memory of sun, outdoors

I suppose the Sun is one of those cards in this deck where its Swedish providence is especially noticeable - in the style of the clothes that the two children wear, and even more so in the prominence of the moose. It has to be a pretty northern country if such an animal is associated with sunlight and warm rather than winter, snow.

We have pictures of moose - from vacations is Alaska and, I think, perhaps Maine as well. I was too young then to remember much from those trips, and what does stick out in memory does not include any experiences with such creatures. Deer though, I do remember seeing, outdoors.

Its really kind of amusing how much of an outdoorsy scene this sun card is: children playing in the grass, roosters feeding, butterflies fluttering above it all. It's things like this that remind me of how much of a city kid I really am, both in experience and in outlook, preference and predilection. We had a house in the Pocanos in Pennsylvania for a while when I was a kid. It was a big change going out there - so very rural, foresty, quiet. There was lots of grass and forest, dirt roads, wildlife of all sorts. Yes, there were the deer that I saw, coming in twos or threes across the road to nibble at this or that plant. It was nice, sure, to be able to see them, something certainly not possible in New York City.

In America at least, I've only ever seen chickens and roosters at petting zoos, also in Pennsylvania. It was not they, but the goats, that tickled my fancy. For a while we used to drive down there almost every weekend, two hours in both directions, card trips I hated for the motion sickness they caused. There was so much grass to play on and forest to explore - I did neither, much. I was bored outside. It was boring and uncomfortable with all the bugs, the lack of man-made noise. I much preferred to stay indoors and play on the Sega Genesis: the Sonic games, street fighter games, that random game where you played a team of criminals, one short and fat and one tall and skinny, who had to successfully break in and rob various places. I read history for kids books about Pompeii and the sinking of the Titanic, about the life of Anny Oakley and about the Trojan War. I colored in coloring books or watched movies with my father, many of them (in retrospect) not especially age-appropriate but no one objected. I would sit at the table when my mother's friend, who lived nearby, visited and complained about her miserable job as a hotel maid and her husband, who was over twenty years older than her and who she had only married to secure a green card and whose grumpy ass she was now stuck with. He was nicer to his dogs than he was to her, she would say. I sat quietly and listened to them talk.

I did not see the appeal of that kind of outdoors. At home, playing in the backyard and in the street, on stoops and stairs of houses, always some other people around making noise, arguing, that was tolerable sometimes for our imagination games but so much quiet and trees and grass and bugs and why bother?

To this day I cannot help but feel this way. Place me in a city, any city in the world, and I will happily wonder round in it all day, on foot, and never grow bored. I love exploring cities, the nooks and crannies and changing style of the architecture of buildings, whether they be cities full of metal and glass skyscrapers or Eastern European medieval architecture or low slung white structures and fields of trash and wondering goats.  In a city I can enjoy the sun, and I love the contrast of trees and flowers to the man-made things all around them. Looking forward to taking pictures of the blooming cherry blossoms around DC again next week for just that reason. But in an actually rural place, the kind of naturey environs so many people find relaxing, a nice place to get away...I can appreciate PICTURES of such places, but actually put me into one and I will very quickly grow uncomfortable and bored and possibly very paranoid about bugs and feeling itchy for no reason and if forced to remain there I will very soon pull out a book or a game and ignore it all.

Different strokes, different folks and all that.

memory of games

What does it mean - to win, to succeed, to level up?

There are quite a few extra cards, optional, that come with the Silicon Dawn. Being rather traditional with my tarot preferences, I kept most of them out, but the 99's were among those I kept. The culmination of a suit, its essence developed, a sort of opposite to the Ace. The king can be seen that way, is in many decks, but in a way this idea makes more sense - Like the Ace, this is a card representing forces, situations, opportunities rather than people, the personal.

Fire-Disks, the practical in life combined with energy, light, destructive potential. The metaphor in this card is a great example of why this deck so very much appeals to me. I grew up playing video games - Sega Genesis, SNES, several generations of playstations and gameboys and computer games. Books you could get for free from the library, huge stacks of them - video games were what saving up money was for. You fight and walk and solve puzzles and dig around in virtual garbage cans for hidden treasures.

My favorite games were the ones where you could customize your character. Pick a race, a class, skills to put points into. When you leveled up you could further specialize: would you be fast, or strong? Shoot fireballs, or learn to heal yourself and save a ton on potions? In some games, later on, you would have many characters on your team for storyline reasons, and you had to further choose which ones would be the ones you fought with, developed, allowed to level up again and again.

