Tag: life

Chapter Eleven – Justice

by Jamieson Wolf, posted in A Tarot Guide

There was a justice on the street that hadn’t been in my life before.

In my life that had been, bullies sometimes went unchecked, those that were different were hurt and often there was no way to find retribution. The street held a kind of law and an unspoken rule of conduct. If someone was down, you held them up. It someone had been hurt by someone else, you stood up for them. I’d come to realize in a short time that you protected those that you were close to. It was just something you did without thinking about it.

Fast friendships formed and these people cemented themselves into your life and it was like you knew them right away. It was like this with Angel. I hadn’t known her at all when I had first met her, but now I searched her out whenever I was at YSB or the square. She filled my life with light, and I tended to gravitate towards it, not to drink from it but so I could bask in her glow.

It was healing to be next to her and her warmth filled over into my life. She would often draw her chalk art on the pavement of the square and put a hat out to collect change. Her art was so beautiful and lifelike that it looked like it could rise up out off the pavement and come to life. I was amazed that she could create such beautiful art with chalk on something as hard and unfriendly as the pavement. It seemed like a wonderful kind of balance whenever Angel worked the chalk into the cold pavement and brought it to life. Angel found life in the world that hadn’t been there before, and I marveled as I watched her work.

“Did you want to write something?” She asked.

I shrugged. “Well, nothing I write will be as good as your art.”

She stopped drawing and gave me a stern look. “Don’t say that. You’re a beautiful writer and your poetry is incredible. Why don’t you write a poem to go with my drawing. You can take your time with it. Here,” she handed me a piece of white chalk

I held it for a moment, watching her bring a woman to life within a forest of leaves. She looked out at me from within the window that Angel had created for her, and I could see her looking up at me. I looked into the woman’s eyes and began to write her story, scratching the white chalk onto the pavement.

I watched as both of our creations came to life together, my words taking inspiration from her. “She looks like she’s looking up at me from behind a window.” I told her. “Or like she’s outside looking within.”

Angel nodded and worked window lines in front of the chalk woman’s face. Only a few lines had been added, but it brought the chalk painting alive for me, made the final words of my poem come out and tumble from my fingers.

“There,” Angel said. We sat back and looked at our piece of art, my words a balance to her world of colours. I hadn’t noticed, but the amount of money in the hat had grown quite a bit. When the day was over, Angel handed me half.

“I can’t take that,” I said. “I wrote my poem for fun.”

“I painted my lady in the window for fun, too. We both worked hard in our own way and should both get paid for what we made. Fuck, I made more today than had it just been me painting. We helped each other.” She put the money into my hand and folded my fingers over it. “I mean, you didn’t see the people going to walk by my art, but they stopped to read your words and what you had written. We did it together, Jamie.”

We gathered up our windfall and headed towards McDonalds on Rideau Street. We could treat ourselves to something. I usually got a Fillet o’Fish and Angel would get nuggets or a Big Mac. We could eat in the restaurant and be near a washroom, pretend that we were normal, just for a moment.

I remember getting our food and thinking about the poem I had written. Eventually, both the drawing and my poem would be gone, never to exist again. It’s not like Angel and I could take a copy of her drawing, and I hadn’t thought to write down a copy of the words I had left behind.

I was okay with that.

It was our give to those that had given us the money we had in our pockets. The art and the words belonged to them, and we had left our magic in the streets. I wondered if others would be guided by the flash of the woman’s blue eyes or the curve of the vowels I had penned.

In that moment, I thought of the chalk dust we had marked the pavement with like stars, waiting to lead others to where they would find their magic.

Chapter Ten – The Wheel of Fortune

by Jamieson Wolf, posted in A Tarot Guide

Rainbow was a consummate host.

He made sure that I was comfortable, and we became close. There was nothing romantic between us. Truthfully, it was just good to have a friend. I knew a lot of people on the street, but there weren’t many that I could call friend, at least not yet. It felt good to have a friend in a world that was so new to me.

