Towards Creative Potential

I decide to take a page from the book of Elendil and some other Deck of the Week folk on AT and do two part new years reading: What I am Walking Toward/What I am Walking Away From. This be the first part, with second tomorrow.

Here we have the page of cups and that seven of pentacles again, the roses. The youth in the page card sits in front of a young woman playing what looks to be some kind of organ instrument. There are elaborately carved pillars behind them, and both are richly, fancily dressed. The youth isn't looking at the musician girl however, but rather longingly glancing back. What is he thinking? Longing for her, or for her abilities, her talent, her creativity? For his own past, lost opportunities, abandoned dreams? The woman plays and focuses solely on the music, her fingers and the keys

The page is about creativity and expression, a dreamer. The woman in the pentacle card too can be seen as having a certain sentimental touch - she appreciates the beauty of the flowers she tends. She works and works to watch them bloom. The page can imagine ways to express his creative potential; the woman in the seven knows how to tend to it, to allow it to grow.

In the new year, I shall try to move towards a synthesis of these. To leverage what I can do, what I can think and write and dream, into something concrete. Like the roses: something to enjoy, and something to ground me.

a juxtaposition

The woman in this picture stands in her garden, pruning the bright yellow rosebush. I do like the color of the roses - not bright red or even pink, no romance or dramatic gestures. No, we have yellow, a neutral color, good for many occasions. The woman's dress is loose, allowing for more movement than that of many others in this deck, from that time period. She can move and work, bring out the full potential for beauty in her flowers.

Roses tend to be finicky plants, especially the kind pictured here, the ones we most appreciate in bouquets and arrangements. They require patience and perseverance of effort. You work and you wait for that work to mean something, to show. It takes time and a certain amount of faith - in your own gardening abilities and in the idea that you will be around to reap the rewards of your labors. Is it worthwhile, what we are doing? The roses certainly do look nice in this image.

Sometimes it isn't so easy to be sure; things get in the way, cloud your vision, fill your mind with more possibilities and calculations and fear than you know what to do with. Sometimes the absence of certainty and of roses to remind you of how beautiful the world can be can feel too heavy a weight.This card struck a cord even in the first edition but in this updated image especially...

This was me, once. A few years ago, my last semester of college... I would climb out from my dorm room window to the ledges that led up to the the roof. It would be in the dead of night when almost no one is already up or still not asleep, when I knew there would be no one to see. I would stand at the ledge and debate with myself whether it was time, whether I was ready to do it. Not if it was a good idea or what I wanted, but rather - was now the time? Was it ok yet?

Stand and stare down, racing thoughts and a distinct lack of clear emotion...and step back. Night after night, I would stand on a ledge under a darkened sky and finally step back - go inside and get back to writing and writing that thesis, those papers, always so much work. I never told anyone about these nocturnal escapades and soon graduated with some fancy latin words besides my degree. Sometimes, later, I would wish that I had let myself fall.

These days I mostly try to focus on the roses. May the new year bloom, in many colors.

gifts in thinking

I've never been much  on the whole holiday spirit thing, this  one or any other, and this year was really no exception. That said, I figured that doing a draw on the general theme of 'gifts' would be appropriate enough...

The Ace of Swords comes up....an interesting response to this reading.  Thoughts, ideas, a way to start something new, an intellectual challenge. You can give other people gifts, trinkets, money - you can even do all kinds of things for them...but thinking, perspective, approach to life...that is something you cannot impart to anyone else. You can try, sure (as many a lecturing parent would know)  but fundamentally you cannot directly influence what anyone else has going on in their head. Your thoughts, perhaps more than anything else in this world, are your own.

A change in thinking, in outlook, has to come from within. It's something that generally doesn't happen suddenly - rather, a slow shift over time, a series of small realizations; sometimes, it involves conscious work. It can be one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself though, if you can manage it -  to work through some of the  self-defeating, negative thought patterns and find the way of intellectually doing things that works best for you. There is so much more you can do in life if you are not constantly standing in your own way...

In certain ways I think extremes can be a blessing. If something very difficult or challenging happens in your life - whether external circumstances or internal  mental health type issues or both - it forces you to become aware of a lot of those problematic trends in thinking. When things are small and never quite a real obstacle individually, it is much easier to leave them as they are, let them accumulate. When they seem overwhelming, all encompassing, you simply must find a way to deal with them - you become too tired to go on with the status quo.

And so, a rest, and a reminder that attitude adjustment and growth in how  you think and how you see is a constant process, something you can always work on improving. I have a bit of time now to ponder on this kind of 'gift' as it relates to me, and some time to focus on aspects of my interests and ideas that are not related to school-work.

