Book+Key

I knew Saturday was an unusual day but I couldn't put my finger on it. It's like having an itch you can't quite get to or trying to remember who played the blacksmith in the old Gunsmoke TV series (it was Burt Reynolds--I can't let this become a mindworm for you). For one thing, there have been some unusual noises around the house.

My old dresser, a beautiful cherry piece with smooth lines from around 1840, has been making noises. Naturally, I don't notice them until I go to bed because I don't spend that much time in the bedroom (hold your guffaws, please). But on nights when I'm especially agitated, it seems to sound especially loud with creaks and pops as if it too is settling in for a snooze after a long day. I might think it was cooling but it's on the northeast side of the house which tends to be cool anyway and there's seldom a ray of sunshine that hits it.

Then one evening last week, I was pretty sure I heard a whistle in the hallway. It's a very small hallway, about the size of a disappointing closet and right outside the bedroom door. All noses were accounted for, especially those prone to whistling snores and this seemed to just come out of the air. Well, no worries.

Friday night--technically Saturday morning, everyone woke up yelling because somehow the television in the bedroom had come on at 1:32 AM and everyone had been nicely asleep, even Louie. Saturday morning at a reasonable hour I found the TV remote on the headboard above my head and was pleased to conclude I had flung my arm up and unconsciously turned everything on. That was something of a relief.

Creaks, pops and whistles I'm OK with. The occasional phantom cat seen in the living room does not bother me. I'm quite sure that the late Normie, from whose estate we purchased the house, is happy we're here because we were kind to him while he was alive. But the TV thing. That was going to be a little too much like a Ghost Hunters all-nighter. I prefer to find the mundane solution first and I'm confident I did this time.

Still, it left me with a feeling Saturday of not-quite-unease. It was more like expectation, like waiting for a spoon to be nudged off a counter. Nothing big, just...something.

I had a reading with a repeat client midday and hoped that what I said was something they could make good use of. I'd purchased a cup of coffee and drank perhaps a third of it, tossing it on the way to the fabric store to look for something. I wasn't sure what, inspiration maybe. I did find a lovely bargain that was just the thing I had been thinking of for a couple of weeks.

"Do you have your Hancocks card?" the tiny service clerk asked. No, alas, I had lost my keys more than a year ago that had my little shoppers card on it. I gave her my telephone number and returned home with my purchase.

I hung out online a while and was inspired to write something funny, about what an automated answering system would sound like if you called heaven (local call from Ireland, of course).

"Hello, you've reached Heaven. Our options have changed recently so please listen carefully and choose one of the following. For St Anthony Miracles or Lost and Found, please dial 1 and have your credit or debit card ready. For Parking or Barbecue with St Laurence, please dial 2. For hopeless cases and/or casino assistance with St Jude, please dial 3. Cats, dogs and other small animal issues with St Francis or St Martin de Porres, please dial 4. Travelers, please be advised that St Christopher is no longer taking referrals. Please dial 5 and a saint will help you. Wait times maybe up to 30 minutes, so reservations and donations are recommended. If you just need someone to talk to, St Joan of Arc and Mother Theresa have limited hours. For more information, please dial 6...just one 6, please. All other questions, please dial 0. Have a wonderful life."

A couple of chats and a quick reading for a friend later, and I was still trying to figure out what the unease was. I made dinner plans for Sunday night, checked messages in email and social media.

What?? What was it? Had I forgotten something? In Lenormand, the Book represents a secret or mystery if not a literal book. One end is closed and can't be opened. The other end might be opened but in Lenormand is usually closed because it represents information not yet available, something hidden. For me, I couldn't even tell what was hidden, let alone where it was.

I paused in my marathon of Midsomer Murders, sent a note to Mary K. Greer about an episode with a Tarot reading in it since Mary "collects" representations of Tarot in art, film, etc. At least it was a Swiss 1JJ deck in a Celtic Cross, even if (bring up strains of "Danse Macabre") the final outcome card was Death. I groaned at the cliche. It's a murder mystery, after all. And I decided to change into my "soft clothes" for the evening and went to the bedroom with the sometimes-noisy dresser to root for a t-shirt and sweats.

Something fell on the floor with a crash. I looked down and saw keys. At first they didn't make sense to me. These weren't my everyday keys I use with a red and blue Snoopy-on-his-doghouse housekey and a couple of dangling plastic seashells, something big and obnoxious enough to find in the deep bucket of my purse. No, these were Other Keys. Those keys. I bent to pick them up, filled with curiosity and the culmination of the strangeness of the day.

These were my keys from a year and a half ago, finally slipped from the pocket of a blue denim jacket where they had slept all this time. I picked them up as if they were a baby bird. Were they even real? There was the Hancocks tag and a couple others, the leather tab with The Hanged Man tooled into it, the keys, the electronic fobs I was afraid were in someone else's hands or smashed in a landfill.

"My keys," I said stupidly. What was lost was found. Well, no need to call Heaven after all, I thought.

