What do I love?

Not this holiday, to be sure, but here is not the place to rant about tacky heart decorations and cheap processed chocolate aggressively marketed in stores. No, in an attempt at making something out of the spirit of things, a simple card draw for a simple question: what do I love?

I admit that a pair of queens was not exactly what I was expecting to draw, and not this pair especially. But I suppose, if I think about it...

The queen of cups is the queen of dreams, of imagination, emotion, intuition. These aren't all necessarily things I would conciously identify with; there's too much the swords queen in my personality for that. And yet... I do have those strange, vivid dreams that are more like adventures or games or movies, where I crawl into strange worlds through ovens and search for gleams of lights, meet people I haven't seen for years and haven't even realized I'd missed.

I daydream. A bit less so than as a kid, but still. There are more characters than I could name floating around my head. I dip in and out of their worlds, their lives...story ideas, scenes. I switch between them so naturally, so constantly. On the train, as I walk, as I fall asleep.

And these tarot cards, these tarot cards which I collect, trade, buy, sell, waste hours looking through scans online of, have a stack of books about, and study and read and shuffle and draw. So serious, graduate student, learning about cyber attacks and ethnic conflicts and islamic history and serious things, serious, as I shuffle a deck of cards and how can I not when this thing fulfills me the way it does?

I love water, and I used to love swimming though I was never great at it; there are reasons now that doing so would be more of a pain than its reall worth. I love night time, especially in a city, running around under the moon. I like reading poems that have a very emotional, gut-wrenching effect. So yes, I suppose there are quite a few things that this queen represents that I love...

And what about the other queen then, the wands?

She has many arms for many tasks. Honestly, do you know how many times I genuinly wished this was possible? It would make life SO much easier to have an extra pair. Multi-tasker, busy busy queen. Spear ready to take on anything. It does make me happy to get things done, to accomplish difficult tasks and projects. Sometimes I do like to challenge myself, make things harder than they really have to be - a certain streak of stubborness or perfectionism, depending on this sitution. A few weeks ago I got it into my head to drag three large bags that altogether probably weighed more than I did several blocks home after failing to find a cab - I was terribly tired and physically in pain by the time I got there, but I was laughing because I did it, I did. That kind of thing...

I guess in a way I am in love, even, with the idea of accomplishment. With the idea that personal worth is somehow reliant on what you can DO, how well you can put your skills and talents and knowledge to use, how productive you are. It's why I get so frustrated with myself when I feel I haven't been productive enough, and why the thought that 'you will never accomplish that which you dream of doing and which you have the POTENTIAL to do' is so discouraging to me. To live a quiet, simple, happy life, a day to day life, calm and stable...it doesn't appeal to me, really. I want to DO something.

I guess that is a synchronicity of cups and wands - in love with the idealized dream of doing something tangible, productive, good.