I should let you know straight out that I’m going to talk about tarot cards.

And that this post, once again, contains tube socks.

Are you still with me?

Heh . . . lo?

So this drawing / painting / sketch /whateverthehellyoucallit was supposed to be about patience.  I was thinking about natural intuition, reception—patiently waiting for that small, directive voice in the stillness.  I was deep breathing and feeling all openness and attentiveness and patiennnnnce-ommmmmm.  But then her hair got out of control, and before I knew it, it was all wildness.  And then her face took on an impatient scowl.  And then the restful, crossed arms became tense and ready to burst.

And I saw, not patience, but impatience.  More than a simple restlessness, I saw a woman attempting to restrain herself, trying desperately—and almost sorrowfully—to keep her wildness under wraps, betrayed by her crazy hair. 

watercolor, arches hot press paper

It perplexed me, as those frequently-occurring paradoxes do.  (I!  AM!  ALL!  PARADOX!  It isn’t just me, is it?  Aren’t we all?)  And, to further complicate things (I just said that two blogs ago), my feelings regarding this paradox itself are split.  It is the eight of swords vs. the red shoes.

Are you still with me?

Heh . . . lo?

Journey with me, if you will, into my soul.  Oh, come on, it’ll be fun!  Does this restlessness-emerging-from-patience-piece point to this or that?

The eight of swords.  (this)

Tarot cards are, despite what you might think, not about fortune-telling, but about inner journey.  I am a visual person (obviously?), and the images on the cards can really assist me in finding psychological, philosophical, and spiritual clarity.  They mirror aspects of nature and of soul, which, perhaps, are one and the same anyway.

I first saw the card years ago, when Dimples was a baby, and I was in the depths of some Postpartum Depression / darkness / soulcraft-ish descent.  My cousin Amy and I would play with tarot cards, then she would babysit as I went crying to my therapist.  The eight of swords came up in a reading for me, and I considered the image: a blindfolded woman, arms loosely bound behind her back, standing in the center of eight swords (go figure!) that had been thrust into the ground around her like a cage. 

Yes!  I thought.  This is me!  Bound and constrained by motherhood and culture and circumstance, unable to fulfill my potential!  But when we studied the card further, we realized that the woman was not so terribly constrained.  She could easily escape the “cage,” and could free her hands and eyes with little effort.  Instead of relief, I felt offended.  If I were not a victim of my circumstances, if I could simply remove my blindfold and carry on . . .  Well, that was quite a lot of responsibility.  “Victim” was so much easier.

So “this” is one thought that came as I considered the drawing.  Have I given myself a new mental straight jacket?  Is there something inside me (some creativity, project, wildness) that is screaming to get out, and am I holding it back for some unnecessary and imaginary purpose?

–OR–

The red shoes.  (that)

To further encourage the eye-rolling of my most cynical readers, I will now, once again, allude to a story in the book Women Who Run With The Wolves.

Heh . . . lo?

The tale of the red shoes is, in short, about a resourceful little peasant girl who fashions for herself a  pair of red shoes.  One day, a rich old civilized lady takes the girl to live with her, gives her new clothes and shoes, and burns her old things.  The old red shoes had been so special to the little girl, that she tricks the old woman into buying her a new pair of (scandalous!) red shoes.  The girl becomes obsessed with these new shoes, and even when she has had a taste of their power (they magically cause her feet to dance, taking control), she craves them.  In the end, the shoes take over, dancing wildly and threatening, essentially, to kill her with exhaustion.  She is unable to remove them, and so, desperate, she asks a woodsman to chop off her feet.

The author (Clarissa Pinkola Estes) compares the little girl to a feral woman—originally and naturally wild (handmade red peasant shoes), but confined like a depressed animal at the zoo (shoes/wildness burned, child civilized).  Sighting the new red shoes is similar to when that caged animal (or woman!) snaps, remembering that bit of wildness that remains within.  But instead of having the knowledge or opportunity to reincorporate the natural way of being, she latches desperately onto anything wild-ish, even at the risk of losing complete control.  The girl dancing like a lunatic in pretty red shoes, the snarling tiger who suddenly turns and attacks the loyal zookeeper, the well-behaved mother who suddenly loses her mind, or becomes addicted to something dangerous, or abandons her family for the cruise ship attendant. 

I mean, not that I have a cruise planned anytime soon.  But you know what I mean.  (Do you know what I mean?)

And so in this light, restraint can be a good, natural, healthy thing.  It can be having the patience to ignore the flashy red shoes and holding out for what you intuitively know to be your thAng, or just hanging on to your old handmade shoes in the first place.  And so is it “that” that I’m seeing here?  Sort of an alert patience?

–OR–

None of the above, it was just a millimeter of a stray brushstroke on her eyes, or the espresso. 

(Now all of this passed through my conscious thoughts in approximately 15 seconds—-Eight of swords?  The red shoes?  Espresso?—-but it took, like a billion hours to write.  It would be so much easier if you could just understand my thought processes next time.  Thank you.)