Book + Key is the Answered Question, the Solved Mystery, the Secret Revealed.

Now I have to figure out if they went through the wash and ruined the electronic fobs. I think in Lenormand as well as physics, everything has to be somewhere.

Best wishes.

BATS Post BATS 2015

Perhaps my favorite SF BATS yet, this past weekend was a blast of fun, Tarot, Lenormand, scholarship, collecting and meeting new and old friends! SF BATS is the San Francisco Bay Area Tarot Symposium, the annual event organized and executed by one-woman show Thalassa Therese and her scurrying minions of the Daughters of Divination.

Some of my dear favorites were not able to attend this year (You Know Who You Are) but those who attended were richly rewarded with serious scholarship in the art of cartomancy and serious fun in the off hours. And I have to say that my loudly-voiced complaint is still my lasting impression: There were just too many good programs to choose from. I was SO annoyed with my inability to be in three places at once to see all of the presenters' classes. If anyone out there has a spell for multiple instances of the same person in three classrooms, I'm looking for it!

Some (not all, by any means) highlights:

• Carole Pierce's study of Virginia Woolf's surreal story "The Watchtower" and how many of the images feel much like a spread of Tarot cards. I have not studied Woolf closely in the past, so this was just like a welcome home to my original college degree in literature.
• Newcomer Benebel Wen broke down just a few of the Asian written words for Fortune Telling and Divination with a look to the origins of those words as clues to their differences in meaning in Eastern culture. How wonderful to have this fresh look from a knowledgeable source! Catch her book on Amazon if you have not already.
• The always intriguing Carrie Paris shared her new project which will become the Relative Oracle, sharing old family photos for an audience participation exercise in psychometry. It was a mesmerizing exercise, stimulating for the class participants and validating for Carrie. I couldn't help but catch up with Carrie after class to talk about the photo I had randomly selected from the pile. "Carrie, I had the most interesting experience! My photo was a man standing next to a little girl who was riding a mule. I couldn't get anything at all from the girl, but had all sorts of information about the man, including the message that he wished he hadn't smoked so much." Carrie laughed and told me that she wondered who would get that picture. Our instructions were to get impressions of people from the Other Side. My photo, as it turns out, was of Carrie's own grandfather (now deceased) and of her mother who is still alive. I passed the test! I can't wait for more from the delightful Carrie!
• Mary K. Greer's discussion of Jung was great fun with slides from ancient alchemical texts juxtaposed with Tarot cards and Myers-Briggs personality typing tying in. Mary's work is always fascinating to me. When she earlier presented a choice to the SF BATS attendees between the Jung presentation and a dissection of the historical meanings of the Lovers card I was sorely torn! Why not both?? But of course, there was so little time and there are so many interesting topics. I'm holding out for a future class on the Lovers in History.
• Rana George had a fun audience-participation Lenormand game to make us stay with that all-important question that is asked when answering using three cards. Her jumbo-size cards are from her new deck coming soon, so stay tuned! Rana threatened to be "mean" to us, but that quickly went by the wayside since "mean" is just not Rana's wheelhouse!
• My own class on the Lenormand Grand Tableau was well-attended (so grateful for that!) and was a hands-on exercise with the participants setting out their cards and looking for the major landmarks in their own spread. Naturally the worst part for me was keeping the class to an hour because...well...I talk! Class members were asked to work through their readings with the tools they had (handouts handy) in a safe space. I was at least able to reassure good friends Don and Sue that the kids had not burned the house down while they were away since the clouds and scythe were nowhere near the house.
• With all the follow up questions from my own class in the hallway, I barely made it to the very end of Kristine Gorman's class on a new spread Shaking the Tree. I was so disappointed! Lucky for me that we carpooled on the way home and she kept me entertained and awake by going through her class with my very own personalized class in the car. It's an insightful spread, great for a Tarot reader who gets "stuck" when reading for themselves. Happily all my A-HA!! moments were from the spread and Bay Area traffic conditions were ideal.
• Vendor Market: I was on a budget this time or I think I would have bought at least one of everything. The vendors were excellent this year: my friend Beth Seilonen with her handcrafted decks and boards, plus: vendors of jewelry, tea, spices, crystals, pillowcases, books, decks, tiaras, boxes and the Millard Fillmore Memorial Garage Sale where bargains galore are snatched up by the clever early birds (that's Birds+Sun+Fox for you Lenormand students).
• Donations throughout the conference went to worthy causes including the SF BATS traditional donation to bat conservancy in nature and finding a cure to white nose disease. Bats are key pollinators and bug-eaters around the world and do not get tangled in your hair! But another important cause was also highlighted this year. Tarot's bright light, Rachel Pollack, is now in remission from Hodgkins' lymphoma and while still taking treatments has a GoFundMe site to help keep her going through this ordeal. The generosity of the Tarot community was evident in the huge number of delicious drawing prizes. Rachel, get well soon and come back to SF BATS!
  
