strength in good times and bad

The range of the moon faces on the eight of cups is the first that that caught by eye in this pair of cards. We have here four images, a visual representation of the waxing and waning of the moon cycle; we also have four face, ranging from happy to sad, alert to asleep. This really feels relevant to my week, which has been very up and down in a number of ways. The moon metaphor is also prominent in my mind for another reason: Ramadan started yesterday, totally changing the schedule and routine of things here, and that holiday is, after all, a month based on the moon calender. We have cups of gold and cups of...lead, glass, some kind of less valuable metal. Duality and balance, between the positive and the negative in life, the pleasurable and the challenging. At the bottom we see the way that one cup pours into another, the liquid the same color as the background to everything, the way this interplay fills up so much in life, one way or another.

The strength card here seems a reminder of the necessity of channeling that inner strength, the internal resources we all have, to deal with whatever comes our way. Sometimes we need that positive drive to keep going through hard times, and sometimes we need some inner self discipline to not lose ourselves in distraction during good times, and so it goes. In a way it's all a kind of dance, the way that the woman and the lion here almost seem to be dancing. The sun in the corner of the card reminds us of the success we can find when we keep at it, at least sometimes.

I was listening to a local Tunisian radio station earlier this afternoon and was quite pleasantly surprised to realize how much I understood. There was a program about, a guest speaker talking about US foreign policy in the region and the geostrategic issues around the war in Syria and I...understood the majority of it, both in terms of the gist and actual vocabulary. Later there was a program, probably for Ramadan, some kind of story about Jules Verne going on an adventure in Tunisia, and though I understood much less vocabulary wise, I still got enough of the gist to be amused and keep listening. When I first got here, not quite two months ago...that wouldn't have been possible. It's nice, this kind of tangible proof that channeling that strength, forcing myself to study and study on good days and less good days too, does have dividends.