I gave too much of myself away to other people. I had always been told that this was one of my failings. I couldn’t help it; I was hardwired that way, the eternal peacekeeper. It was the role I had been used to playing because it had been safer.  

I also knew when to keep myself safe and balance that with the role of a peacekeeper. I had put up a wall with Shades and I had been building it for a while. It was a way of keeping everyone happy and ensure my safety. I had been taught to do this since I was young. Growing up, there needed to be a someone to keep the peace with my father. It was easier than the alternative which happened all too often.

It was wonderful to have someone in my life who I could be myself with and not worry about romantic entanglements, protecting myself and trying to look for what was underneath so that I could see what the other person was hiding. Sunshine was completely himself and I had never known anyone like him before. I felt safe to be with him and didn’t have to hide anything about myself. I didn’t want to tell him my life story, but his behaviour towards me let me know that I could if I wanted to.

One evening, we were both scribbling away in our journals. He had given me a spare one of his as I had filled up my notebook, even with the extra paper. “I still think that my journals are going to be published some day,” he said softly over the music of pen scratching. “I wonder what kind of people will read them? Who they will be? Did you ever wonder who will read your words?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know what story I want to tell.”

He shrugged. “You have to let yourself live, Jamie. You think too much. I can see it in your eyes. You’re always trying to think past the next few steps, what comes next. It must be so tiring. You have to just live day by day. Don’t worry about tomorrow before you live today.” He handed lit a cigarette and passed one to me, lit one for himself. They were slim 100’s in a gold and black carton. I felt fancy and so literary when I smoked these cigarettes. They reminded me of black and white film stars.

I sat there looking at the blank page in front of me. I knew that I wanted to start a new cycle for myself. I also knew that I had been lucky to find Sunshine when I arrived on the streets. He had been a friend from the word go. I looked at him writing out of the corner of my eyes as I tried writing some words. He was completely himself and I knew that if I was going to make it out here on my own that I would have to look at myself in a different way.

I was not a victim in any of this. Though the place I had known as my home had been taken from me and nothing was like it had been, that didn’t mean that this was horrible. I had found safety with Sunshine and I had found my freedom again. I had left home on my own when I was sixteen and I been okay. I could do this again. I didn’t have to be afraid anymore. I couldn’t be afraid if I was going to make it and the thing of it was that I knew I could make it and that I had already made it by not going back to my stepfather grovelling at his feet for him to take me back into a house that had never really been a home anyways.

Looking down at the paper in front of me, I drew a door. I flipped to the other side of the page and drew an open doorway. The smoke from my cigarette made it seem like there was fog coming from within my words and all I had to do was see past the mist to find where my words had been hiding.

Taking a drag from my cigarette, I put my pen to a clean sheet of paper and let my words free.

Chapter Nine – The Hermit

by Jamieson Wolf, posted in A Tarot Guide

Sunshine lived with two other guys in a two-bedroom apartment.

It was this squat building painted a burgundy too dark to be considered gentle and there was yellow trim everywhere on the outside of the building. The building looked tired, but damn it was trying. “It’s not much,” Sunshine said. “I get a large room with a window that looks out into the alley. There are sometimes that I like to sit there and listen to the music that the evening has to offer.”

He gave the old building a wink. “Still, she can be temperamental like all old places are.” Giving me first a shrug and then a saucy wink. “At least she’s trying!”

The lobby was a one room with a jumble of mailboxes that looked strangely like mouths. I was reminded of the doorknobs from The Labyrinth for some reason and wondered what kind of a world I was about to enter. There was graffiti in the stairwell that had been there for years. The words had faded to the point where they were unintelligible. In certain sections of the stairs, it looked as if a painter’s pallet had exploded: the stairs were covered in bold blacks and yellows, arcs of magenta, vibrant oranges faded to the dusk of dusk itself.

To my mind, only the fey folk lived here or those desperate to live. It felt like home to me right away. My stepfather had taught me to recognize the signs of what had once been a good building. This building may not look pretty, but I could see what the building had once been underneath the grime, crumbling stone and faded windows. She had been a jewel in her day. The wood held the stories of these people that had come before me. I may not be here very long, I thought, but it would be home while I was.

