Reading the Tea Leaves

Friday night Mark fell asleep early and I decided that I would do a tarot reading outside under the half-moon. This was partially an excuse to take advantage of the clear night and light eight beeswax candles at the cardinal points and cross-quarter points of the brick circle. Because eight candles burning in a circle looks cool.

I gathered candles, matches, cards, a flashlight, a small folding table, a copper tray, and The Book of Art and headed outside.

There was a slight pause as I had the disappointing realization that one, if not several, outdoor concerts were filling the air with… music. (Last time it was *Earth, Wind, and Fire* performing at the Cuthbert Amphitheater, two miles away.) I decided the music was dim enough that the fountain would mask it and continued with my plan.

As I was setting things up, there was a sudden thump, and something medium-sized, white, with a wedge-shaped front crashed to the ground out of the old-wooden-fort-cum-grape-arbor. I think it was an opossum. “Whoa!” I said. “Hello.”

I clapped my hands a few times to let whatever it was know I was there.

It scampered along the edge of the candle light, along the west end of the yard, and toward the tool shed.

Summoned by my clapping (which typically means SQUIRREL!), Aoife raced out of the house and silently and vigorously patrolled the shadowy foliage in the area between the tool shed and the grapes.

I continued to light candles, and began a formal invocation of the ritual circle, and invitation to the Powers of the Four Watchtowers. Aoife continued to guard the perimeter—at one point she did add to the concert music floating through the air by whacking the tin sides of the shed with her tail (this is usually a sign that she’s scented wildlife cowering under the shed’s foundation).

I chose to do a general bellwether, five card spread. 1. Situation/environment: Death. Change and transformation. 2. Crossing Obstacle / side-quest: Four of Swords, reversed. Emerging from rest. This would be like a butterfly coming out of a chrysalis. 3. Temperance, reversed. Churning resources; spinning one’s wheels. 4. Strength. Animal drives and reason working together. 5. Knight of Swords. Air expressed as Air; mental agility; reminder to stay focused and sustain efforts. In this particular reading the three cards don’t represent a past-present-future progression so much as showing a way the Strength is a balance point between inward churning and outward charging.

I did a count: two swords; three major arcana. Two reversed cards; three upright cards. The interpretation of the five-card spread I did boiled down to: you’re moving forward by leaving old things behind; take a moment to ground; don’t confuse stability or balance and stagnation; don’t confuse the opposite of stagnation for undirected frenzy.

I wrote the cards down in the Book of Art, bade “hail and farewell” to the Four Quarters, dismissed the ritual circle, and brought all of the equipment inside. A little light reading before I fell asleep reminded me that Death, Temperance, and The Devil are connected with “The Dark Night of the Soul” and related paths to Tiphareth on the Tree of Life.

I suppose that this reading might have something to do with my job, my retirement, Mark’s much sooner upcoming retirement, and how long I’m going to have to continue to work until my pension benefits and social security benefits will provide sufficient retirement income (Don’t Lose The Day Jobbe just yet).

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The next morning, Mark stopped on the threshold between the kitchen nook and the living room. “There’s something on the floor here.” He stepped back and forth. “What is this? Did you spill sugar or salt on the floor?”

“No,” I said.

He reached for the hand vacuum. “Huh, it’s kind of black. Were you doing Secret Pagan Rituals while I was asleep?”

“Well… actually—“

“Hah! You were Agitating the (Astral) Cooties, weren’t you?” He vacuumed the floor. For someone who claims to be a religious non-participant, Mark has an intricate theology of the Cycles and Habits of the Common Astral Cootie, which boils down to: “Leave The Cooties Alone.”

This is what I get for reading 1980’s Starhawk aura cleansing techniques to him.

“Not exactly,” I said. “I just did a tarot reading outside.”

He turned off the vacuum. “What did you do?”

“I just put eight candles on the brick circle and did a tarot reading.”

“Were you burning myrrh?”

“I thought about it, but I just lit beeswax candles.”

“And why did you light the candles?”

“Well, they’re cool. And they were on the circle, so they formed a barrier.”

“Ah ha! You raised energy and Summoned the Cooties, and you’re handsome and the Cooties wanted to get to you but they couldn’t.”

“It was just a ritual circle and tarot cards. Oh—something large, white, and wedge-shaped dropped out of the arbor. I think it was an opossum... Aoife came out and chased it and then was on silent patrol.”