• Finally, one of my favorite activities at SF BATS is something not specifically on the program. It's meeting with all of the brilliant attendees and vendors, veterans and newbies, where we can sit down and laugh and talk seriously about readings, decks, spooky experiences, projects, family and plans. I love my SF BATS family! And this year I had the pleasure of meeting Marieke, Benebel, Richard, Nora and Yolanda for a little extra conversation and connection. I was thrilled to see Bonnie Cehovet at SF BATS for the first time, a respected name in the Tarot community and valued reviewer of books and decks. I was gratified at the partnership between SF BATS and NWTS organizers Jay and Jadzia DeForest of Devera Publishing. From my "old-Bies" and "newbies", I felt the love and I send it right back atcha with big Aunt Marplot hugs and a reading from an obscure Sacred Text from 1971, Ace of Cups style, spilling all over your good outfit, drowning your snackplate and dripping on your shoes! Let's do it again--soon! Now, where's that cup of tea?

Best wishes!

Consent

I was talking with a friend yesterday who mentioned that she was tempted to go on a media "blackout" just to get a break from the negativity in the world. Even well-meaning friends who are working to make things better by tackling a difficult issue and trying to drum up support can be overwhelming sometimes. Sensitive/empathic/receptive people need a break from so much input.

Off-Center Lenormand (out of print)
(c) Copyright 2012 Marcia McCord

When you make that empathic knack one of your means of income, you need to protect yourself from working full time, just like any other occupation. Being "out there" in a community doesn't mean "The Reader Is In" sign is always up.

Back in April, someone contacted me privately, initiating the conversation for a reading, a free reading as it turns out. We had never spoken privately before.

The Querent: Hi, do you might just pulling Some cards for me please
Me: Hi actually I read cards as a business. Did you want a reading?
The Querent: I just wanted to ask a question (smile emoticon)
Me: That's often what a reading is.
The Querent: Okey im sorry
Me: No problem. You might see if one of the FB groups has someone doing free readings or exchanges.
The Querent: Where can i find it
Me: You can search for groups with tarot in the title

I had hoped the person had found good advice and learned more about reading cards.

Interestingly the topic from the same person cropped up again in a more public way this week.

The Querant: I don't understand how some people can be full of sh** and fake and bitter and disgusting all the time !! AROUND THE CLOCK go **** yourselves
The Querant:  some people here are so disgusting, they realy are.. allways beeing negative, if you ask them something they bite ur nose off !!! no seprect, you ask them if they can pull some cards for you and they say no bcause they are proffesionals, yet they are on learning grouops all the time, i dunno but don't they have clients to keep themselves busy with?? if ur a pro like you claim you are *** off from the groups then we can see who the real students are.. i hate people like that !! so disgusting !!!!!!!!!!!!!
Me: A girl walks into a restaurant with kind intentions and asks for a free meal. She is turned away because the restaurant is a business. She is given directions to the free Soup Kitchen where volunteers help people who need a meal get a good one. She sees the owner of the restaurant helping at the Soup Kitchen. She is angry because she does not like having been turned away only to see the owner volunteer. What is the difference?
  The owner volunteered their time and resources for walk-ins at the Soup Kitchen for a certain amount of time and a certain amount of food. But the owner still runs a business and in the restaurant must charge money to pay expenses, even the "expense" of volunteering at the Soup Kitchen. 
  Is the food better at the restaurant? Maybe or maybe not. But everyone at the Soup Kitchen understands the meal is free there for those in need, just like the people who go to the restaurant expect to pay. 
  Is the owner a mean person?
Another FB Member: If a professional reader joins a group of beginner readers, then turns someone down because they're "professional" and don't want to read for free, that's the same as the restaurant owner volunteering at the soup kitchen, and then turning the girl away because he's an owner and too good to serve others. If they don't want to help people then get out. I think that's what she's saying, if I understood her correctly.
Me: The difference is the venue. The client approaches the professional reader in a venue other than the learning group and asks for a free reading. Instead they might have done better to state the question in a posting in that group, pull cards, offer their interpretation, then request that others in the group assist. That's how learning groups work.
The Querent: Thats bullshit
The Querent:  I asked paris [Australian reader Paris Debono] plenty of times for a Reading and he did it And posted in the groupe without bitchig About it.
Me: Here is your reading. Ship+Whip+Man. It looks like you prefer the readings from the man from far away that you've talked to before. That's the energy you seek. Best wishes.

I kept looking at the cards I drew for The Querent and more and more I connected to what my experience of this person is and my advice from the cards.

One of the big topics in the news today has to do with consent. Just because a woman wears a dress or makeup or visits a public place like a bar or a mall or a movie, it doesn't mean she is giving consent to strangers to approach her for her favors. Even if she is single, even if she is looking for a special person or even just a friend, she isn't saying her favors are free to take without her consent.

