"Dine with the Red Queen, the White Queen, and me." - Queen Alice
"Because we don't know when we will die we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well, yet everything happens only a certain number of times and a very small number really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, an afternoon that's so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it. Perhaps four or five times more? Perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise, perhaps twenty and yet it all seems limitless."
-Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky
XIII13Thirteen, 0000001101, FOX111, AlephGimel, and all the many other things I seem to relate to "death" I am often questioned about. Of course the reason that seems most likely for friends of mine that have somehow survived through the years is that it just something hokey that I carried over from my goth "daze," and I question that myself ... and I'm unsure. I've always liked the idea of unpleasant, but inevitable transition. I believe Issac Asimov said " ... life is pleasant and death is peaceful. It is the transition that is difficult." That isn't verbatim by any means, but you get the idea. Since my divorce that is working it's way into 3 years of my past I became obsessed with the idea of unpleasant and forced transition. I remember afterwards looking at astrology and messing with tarot cards looking like all desperate people do at unlikely sources of direction seeing as your confidence in your decisions have slugged to a stall and you hope god, the force, or whatever it is out there that we hope has some sort of structure that even places something as tiny of you in the celestial equation. Where else can you get hints of the answer? I remember in the catergory of "what is going on in you life now?" The well suited card fell over the fold. Major Arcana XIII "Death." I could talk about my feelings on this card, but this short quote conveys it so much better.
"The Death card is wrongly attributed as the most fearsome card in the Tarot; it is probably the most misunderstood card. While it can presage a physical death, this is a rare occurrence. It does presage change, sometimes forced change, and that can be cause for fear and apprehension. However, as we have seen with previous cards, the only constant in the universe is change. When we can no longer face the decisions that create change (as in the Hanged Man), change must be forced upon us. The Death card tells us that the time for change is NOW. If we don't take steps to start it, those steps will be taken for us. However, drawing this card indicates a readiness for change, even though that readiness may not be apparent. The act of letting go of the known can be a painful experience. Always remember that once these things are released, pure liberation follows."
"Everyone wants to go to heaven, but no one wants to die." I could quote on and on, but you guys get the picture. Once upon a time I was afraid to let go of things. It is not like now I let everything slip through my fingers actually opposite I embrace the things important to me, because I see the fragility in all things. If I stop and think about it every tick of the clock is another grain of sand falling from one side of my life's hourglass to settle into the other. I also realize that change is important and that if we become too comfortable and settled change will invade you whether you want it to or not, but in the end no matter what happiness follows for those willing to look at the time left and make that time count towards something. I remember one night at Ozz with trickster578 and glaswegian_took when a girl went around with a basket of roses selling them. I couldn't resist to but to buy glaswegian_took one. It was a pretty sunrise/sunset color and I couldn't resist this unusual symbol for this new relationship. I look at it often with a the same curiousity as I watched that XIII card fall above the others that night so long ago. She left it at the apartment and I am currently pressing it inbetween the heavy pages of a Lewis Carrol collection book. It is inbetween some of my favorite passages of Queen Alice. I wonder if the moisture will bleed into the pages. So what is it with me and the number 13? I guess it is alot of things. It's pain. It's hope. It's finding yourself when you thought you knew who you were. It is me being happy today because I wouldn't be if I hadn't left that all behind. fritzling said last night that you need to pay attention what is going on at the stroke of midnight this year because that is what you will be doing for the entire rest of the year. I say we all party party party and set the groundwork for a year of hedonistic bliss. Thank you guys for always being great friends and helping me move on and let go. I think I really see the light at the end of the tunnel in the great things I am experiencing in this time.
So "what is going on now?" Major Arcana 0 "The Fool" and how appropriate. I'm certainly without the knowledge of alot of things and I'm prancing in blissful ignorence, but I'm learning and enjoying this walk through the unknown and even friends of my past are strangers will familiar faces. I suppose we all changed.