Wednesday, July 8, 2015

Hold the Phone

There was a sudden noise this afternoon. No, actually it was a sudden lack of noise. I was on my work computer fussing over a problem with a document that stubbornly would not display where it was told to display. I had chased the problem down and frustratingly concluded that I had to try again tomorrow. I paused and my computer screen dimmed. That was odd too. I picked up my house phone and realized it wasn't working. In fact the internet was down. I was about to dial my internet provider and realized with a laugh that it was really the power that was off. A quick check on my cell phone confirmed it might be a couple of hours or so. While I still had batteries on my cell phone I sent a note to my boss.
Picture Postcard Tarot
(c) Copyright 2010 Marcia McCord

And for a moment I realized I was out of touch with my workaday world. What little battery life I had left was running out. How odd, I thought, after being so very connected with so many little machines, machines I might have barely missed 20 years ago, I am momentarily "out of touch." What a funny, free feeling. But I was delighted that I had cats, dogs, books, cards, needlework and that spider in the bathroom to occupy me. That's hours of entertainment for my over-active Mercury Mind.

My friend Chea, an astrologer, marveled recently (politely, I might add) at my need for what would likely be entirely too much input for someone else. I agreed with her. Too much was almost enough. I once was faced with an assignment to do just one thing; I couldn't imagine a worse job.

Tracking several things at once feels right to me. I had been keeping an eye on a couple of Tarot threads in Facebook. One of the discussions touched on whether cards could be predictive.

This might astound people who aren't part of my regular crowd of Tarot buddies. How could people who read cards professionally question whether cards could actually be used to look into the future? After all, isn't what what card readers do, tell fortunes, foretell the future?

Seriously, many pro Tarot readers don't believe in predicting the future. What do they read about in the cards? The answer is lots of things. A good interactive session of Tarot can help clarify choices for someone who is struggling with what to do. A deeply spiritual Tarot session can assist a person with dealing with grief or change or just a higher level of consciousness like being present in the moment instead of distracted by past or future anxieties.

One perspective on the future holds that free will and often blind chance muddy the waters of the future so much that those umpteen zillion alternate universes that split off with every decision we make are just too many to pick a future outcome. I respect the people who hold this view. Some of them are my best Tarot friends and good readers. I also hold the other view and do predictive readings. I even agree with the currently-held physics-based concept of the alternate universes at each juncture. Where I disagree with my non-predictive friends is that the ability to sense an outcome is not always so close to a zero percent chance of picking the probable future. True, sometimes it is complete mud.

And then there are those other times.

Another Facebook thread, one from a more famous paranormal investigator/psychic/actor named Chris Fleming asked people if they had ever had a moment of ESP. He went on to specify, Did you ever know something in advance that you had no real way to know?

I thought, Sure. Lots of times. And I flashed back to the 1970s.

No, no, not THAT kind of flashback! I never experimented with hallucinogenics even though they seemed fairly readily available. I always figured my best asset was between my ears with my extreme vanity for my feet coming in a distant second. But flash back, I did.

It was August in the mid-70s when the dream started. It happened over and over. I would pull cards about it, but it was still a mystery to me. The experience in my dream was actually being in the car during the accident. I heard myself scream. Crumbles of glass flew at me as I turned my head over my left shoulder in the direction of impact. The dog jumped in my lap. The car that hit our car was in some way locked in its front end to our driver's side back fender...where the gas cap was. The other car was spinning counter-clockwise in the fog, heavy fog and forcing us off the road, into the ditch. Was it deep? And my ex-husband was fighting to keep the car from rolling, from flipping, from doing anything but stopping just off the road.

And then, there was the quiet. We looked at the car that hit us. In the fog, I could not tell if it was blue or green; I just knew it was big, bigger than the little yellow sportscar my ex drove. We had come to a stop, not flipped, not rolled, at the margin of a cornfield. And my ex walked to the corner of "Cornfield and Cornfield" to call in the accident from the pay phone there.

I had this over and over again all winter. It was always the same. I heard myself scream, I watched the glass fly, the fog, the spinning car, the cornfield and the pay phone. I told my ex about it, assuring him that the car was a bit messed up but we were OK and that that was the message. Don't freak out. We're OK.

He shrugged it off like he did most of my interest in metaphysical studies. He listened, but he shrugged it off.

Winter was over and it was St. Patrick's Day. We had traveled with our little dog Stoney in my ex's treasured yellow sportscar to his parents' home in Wood River, Illinois, partied with his friends and decided it was better to get up early Monday morning on March 17 and get back to Carbondale in time for the ex to go to work.

It was foggy, really foggy near the intersection when we turned South on Highway 4.

"I'm getting that weird feeling again," I said to my ex. "It's like that dream only I'm awake."

"Shut up," he said. "Just shut up" He chewed his fingers, his easy tell that he was nervous, that he had heard me all along.

And just south of Lebanon, Illinois, it happened. We slowed in the fog to let someone turn right when the impact came. The nurse driving the car had just gotten off a long shift at the hospital, we found out later. She had looked up, saw us unexpectedly stopped, slammed on the brakes in the fog-wet pavement and started spinning. I heard myself scream. The dog jumped in my lap. The crumbling glass flew in slow motion towards me as my neck wrenched around to see the big car. We landed in the cornfield. I picked up Stoney's leash and stepped out of the car, knowing he would need to piddle after all that. My ex started screaming.

"My legs are trapped! My legs are trapped!"

I ducked my head back into the open car and smiled at him.

"Unbuckle your seat belt."

As I watched him direct the nurse to move her vehicle out of the road so the accident wouldn't be compounded, then head for the phone booth which was, of course, on the corner behind us, surrounded by cornfields, I thought, We're fine. At least I know how this goes.

Sometimes, like the 8 of Wands, the message just has to get through because transmission started a while back.

Best wishes.

1 comment:

  1. Nice! It's funny that I too drew the 8 of wands today, along with Justice. I bet the next time you had a reoccurring dream, he listened. ;)

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