Similarly, even professional readers learn from the efforts of beginners, get refreshed by stimulating conversations about reading cards and like to contribute. I'm always so encouraged to see people starting out and growing in their understanding of Tarot and Lenormand. I think of myself as a perennial student. I also read cards professionally by appointment only. And, I even do free readings sometimes when I'm up for that. For instance, normally on Halloween, I set my tent up in my driveway and give free readings to the parents of the children who come by for candy.

A Tarot or Lenormand learning forum is a place where newbies need to at least make an attempt at reading for themselves (even if they are certain they lack insight in their own readings) and then ask for help. The help may be in a better-formed question or the help may be with insight to the cards themselves or something more mechanical.

The insight I gained from this exchange was that this person actually just wants free readings and apparently has tapped well-known readers for this service in the past. I don't say that's necessarily a bad thing if the reader consents.

But if the reader doesn't consent, it's a lot like disappointed unsuccessful sexual assaulters who complain that their unwilling partner is "frigid" or "a bitch" because they won't comply. Ship+Whip+Man can actually be the "sexually predatory foreigner"  or the "repeat-offending traveller" or even a simple "Go On With Your Bad Self."

Readings must be consensual, by both the reader and the person being read. That's why we have ethics like not reading to spy on a third person, not reading for children--who cannot legally give consent--without a parent's permission, and not revealing very personal details outside the boundaries of the reading. The truth, which may shock some, is that readers are not obligated to give a reading if they don't consent. If they are kind, they will show The Querent where they might find such a free service and wish them well.

Best wishes.

Loyalty

“Don’t make me choose.”

It was something of a showdown between my father and me. In his very old age he had come to live with us to recover and even thrive for just a little while. He had fallen down an escalator in a department store and shortly afterwards got up in the night in his small apartment and his hip had collapsed, broken.

I was in California then and he was in Missouri, far away from any of his children and doggedly stubborn, something that must surely be a genetic trait within our family. I could not fly out fast enough and spoke to his surgeon who expressed doubts about Daddy making it through the surgery.

Off-Center Lenormand
(c) Copyright 2012 Marcia McCord

“I know he’s 90 or whatever and I know he has heart problems and other issues, but, with all due respect, doctor, you don’t know my father. He will live if only to prove all of you wrong.” And he did. The doctor was dumbfounded.

As Daddy recovered in a nursing home, we kids took turns spending a week with him until vacations ran out and it was clear that without family presence he was not going to be well-cared for.

It was part of our initiation into the world of elder care, the various interpretations of advanced directives, etc. Daddy had a DNR order and had created a Power of Attorney naming me as the person to make decisions should something devastating happen. What we found was that instead of the folks caring for him and consulting me on major decisions, they interpreted DNR “do not resuscitate” as “do not care for.”

When we scooped him out of the nursing home to airlift him to California, he had bedsores, edema, pneumonia and other things that displayed a lack of care. Nothing keeps your loved one alive, I found, more than your presence and attention attracting the notice of the caregivers.

Daddy recovered from all those things likely to kill older people and moved into my first floor apartment, what I call the “basement” although it is not underground. He thrived in a way. He got well enough to become, instead of the “pet father” I had hoped for, truly a troll in my basement. His old age, in his defense, was not necessarily happy for him. His beloved third wife had died after a short and dreadful battle with small-cell lung cancer. He could not see why he was still alive and was constantly angry at everyone from me to Hilary Clinton whom he blamed irrationally for Noni’s death.

I gave him a break though. He was 90 and had alienated just about everyone who might have cared about him, alienated or outlived. And it’s hard for someone who lives only for the attention from others when the audience has left the theatre.

At some point, he picked a fight and demanded that I choose between him and all I held dear.

In Lenormand, the card that signals “loyalty, regard, friendship and enduring kindness” is the Dog. Dogs forgive. Dogs stand by you. Dogs don’t care if you wear good clothes or bad. Dogs will put up with a lot to remain in your pack if they have bonded with you. Dogs stay.

When someone asks you to choose between loyalties, they likely do not realize that they have just revealed their lack of loyalty to you. If they were loyal, they would say, “I need to do this and I know it’s something that you can’t agree with, but I would like to remain your friend.” But by saying, it’s me or them, their regard is revealed as conditional and their loyalty limited; yet, by the demand for choice, it is as if you are the one whose loyalty is in question.

I’ve had that kind of situation lately among some friends. It is heartache for me. Unlike the temporary motto of my family crest (now abandoned with better DNA testing), I don’t identify with “My way or the highway.” It’s a type of loyalty that is divisive, not building.

If your friends and loved ones really care for you, they love you in spite of what they do not agree with. They are strong enough to acknowledge a different point of view, a different choice, without calling it evil or sick or deluded or, of course, disloyal.

When my father presented me with the choice between himself and the rest of my world, I was very clear to him.

Do not try to make me choose. You will lose.

The attempt to force my choice demonstrates your weakened bond to me and signals the danger in my placing my complete loyalty with you. Allowing me to remain loyal to myself will earn you my undying friendship. And then this cat will be the dog.

