tuesday, seventeen august: six of pentacles
For vacation, I downloaded a set of books that I wasn’t sure I was going to like. There’s this romance author, Sarina Bowen, whose books I often like, even though a lot of them are about hockey and I really have no interest at all in hockey. (I like her books enough that I’ve forgiven her for the genuinely embarrassingly bad book covers.) She recently started a publishing line where she’s publishing books by other authors set in the same world as her books. I respect the level of hustle involved, but never was that interested in the books, but I thought I’d give them a try and grabbed three or four of the “World of True North” books.
Y’all. These were not that good. They weren’t actively bad, it’s not like I regret reading them or anything, but they were not that good. Despite all my years with fiction editing, I don’t quite have the editorial vocabulary to explain what was wrong, but these books felt stiff and over-explained; the presence of characters from Bowen’s series was I think supposed to make it all feel like a unified setting but really just read like fanfic. (Which is not to say fanfic is necessarily bad, I’ve read some brilliant fanfic, it’s just, I don’t know. This didn’t work.)
Anyway. One of the books, one of the main characters is a floppy-haired aw-shucks Vermont hippie, raised by his Wicca-practicing Vermont-hippie grandma, and one of his Vermont-hippie character quirks is that he draws two Tarot cards every morning to start his day, and part of how we’re supposed to believe that he and the other main character are TRUE LOVE is that he keeps drawing the same love-themed cards every day, despite, I don’t know, shuffling a lot and covering his deck with cleansing crystals or something. This was a lot. And it was discussed at least once a chapter. And it has nearly put me off the tarot practice entirely.
That said, today’s card is one that’s come up at least once before this summer. A time to harvest the bountiful results of past actions, and/or to be grateful for good fortune received. I have been so full of gratitude lately that it scares me–acknowledging good fortune will bring down bad luck, or something. One part of my anxiety, I think, has been waiting for the other shoe to drop, or something. It’s that state of mind where happiness feels like walking a tightrope.