that math there and you’ve got a bunch of cards on the table. While listening to Bob’s explanation and instruction, I realized that this reading could take a good two hours done properly. I wondered if I had the attention span to last through it, let alone one of my clients. But, remember, we can use the Tarot for multiple reasons and a long meditation on chakras and blocks could be just the ticket.

Still, I’m more inclined to use fewer cards now and go more deeply into those fewer cards. One of the temptations of using more cards or a large spread is to ignore the cards that aren’t making sense to you at the time. To me, that’s the Big Signal that I need to Pay Attention in a reading. Glossing over a message is so often what we do in everyday life. I don’t do a reading to get the same perspective that ordinary observation gives me. If it doesn’t make sense right away, it’s like the thing I need to know.

So I pulled three cards: Page of Cups, 3 of Swords, The Emperor.

From David Palladini's Aquarian Tarot

The first two cards made me think of all the experiences I’ve had as an intuitive reader. My earliest experiences so often brought the sense that something bad or difficult was going to happen. The Page of Cups receives messages and learns from the realm of spirit and emotion, the essence of the intuitive reader. The 3 of Swords signals sorrow, actually just one of its interpretations.

I’ve been thinking lately about the way intuitive readers or psychics in the news almost always make the sensational headlines with predictions of big, scary events. I remember a Tuesday night when I was restless and could not settle down. Finally, I drew three cards with the question (poorly worded and certainly not recommended for a good reading), “WHAT???” The cards I drew were eye-poppingly terrible and I realized something really awful was going to happen. I followed up with a question about who is affected and finally got the sense that it was no one I knew personally; a few days later the tsunami hit Japan. Now, this would, of course be a much better story if I had put that reading out in some public forum with a clear date/timestamp. I didn’t. It was, after all, a reading to help me figure out why I was restless.

One of the things I maintain is that Big Bad News is one of the easier things to predict because if you sense the news coming, getting the message that something Big and Bad is going to happen is a lot like saying you could hear someone screaming in your face.

Another thing about sensing difficult events as a professional reader means I feel an obligation to help people through some difficult times. And sometimes some of the reasons just defy logic which actually is another aspect of the 3 of Swords. Logic sometimes fails and must come home to the heart.

Finally, here’s the kicker: The Emperor. So I spent a lot of this talking about the easy part, the intuitive reader senses sorrowful subjects. But what’s the Emperor doing here?

There are plenty of possibilities, but one of them is that I need to remember that while I’m walking other people through difficulties, I’m also one of the resources in my own empire that I need to defend with the setting of boundaries. The Emperor is in charge.

I can take a hint. I was blue today, so I took a luxurious bath with bath salts and lavender. That and some enthusiastic adjustment from my chiropractor made a huge difference. Because no matter what the news is, I’m in charge of the choices I make next.

Best wishes.

Gimme a Light

You’ve done this, right? You’ve told yourself that you could walk through your house with the lights off because you know where everything is, then stubbed your toe on a chair or stepped on one of the cats’ or kids’ toys that wasn’t supposed to be there.

Just about everyone I know wishes they could see things more clearly.

“I just want to know if I should keep going to school or quit and try to get a job.”

“I just want to know if he really, really cares about me.”

“I just want to know when this is going to happen because I am so tired of waiting.”

Yeah, me too. Seriously.

Well, in the absence of a clear choice, I worked full time AND went to school. I wasn’t getting any younger and I certainly wasn’t too old, although I had had feedback from my contemporaries that, well, I probably was.

“That’s your choice,” I told them. “I’m going to do it.”

That was thirty years ago. Now, I’m astonished that anyone would think I was too old for anything in 1983. I’d say that I have some real physical constraints now, but not many. One of my friends and team members at two companies noted that, due to my scooter accident, my pro football career was most likely down the tubes. The doctor confirmed I should not ski or play tennis; it’s a knee thing. But, the good news then and now is that I hadn’t actually had aspirations of greatness in professional or even amateur sports, especially the knee-intensive variety.

Running my hand down my silky and comfortably rounded form, I answered the doctor, “I see why you might mistake me for a tennis player or skier….”