There were the difficult games where you had to grind - to walk around in certain areas fighting monsters again and again to gain experience, go up levels until you were finally strong enough to face this or that boss without being defeated. There were games where you had to strategize how to develop your character, what would help against this or that opponent. Brute force? Picking them off at a longer range? Status effects, attrition?

I still remember my first ever computer game. It was called Rise and Rule of Ancient Empires. You picked a civilization, built cities and roads and armies. I liked being the Indian empire best because of their elephant units. Strategy there was in that, yes. Which buildings will you choose, which advantages, will you lay seige to that city, take the offensive early on or bide your time and hope your neighbor doesn't build up his forces faster than you? There were the city building games too...Egypt, Ancient Greece. You start with a few hovels and farms, and expand. Build temples, mines, bathhouses, theaters, tax collector's offices. A garden next to houses will allow them to evolve, a mine will lower the property value - even in video games no one wants to live next to a mine. Can you level up that city enough, build the infrastructure needed to harvest the resources that will allow you to advance to the next part of the game?

You would calculate and think, in those games, trial and error. Trade offs, budgeting, this for that and you can never have everything. I played three generations of Sims games and even now my thinking about interpersonal relations is so very influenced by them - sometimes I imagine those bright green bars indicating hygeine level, social need, energy. The bars that showed relationships. Talk on the phone to advance, except if you don't have a strong enough relationship that person will not want to talk to you on the phone. Have you leveled up your skills, schmoozed with your coworkers and boss enough to gain a promotion?

In media video games often get so much flak - the violence, the time waste, the people with the
'video game addiction' and 'no life'. They are not mindless though, not all or even most. I read like mad and played video games too. And life too, has leveling up, of sorts. My social skills have certainly leveled up over the years. My ability to prioritize, my confidence even. Some things still need work...even in the Sims it was rare to have, without some kind of cheating, an elder with all their skills maxed out. That was a simple game. Always you can improve, grow, use energy to become more.

Achievement and pride, but fleeting. There is always more to be done, new beginnings, chances for gain and for loss. Some skill and some hard work and sometimes, luck, or lack thereof. I remember sitting in the air-conditioned computer room in elementary school, playing Oregon Trail. Perhaps if you prepared well and chose a good course and prudent actions you would make it to your destination. Other times, you would be mauled by a bear, your comrades would catch a disease and so it goes, game over. When you can you level up, and then you keep going at it.

Starry Memory Exercise

Realized I hadn't done one of my memory exercises in a bit of a while. Seems a good way as any to start off a week I plan to spent with another of my most favorite decks...

Considering how much I like astrology, it's a bit funny how infrequently I actually pay attention to, or take time to really look at, the stars in the sky at night. Perhaps this is only natural - I have always gravitated towards and felt most comfortable in cities - NYC, Boston, DC...places where, well, at the best of times it isn't so very easy to see the stars clearly, the way that they are meant to be seen. Most of my closest friends in New York work in the vicinity of Times Square, so I find myself there at night quite a bit when I am back in that city and well...so much flashing light, bill-boards, advertisements, even pharmacies with huge colorful flashing signs and the stars, ha, what stars, there...

When was the last time I really...looked up and appreciated the stars, in all their natural glory? The second weekend of August, the Saturday when our Arabic teacher took three of us in the car with him on a day trip to see Dougga, his native city. We spent the day-time walking around old roman ruins and then in the car, being given a kind of tour of his early life. This is where my parents live and this village is where I went to primary school and this town is where I went to secondary school and that land belongs to my uncle and that store belongs to another uncle and so on. Mostly in Arabic, for practice.

Later, at night, after we had the iftar meal at his parents' house, we took a walk around his hometown. Rural, small, no streetlights, rudimentary paving in the streets. We went to the cafe in the center of the town, which was really a field that they brought out tables and chairs for you when you arrived. There were several dozen people there, and I was one of two women, the other a foreigner as well, sitting several tables away. We had dark, strong coffee served in little cups. They smoked unflavored shisha and cigarettes, the scent of the smoke strong, curling around everything. After a while our teacher left to go pray, leaving us with his cousin, who spoke very little English, and we with not much Arabic - and certainly not enough dialect Arabic - and me with some French but not enough confidence, and so.