Best wishes.

Get Your BATS On!

This week’s blog is brief, but meaningful, somewhat like yours truly. OK, true, I am brief in stature, not words. Nevertheless, I’m here to urge all those with an interest in Tarot or other Oracles like Lenormand to attend this year’s SF BATS August 17-18, 2013.

This is the 22^nd year for SF BATS, the oldest continuous Tarot symposium led by the always entertaining and erudite Thalassa Therese. This year SF BATS will be held at the DoubleTree in San Jose.  The DoubleTree is near the San Jose airport and close to some fascinating attractions like the Rosicrucian Museum and the Winchester Mystery House, so come early, leave late, and have a fabulous time. Want details? Click here to go to the Daughters of Divination website. There is still time to sign up for the best deal in Tarot, so click away.

You can probably guess that it takes a lot to put on an annual event like this. So the Daughters of Divination are launching an Indiegogo campaign to help raise funds for SF BATS. SF BATS could use your help, even if it is small. Please go here to contribute and help all of us make the San Francisco Bay Area Tarot Symposium happen!

I am thrilled to be among the presenters at SF BATS this year and happy to share my timid knowledge and fledgling experience with others who are dipping a toe into Lenormand. To lure my unsuspecting attendees, I promise door prizes, humor, patience and a little fun. While it won’t be the purpose of my class nor will it be featured by any more than a note of introduction, The Dust Bunny Lenormand deck will be available in a limited quantity at SF BATS in the vendor room.

After a bit of a rough start at WooFest, I now feel certain I am able to use my laptop and projector in concert (!) for a presentation that will feature some of my antique Lenormand decks. My thanks in advance to Fortune Buchholtz and Malkiel Rouven Dietrich for their assistance! If you come and you sit in the spitwad section in the back row, you will need to bring your own spitwads.

There will be many wonderful people attending, a few informal get-togethers, vendors with delicious goodies to tempt you and a lot of good information. And I hear my dear friend Beth Seilonen has a new deck in very limited quantities! Come and indulge and enjoy!

I am looking forward to seeing everyone at SF BATS, old friends and new. Please bear with me now while I have the tiniest of swoons in anticipation!

Best wishes!

Moon Ship

So there I was, sleeping like there was no tomorrow and I stepped into a dream, no, THE dream. It was not one of those one-liner dreams. Sometimes those make me wake up laughing. It was not one of those short stories with a distinct beginning, middle and end with well-developed characters. No, this was beyond that. This was more than a novel. This was the Dune series of dreams, unabridged.

It seems we had finally perfected time travel, well, perfected is a peculiar term. What we had done was make it reliable enough that the general public could schedule trips with various carriers, like airlines, who occasionally ran sales in competition with each other. There was a trip schedule. There were “hub” timeports, places where you could make connections to less-well-traveled times/places.

With the normalizing of time travel, the vacation industry really boomed.

“Go AnyWhen!”

Advertising slogans plastered billboards and internet space. Somehow, regular people like you and me, and since it was my dream, especially me, could afford to go places, excuse me time/places where/when you weren’t. There was that whole "two places" temporal anomaly thing, but the carriers were in charge of making sure that you didn’t get into trouble.

Oh, the butterfly effect was taken care of, too. Unlike the sci-fi stories that show how traveling to the past and accidentally killing a bug change the entirety of the future, that was covered. It was part of the technology, taken care of just like that.

It was a lot like the normalizing of airline travel. You figure most of people-dom felt that not only could humans not fly, they probably shouldn’t. Still, there were always a few agitators who ignored the rules and kept trying to come up with a workable design. True, there were a lot of failures, some with tragic consequences. Gradually, we were convinced that what first seemed like a miracle, then a wild luxury only for the ultra-posh was somehow no more remarkable, through the wonder of marketing to sell on volume, than catching a cab, bus or train.

Hop on a quick flight and spend the day in Los Angeles or Seattle or Albuquerque! You can fly back the same day.

When time travel got to this point, in my dream of course, I found myself in line for my little getaway with my husband.

We’re both readers so we had apparently agreed on a “somewhen” to go to together that was likely literary in nature. I wasn’t sure if we were meeting Geoffrey Chaucer or William Shakespeare, but whatever the destination we were positive we were not going to change history or more importantly make a new future.

Then, I got a call from work. You know, that kind of thing happens to me in real life.

I was answering my work Blackberry messages in Ireland. I was trying to debug an implementation issue on a Saturday morning at the Russian River. I sent status reports from the beach in Florida. I attended conference call meetings from the passenger seat over some of the more mind-numbing stretches of I-5. I performed production checkout from a haunted hotel in New Hope, Pennsylvania. Most remarkably, while in the middle of my father’s estate sale (yep, that tear-jerking task of sorting through and selling of the artifacts of my Daddy’s life), I got an email from my VP saying, “Handle this.” Handle this? While I’m doing something much harder than my Dad’s funeral? I handled it.

Even temporarily insane people can be productive.