He was a smart guy but he didn’t have much of a sense of humor. He was, after all, paid to fix my knee and not laugh at my jokes. They tell me the osteo surgeons are often grumpy. But that was more than ten years ago, too, and, heck, I can walk. That’s pretty amazing.

But that time in between, the times where I was stubbing my toes in the dark on the path of my life, between deciding to go back to college again and getting the degree, between the accident and the first confident steps I took after months of physical therapy and surgery, I could have used a light.

When we are in a place of uncertainty, we think we want a guiding light, a Star to fix upon, to shine down on us and show us the Right Thing to Do. There’s a really important hair-splitting point about that shining star to guide us. We pick the star; the star doesn’t pick us.

Oh, of course it would be easier if the star picked us. Sure, if your heart’s desire just fell into your lap, well, wow, that would clear out a lot of uncertainty. Wouldn’t it? What if you didn’t have to choose it, set your sights on it, plot a course or at least start out in some direction towards it? What if you didn’t stumble along the way or momentarily wander off course? What if you didn’t have to work so darned hard for it? What if you didn’t have sleepless nights wondering if it would happen because you want it so badly?

Would a star still be a star?

Would it just be a point on a map or an X on a calendar? Today, I got my heart’s desire without lifting a finger. Ho hum.

What would you do tomorrow? Do you go to second on your list? Do you stay home and play with your toys until you’re bored?

Can’t there be something between stumbling in the dark and finish line? What if, just what if you could see your way clearly to make sure you were taking all the right steps to get to place you want to be? Wouldn’t that be “the best”? Maybe it would.

But, maybe not. After all, what makes you think you’re so smart? You may have a goal that sounds like the right answer. But, ask yourself, have you ever been wrong about what you wanted? Remember the time you insisted that you wanted the chocolate-beer-bubblegum ice cream and would not be persuaded of anything else only to find out it was pretty awful? Have you ever been sure you could fit into those shoes that looked so good only to be an agony halfway through the Big Event? Did you ever fight with your family about going out with the Wrong Person only to find out, darn it, they were right?

I’m in the middle of one of those walking-in-the-dark things myself right now. I’m working to stay conscious of the fact that I choose the Star, the Star doesn’t choose me. I’m not a victim of my life. I’m an active participant. I have a general goal in mind, something specific and attainable but not so locked into exactness that I’m out of options or alternatives.

One of my favorite exercises, when I’m faced with a goal that seems difficult to attain or at least farther away than arm’s reach, is something I think of as the Hermit’s Lamp. The Hermit has a darkened path, an interior journey, because so often when we face these walking-in-the-dark times much of the work is individual. He’s a bit better prepared for his travel than the Fool because he has a cloak to keep out the rain and cold, a walking stick to keep him steady and maybe most importantly, the Hermit has a lamp. His lamp has a star in it. That star is a smaller version than the one up in the sky. Think of it as personal sized, trying your goal on with the clarity that it can bring to your path. Through the light of your goal, you see your next step. It’s not sunrise yet, with the whole landscape lit up. It’s not moonlight that shifts and changes like mist. The light you carry with you is the light of your goal. It’s the light you picked. It’s not even the most important part of the Hermit’s tale.

Taking that next step is.

Best wishes.

Readers Studio 2012 Part 1

I went to New York to be the Page of Swords, to soak up new information, new ideas, new ways of looking at things, to listen to what others had to say. I went there to be all the other pages too, to soak up inspiration, emotion and cool tarot decks.

I wanted to talk with people in person whom I text, exchange Facebook and Twitter messages, meet through Donnaleigh de LaRose’s Beyond Worlds on Blog Talk Radio or through telephone classes with the Amberstones’ Tarot School. I wanted to see what Jeannette and Dan had for me at the Tarot Garden, decks new and old, bargains and, ahem, Big Kid Tarot decks. I wanted to see what the stars of the Tarot world had to say and even what they avoided saying. I wanted full immersion Readers Studio. I got it.

As thrilling as Bob Place and Sasha Graham’s trip to the ancient tarot decks was for me, that was, after all, just the preview of the reason I had spent all day on an airplane last Monday. Let the official treats begin, especially since the appetizer had been so savory!