“What?! There’s no such thing as albino opossums in Oregon!” He reached for his smartphone. “(AI’s love me.) What does seeing a white possum during ritual mean?” He then read out two answers, which boiled down to protective spirit animal or deceiving demons. “Ooh. The poor AI; one source is an Instagram feed, the other is a goofy Facebook page…. I’m going to go with the protective animal.”

“It was running away from the grapes.”

“Oh, these men. That just proves my point; it was running away from The Cooties that you stirred up.”

“Oh, you know, I wonder if the black stuff was the remains of a match; I brought in the folding table when I was through.”

“So you brought stuff into the house! And The Cooties followed you in!”

“I’d dismissed the circle after the tarot reading….”

“You put a barrier around yourself, but you didn’t put a barrier around the house, did you!?”

“Well, the ritual circle keeps—”

“It’s the old ‘Where Did You Send The Cooties?’ question all over again.”

I was not awake enough to point out that my raising a ritual circle for a candlelight backyard tarot reading was different from a ritual cleaning and banishment performed by one of Mark’s Pagan housemates back in the late 1990’s.

Mark claims his irritation with myrrh is proof of an affinity with The Astral Cooties. “I’m surprised I didn’t feel anything. I didn’t have any odd dreams…. Although, I did wake up at 1 AM with a headache.”

By this time I needed to get to the Y to clink weights, so the conversation ended. I suppose that I’m going to have to ritually sweep the floors in front of him and bid The Cooties a formal farewell and adieu.

But, by the time I got back from the Y, Mark decided that the black substance on the floor was not the result of Cooties but actually the remains of a teabag that ruptured when he was straghtening up the beverage supplies cart in our kitchen.

I’m sure there’s a metaphor in there, somewhere.

Indigo Lake and Pika

The other day Mark and I went to Indigo Lake, in the Willamette Forest on the slopes of the Cascade Mountains. It’s about an hour to the turn-off, and then another hour along a windy road to the trail head.

We saw what we thought was a hawk or other raptor flying ahead of us on the road, but after about a quarter of a mile of it flying above the road, when it alighted on a branch we saw that it was a raven. It was a sign, I’m sure.

We also had a deer moment on the road where we were reminded that deer always travel in pairs.

The weather was at turns sunny and overcast. This was fine with me because just as one would start to feel chilly from the wind or a little overheated from the uphill hike in the sun, the weather would change.

Mostly we walked through pine trees. On the steeper areas, the base of the tree trunks curved downhill; this is where the snow, melting downhill, has repeatedly bent the trees over successive Winters and Springs.

The trail to the lake ran along a stream; we were able to cross over without getting wet because the stream bed was dry. Further on, we did see sluggish water held back by rocky formations, and even further the stream widened into a marshy, open meadow.

Indigo Lake was not indigo when we visited it. It was green, to Mark’s disappointment. When we first encountered the lake, at its northern end, the wind blowing on it gave it a voice of a thousand lapping tongues. The only competing sound was the swelling rush of the wind through the pines, which sounded like something produced by Wendy Carlos in a mid-seventies recording studio. (“Psithurism” is the name of my next Mediaeval Synth Band). Overhead, clouds raced by Sawtooth Mountain.

We followed the lake’s shore to the mountain’s talus. I located a Chrysler-sized rock slab (one of many) for us to lounge upon and Mark broke out the blue cheese, almonds, walnuts, and crackers. I broke out the Ceylon OP.

And we listened. And waited. For pika.

They came. We heard their cheeping first.

One came close enough for me to be able to get a photo of Mark peering at it through a small monocular.

Mark was enchanted by its small, round, black ears and its whiskers. Unfortunately, there was no gift shop near, as the closest Ranger Station was about thirty miles away; so I could not purchase a plush pika for Mark to be a companion to the plush baby orca I purchased for him a couple weeks ago at Port Townsend.

I broke out some pens and pencils and sketched the rubble pile the pika was hiding behind.

Even though it was a secret, unspoken desire that I was silently talking myself out of, Mark had a psychic moment and forbade me from hiking through the talus to see if I could locate a surfboard-sized one to slide down the slope on.

Then it was time to head back home and Rescue the Dog from Ennui.

We managed to miss the rain while we were in the mountains, only encountering it on the drive back to Eugene.