"Ain’t it awful how work interferes with yer personal life?" my friend Sherry used to drawl, knowing how we make those decisions to work because the work is sometimes our life, like a family member. A really demanding family member.

I’ve been working with Lenormand decks lately, creating my Dust Bunny Lenormand and the Off-Center Lenormand. They are different from Tarot but they are used in cartomancy, usually for more of the “fortune telling” end of working with cards.

Getting the cards Moon (dream, intuition, imagination) + Ship (travel) would be a lot like having a time travel dream. Lenormand cards are always read in pairs. They are read nearly literally with their keywords with the first card being the subject and the second card being the modifier. My “moon-ship” was a travel dream of the wildest imagination.

 

Back to my dream: So I’m somewhere out of earshot there in the timeport while the Hubs holds our place in line and wouldn’t you know it? I miss my … flight? Transport? I’m not sure what we call this time travel event. I’m a little new to this.

But, hey, no worries. I can catch the next one. I do and catch up to John and we have an adventure. My dream conveniently skips this fun part so I don’t even know if we talked to Kit Marlowe or whoever. Work contacts me again—pretty amazing technology if your Blackberry works in the 15^th century or whatever—and I have to go back on a separate transport from my husband. Wow, this was supposed to be a super-special vacation and it’s all interrupted. John catches his transport.

I’m in line for my separate transport when I hear, Marcia!! The voices behind me are my long-time friends, Mark and Sally. I didn’t know they had gone on vacation to the same time/place or I would have suggested we connect. And here we are standing in line together to catch our transport home. But we both notice about the same time that something is different.

“You don’t look the same,” Sally says, smiling and frowning at the same time. She’s as sweet as pecan pie, always has been. We were instant best friends from the first time we talked. “Are you OK?”

I figured my hair was out of place and then it dawned on me what was wrong.

“Hon, how old are you right now?”

“43!” she said, shaking her head like I hadn’t gotten enough sleep. I hadn't.

“Well,” I sighed, that explains it. “OK, I cut my hair and you guys have a lot coming up, but fer sher I’ll see you in about 15 years.” She and Mark looked at me with widening eyes and laughed in realization.

Those temporal anomaly resolution algorithms guarantee you won’t see yourself coming and going, but not that you won’t see your friends or family out of sync along the way. Time-lag, they call it.

We laughed and waved and I stepped into my transport. The now-familiar near-nauseous blackout thing happened that I had come to expect with time travel swirled around me and when I came to, I realized I was in a sleek black limousine.

“You feelin’ OK, miss?” the driver grinned. “I know a lot of people have the same reaction you do when they travel. Your suitcase made it just fine. It’s in the back.”

I blinked and looked out the window. Nothing looked familiar. I mean nothing. I wasn’t sure I was even on the right continent.

“Driver?” I asked, pretty sure I knew the answer. “What year is it?”

“2016!”

Well, fooey. I hope I get a free trip out this.

“Can you turn around and take me back to the timeport? I need to get back to 2012.”

Sure is good to be back.

Best wishes!

***

Images of the Moon and Ship are from the Off-Center Lenormand, now available from The Tarot Garden, while they last!

After Clouds Sunshine

My brother had a band in high school, guitars, keyboards, drums, vocals, the whole deal. It was not a “hair band” or a “metal band”. Those concepts weren’t part of the lexicon of youth yet. These were guys who wanted to play rock music with electric guitars.

Dust Bunny Lenormand
(c) Copyright 2012 Marcia McCord

They played at our high school dances and were rivals to the other band in town. It wasn’t a rivalry like New York and Boston, San Francisco and Los Angeles; it was something of a sneering truce. Since our little town in New Mexico was blessed with two dance bands, we had dances nearly every weekend.

“Noise,” Daddy said.

We laughed at him. It was our noise. Daddy had played oboe in high school, maybe a million years earlier. Although later famous groups would incorporate more than the rock band basics with stunning success, oboe was a laughable instrument when considered with guitars, drums and keyboards during our high school dance years.

I think those may have been the years when my brother hated having a little sister more than any others. After all, what could be more fascinating than slightly-older high school boys who sky-rocketed to instant stardom, locally of course, to a spirited teen-aged sister? And what could be more distracting during a band practice than a flirtatious and devoted younger fan? So, a lot of band practices happened somewhere else.

My best friend had an eye for the sometimes-drummer in the band, a slow-talking, muscular blond with an easy grin and fabulously restored 50’s sedan with leopard-print upholstery and the latest in technology, an 8-track tape. Steve would take us and half a dozen other kids to lunch in his car, usually the A&W where we would order taquitas and sodas and listen to his 8-track.

My friend was a Scorpio and was perfecting the art of being the Mystery Woman. An Aries, I was hopelessly lost in the concept of mystery and the feminine mystique. For me, yes meant yes and no meant no and if you liked someone, you said so. I was as subtle as a sledge-hammer.