I looked up at the sky then, really looked. It was so clear, so inky black, so many bright pinpricks of light. I could make out whole constellations, easily. The sky was almost always cloudless in Tunisia, but now, at night...it just looked so amazing. Sitting in a rural cafe at night, after a day of ancient ruins, of farms, fields, cactus fruit, cows and goats and sheep and even camels seen up close or from afar, of eating fresh makrouch that made fig newtons taste like a joke and grapes fresh off the tree and now, the brilliance of the stars right above me...it was one of those moments where you are fully, acutely aware of the wonder you feel, the privileged of what you have been allowed to experience, the terribly temporary, fleeting nature of it all...

Moments like that, and you can understand why the Star represents what it does in the cards. It stops being an abstract concept....rather, a truth; something that makes sense in your gut, your soul.

literal/metaphorical gardening

So decided to harken back a bit to the memory exercises I did on this blog more a few months ago...

Looking at this card literally, I am reminded of the gardening my parents used to make me help with when I was younger. Occasionally I still do, when I am visiting or staying with them and they ask, and I really do try to be good-natured about it because it's the least I could do to help them out like this but...when it comes down to it, I just really, really do not like gardening.

When I was a younger, of course, I had both less perspective and less self-control and so my participation in family gardening activities was filled with a good bit more whining and are we done yet and can I go inside yet and I hate all these bugs and its hot and I feel itchy and why do I have to be out here can't I do some indoor house work instead?

See, in a very literal way, I've always rather sympathized with the figure in this card-image. All that work and is it worth it? I guess it depends. The cucumbers and tomatoes that grow in my mothers garden are quite delicious. She makes this salad, just tomatoes and sweet onions, sliced and chopped, with vinegar, salt and pepper, served cold. It's quite delicious. But is it worth the effort if the actual work is something you deeply don't enjoy at all? Left to my own devices, I can't see myself ever cultivating a garden, much as I enjoy the beauty of flowers, and much as I love eating fruits and vegetables.

Other times though, when the work itself is something we can find pleasure in, it can indeed be worth the effort to cultivate a more metaphorical garden, even if we aren't sure what may grow from it, or how long it might take to see those fruits. Have been feeling a bit dissatisfied/blah about things lately, mostly because there are just so many uncertainties and questions when I try to look at things from a wider, more-long term perspective.

Sometimes perhaps, it is just good to remember that if the work itself is objectively productive, and you enjoy doing it - or at the very least, don't hate the experience - worth it to carry on, staying in the moment, not letting the bigger questions cause unnecessary worry prematurely. Trying to keep that in mind...

the freedom that comes from constraint

(so this started off with me trying to do the memory exercise again and turned into a bit of a free association ramble/pondering thing as well...)

I remember, a couple of years ago, some day during the summer...meeting up with a few friends and going skating on Governor's Island in NYC. It's a really nice place to skate and bike, a large loop around the island, smoothly paved, no cars to have to avoid... We were joking around, beeing silly. I found some kind of rope type thing, and kept turning it into restraints, a pseudo-noose, or leash, horsing around until I made them nervous enough to take the thing away from me. It was silly, all of it, but a very nice day.

For a while after that I wanted to go back, go skating there again, but all of us coordinating schedules around work and other committments...it never seemed to happen. The next summer, again, hey lets go skating sometime, and we'd agree, and then it wouldn't happen. I spent days stuck in my house, gripped  by a kind of ennui, paralysis, a certain lack of energy or motivation to do much of anything. I kept wishing that someone would please drag me out to do something fun. Finally, one day I just put my rollerblades in my bag and made the commute, took the two ferries needed to get from where I was to there, and spent hours and hours just going around the island by myself, enjoying it, enjoying that I could go on as long as I liked, until my body physically refused to go any further. I didn't have to stop, to wait around for someone else to catch their breathe, to leave before I wanted because everyone else had had enough.

Having done it once, enjoyably, there was the freedom of the realization, backed up now by experience: I can do this whenever I like. I don't need to sit around, waiting for anyone else. Being alone is not, in fact, a constraint.

And so it is, that fact about the situations that bog you down, that get you stuck. The fact about difficulties, and constraints, and limitations and obstacles, whether without or within: without them, life would be easier, more pleasant. By overcoming them, we grow. Academia is this card for me to a large part, it feels like, right now. Every time I finish something, drive myself to the very edge of physical and mental exhaustion to get something done....I turn and there is more, more still to be done. Stuck in the school library, in front of computer screen night after night...and yet, I wanted all this. I knowingly chose to go back to school, to go back to this reality.