Adventures in Dancing

Well, so much for regular blog posting over the summer. I am thinking that a combination of irregular writing practice, The Day Jobbe, doom-scrolling on Instagram, family duties, and a desire to have a blog post that is a polished, 2000 word essay has kept the posting down. So, yay, Autumnal goals!

My latest activity is Dragon Dancing. When I was researching dance poi, I stumbled across a Seattle-based influencer waving around a long, sinuous, LED-laden, zero-porosity, dragon banner in gyring arcs. And I thought, “Wow! That thing glows in the dark!” After a month of wishy-washy deliberations, I ordered one.

My dragon is blue, with white LEDs running along his fabric sides. He has a purple-highlighted Chinese dragon head, so he’s got glowing antlers, glowing white eyes, and he’s got a glowing red ball in his mouth. His rope leash clips into the ball. I whirl him around in circles and his fabric body traces spirals. I have to make sure to keep my back to any shifty wind or else the dragon’s body will sideswipe me, tangle around my feet, or the tail will whapp me in the face.

Holding the leash near the clip results in very tight circles, which have to be combined with a lunge or a full body turn so that the dragon takes a corkscrew path. Holding the leash at the handle end results in wide, slow arcs that can reach about fourteen feet in height; with the dragon’s body unfurled in this way it’s easier for it to act like a windsock. Adjusting the distance from the leash’s clip to my hand changes the period of the dragon’s swing, allowing for me to sync up with the beat of whatever music I’m listening to; I’ve made a Dragon Dancing playlist to help me keep track of session length.

It turns out that this is a dance and movement form that older people in China do. So, yay, I’ve landed on an age-appropriate behavior? There’s a lot of arm waving and lunging to get the dragon ribbon going, and my fitness tracker frequently thinks I’m swimming when I do it. I’ve decided that it’s good cardio, and I’ve been aiming for 45 minute sessions. Mark calls it “fast Ti-chi.”

I’m pretty sure that I’m not going to get hot pecs or bulging biceps Dragon Dancing, though, as I’m currently doing a lot of jumprope type motions with my shoulders, elbows, and wrists—however, I do notice that my posture is improving, that I feel more limber afterwards, and that the repetitive motion results in a toned look. And 45 minutes gets me sweaty, which is a plus because Mark appreciates it and “sweat is fat crying.”

After about a month, my repertoire consists of a figure-eight figure, a four leaf clover figure, circles of varying sizes, and a corkscrew. Continuously. For forty-five minutes. I recently saw a YouTube video where a performer whirled her dragon ribbon around her, overhead like a lasso, which I can do if the wind isn’t blowing too fiercely. I have a feeling I look like a western dance sequence from Xanadu. I suppose I need to pick up a few more moves; I think there’s one where you can make a large, Doctor-Strange-portal motion with the dragon-ribbon and then hop through it. I also need to curate my dance playlist to fine-tune it; when the right Dead Can Dance tune comes on it’s easier for me to put footwork and full-body motion into the routine, which helps to make the dancing feel less mechanical. And probably makes me look like a dance-flow hippie.

Yes; I sometimes dance with the Moon. Sometimes I dance with the sun and my shadow. But mostly right now I dance with the wind, because if I don’t I tend to get smacked by a dragon tail.

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In other, Old Gay News: I was going to go dancing the other night, but wound up staying home because I couldn’t find my stupid ear-plugs. I spent about an hour and a half—all dressed up in in a club vest that Mark bought me, black pants, raven earrings, rings, and a glow-in-the-dark bracelet—armed with a mini-maglite to help me actually focus my perception, looking through desks, tables, shelves, medicine cabinets, drawers, bookshelves, counters, room dividers, mantels, car gloveboxes, travel bags, backpacks, jacket pockets, pants pockets, under beds, under shelves, and under baseboard heaters for the stupid black, round, pillbox shaped case that holds my hearing’s salvation. I found my library card, an actual pill box, numerous pens, a pencil sharpener, and an embarrassing quantity of dust and shed animal fur.

Mark was asleep.

It was quite vexing. I tried to put a “this is the Universe saving me from encountering a gunman on an e-bike near Agate and 18th” spin on it, but I was so put out by the failure to find them that I doom scrolled on Instagram and groused about gay community and “doing gay things.”

I am sure my earplugs will turn up as soon as I order replacements.