I was never sure the guys liked me because of my grades. No one asked me, but if they had, I would have told them I thought it was just plain stupid to be afraid of me because of my I.Q. Well, OK, in retrospect I can see they had a point. “Don’t-hold-back-Marcia” would be a nickname I gained even after I had learned subtlety. But, hey, what would be so scary about a little witty repartee or verbal jousting or mental gymnastics? I mean, what else was flirtation, anyway? I wasn’t trying to win, for goodness’ sake; I was trying to keep up. I’m not sure many of the guys I knew got that about me. It was probably for the best though, like most things that seem like disasters in dating in high school.

I didn’t have a height requirement. At 5’ 1” I considered myself one-size-fits-all. At least I did until I was asked to dance with one tall cowboy one time when my brother’s band was playing. It was a slow dance and the guy was polite and didn’t try anything ungentlemanly. It’s just that he was probably 6’ 6” and I spent the entire song unable to hear a word he said. I was tempted to quip, “How’s the air up there?” Otherwise, I stared at the guy’s belt buckle which, since he was a cowboy, was at least a little more interesting than usual. At that point, I realized I probably did have a height requirement for a guy that was an upper limit of maybe 6’ 1”. No offense to the really tall guys, but when you have Mercury as heavily aspected in your astrology chart as I do, good grief, I want you to talk to me.



Art Postcard Tarot
(c) Copyright 2010 Marcia McCord



This led me to like two very different kinds of guys. I had a special affinity for the fast talkers, the Tarot’s Magician types. I loved to be entertained and some of my favorite guys were natural entertainers. I adored them, in spite of their weaknesses, which I would staunchly deny anyway. After all, the show must go on! Little did they know that it was actually the little slips, the betrayals of imperfections that made the performers dear to me.

The other kind of guy who caught my eye was the Cypher, the guys who said nearly nothing at all. It didn’t make sense, unless you realize that we pick our own Devil in the Tarot and life.



Art Postcard Tarot
(c) Copyright 2010 Marcia McCord



See, as my husband so kindly points out on occasion in the gentlest possible way, I made the classic “girl mistake.” I figured the quiet ones were thinking. It was a challenge to get them to open up and talk as they had never done before. After all, they would feel so much better, right?

It took me a while to really realize that my mother wasn’t just in a very bad mood all the time; she was an introvert. But I had used her example as a template and mistakenly applied it to the quiet guys. After all, my quiet mother was always thinking something even though she didn’t say much; these guys must be doing the same thing. It took me many more years after high school to realize that one of the reasons boys are quiet in high school is that they don’t always have a lot going on that would be stunning conversation with a girl they liked, or might like or even didn’t like.

So, like a muddy puppy, I would occasionally pounce on an unsuspecting quiet guy and try to get him to talk to me. Depending on exactly what bait he took, I would go away sooner or later and try to talk to some other more pliable subject. Or someone who spoke at all.

The guys in the band were just the perfect tantalizing snack for me as a mini-man-eater. They weren’t allowed to talk, not while they were performing. Lots of them hold their mouths funny when they are concentrating on guitar riffs or whathaveyou. It was like my own personal arcade, these guys in the band. I tried to get them to talk, flirt, sharpen their minds, trade bon mots, and engage in conversational duels. Most of the time, I found out, they hadn’t heard a thing I said; they were too busy looking at my chest.

Cripes, guys, get over the chest thing, I thought. The real circus is in the mind!

The naming of a band can be a tender thing. My brother’s band’s name was “After Clouds Sunshine.” It was named for a needlepoint motto from the previous century we found in Mom's antique shop and was just nearly-nonsense enough to pass for a band name. As good as any Strawberry Alarm Clock, we figured.

A long gap after school and New Mexico and high school dances were just a memory, I chanced to marry one of the guys in that band. At the time he had been something of a blend, a performer who talked in bursts, who seemed to be a leader of his friends, and who didn’t seem to mind the muddy puppy/talking thing I did. But neither of us was the person we had known when we dated in high school and it was, alas, a mistake to marry.

And yet, like my Dust Bunny Lenormand cards of the Clouds and the Sun, while happiness was not something he and I found with each other, only the memory of ourselves when we were young and full of hope and little understanding, after the clouds of our failed relationship, I did, after all, find sunshine with my adorable Hubs who is both Magician and Cypher and just the right height, a man who brings me laughter every day. And he has the most boring belt buckles.

After clouds, then, finally, there was sunshine.

Best wishes.

Dust Bunnies

“I think it is perhaps best if Soror Marcia visits the Solarium with me,” said Thalassa with a sweep of her robes of office.

OK, out of context, this may not be as funny as it was at the time, I admit. It was a relief, too. My friend Thalassa has had too many hits on the not-funny side of life lately. The fact that she can determine that my character is in need of removal from the room to a sunnier spot where I can do less harm is, to my mind, a spark of hope in an otherwise bleak few weeks of stunning losses of dear ones to her. Her humor here is no sign of disrespect. It’s a spark of sanity that she will be OK, at least in time, in spite of Death’s calling card too near. My friend needs hugs and laughs and adorable pictures of creatures with cute little nosies and a little sunshine. My friend needs a break from people dying and the job market being the pits.