You can learn a lot from simply reading books. I could have stayed at my unchallenging dead end, but relatively comfortable job longer, going to the bookstore up the street after work to read, read, and been satisfied with that. But...it doesn't challenge you the same way. It is pleasant, and certainly educational to read a book about a subject you do not know much about...but it just doesn't force those mental cogs to spin at their full potential, not the way that reading several different sources, and having to critically think and apply larger concepts, and create a well reasoned thesis, and argue it efficiently in a set number of pages to be done by a certain time does.

When I feel tired, sick, so stressed I cannot really eat for days, when my tooth still hurts and I have all these other things I need to deal with, and I must still show up for work...and when I have to do those academic  things...the feeling of being pushed to the very edge of capabilities...the swords, closing in around you, the binding voice that says you cannot, cannot handle it all...when you in fact do...the feeling of accomplishment, empowerment...it is something that just reading a book on your own in free time, and saying yay, now I know about this...just doesn't match.

It makes me think of the much larger 8 of swords kind of situations/issues in my life...the question of who I could be, what I could do if I somehow managed to extricate myself from all of THAT...

And yes, the freedom of learning that doing things alone does not have to be a limitation. That is also a big one for me, being a solitary sort much of the time. I am...in the process of...potentially arranging something that, if it worked out...I would be off by myself in a certain North African country for ten weeks, quite soon actually. In a way that is pretty intimidating...especially since there is so much societal messages around 'women shouldn't do ____ alone" which pretty much includes travel to foreign, developing, muslim countries....and yet, it's such a silly thing to be limited by because...where would that leave me? If I have no friends or partner that share my interests or ambitions I should simply never go anywhere interesting, when in fact I do enjoy adventures on my own? No, I don't thinks so...

So yes, the 8 of Swords scenario...perhaps never pleasant in the moment, but in the larger scheme of things, not necessarily a bad thing at all. Having spent all that time tied up, stuck in one place...how much more amazing will it feel afterwards, to be able to run?

more memory & card exercise

Yep, having another go with this idea because it led to interesting things last time and why not try it again with a different deck? So...

This is, I must say first, an interesting take on the Hierophant, but it does make a kind of sense. After all, what is religion and institutions if not that which is written and that which is ruled by old men? Ok, so maybe a bit of a cynical take, that, and yet...

It does bring to mind though, my own experience of religion and writing, way back when. See, my parents were/are Catholic, so we went to church and all that. From the youngest of ages I always just found the whole thing massively boring. Mostly I just daydreamed stories in my head the entire time and tuned it all out. At about age twelve or so, though, I'd gotten to thinking a bit more, and it was then that I actually tried to really LISTEN to what the priest was saying. And I realized I disagreed with all of it, that I was sure that he was just wrong, that what he was saying was completely at odds with my own moral values, and that therefore, this religion was not for me.

Young INTP that I was, this didn't cause me any angst. Ok, then, if you are supposed to have a religion, and this religion is not for me, time to research alternatives. So I went to my local library and started browsing books about religion and found a few about Wicca. Youngster that I was, long-time fan of fantasy stories and comics and tv shows, of course I was intrigued. So of course I read and learned about "real" witches and pagans and so much of it DID make logical and moral sense to me that I decided that yes, I would learn and practice THIS religion. I got a friend interested as well, and that was kind of how I spent most of middle school.

I got a red folder/notebook thing which I called my "Folder of Shadows" because every Wiccan was of course supposed to have a "Book of Shadows" or equivalent, right? I doodled the triple goddess emblem all over the front. And I read and read as many books about Wicca as I could find in the public library system of NYC and in Barnes and Noble occasionally and of course, online. I printed things out and copied diagrams and color coded and chose those parts that made sense to me and omitted what didn't because that was the cool thing about Wicca: you could choose exactly what worked and didn't work for you, there was no book you HAD to read and take at face value whether you agreed with all of it or not, no, you got to WRITE your own, do your own research, put together your own rituals, and wasn't that just the best? So I filled it up, that folder, wrote and wrote. It certainly kept my young brain occupied, if nothing else.

