Hi!

Do you practice tarot? Or just fancy it? Even if the answer is no, you might find this recent moment from my life relatable.

There are a few cards in the deck, at least the classic Rider-Waite deck and the ones that riff off it like Modern Witch, that feel particularly disconcerting when you draw them.

You know, The Devil, Death…and The Tower.

Yeah. Not a barrel of laughs.

But none of these cards are actually forecasting satanic forces, death, disaster, doom and gloom.

They’re spiritual guideposts.

My sense of The Tower (having practiced tarot since I was eleven with my friends) is sudden, unforeseen catastrophe or change. The rug pulled out from under you. The Tower signals swift and life-altering crumbling of structures in your life that no longer serve you. Sure, that can seem scary at first, but it doesn’t have to be.

I pulled this card the other week, and my first reaction was: “Noooo…” and thought for a second, okay I’ll just put it back, and try again, as if that was how tarot worked. But next I accepted what the universe wanted to tell me, and then something else happened–I felt relieved. Affirmed. Yes, in fact, my life did feel a bit like The Tower right now, so thank you tarot for reflecting that back to me.

Tarot is not always divination, but it is often a mirror.

I’ve had a series of somewhat hard knocks lately…it’s felt a bit like ocean waves crashing against a buoy. I’m still afloat, and tethered, but I feel a bit bounced around.  Other than that, I’ll spare you the details. And not to worry, I’m okay. The sea is already starting to settle.

And I imagine you might be feeling the strain now too in the world we’re in. Suffering is a part of life, after all. But the amps are really turned up in this arena right now, aren’t they? I’m in the SF Bay Area, and ICE just got deployed here in an even stronger show of force. It’s terrifying, yet only one out of a bazillion things that are scary and awful right now.

Speaking of the First Noble Truth, though, drawing The Tower reminds me too of the concept Pema Chodron discusses in her book When Things Fall Apart…groundlessness. Whether we believe it or not, we’re always in groundlessness. The only security comes from within. Accepting impermanence is the only way to be at peace with how much things change. Or to put it in the language of her famously prescient book Parable of the Sower from Octavia Butler: “God is change.”

Luckily, things don’t stay unstable either. Sometimes things need to fall apart a bit so they can come back together stronger.

Or here’s a common reading of The Tower:

“The Tower is commonly interpreted as meaning danger, crisis, destruction, and liberation. It is associated with sudden unforeseen change.”

Don’t forget there’s liberation at the end of that collapse.

I’m taking this as the microcosm of my world, but who knows, maybe it could be macro, too.

Plus the very next card I pulled was The World:

The World is a lovely card about completion, wholeness, and successful closure to a life cycle. 

Things aren’t shaky for no good reason (sometimes life is hard), and no card is in isolation; no period of our life is forever—also no social, political, or economic system is forever, and we keep turning the cards, and turning the pages.

Speaking of turning pages! Let’s get to a graphic novel I love.

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STUFF I LOVE

The Contradictions, a graphic novel by Sophie Yanow

The Contradictions was laugh out loud funny and also thoughtful and poignant, and the characters were tenderly drawn, both visually and in the charming dialogue and storytelling.  Easy to see why it won an Eisner!

The pacing and quiet urgency of the main character’s struggle to belong drew me in almost immediately.  She’s a college age queer American trying to fit in with her study abroad crew in Paris, and develops a rather complicated friend-crush on an anarchist young woman who is probably straight, but appealingly rebellious.  The central ideas about ‘purism’ in radical politics, especially when it concerns lifestyle choices like veganism, bumped up against the necessary, well, contradictions, of living in an ‘impure’ world.  The main character is an aesthete, and she wants to effect social change with her art. The author certainly succeeds at this with her careful observation of the tensions that underlie not just fringe anarchist subcultures, but for anyone trying to reckon with the paradoxes of late stage global capitalism.  This book is excellent and loving satire of people who have leftist ideals, but have difficulty squaring that with being alive in this moment (Um, me. I felt seen and gently teased, and it was great). 

At one point, the protagonist muses if cinema has more power to influence the masses than fine art.  I do admit, I think this book would make an excellent film adaptation, live action or animation, and I hope it leaps onto the big screen someday in all its contradictory glory.  But this “fine art” graphic novel already has a definite power that eclipses its character’s concern that art can’t change the world as much as she wishes it can. With the skill of her craft, Yanow captures the weighty paradoxes of surviving capitalism while also trying to resist that system’s machinations and carve out a modicum of freedom. 

It’s also a great cautionary tale about chasing a straight girl. 

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PUBLIC APPEARANCE

I’ll be reading this coming Sunday at the Listen to Your Skin series out of Denver–it’s a monthly zoom series with writers from all over the map! I’m planning to read newer poetry, some creative non-fiction, and an excerpt from my graphic novel Journey to the Enchanted Inkwell. 

I’m delighted to be sharing the stage with Roz Kaveney, an absolute LEGEND!

She’s a trans woman writer from the UK who is also a decades-long trans advocate, journalist, novelist, and poet. She’s also known for her sonnets! She’s fighting the good fight on TERF island, and has been for a long time, and is a wonderful writer.  

I would love to see you there.

Sunday, October 26 

7 PM EST/6 PM PST/5 PM MST/4 PM PST

listen2yourskin.com

@listen2yourskin on IG

It’s also an open mic, so feel free to come share something!

Feel free to reply here and say hi if you think you can make it, but no pressure…you can also just drop by. 🥳

Sending you peaceful thoughts about the contradictory process of accepting impermanence…

With care,

LD

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