In our Salon of, well, I was going to say misfits, but everyone there is “properly placed in their present position,” a term I used to snark at when used in corporate performance reviews, we have fun. It’s a group of friends who are tarot readers. We like to have fun and even though we consider our studies, our reading, our interests and our businesses in tarot serious stuff, we poke fun at taking things too seriously without poking fun at any person or organization specifically.

In our Salon, we are devotees of divination, which isn’t a joke since we actually are, but in the Salon we are perhaps over the top in tradition, ritual, magical properties, heritage and, in the latest turn of fun, the newly revealed never-before seen photographic evidence of the extended fictional family purported to be the foundation of our fervent “secret society.” After all, if you talk about it on Facebook, it’s not much of a secret, right?

In our imaginary Salon, we have celebrations that go on for too long, toasts that leave the revelers toasted, old scandals hinted at, new scandals barely avoided. Or not. It’s one of my few forays at role-playing because I’ve never been into the chat room alter ego before.

With all characters there in some basis ourselves with a twist, I play some version of myself mixed with my first piano teacher Mrs. T and a lovely optimistic version of Miss Havisham I met when I was a child accompanying my mother on a hunt for antiques for her shop. Add gin, and serve. I don’t disguise my real name although lots of people do in the magical world of the internet. I’m just me, well, sort of, and all these other people a bit too.

Mrs. T wore sweeping jersey shirtwaist dresses cut on the bias, an easy-breathing, swirl of print fabric over a generous frame. She had a voice something like Meryl Streep’s version of Julia Child and towered over me as I once again proved I had not practiced my piano lessons for the week. Mrs. T liked all her students to have an annual recital and dress in costume for the show. I loved my costumes, one in particular was a long brown dress, cap and apron that harkened of Pilgrims and Thanksgiving turkeys. The piano playing was the turkey for me and I learned that my particular form of stage fright occurs after I’ve gutted it out through the ordeal, curtseyed and strutted offstage, only to faint dead away backstage. The show must go on, after all. Mrs. T’s world was just a little fluffier and more floral than the real world and I suspect she tippled a bit after a long day of piano lessons with truculent brats. I was never sure I liked her, but I was pretty sure she did not want me to know who she really was either. I was a job to be done, however grudgingly. The jersey print dresses were rather dreadful. It all added to the ambiance. The key to Mrs. T for me was the swirl of the skirt and the dogged way she stuck to her idea of appearances and the show going on.

Miss Day was my happy, not spiteful, Miss Havisham. She lived in a world that was dusty, old, preserved and not quite decaying. What once had been splendor had turned into something more like the asylum walls. Every possible surface within her vast apartments was encrusted with Cracker Jack toys set in some hardened matrix. It was like a LegoLand of little bits of childhood forever frozen and covered in draping strings of dust. It was wonderland. Miss Day was what we might characterize now as being a little “out of it.” I think that’s a little unfair. I think she was so “into it” that she never quite came out again. She was gracious and airy, with effortless Victorian and Southern manners. We drank tea in porcelain cups set on a shadowbox table full of tiny toys, perched on worn velvet and horsehair fainting couches, loveseats and chairs. It was the kind of place you were meant to wear gloves to and yet, due to the dust, you’d take your gloves off at once to save them.

Miss Day was charming. She had a high melodic voice that drifted off into reverie so that Mother had to reel her back in every so often. She wistfully showed us a framed remembrance of her family, an intricate braided design made of her mother’s, her sisters’ and her aunt’s hair in all the family colors, light and darker and a little red thrown in. It was gruesome fairyland, these strands of lost loved ones, memento mori.

If I put those two women together, sweet, damaged, mannered, cultured, asynchronous, anachronistic women whose vision of the world had swerved another direction from their own expectations, and added a generous dollop of gin for “medicinal purposes,” I find my character in our Salon. She fervently believes but has become lost beneath the divan for several days after a particularly boisterous ritual celebration, her jersey dress tangled beneath her ritual robes, tripping up her sensible shoes. And under the divan, among the dust bunnies and cat fur that has piled up over time due to unclear responsibilities for such mundane duties as cleaning that characterize the Salon, The Common Room as we call it, she finds a little inspiration.

And so I have, and I present to you my latest deck of cards, not a tarot this time but a relative oracle deck called The Dust Bunny Lenormand, a 36 card deck of gently humorous Victorian images, now available for $20 plus postage. When the scraps of this world may not seem to make sense, it can be in the least likely places we find insight. Let our tired minds and hearts rest from the effort to make patterns of the pieces of our lives, rest and come back to love another day.

Best wishes.

*&*&*&*&*&*&*

*Contact me via email if you are interested in obtaining a copy of The Dust Bunny Lenormand. Gin not included.