When I was in college, I had a girlfriend who found living away particularly liberating, especially since she could now buy - and keep out in the open - a deck of tarot cards. Her oddly strict mother, according to her, wouldn't abide by having such a tool of satan in her home.
I've always thought of the tarot as being somewhat akin to the battered spiral notebook a moody high school girl sets her deepest thoughts - and embarassing poetry - about how much of an 'other' she is. That is to say, nice for some people to help them - like church, or faith in a god - through the cyclical hell (thank you Dan W.) that life can be. I've been taught (thank you Dad) that just because I don't possess a faith doesn't mean I should ridicule those who do.
I've always thought of tarot dismissively until I found myself obssessively thinking of the card to the left. Here's what an online source says about it and this is what I was looking for:
"experiencing betrayalOne of the many reasons my entries here tapered way off were a series of events I perceived as betrayals of me: from friends, employers, even my government. Of course, being a good little liberal (and a wannabe Buddhist) I've had to endlessly replay those scenarios in my head, trying to see where the fault(s) lay and how I could better my own behavior in the future. Sadly, because most of those people simply have ceased speaking with me (or never did) I'm left with that awful uncertainty of feeling like it's all my fault. When another girl and I broke up acrimoniously in college and she began avoiding me and speaking in clipped icy tones to me when she had, I tossed and turned a lot at night, broke empty bottles against my walls and too a lot of long solitary walks in the nightime.
discovering a painful truth
finding your trust misplaced
being let down
letting someone down
getting stabbed in the back
turning against someone
breaking your word
acting against"
Finally, one night, I had a dream in which that girl and I had a long, pleasant and civil conversation where each outlined our greivances and parted as friends. I felt a lot better in my waking life from that morning on.
So last night, I had one of those dreams about one of the recent angry parties in my life. And I'm ready to carry on.
Dream therapy. Cool.
So when you say "wannabe buddhist", do you mean buddhist like Kerouac, or like D. T. Suzuki, or more along the lines of the Dalai Lama? 'Cause they're not really the same, at least not more so than, say, the pope and Jesse Jackson.
I consider myself a non-practicing atheist buddhist quaker. That way, I don't have to want to be anything.
We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart. -- H.L. Mencken
Sorry to hear you're feeling down man. I love that quote, I think of it when confronted with religion in any sense. And while I'm at it...
The history of the race, and each individual's experience, are thick with evidence that a truth is not hard to kill and that a lie told well is immortal. -- Mark Twain
hey, j. i can relate to your feelings about "friends". things are getting better!
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