Well, I've left myself one hour here, to write up today's entry, and I really do feel as though I'm kind of 'on hold', or slightly disoriented, or maybe even just a little worn out. The problem? What on earth do I say... next?
It's not as though I have any lack of material -- it's more a matter of making a choice, which would seem to be so very easy, except that, of course, it isn't. Because while I'm doing the writing and thinking and editing and poring over every choice of where a paragraph begins, and the placement of every comma, I'm always aware of... you. And as much as I feel a certain (fleeting) satisfaction when I've succeeded in making a bit of sense, or in pulling something out of hiding, and exposing it to daylight at long last, I'm rarely unaware that you are out there, getting ready (I hope you are) to read all of this. My efforts should be invisible, and you should feel yourself pulled through whatever metaphoric door I've chosen to open for the day.
But, what if you don't want to go? What if I'm not pleasing you, after all? I'm thinking of a recent comment I made on Facebook (spending too much time...), about how I knew I should be up and about, doing something productive, but that I was trapped by a red cat, lying on my lap and purring. And because, I went on to say, I firmly believe that, in spite of what physicists currently think, the universe is actually powered by the purring of cats, and therefore it was my bounden duty to stay put, while my cat did his soft whirring work of holding things together. I have to say that this brief post (it's much longer here, by the way) generated far more comments than anything I think I've ever sent out into the cyberpool of today's version of conversation around the water cooler. This of course turned my head, and I thought -- hey, I can talk about cats until the cows come home, and then I can talk about them too! But John observed that, probably, this gratifying set of responses was mostly due to the fact that it's a whole lot easier, and more pleasant, to respond to a posting about purring cats, than it is to make a comment about, oh I don't know, what's another topic I'm inclined to poke about in? Say, death, for instance.
Well, as it happens, my kitty tales would, in fact, give the Grim Reaper quite a few entrances and exits. But I'm still not sure -- isn't it a little cheap, to resort to cutesy kitty-talk? I can be so indecisive sometimes, I'd like to either throw myself off a cliff, or run into traffic, only I can never make up my mind.
So. Here's what I think I will, in fact, do -- with the 43 minutes I have left, for today's contribution to blogdom (I'm thinking, by the way, of calling this a 'blogue', and myself a 'blogueur' -- somehow, the French twist takes some of the gag-making out of an otherwise graceless neologism) -- I think I'll write, ever so briefly, about a Tarot card reading I gave myself, some months ago.
(An aside, as usual, for those possibly curling their lips, or going a little bit cold -- without delving too deeply into my own jumbled cosmology, I do believe that there's an observable universal phenomenon, a kind of careless but powerful urge at communication, that wells up all around me, and it doesn't really make much difference what mechanism I use, in order to make this energy available to myself. We can talk at another time about the essential difference between basing possible life-altering choices on the random distribution of some illustrated pieces of cardboard, or, instead, on the proclamations and pronouncements of a bunch of clerics, a long time ago, in someplace called Nicaea...)
This spread showed a central conflict between a strong need/facility to rationalize and to use order and force in dealing with my life, and an equally strong need/facility to call on emotion, in order to handle the very same problems and issues. The final card showed a graceful, fertile and satisfying outcome, but the next-to-last card -- the card indicating, in this arrangement, the means by which the ending will be achieved, was one of the cards I dread most -- the three of swords.
This card -- which I first encountered a few years ago, showing up then as the central, underlying issue for me -- shows, nearly filling the picture plane, a great, pliant-looking red heart, suspended against a dark sky. (Not an anatomically-correct heart, by the way, but the point still gets across) And this heart is pierced, front to back, top to bottom, through and through, by three inflexible swords, also suspended, as if either thrust by invisible hands, or left, after the fact, as a kind of warning. The central significance of this image, and this card, is one of betrayal and ultimate kinds of pain -- stabbed through the heart.
When I saw the card that first time, it was such a shock -- only because it had all the aptness and clarity of an ultrasound of my own rib cage -- that my eyes stung and welled up with an awful, unexpected familiarity. This last time, though the image still seems awful, it cast that same kind of ultimate, deep-seated pain, but from a different perspective. This symbol, in this place, seemed to be hinting to me that it is through the pain -- not around it, or under it, or in spite of it -- but only through this pain, can the indicated goal be reached.
Well, I don't know what Jesus would say about all this, but in a way, at this point in my life, it seems I have little choice but to look at what I have, to take a good clear look inside -- and as it happens, I have a great store of very sad and unfortunate things. Make no mistake, there are tremendously good things too, but it seems as if it's the store of sorrows which -- if I understand what this old mystic system is pointing to -- I am to harvest, regardless of how many prickles there may be, or how the dust makes me cough, or whether or not the scent of these growths offends me.
And, actually, now that I've gotten this far, both in the sense of today's working, and with regard to the things I've been able to put out there for you -- that's you, you know -- to read, I don't think it's really necessary or even important to think about that last card, that last promise, all golden and peaceful-looking, with lots of warmth and lions and things in it. I think I have to be like Little Ivan, in the Russian fairy tale, The Humpbacked Horse, who, when ordered to build a castle in a day, was instructed by his unlikely little ally (said horse, of course), to 'keep working. Don't look forward, to how much there is left to do, or backward, at what you've accomplished. Keep working.'
Oh dear. I'm afraid this means that, even if an entry get squishy-warm and cute for a few minutes, it'll turn grim fairly soon -- as I mentioned earlier. And, in my limited experience, the cats -- even the dead ones -- have had the better luck.
(By the way -- what was the first time you ever saw a dead body? I know when I did. I think I'll talk about that... tomorrow)
© 2011 Walter Zimmerman
No comments:
Post a Comment