Sunshine’s roommates nodded at me when Sunshine and me came into the apartment. “This is Dan and Mike. They’re nice. Their room is that way. They don’t want anyone knowing that they are a couple, so mums the word, honey.”

We passed by a kitchen, the bathroom and then ended up in Sunshine’s room. He was right, it was a spacious room and the window to the outside world was huge. I could see the deep blue of the dusky sky and it brought me comfort. “Come here, honey. Look, it’s like a window box. You can even sit in there and write. I like to do that. I write in my journal sometime, you know? I know that it will be published someday.”

He went over to his stuff and pulled out a roll of foam. “I don’t have a lot for you to sleep on. My mother got me a futon, but it’s only a single. I can give you this to sleep on? I’m sorry honey, I wish I had more.”

I took the foam with reverence. “Thank you, it’s more than enough. You’ve given me so much already.”

“You go on and make yourself comfortable. I’ll be right back. I’m going to see if those two guys have left any food in the house.”

While he was gone, I took a seat in the window. If I wanted to, I could have opened it and dangled my feet out into the alleyway. Instead, I was content to sit there looking at a slice of the moon that I could see. There was a haze around the building that seemed to take on more life the darker the sky got. It’s like the building wanted to shine for all those that might need her.

I sat there and tried to focus on my own light into my words. I sat there, holding my pen and paper in hand and just enjoyed the moment instead. There was no other sound except my own breathing and Sunshine in the kitchen.

I knew that the world held the dark and the light and that I had a choice to make. I could let what happened with Shades dim my light, I could disappear into the uncertainty of this world and let myself become lost within it. What did I have anymore but my own will? I could choose to let that go, too and embrace what may come.

Or I could choose to dust myself off, get up and not have my life determined for me by a man. I was in a place of comfort with someone I trusted, and I hadn’t had that with Shades. I thought of the steps that I had taken and the path I had chosen for myself. I would see this path through to the end, no matter where it took me.

As I looked up at the sliver of the moon I could see in a dusky blue sky, I promised myself this.

Sunshine came back into the room holding two mugs. “Good news, honey! They didn’t finish everything off.” His smile was infectious as he held up the two mugs. “Chicken noodle soup!”

Chapter Five – The Hierophant

by Jamieson Wolf, posted in A Tarot Guide

Even though I was staying with Shades, my bag was always with me.

It held everything I owned, and I didn’t feel safe leaving it with him. I just got a feeling that my belongings weren’t safe with him if I wasn’t with them. To a passerby, the bag was full of an odd sort of collection, a hodge podge of things that didn’t seem to connect or have any kind of order.

They were the only things I left home with.

My stepfather had given me fifteen minutes to pack what I wanted to take with me when he kicked me out. I had looked around my room and tried to think of what I would need to make me feel more comfortable in a transitory lifestyle. I had no idea where I would end up, no set notion of where I was going and no idea what I was about to do.

That was okay, though. It was better than living under his roof. I was never really at home beneath it. I had a room, but it was never really mine. It was a waystation of sorts, even I knew it in some rudimentary way. It was a home, but it wasn’t mine, not really.

I had looked around my room and thought logically about what I would need, knowing that everything would have to be small and lightweight. I went around my room, looking at everything I had gathered crow like around me, all my clothes and things: gadgets and wonders, books filled with worlds, CDs filled with anthems, joys and understanding.

I knew that I would need to take very little with me. What did I actually need beyond a shadow of a doubt. I took my time to choose the things I would need no matter where I was. I took my alarm clock so that I could set always get up when I need to and have order in a world that had none. I took three t shirts and three pairs of underwear so that I would always have a spare and a change plus the shirt I wore. I took one hoodie. I had a little bag of toiletries: deodorant, toothbrush, soap. I took Playing Beatie Bow by Ruth Park and Mine for Keeps by Jean Little because they were a comfort, and they were thin and light.

