Saturday, August 7, 2010

the only upright card in the reading...

when i was 23? the cards that leapt off the shelf in the groovy seattle bookstore began to teach themselves to me. that was 21 years ago....
my deck, ralph blum's norse tarot, has been a constant companion since then and i turn to it when i'm ready to hear some unadulterated truth. i do not read commercially--or do any of my spiritual/metaphysical stuff for money--but over the years, i have shared reading and intuition and stories about what i see with friends who can use what they can classify as wisdom for their own situations--and leave the rest as my own particular world view. but tonight, i turn to my own cards to find what they have to say to me.
today, we showed up as the black hut with some borrowed materials from sun--tablecloths an old wallpaper sample book--and some new materials we purchased on behalf of spread kindness, and we did our art thing in the wind with the families assembled in the pittsburgh family center. maria and her family brought backpacks and cupcakes and ideas about kindness--and we arrived as the black hut and did our own personal brand of irreverent sharing of art materials and truth. truth as we see it, at any rate. truth, the way we can share it out loud in banter and joy and sting and bite and overwhelming love. the abbot and costello versions of just sayin' it like it is.
in my little blurb about who we be, i said, after mark's eloquent explanation of kindness, my little piece about sometimes we are and sometimes we aren't--and extended my invitation to make a mess. and then the families came forward and made their prayer flags with ideas about what kindness means to them--and we laughed and made and enjoyed and got messy when the wind wanted to blow the plates into and onto the bodies of the people, all dressed up to receive their backpacks.
there were lots of moments--beautiful moments--when we were all who we were in a natural conglomeration of givers and receivers and sharers and art makers and mess makers and laughers and enjoyers. and then we exhausted all the photo ops and recorded all the "what kindness means to me" soundbites for youtube. and then we went for coffee.
and we drank coffee.
and then we showed up like ourselves and steered the conversation into uncomfortable places of truth and dare.
and we were who we were.
and we laughed and told truths we might otherwise have kept hidden, deep, in the dirty corners of our own psyches.
but because we invoke this sacred clown--who tells the truth to the naked emperor and makes possible the rich and beautiful tapestry of levity for the profound, and lays open all the wounds still oozing and pusssssing under the surface of things, we were all able to find some way to be and laugh and ease up on this earnest kindness thing.
we all want to show up good in the world, it seems--
but sometimes we aren't.
and when we aren't,
we're better.
it is always like mae west said...
and invoked the sex goddess and laughed out loud and spoke in my southern accent to soften the blows of the goooosh and whooosh of truth zinging across the table and it layed some people way more open then they might have gotten otherwise.
and this, i suppose, is good.
it was good for me, at any rate.
and so i thought about all this, when i met someone i could have bedded if he smelled better and cruised around oakland thinking if i was brave enough to find some event to attend and meet someone's eyes across a crowded room and before that stood outside the studio of my captain to casually invite him for a drink if he had opened the door either one of both times i knocked or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or...
the truth is, even in the starting with over, i have know idea how to do what is next in this part of the unfolding future of my life.
and so i sit in the tiki bar at the end of my street and i draw on the bracelet i've made myself from a cardboard tube reclaimed after pulling all the tape or string or...what is this cardboard tube from? i forget.
but i doodled on it, as if my magic markings would make it beautiful.
and i looked as my dear friend and medium posted the pictures of us--me in my large gifted t-shirt--looking matronly and wide as i laugh out loud in the pictures of us being us at the spread kindness event.
i am not a sex symbol anymore.
i am not going to find my next someone looking like a starlet.
it will have to be me this next one wants...
me, the wide way i am now--
no longer wide eyed--
no longer young--
and even before that, it will have to be me that wants and loves and adores myself enough to allow for standards to replace desperation.
i do not have to bed men who don't smell good just because i want to feel desired....
oh, god--these confessions of the pubic sort are...
what?
self-indulgent?
where is that line?
between sharing the real? and creating the drama? and indulging the self in ways that are not transpersonal?
transpersonal...
this is the idea for the art, life, sharing, writing, being alive in public...
that my journey is a mirror and a microcosm and a connecting link in the stories that spin off from here--
me, the biggest butt of my own jokes...
fat bottom girls played from the juke box in the tiki bar tonight, where i met the bartender and we shared stories of the neighborhood.
i thought of the gorgeous queen who penned the words, sang them out, stairwayed his way up and down heaven--isn't that what the club was called in soho? where he was reputed to be? down in the dungeons of ecstatic yes? where there were whips and chains and pain to be enjoyed by all those who like that sort of thing with bravery enough to move their fantasies out of the fantastic realm and into the twentieth century? it was the twentieth century when freddy mercury was doing his beautiful thing?
it's the twentyfirst now.
i arrive home after spilling my second drink in such a way that i felt comfortable to drive the block back home.
i come into our BECOME YOURSELF space and light the candles for the prayers i'm praying for myself and others these days.
i sit at the black hut reading table and lay out the cards in the way my grandmother showed me.
she taught me solitaire.
a hundred different forms of solitaire.
i used her games to teach me the cards when they first gave themselves to me--way back there in time.
i layed them out--pulled out the major arcana as they fell out of the deck.
the one and only upright card in the major arcana is the fool.
i am the fool again--
again at my beginning--
heading out to meet the new initiating teachers in my unfolding world.
i am, again, the fool in my own deck--
the sacred clown--
the abbot? to raven's costello? or are we both the fat ones?
fat bottom girls you make the rockin' world go round....

1 comment:

Christina said...

reading this, knowing you, experiencing your performance/gathering/teachings, i am reminded of Baboo. in greek myth she is associated to Demeter while she was on her depressive walk around the earth after her daughter was kidnapped and raped. Demeter came to work as a nanny for a family and met Baboo, the help of the household. To make the depressed Demeter smile, one night Baboo danced, sang and told raunchy jokes in front of a fire late at night. As she danced, she lifted her skirt to expose her naked flesh. this is what made Demeter let go, feel, laugh, experience joy. Baboo brought Demeter back to love, life, and pleasure in a new form of mother.
I can hear Baboo in your words, your presence, your authenticity. lovely! beautiful! Time for some dancing!