The king tides are upon us and the moon has become very prominent. South Florida is flooding worse than anticipated and people are trapped in their houses. It seems as if my hexes have been working after all.
I had started reading up on the tarot, but I got distracted by other books, such as A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara (still reading) and The Field Guide to Surreal Botany. I want to keep a notebook on all 78 cards, what they can mean, what they mean to me. Worthy to note: I’m not religious, nor do I define myself as a spiritual person. I don’t believe in the afterlife, in souls, in spirits, in the divine. I know all those beliefs just act as balm or distraction from our ruminations on our own mortality. Yet I’ve always been fascinated by certain pagan rituals and mysticism—I especially appreciate how these acts encourage creativity and use of one’s own intuition. Intuition over superstition. This does not seem very prominent in other organized religions. I’ve known pagans who are also atheist, and I can understand why this wouldn’t be a contradiction.
My partner in literary crime, Melissa Dominic, has her fascination with rocks and gems. They serve her as talismans. She also reads tarot and understands my need to be my own kind of cartographer. I keep journals of brain sketchings to make sense, to do something with the buzzing in my head. This tarot notebook is just a new medium.
I was taking a break from writing and submitting to journals, but this didn’t last long. Writing is such unbridled bliss to me, it really is, but submitting gives me a headache. It’s homework. Or rather, it’s like applying to job interviews and getting turned down repeatedly. Who has time to schmooze on social media after all this? (Really, I just want to be a recluse and have editors magically find me, fall in love with me, and publish me.)
Leave a Reply