I'm not crabby: I'm pensive
Monday night was interesting. I went to tc_borderpagans but didn't really participate. As Borders closed I skipped the traditional dinner-after-BP as a few of us descended upon a friend's home. A good bit happened that evening, and I'm still processing some of it, but one part in particular now jumps out at me.
It was a tarot reading. This is odd for me, because habitually I don't engage in much related to the tarot. See, somewhere along the way I decided that I was both an intellectual powerhouse and a purist, and as a result that I simply couldn't allow myself to be dragged in by a system as imprecise and as eclectic as the tarot. It would be bare accession to many of the very things I often bitch about in modern paganism. Can't have that.
Lately, though, I've been softening. I've been growing a lot lately, and in particular I've been learning to recognize a side of myself that isn't so analytical. A side that isn't so pure. And in this particular case, I was hanging out with friends as they simply pulled out tarot decks and dealt each person three cards.
My three -- from a Rider-Waite-influenced deck that I didn't recognize -- came up as the six of swords, the eight of swords, and Reflection -- VIII in this deck, and closely related to the softer aspects of Strength in good ol' Rider-Waite. This really clicked for me. I'm not sure I have the vocabulary right now for an adequate expression of why, and honestly it deals with some parts of my self that I'm just not ready to bare wholly in a public forum like this journal. Suffice it to say that at a shallow level it speaks strongly to me of cleaving to structure to ameliorate some difficulties, in time binding myself in with that structure, and ultimately freeing myself of the burdens of it and attaining some peace. This pattern is present at many levels in my life right now. I'm very much in that difficult middle stage in most of them, and it's been weighing heavily on my mind lately. Much of the rest of that evening was for me a welcome accession to Reflection.
I was up much too late Monday night, but in retrospect I don't think that's what lead to my splitting headache on Tuesday. I don't honestly know what led to that headache, but I have trouble crediting it simply to sleep deprivation. Regardless of reason, I was in no shape to go to work on Tuesday, so I spent most of the day sleeping in bed or resting on the couch.
Late Tuesday evening we put Little Man Tate into the VCR. I'd never seen it previously, and seeing it for the first time had me very nearly in tears. See, I identify very strongly with Fred. I may not have been studying quantum physics at age eight, but I was nonetheless a gifted kid. I was quite sharp both mathematically and linguistically, but unlike some children with strong analytical faculties, in me it was tempered very strongly by emotion and intuition. My parents didn't really know what to do with me, and my teachers largely didn't either. And at the small private school I attended, I fit in about as well as Fred did in his school at the beginning of the movie, which is to say not at all. And so for much of my schooling I was quite depressed, much like Fred at the beginning of the movie. I just wanted to be a normal kid, but my own nature conspired with my classmates to make that pretty much impossible for me.
The difference was that I never got snatched up by a well-meaning child psychologist and put into a program where I could interact with other kids more like me. One of the toughest parts of the movie for me was seeing some of the wonderful opportunities Fred had, recognizing how much I'd needed those when I was younger, and wondering how my life would be different now if I'd had them. It really hurts to recognize how healthy my childhood could have been. It really hurts to recognize how healthy it wasn't.
And that's another topic I've finally been coming to terms with lately: how unhealthy my childhood was, the metaphorical boat I set off in to ameliorate that difficult situation, the bindings I thereby tied myself in, and the swords I surrounded myself with. And finding the the gentle path from there to Reflection.
It was a tarot reading. This is odd for me, because habitually I don't engage in much related to the tarot. See, somewhere along the way I decided that I was both an intellectual powerhouse and a purist, and as a result that I simply couldn't allow myself to be dragged in by a system as imprecise and as eclectic as the tarot. It would be bare accession to many of the very things I often bitch about in modern paganism. Can't have that.
Lately, though, I've been softening. I've been growing a lot lately, and in particular I've been learning to recognize a side of myself that isn't so analytical. A side that isn't so pure. And in this particular case, I was hanging out with friends as they simply pulled out tarot decks and dealt each person three cards.
My three -- from a Rider-Waite-influenced deck that I didn't recognize -- came up as the six of swords, the eight of swords, and Reflection -- VIII in this deck, and closely related to the softer aspects of Strength in good ol' Rider-Waite. This really clicked for me. I'm not sure I have the vocabulary right now for an adequate expression of why, and honestly it deals with some parts of my self that I'm just not ready to bare wholly in a public forum like this journal. Suffice it to say that at a shallow level it speaks strongly to me of cleaving to structure to ameliorate some difficulties, in time binding myself in with that structure, and ultimately freeing myself of the burdens of it and attaining some peace. This pattern is present at many levels in my life right now. I'm very much in that difficult middle stage in most of them, and it's been weighing heavily on my mind lately. Much of the rest of that evening was for me a welcome accession to Reflection.
I was up much too late Monday night, but in retrospect I don't think that's what lead to my splitting headache on Tuesday. I don't honestly know what led to that headache, but I have trouble crediting it simply to sleep deprivation. Regardless of reason, I was in no shape to go to work on Tuesday, so I spent most of the day sleeping in bed or resting on the couch.
Late Tuesday evening we put Little Man Tate into the VCR. I'd never seen it previously, and seeing it for the first time had me very nearly in tears. See, I identify very strongly with Fred. I may not have been studying quantum physics at age eight, but I was nonetheless a gifted kid. I was quite sharp both mathematically and linguistically, but unlike some children with strong analytical faculties, in me it was tempered very strongly by emotion and intuition. My parents didn't really know what to do with me, and my teachers largely didn't either. And at the small private school I attended, I fit in about as well as Fred did in his school at the beginning of the movie, which is to say not at all. And so for much of my schooling I was quite depressed, much like Fred at the beginning of the movie. I just wanted to be a normal kid, but my own nature conspired with my classmates to make that pretty much impossible for me.
The difference was that I never got snatched up by a well-meaning child psychologist and put into a program where I could interact with other kids more like me. One of the toughest parts of the movie for me was seeing some of the wonderful opportunities Fred had, recognizing how much I'd needed those when I was younger, and wondering how my life would be different now if I'd had them. It really hurts to recognize how healthy my childhood could have been. It really hurts to recognize how healthy it wasn't.
And that's another topic I've finally been coming to terms with lately: how unhealthy my childhood was, the metaphorical boat I set off in to ameliorate that difficult situation, the bindings I thereby tied myself in, and the swords I surrounded myself with. And finding the the gentle path from there to Reflection.