Of course, in terms of actual gift-giving...in my house we have a long-established tradition of my parents simply giving me some cash for the holiday rather than anything physical and wrapped up.  I didn't really exchange gifts with anyone else this year so that is all and that is quite enough. I have a plan, you see. I am working on a design for a fourth tattoo, something to represent, actually, a lot of the ideas behind the Ace of Swords...freedom, flight, new beginnings with old experiences in mind and going forward and possibility and suchlike. I haven't gotten in quite right yet but...soon.

shipwreck that's not a disaster

So I finally got my copy of the new 2nd edition Victorian Romantic tarot. I got the mini, seeing as how I already have a full sized Russian version of the 1st edition, and have a disinclination towards owning decks that are too much alike. Must say, it is indeed quite nice, and the changes that the made... I approve. Finally have some time to properly blog with it, too.

I rather like the way there is a very distinct theme in these two cards. Both deal with a ship in water. In the first we have a gloomy, darkened sky; in the second, a raging storm. The woman in the first wears a red skit, and the same color again shows up on one of the folks in the second.

The Tower in the Victorian Romantic is really one of those cards where...the more I work with it, the more I come to appreciate the image. It's an unusual take - no tower or building of any sort at all but rather two figures, cast adrift, hanging off of the remains of a wrecked ship amidst waves, a storm torn sea. A sudden shock, a disaster of sorts it is.

Except....is it really, when you look at these two cards side by side? Unlike many, I tend to see the Tower as a mostly positive card. The woman is tied up, stuck. Perhaps she could work those knots loose, free herself if she was determined enough. She doesn't though, has become so used to the thought of herself bound that doing anything else feels impossible, unthinkable. So she sits at that dock, waiting to be herded onto the ship - a plaintive look perhaps, a wish, but no action. She sits.

How long would she go on like that? Who knows. The storm hits. The waters rage and the ship falls apart. There is cold and there is being soaked, tossed about. There is the sound of lightning and there is fear, yes, fear of drowning, of so many things left undone, so much inspiration lost. It never is very fun, at least not the whole way through, when the tower event or situations hits. It isn't fun to be thrown off balance, to see the systems and routine you have gotten used to gone. It isn't fun to be forced to change and adapt and learn how to deal with the new.

Change can be terribly, terribly hard - especially if you aren't even sure that you want it. Sometimes, though, that storm doesn't turn out to be such a disaster at all. Perhaps you will find yourself back on the shore, clothes soaked and torn, possessions gone, shivering and alone. But perhaps to, you will look down and see that your hands are now free - that there is so much more you can now try to do, see, learn.

snapshot of a day

still too busy finishing up to get to properly working with my shiny new victorian romantic mini tarot deck... so for now, this.

I drew these three lenormand cards this morning and they turned out to be more on-point than I expected. A day full of travel it was indeed: what is normally a four and a half hour bus ride took seven, then more time in the car getting home, my father taking a different route that had us wondering through a very Hasadic section of Brooklyn...

Productive though, in spite of that. Made much progress in completing my work on that long bus ride. The camel here looks to the right, at the sun; the ship, too, sails towards the light. Not quite there yet, the Sun in the center rather than at the end of the line which has this ship, the ongoing journey, but the light at the end is visible now.

A positive slant. The rider and sun together can mean receiving good news, news of success brought to you. I get home after all my moving about and find an email from professor whose paper I had slaved over all of last week. His comments on it were all positive - in fact, apparently I managed to impress him enough that he actually decided not to penalize me for submitting it a day and a half late...something he really seemed to be a stickler for. Sun type sign indeed. Pride, validation.

Sun in the center, and a push. The ship too, is nearing its goal, its day almost over, a journey coming to an end. Finish this paper and put the journey of this semester behind me - if I can force myself to stay awake, sleep deprived one more time...I think I can.

personal lenormand - short reading

So yeah, even when I am working very hard on getting something done and very stressed about it, I seem to have an inability to really stay focused on only one thing throughout. Add to that a need to distract myself from a kind of panic attack today over still not being done with this now-late-in-spite-of-extension paper, and...well. I sort of threw together a personal use lenormand for myself, using public domain art (wiki paintings is useful place :0).

Mostly this is inspired by the fact that my tastes apparently differ from most as far as lenormand is concerned. Granted I am a mere dabbler at this point, but.... I've heard a lot of people say that whereas they like complex imagery in their tarot decks, a simple straightforward art style for lenormands does it for them. While I don't necessarily NOT like that...well. What can I say? I've always been a very, very visual person. Besides that, doing this was a fun little distraction indeed because it allowed me to really think about what felt right to me, to find images that together hold I kind of universality which is rather lacking in most lenormands especially. Like the house card: yes, for some a house is a nice square building with big windows and a garden out front; for others, a house is a yurt. Both are houses aren't they, the same idea? So why always show only the one?