Thursday I realized I had not signed up for Wald and Ruth Ann Amberstone’s early bird class on the Court Cards. I had had a few deep dives into the courts in the last year or so, had even taught my own class. Happy that they accepted walk-ins, my cards and I made our way to a table and we began what seemed like a benign process of picking out our court cards, selecting our favorite suit, selecting our favorite rank, our favorite card within suits, etc. When we laid out the cards from our four stacks in a 4 x 4 grid, we had a spread which showed our favorite card in the upper left through our least favorite in the lower right. Taken together, it was an almost uncomfortable revelation of the make-up of our own personality, showing our tolerances, our strong likes and dislikes and even the “ho-hum” section. Well, there I was, spread like “filet of soul” upon the table before me, with my sunshine and shadow, my strengths and foibles. What started out to be a great little court cards review turned into the best and scariest of the inner journey of the Hermit.

Maybe there was a reason I picked the Hermit as my costume for the Saturday night dinner?

Friday afternoon James Wells took us on a Dante’s Inferno walk through the stages of grief, a sucker punch of a reading session that I must have sorely needed. It was powerful, to say the least. James shared his own poignant story of his father’s recent death. I was glad we were all in there together in our guided tour of the Underworld with James and, like Dante, we were allowed out again to breathe the quiet air of earthly pleasures.

Earthly pleasures turned into a quick round of the travel version of Jude Alexander’s Tarot Game including my new friend from Scotland, Andrew Duncan. It’s a cut-down version of the larger game with fewer parts but no less fun. And when you’re done, you’ve got a reading! Had to get one at Tarot Media Company!

I wandered towards the hotel bar and restaurant and found a big round table of folks to enjoy jokes and the occasional serious discussion with: Aulruna, Becky, Ciro, DemonGoddess, Frances, Rana, and oh, I just KNOW I’m leaving people out. It was big, lively table and we had a nice light-hearted dinner. Note: You must be 21 or older to ask Ciro about Superman. The discussion that followed that, however, made him blush, so we feel everything evened out.

I wandered downstairs, early as it turns out, for the first of the optional evening workshops. Now, this is a True Confession. I have begun to wonder if my enrollment in Thalassa’s classes is the kiss of death for attendance. This is an unreasonable fear because the times it has happened before, no one knew of my enrollment besides Thalassa and me and sometimes my friend Kristine Gorman. The last couple of classes I have had with her, I’ve been the only other one there and started to think it was me. Deodorant? Check. You know the list of things you go through. So I waited until at least four other people had signed up for her class, then put my name in.

It turns out I needn’t have worried. The class was well attended and Thalassa always has a great trip through the Dark Side of Tarot with a pie-in-the-face approach to confronting those scary cards. If you haven’t taken one of her classes, you’re missing out. Just saying.


Arriving at her classroom early, though, I was greeted by none other than Mary K. Greer who was teaching her class in the room next door. Or, rather, she would be except the dividing wall between the two classrooms had not been set up. We looked at each other and decided that while we could call the event people at the hotel, we were also reasonably intelligent (ok, Mary’s reasonably brilliant and I’m just following along) and could figure out how to get a fuzzy wall to make two classrooms out of one. It was a fun exercise in real world problem solving and I felt happy that I had had a behind the scenes moment with one of my favorite tarot authors.

Evening class was over at 10 pm. The cool kids retreated to the shelter of the bar and other happy tarot people. I, however, did not. The Spectre of Work arose at its appointed time like some Dickensian Ghost of Software Implementation Present and I dashed up to my hotel room and my three (not a typo) computers I brought to get through the evening. I worked from 10 pm until 3 am, got up again at 7 am and worked until 9:30 am, missing part of Shawn Nacol’s class.

Best wishes!

Tony Tony Turn Around

“Where is it? I saw it and I know it’s here somewhere!”

It’s 2011 and I wanted my pocket calendar. Now.

Yes, yes, I know, I’m a technology professional along with everything else and I have a million ways to keep my calendar through my cell phone, computer, Blackberry, etc. I happen to like calendars that are little books that I can stuff in my purse. Little books only get misplaced. Their batteries don’t die; they don’t fizzle in Merlot accidents or untimely dives into vessels of water in the bathroom or anywhere else. They might be damaged or unsavory after such events but paper still talks even after torture. There’s something intimate about paper and pen that is lost in the electronic medium. Low-tech has its pluses too.