Interesting times, interesting times. Of course, a few years later I realized that no matter how much a religion's tenets might make sense to me, I was still fundamentally incapable of believing in any kind of higher powers or supernatural forces of concepts of an afterlife. Again, this didn't distress me. Ok, I guess I'm an atheist then, and so it was. Being a packrat, the folder still lives somewhere in my closet in my parents' house. It was, if nothing else, and interesting and amusing experience to reflect on from the perspective of an adult...

memory & cards exercise

Well, here is another attempt on my part to explore relationship with the cards through various not-quite-a-reading type exercises. This idea is pretty straightforward - draw card, and working mostly off of the images on the card, write about a specific memory. Not general 'things i used to do' but of a specific place and moment in time. Then if possible connect that back with the 'traditional' meaning of the card. So...

I've never really ridden a horse, I don't think. There was a birthday party for the granddaughter of a family friend when I was maybe twelve or thirteen. I vaguely recall there being a pony there for a while. The younger kids took turns riding it. I honestly can't remember if I did. I was a good bit older than them, and had never been stereotypical 'I want a pony girl' so it's very possible I might have passed. It was a short ride around in a circle on a front lawn in suburbia type thing, highly unexciting.

I have ridden on a camel. Also nothing too terribly exciting, except that it was in Egypt, in Giza in front of the pyramids. Of course, made less pleasant by the fact that the camels had sores and flies on them and I felt bad for the animals. It was exciting and yet so...controlled. So touristy. Being led in a line across a small stretch of desert and back. I never really like that touristy feel, have a far too easy time seeing myself and companions through the eyes of the ones doing the talking and guiding and whatever and just...I don't like the falseness of it. No doubt useful way to see the 'sights' and yet... My least favorite part of that trip to Egypt was the few days we stayed in Hurgada. It was so pretty and clean and full of Western style restaurants and just so...immaculately touristy. Some people spent entire vacations in places like that, in Sharm-el-Sheik. I just wanted to leave, leave, leave. When I travel, and i DO love traveling more than almost anything else, I want to really EXPERIENCE the place to which I am going. A tourist resort is not Egypt, not the real Egypt, no. It was later, that last week where, having no one to do things with I spent entire days walking around Cairo alone. Some people raise eyebrows when I mention that bit. talk about safety, but...nothing happened, nothing at all.

I walked across the long bridge from Zamalek, through Tahrir square, on the news so much these days but then, before all of that started, perfectly ordinary. There were always people sitting around in front of the stone railing around the bridges, enjoying the Nile, and yes, especially around sunset the Nile was beautiful. Once or twice I bough roasted corn from a street vendor. It was vegan after all, and tasted good enough; like corn. I crossed those massive busy streets with no real intersections, no lights or walk signs you just wait for an opportunity and run across. There was a man selling tea under an underpass, where lots of people also gathered and sat because summer is so hot there and underpass means shade. I definitely admired the women wearing the black abayas, covered entirely and in black in that heat. Some men wore gallabiyas which are similar shaped but light-colored, not the same thing at all.

There was that store in a very, very un-touristy neighborhood which sold koshari, this really yummy dish of pasta and fried onions and lentils and tomato sauce and chickpeas in huge tubs and for so cheap, given exchange rates. The big stores in the downtown area you passed, the movie theatre, the way you walked and walked because what else was there to do, stop in a cafe for a glass of chilled mango juice because it was so hot, so fucking hot and the cafe was cool, walk further, the book store full of books you can't understand, walk further, take in everything with your ears, your eyes, wish you could run away, stay here, the unfamiliarity of it all, walk further, go.

Exploring the world. Same concept, really, the woman on the horse with the bow. The nine staves, nine obstacles, a fence of faces, ideas of what you shouldn't do. Stay within these limits. Stay within these rules. This is safe. This is safe. This is what you are used to. She doesn't need anyone with her - she is ready, excited to go, confident that she can take on anything, in night or day, whatever, let us see something, let us go. My approach to life really. Some would call me reckless, and I won't deny that, but I don't think all recklessness is necessarily bad. A bit of danger does make things more exciting. Jumping out of a plane was the best thing I've ever done. And if I am in a new place, an interesting place, a place I might never have the chance to visit again, why shouldn't I take the chance and walk around and explore and see what i can? If I have no one to do it with should I let that limit me? No, no, no. Even here, in my neighborhood, which some people seem to think is not the safest of places...I've walked around alone, after dark, and it was fine. Nothing happened. Nothing bothered me.

Not that this is always advice I'd give others, not least of which because my priorities in life ARE kind of skewy, but...refuse to let such supposed obstacles limit me. Not obstacles of others, vague, and [working on] not obstacles in my mind...expplore, explore, see how much you can do, and if that is recklessness, so be it, I am reckless. I really would prefer a short but interesting life anyway.