"You think it will never happen to you..."Paul Auster
TAROT: Son of Baskets / LENORMAND: Coffin, Mountain, Ship / ADINKRA: Odor Nih-ra Fih Kwine
The other day, I saw an Instagram post where a little girl, who looked to be about 5, was playing with huge pink Leggo blocks while she explained to her mother why it is that people live longer than dogs. Essentially, what she said was that human beings come here to learn how to be happy, to be kind, to love. She noted that people tend to be pretty slow learners, and so must stay here a long time. Dogs, the little girl explained, already come here knowing how to be happy, to be kind, to love, and so they need not to stay here as long. Aside from the simple sweetness of her logic, I appreciate her implication is that we come from a common Source, to which we (dogs, people, et al.) will all one day return. As we are neither children nor dogs, however, what a mess we can often make of things in that time between our coming here and our going home.
Paul Auster, called by the New York Times, The Patron Saint of Literary Brooklyn in his obituary three weeks ago, said it just right:
“You think it will never happen to you, that it cannot happen to you, that you are the only person in the world to whom none of these things will ever happen, and then, one by one, they all begin to happen to you, in the same way they happen to everyone else.” Paul Auster
My crystal ball showed me a mermaid today, or her tail, anyway. It made me think of The Little Mermaid, with her idealized view of what it must mean to have legs rather than a tail. It’s not all its cracked up to be, I suspect.
Our Tarot card epitomizes this idealistic sense of things and of ourselves, with the Son of Baskets (Page of Cups.) This card depicts a couple basking in the rays of love’s first blush. She sees no warts or whiskers when she gazes at her beloved’s face, anymore than he sees the beads of sweat ruining her mascara after their bicycle ride on a hot summer’s day. All they see when they look at each other is….perfection. Surely, he would never die, nor would he cheat on her with her best friend, any more than she would turn to drink or leave him to find herself by joining the Peace Corps at 50. To these two lovers on a bike, such possibilities are inconceivable. And yet, is not the world full of such turns in the road, such shocks, such revelations?
The Son of Baskets is a card that at once acknowledges the human tendency to idealize ourselves and others, and serves as a warning that clearer eyes are perhaps required. It is not necessarily the case that seeing ourselves and others realistically means we will love ourselves or them any less. In fact, clearer vision can illuminate a path towards deeper, truer love, expanded compassion for self and others, openness towards the lesson our little five year old girl insists we are here to learn.
Someone who has been preternaturally slow in the lesson-learning department, of course is 45. Lenormand speaks directly to his situation this week, I think, with Coffin/Mountain/Ship. His ability to compartmentalize, to surround himself with sycophants, to convince himself that HE will be the exception to every rule has helped him in the very short term while boxing him inextricably into a corner (Coffin.) He cannot grow and learn, which, our 5 year old reminds us, is both our common and our singular purpose here on earth. His bubble (Coffin) has seemed comfortable, but it has hit a roadblock in the form of the Mountain. In this instance, take the Mountain to be justice, karma, unavoidable fate. For now, stasis is his reward: forward movement is impossible. He will soon see the truth of Auster’s observation, and know himself to be as mortal, as fallible, as answerable to destiny as the rest of us. That Ship, which is Fate itself, is sailing the tide of time, which moves inexorably forward, all attempts at delay notwithstanding. Hard, hard times are ahead for 45.
Adinkra casts the single ray of hope for him, with the symbol translating as “Love Does Not Miss Its Way Home.” 45 has a soul, however warped his mind may be. The dark night his soul faces presents him with yet another opportunity to learn and to grow. Perhaps several more trips home and back again will be what his soul requires before it becomes what I bet our 5 year old would call “dog-pure.”
In the meantime, the rest of us are asked to keep what is dog-pure about the Son of Basket’s starry-eyed idealism and to temper it with compassionate clarity for ourselves, those around us, and yes, even for 45 during his unavoidable time of reckoning which begins next Tuesday and stretches who knows how far.
Amen and Ase
That Ship of Fate has no navigator save the person himself.