Take my haircut appointments, for instance. It’s really important for me to note in my appointment book whether the time I listed is the time I need to leave the house to get to the appointment on time or the actual appointment time. Sometimes that kind of notation is more easily made on paper. At least it feels that way to me. Debbie really appreciates it when I show up on time. Or at all.

And I really like my calendars to be different colors in different years, at a glance, in my purse. 2009 was bright tomato red Moroccan leather. 2010 was a sedate oxblood red, only because it didn’t come in any more startling colors. 2011, wherever it went, is an eye-popping chartreuse, basically “bug-squash” green, almost fluorescent. You’d think something that bright would be hard to lose. Never underestimate the power of an untidy packrat!

I used to use those cute little cheap plastic coated calendars with kittens or seashells on the front and the month at a glance with each day as its own square. Over time, those squares have gotten smaller and smaller (it just can’t be my eyes going bad) and I need just a little more room. I liked the compact and lightweight aspect of those little calendars and so transitioned to the slim notebook style bound in some delicious and smooth leather, hopefully in bright colors. I had black before, but it gets awfully dark in that purse. My purse isn’t that deep until you’re looking for a key or your casino card or something else that has sifted through the big stuff to nearly but not quite the bottom. Then I need one of those deep water submarines they use in the Monterey trench to find sea critters never before seen by humans, one with really bright lights. Something dark down in the bottom, like a calendar with a black cover, could hide for weeks without being found. Even those deep-sea critters use their own home made glow in the dark stuff to get around down there.

I really loved the calendars I’ve had in the past. They have had almost everything in it. There were color maps of the world in last year’s. One year there was a very cool map of the London Underground, not that I live in London or anything. But it was like memory lane or maybe memory tube stop to look at it. Remember that terrific pizza we had at the Embankment? It was heaven after one too many mushy peas experiences in the pubs that trip. But there is always seriously useful stuff in them too along with the requisite calendar days to write in the appointments, birthdays and reminders for the year. I pasted little souvenirs of the year in last year’s, like my dentist’s phone number stickers. And my favorite little memento last year was the autograph of a young man who had been the voice of the baby in the movie The Incredibles, one Eli Fucile. Incredibly, we were having a hamburger in Sonoma and happened to strike up conversation with the gentleman’s father. By then, The Voice was a strapping young man who was pleased to write his name in the back of my calendar. My husband and I of course admired his work and hoped to hear more of him in the future.

So where on earth was it? Lightning-lime green should stand out like…like…well, heck, I like lime green a lot but still it’s a peculiar size lime-green thing and I remember having it in my hands. I remember putting it in a tote or purse or something. I took apart the purse I recently transferred from, realizing that recent was a few months ago now. It was a useful exercise at least. I found a lot of other stuff I was looking for including that spare house key I had been looking for. I found a key ring I got at a technical conference that is solar powered and blinks when it’s charged up, good for those deep dives into the purse for something that was recently exposed to sunlight at least. I spent time taking it apart to see if I could put my own name in it instead of the company being advertised. I can’t. Bother. But the solar cell is still very cool.

Calendar, calendar, calendar. I went through all kinds of totes and bags from various events with no luck. No luck, except to find other useful items which had not been put in their proper places like a zillion ball-point pens and a nice little flashlight.

The Hermit from the
Victorian Trade Card Tarot
(c) Copyright 2010 Marcia McCord

The light flashing thing was starting to gel with me. In the tarot, the Hermit is the seeker who lights his way with a lamp. If he didn’t have the lamp, he’d be stumbling around in the darkness. My husband called in, “Do you need any help.” “No,” I puffed forlornly, wishing the calendar really was fluorescent and I could turn off the lights and see the glow. Like most Hermit moments, looking for something only you can find is something that feels best done alone. You turn over the rocks in your soul and poke at the crawly things a bit. You don’t really welcome visitors because, well, they might touch something and you’d have to start over. I had put it somewhere. I had to find it.

