Month: March 2015

Learning to Play: Cards

I’ve been very focused lately on what I “should” be doing, what “needs” to be done.  To accomplish this, to do what’s appropriate with that.  Not just with work things, but in my play as well.

In fact, I realized tonight that I haven’t been playing.  I’ve been approaching all of my ‘fun’ things with a work ‘must get done’ attitude.

It’s not hard to see where this came from.  During my two years of major transitions, I kept to my hobbies, my crafts, by determination and will alone it seemed somedays.  I was exhausted through much of those days and I would have these litanies in my head such as “okay, you can rest, but right after you get that mead racked”.  Taking care of my mead became another list on my list of things.  It needed to or it would have stopped.  And I was NOT going to be stopped from continuing to do something I love.

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And let’s face another reality while I’m at it.  I’m inherently lazy.  I don’t want to do the things.  I want to lie on my couch with a book in my hands, tea to my side, cat on my legs and while away my afternoons.  Rain or shine doesn’t matter, they are both conducive to a lazy afternoon reading.  Doing anything beyond that requires a certain level of determination from me.  I feel like every hobby I pick up comes with the weight of fear and depression and childish whining of ‘it’s too hard’.  I don’t know when these things crept onto and started to leech at my joys, but it has happened.  Badly.

In a nutshell?  I’ve forgotten how to play.

So I’m going to try something new.  I hope.  I’m going to try and find the play in my interests.  Grins in my hobbies.  Laughter in my crafts.

Tonight I played with my three favourite card decks.  Joie de Vivre, Thoth and the Celtic Book of the Dead cards.  Check out the spreads, my friend!:

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Each one with a tale.  Each one whispering of things to learn and to discover.  Life has changed.  My emotions will run strong and there will be storms and high seas.  And therein too lies the joy and the fun.  Living is going to feel good!  Or, well intense.  Intensity can be its own good sometimes.  Any way, though, I hope to embrace and live and try to find the fun and the bounce.  To do what I love because of love.

What is fed, grows.

Saturn,
the Abysmal Witch

Things can change in an instant…but mostly they stay the same

Or change really, really slowly.

I nearly died today.  One of those moments that happens periodically, when you feel the brush of death closer than usual.  Not the slow caress of death from bad habits or long-term illness, but the flirtatious goosing from a near miss.

I was out for a walk, headed to a favourite park that requires walking past some major intersections.  Please note that I was wearing a purple jacket, orange and black socks, and green laces on my shoes.  Really, I was a jokeresque symphony of colours.  Not exactly blending into the background.  I have proof, check the picture.  The pic is from after the rain (and thus my drowned cat impression) but at the time of this story, the rain had yet to start so visibility was perfect.

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I had already started to walk across the street, cheerfully following the instructions of the little glowing white man on the pole across from me.  That’s when a truck decided to run the now ended left turn advance signal. Thankfully, the person he cut off honked.  I say thankfully because that’s why I looked up and paused and waited for the idiot to pass me by with a couple of feet to spare.

If I hadn’t paused, at minimum he would have clipped me but most likely I would have been perfectly aligned under his right wheel as he hit me.

He noticed me about ten feet past where he would have run over me.

I shared a bewildered head shake and shoulder shrug with the woman in the car beside the crosswalk.  Idiots.  What can you do?

Life can change like that, one instant to the next.  Boom.  Crash.  Bang.  (Anyone else remember that Roxette song?  Well, Crash Boom Bang technically.)  And all of our life can be gone, all those unique memories disappeared into shmutz on a road.  We are ephemeral by definition of our lives.  It pays to remember this, at least now and again.

Naturally I kept on walking.  Because what else do we do?  My life hadn’t actually changed.  No broken bones, no death, might as well keep to my purpose.  My thoughts churned around the importance of life and all of those typical things and then, as we tend to do, the moment passed and I was back in the musings I’d started with.

About a week before I’d done the same walk with friends.  On that walk I came across some banana peels that demanded I take their pictures.  Hey, it was my birthday weekend, I didn’t say I was sober during this walk! lol.  Here are those banana peel portraits:  Banana in Puddle and Banana with Bag.

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So here I am a week later, on essentially the same walk, and what do I see?

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Oh, banana, poor poor banana.  Slowly fading into the past.  As most of us do.  Most of life doesn’t change in that quick instant, that lightening strike of a car.  Most change is slow, changes coming in small bits, microbes eating away at who and what we are until we oh so slowly decay from living until death unto dirt.

Thankfully, it is slow!  Meaning there is so much time to enjoy the moments, large and small, crazy and plain, thunderous and whisper soft.

Those goosings from death are a chance to take the appreciation for everything else a little deeper into ourselves.  I know this in my head but it’s my heart that needed the reminder.

Time to go live some life.  Because what is fed, grows.

Blessings of the deep and wild to you all.

Saturn,
The Abysmal Witch.