Anyway, wanted to give this a quick test drive. It's all digital for now though I may try to print me a copy eventually. No in depth reading...really have not the time or the mental capacity right now.

First row of cards quite accurately captures my current predicament. House, Book, Moon. I have barely left my house for days other than venturing out to grab beverages when I get too dehydrated. It is a mess, calling for attention. I must pack in the next few hours to go to another house, my parents', for the holidays. I feel stuck in this house, in the house with that book that taunts and taunts because I only have this one thing left to finish, this one final paper, and yet it never seems to end and my mind is not being cooperative and on and on it goes. The moon on the other side of this book, yes. My mind jumps and skips around so many things. Wild thoughts, crazy ones - creative too, inspired, except not about the THING THAT I AM SUPPOSED TO BE WORKING ON. Stuck in the house working on finishing this book work and feeling like my sanity is wearing away...

After that I decided to draw two more cards - since the first three described my situation, the last two, for a nice five row whole, to provide me a solution. A contrast here, with the Fish and the Star, the positive energy as opposed to the negative overall feel of the previous cards. Like the Moon the fish can be seen as creativity, but also work, momentum, succeeding by keeping on. The star indicates positive things indeed, success, completion, getting it done. A reassuring message for me, here. Part of my issue is that I keep thinking about failure, and well. Hope, yes. And a reminder to take better care of myself, I think, between the star and the fish....I won't get into details but last couple days with all of this I have not been...good about that, at all. Touche.

A good first reading, I think. Now to get back to doing appropriate things....

another tarot-prompted poem

(Needed a break from this...desperate academic writing I am still stuck doing. Another attempt at this particular exercise/idea....)




the strife

within us burned. 

we glowed, golden 

in our fury; shined
as we scratched,
sliced, fought.

higher, always
we climbed as the flame inched up.

it laughed in our belly. a mind
tickled the soles of our feet -
we tried to grow wings
but could not rise,
lacked speed.

now we dance,
fold into each other blind -

now we fly,

alight.

finishing up

Decided to do a little reading for advice about getting this last final paper completed, using the 'shadow' card from bottom of the deck to start off the reading, a kind of background card.

I think there can always be a lot of ways to 'see' the imagery on an unillustrated pip card...you could see this background as rich, golden and flowered - or you can see in it the color of wheat, harvest, fall, the end of a cycle; the flowers cut from their stems, not long for this world; the cups laying on their sides, used.

In the RWS we usually see this card as a man walking away from things, his back turned as he goes forward into the night. In the Thoth this card has a darker scheme - Indolence, it is titled. Both are true enough in their own way, in this context. I'm having trouble getting this done because a part of me doesn't much want to - it's tempting to lay about in bed, waste time on silly websites, read, catch up on episodes of shows online I haven't had proper time for in weeks. I want a break already, to leave all this work and responsibility for a while. This marathon of reading and writing and more reading and more writing has left me rather tired of it all. 

Cannot, of course. Must get this written and done and very soon. Must write and submit some cover letters, internship applications. Must pack for some visiting. Now is not the time for indolence, for running away, no matter how much, as this shadow card indicates, I might like to.

The next two cards here indicate, I think, that finishing up this last paper of the semester will not in fact be as challenging as it might seem. The high priestess with her folds of robes, her moon, her book in hand shows how much of what I want to write I already have in my head, perhaps not well formed but intuitively there - and backed up by the research I've already done, the reading. Deep down, beyond the tiredness, I do find my topic quite interesting. This isn't a paper I am only writing because I must.

Women's issues here, too, this Priestess reminds me - I am writing about use of technology to map and record incidents of sexual violence in ongoing conflicts, about the potential use of that to help prove, prosecute, prevent the widespread use of rape as a weapon of war. About how the internet allows us access to information that would otherwise be impossible to gather in a war zone too dangerous for outsiders to enter, from which people flee by hundreds and thousands every day. Instead of suffering for however long in silence a woman can go on youtube, her face covered, and tell the world: this is what they did to me. It allows for empirical patterns analysis to prove what would otherwise be merely a gut feeling - that these crimes are deliberate tactics, that they are used in a systematic fashion in pursuit of specific aims, that the same tactics can be seen again and again in various parts of a country and that this has meaning, is not simply 'war' or 'boys being boys' or any such nonsense.

Even as I write that summary here I feel myself channeling more of this Page of Wands, standing with her powerful, flexible bow in the field of green. She stands under a tree that is full of ripe fruit ready for picking, eating. She is young and full of energy and ready to handle anything. I need to channel that energy, the confidence. The words, that fruit, are already in my head. I just need to write them, edit and revise until they sound right, add all the proper detail and citation. This is something I care about. This is something I want to do, when I let myself forget to think about how tired of DOING I am.