“Tony, Tony, turn around. Something’s lost and can’t be found.” An old Catholic tradition says that St. Anthony of Padua is helpful in retrieving lost articles, provided a small charity donation is made to the first worthy cause you see. At least that’s how my husband tells it. I like St. Anthony. He was Franciscan. He practiced preaching to fish. Besides the saint thing, he also seems to have been a nice guy.

Along the way, I did find a half-full container of catnip my House Elf had helpfully squirreled away into a box with a painful journal written by my father, a couple of copies of the magazine my mother had been an associate editor for and some sheet music. And my ardent admirer, Tony the cat, was trying to assist without getting in the way and would benefit from this scavenger hunt from this find. He’s a dark (some would say dim also) mackerel tabby with a purr like an outboard motor and a devotion to me that in cat culture would be considered no less than a religious calling. He sniffed every bag, stuck his head in every box, and earnestly listened to my sputterings about my purchasing a 2011 calendar in the summer of 2010 with all likelihood of never seeing it in 2011.

And then I experienced a moment of calm. Tony beat me to the bedroom door where he knows another stash of fresher and more aromatic catnip is hidden. He ran straight for the bedside table drawer but I muttered, “Suitcase.”

Hmm. Wonder if I put that silly calendar in my suitcase when we went on vacation in September? One unzip and there it was, green, near-fluorescent, pristine and ready for 2011. So Tony got his catnip reward for “finding” my lost calendar, grateful for any charity, and I now have the beginnings of organization for the year. Now I have to put away all these pens and stuff. Nice kitty.

Best wishes!

What’s New at the Magician’s Table

And now a word from the shameless self-promotion department (borrowed with respect from those crazy guys at Car Talk on Public Radio):

• Picture Postcard Tarot SOLD OUT
• Two more decks in progress and available now for pre-sales reservation!
• Tarot Class September 19, 2010, Benicia, CA

I am just thrilled that my Picture Postcard Tarot (self-published limited edition) has sold out. Almost all US mailings have been sent; the International mailings are being held waiting for a couple of spare King and Queen of Wands.

My first venture into self-publishing was exciting, obsessive, perhaps even mirage-like in its quality for me. Just a few of the decks suffered from a problem where the King and Queen of Wands were stuck together. When pulled apart, they left part of the images on each other, just like all the CSI shows tell you about the rules of physical evidence. And boo-hiss to that little snafu! The printer, however, has been just excellent about it and is shipping the replacement cards to me now. So if those over-heated King and Queen of Wands are stuck on your copy of the deck, never fear, cooler cards will also be yours.

Who knew Wild Bill Hickok had such a thing for that Party Girl? Get a room!

Many thanks to those who ordered one or more decks, making this experiment possible.

**Update!  Aeclectic Tarot has posted a review and images of the Picture Postcard Tarot.  Click here
http://www.aeclectic.net/tarot/cards/picture-postcard/index.shtml

***

Following closely on the heels of my first tarot deck are my next two tarot decks. Like the Picture Postcard Tarot, these will be self-published numbered limited editions. However, both of these decks will be limited editions of 100 instead of 50. The cost will be $25.00 USD per deck plus postage. I intend to publish both before the end of the year and am taking pre-order reservations now. If you would like one or more of these decks, please contact me at my email address which is listed in several places in this blog for more information.

The Art Postcard Tarot is the second in my study of antique postcards from 1900-1909. It is a deck of 78 cards, plus a “Happy Squirrel” and a cover card. Again all images were taken from real antique postcards from that time; the images themselves may be older, but somewhere someone thought it would make a good visual to send their message. The artwork is generally light-hearted, even when dealing with difficult themes. There are portraits, serious art, cartoons and illustrations.

The cover card shows a “romantic harem” theme with the lovelies contemplating their own fortune. The Ace of Swords is atypical of the usual portrayal but shows that not all our new ideas are necessarily good ones. The Hermit walks the night alone. The Queen of Wands is a lively redhead bursting with energy.

The Victorian Trade Card Tarot is the third of my limited edition decks. It too is a deck of 78 cards, plus a “Happy Squirrel” and a cover card. The images on this tarot were taken from trade cards used as business cards between 1870-1890. Trade cards were an interesting phenomenon that had a short but exciting life in the history of advertising. Even during their own time, they were collected and pasted into albums as novelties. They came in all shapes and sizes and, unlike our business cards today, were not personal contacts at a company but rather advertised a business or product in general. Again, I’ve aimed for a light-hearted theme. Often the pictures on the trade cards had little to do with the product being advertised. Looking at some of the ads on television lately, I think we may have come full circle!

The cover card shows a wizened fortune teller and her young clients. Is she telling them to listen to her words or explaining that she has to eat, too? The Emperor is advertising ham even if the pig looks more like an elephant. The Devil is demon temptation, especially for the shoe-lovers among us. Who hasn’t heard that little voice over the left shoulder whisper, “But they are so YOU!” The 6 of Swords illustrates how the picture often had little to do with the product. The advertising for tea is seemingly disconnected from our well-dressed travelers, unless you consider Mom needed that extra shot of caffeine to get the boat going.

***

Finally, I’m teaching a class using tarot for creative inspiration on Sunday afternoon, 3 pm – 5 pm, September 19, 2010, at Angel Heart 4 You, 501 First Street, Benicia, California. The class is $35 per person. It is called Fire - Inspired Tarot. Collecting, Writing and Creating Tarot and will feature the work of local artists, plus a hands-on workshop for you to create your own art using the tarot as inspiration. I’ll talk just a little about creating these limited edition decks and what it takes to get them from concept to realization, a Fool’s Journey in itself! I’ll also bring some of my collection of antique and limited edition “art decks” with a little bit of information about each of them. It will be a fun class. If you have already created something inspired by the tarot, you are encouraged to bring that. Advance reservations are encouraged (you can pay when you get there). Call Angel Heart 4 You at 707-745-2024 and sign up. There’s no telling what we will come up with!

Best wishes!

Hello Darkness, My Old Friend

Thanks to the miracle of DVR technology, my husband and I got a rare treat this weekend. We had dinner at home and watched the PBS Special on the Library of Congress Gershwin Award for Popular Song given to Paul Simon. Simon and Garfunkel were icons of my youth, heralds of my awakening into the world of adult “freedom,” the land of altered expectations and persistent search for the place of self, meaning and value.

Of course, we’re a little late viewing this. The prize was awarded to him in May 2007. But we’ve been busy. You know how it is. What memories this music brought back to me!

“Sounds of Silence” was released on Simon and Garfunkel’s first album in 1964. I was just a pup, strictly speaking not yet a teenager, but I had been listening to popular radio for years. One Christmas years before, my Dad had given my brother and me a brother-sister set of RCA transistor radios, “newfangled” in their time. My brother’s was green and mine was off-white. They used huge 9-volt batteries that I was pretty sure could electrocute me but touched my tongue to the posts anyway to see if I would get a shock. For a long time my radio graced the headboard of my bed, fashionably fitting into my pink and brown décor. I tuned to my local popular music station in Orlando and can even remember their call sign jingle, “W-L-O-F, Channel 95!”

I tend to mark my musical life in terms of earth-shattering events, basically pre-Beatles and post-Beatles. Even my mom liked “I Want to Hold Your Hand”. It was so fresh, so upbeat. You have to remember that not all the music of the early 1960’s was upbeat.

In 1960, one of the big hits was “Tell Laura I Love Her,” the dying words of a teenager stuck in a car crash after racing. Presumably, besides the virtue of selling records, this was a message to kids not to race cars or at least for nice girls not to be smitten by boys who drove too fast. Even as a little kid, I realized the haunting quality of this song. Now Laura’s life was always going to be overshadowed by her late almost-fiancée’s undying love, haunted by a car wreck. Something about the ghost of high school past was a little creepy for me, even if it was actually high school future in my particular case. This was one of the times when I preferred to follow my own advice and learn from the mistakes of others. And what about “Big John?” “At the bottom of this mine lies a big, BIG man. Big John.” And don’t forget “Ghost Riders in the Sky.” Yippie-eye-ay. Well, when odd things happen to you when you’re a little kid, validation from outside sources is sort of comforting.

Even the Motown 1964 hit, “Dancing in the Street,” could give me the heebie-jeebies, not because of the lyrics but because of coincidence of timing. The Public Library was remodeling and the kids’ section was closed. I was desperate for a read and picked a book that had kids and dogs on the cover, Where the Red Fern Grows.

OK, in these modern times when we are used to visions of violence on everyday television, this book seems pretty tame. But put it in context, in a world where my brother and I speculated on the color of the shirts worn by the cowboys on Bonanza because we had never seen color TV, where there was a test pattern on the TV if you got up too early and where I thought everyone could see the Cape Canaveral/Cape Kennedy rocket launches from their front lawn. Well, Red Fern was a little more like “Nightmare on Elm Street.” So if you haven’t read the book this is something of a spoiler alert, but one of the kids in the book, one of the bratty ones, not one of the heroes, gets hurt quite badly with an axe.

I pause for a moment for a little more personal context. When I was three, I wanted to help my parents in the yard one sunny fall day, picked up a dull but heavy stone axe and missed the piece of bark I was aiming for between my feet and planted it in my right foot. For that nanosecond before the pain message went all the way from my little foot to my little consciousness, I stared fascinated by the suddenly revealed inside of my foot, thinking to myself, “Wow, you’d never think there was so much stuff in there.” The pain message arrived, I howled and was carried off to the doctor, got stitches, two lollipops instead of the usual one because it only took six people to hold me down while they treated my foot and received my favorite badge of, uh, courage (ok, klutziness per my brother’s correction), my very cool scar. Even at age three, swept off my feet by my panicky mother who was yelling over her shoulder at my father, likely the assignment of blame phase of the incident, I remember thinking with concern that I probably was also going to get in trouble with the neighbors too because they didn’t like us to make noise on Saturday afternoons while they had their naps. Suffice it to say, that I’m not a big fan of axes now and prefer to let others take their turn when such a tool is required.

So there I am reading Where the Red Fern Grows and listening to the radio which happens to be playing, “Dancing in the Street,” during the goriest thing I’ve ever read in my life, fascinated, horrified, titillated, shaking, ready to shut the book if I can’t take it anymore, and my cat, Misty, jumps on the end of my bed.

I screamed, the book and cat went flying down the hall together and “Dancing in the Street” imprints on my little brain as the No. 1 Most Frightening Song of All Time, with my profuse apologies to Martha and the Vandellas. Well, the cat forgave me, I finished the book and the radio continued to be my constant companion. And, oddly enough, I was seldom afraid of anything that happened to me, normal or paranormal, after that. I became a fan of science fiction and horror.

At one point I considered doing post-graduate work on H. P. Lovecraft, but abandoned him for a more workaday world. I still revel in the story of H. P.’s wedded “bliss” however: Here’s a guy who lived with his aunts, stayed up all night with the shades drawn and slept all day, wrote some really twisted stuff and, uncharacteristically, he marries the girl of his dreams. All was not roses with the Lovecrafts, apparently, for soon thereafter, they officially and mutually agreed to continue their relationship “by correspondence.” Ya’ gotta love them odd ducks. And I reflect that I may be a duck of some similar persuasion, more likely Daffy than Donald or Daisy.

While I loved the Beatles, the Kinks, the whole British Invasion, I was also mad for Simon and Garfunkel. Popular music had always held both a light and dark side for me, but I held the secret of that darkness within me. If I couldn’t tell my family about my paranormal experiences, a simple discussion of Big John or Laura and her dead boyfriend was just as taboo. I was a little blonde, blue-eyed fluffy girl that my mom wanted to be a fashion model to dress up in pinafores and petticoats and black patent leather Mary Janes. It was really clear that the real me, who saw both darkness and light, was most certainly not OK with the fam.

Paul Simon’s songs embraced the difficulties of balancing dark and light. Hello, Darkness, my old friend. I’ve come to talk with you again. And somehow, I felt my inner journey, like the Hermit with his Lamp, seeking truth in the darkness, alone, wasn’t so lonely. I was OK with me even if it scared my mom. I persisted in my connection to the Other, wherever, whatever it is and learned not to frighten my parents with the sounds I heard in silence.

They’re delicate creatures, you know.

Best wishes.