I took what ID of mine that I could find and my tarot cards, the box beginning to fall away. I checked my wallet. I had thirty dollars to my name and little bit of paper that contained things I had written down.

I had collected these things to me, going around the room and gathering to me and finding a place for them in my bag. Every spot was special, and I didn’t want to weigh myself down too much with a lot of stuff. I took one last thing: a silver ring with a wolf etched to it in Haida art. It was my connection and touchstone to spirit.

I kept all of this with me at all times, either on my back or beside me, always in view and I had chosen each piece for myself. There was no panic in any of my choices. I knew that I had to leave room for other items and treasures that I would find along the way. I had to leave room for myself so that I could grow wings.

I knew that every time I took my bag with me that I didn’t trust him. Could I love someone I didn’t trust? I knew the answer and wasn’t sure how long that I could stay with someone who I didn’t trust, who hadn’t so much as kissed me. We’d done other things, but never that. I knew that it was the most intimate that you could be with another person and Shades and I didn’t share that between us. I knew the signs were there and that this was only the fist step along on this new journey.

I had no idea where it would take me, but I knew that I had packed my talismans and brought them with me for some semblance of normalcy. Less a bag of personal items, it was a bag that contained what I thought contained magic. I just wondered where that magic would take me.

I lay there at nighttime, Shades shirtless beside me, listening to his breathing as he slept. His snores sounded like the wind as I looked at the night stars outside the window, the air hot with the heat of summer, a candle we had lit earlier beginning to sputter.

As I fell asleep, I watched the shadows on the walls and wondered what I would become.

Chapter Two – The High Priestess

by Jamieson Wolf, posted in A Tarot Guide

Life took on a different shape for me.

I found it surprisingly easy to let go of the life I had lived and embrace the new one that stood out in front of me. No rules, no engagements, no expectations of me. The sheer amount of freedom was almost intoxicating.

Shades and I shared the same bed, but it turned out the only way that he would let himself act on his impulses with me was if he got drunk beforehand. I hadn’t known or wanted to see that about him. There was a lot that he had kept hidden from me, the biggest omission was that he was dating a woman.

Rainbow didn’t exude an array of different colours. Instead, she looked at everything with a very calm outlook. There were some in our group that thought she was arrogant. I recognized a little of myself in her and I knew that her attitude wasn’t arrogance. She was trying to protect herself. Rainbow had been drawn in by the flame that Shades put out, but she was being careful.

Despite Shades pressuring her for sex, she refused. She would look at him with a coy glance and give him a little smile as if she were laughing at him internally. When she refused him, he would turn to me. I wondered what Rainbow had seen, what she had dealt with to make her so able to observe the true heart of any matter that was placed before her and speak her mind about it.

Rainbow and I would sit outside waiting for Shades to come back with money, cigarettes or food. He took his ability to provide for us very seriously. Rainbow and I would smoke and look at the world around us, wondering if we ever fit within it.

“You deserve better,” she said to me once.

I shrugged. “I love him,” I told her, knowing that she was referring to Shades. I don’t know what made that love so vital to me, but there it was. It was the first time I had said the word.

Taking my right hand, she traced a finger around its knuckles. “I know it may seem like love, but I’m not sure that Shades is capable of it.” She let my hand go and pulled a cigarette out of the pack. “You deserve someone who loves you as much as you love them.”

“What about you?” I asked.

Now it was turn to shrug. “I know that I love myself,” she said, taking a drag off of a cigarette. “That seems to be enough.”

“Then what is he to you? How can you be with someone you don’t love?”

Rainbow gave me a genuine smile. “Haven’t you ever been with someone you don’t love?”

I thought back to the people I had been before I came out of the closet. I loved them, but not in the way they needed. I thought, too, of the men that I had been attracted to since coming out. They were all unattainable in some way. None of them got too close to me and I’m not sure if it was me keeping them away or their non-ability to have an actual relationship.

“I guess it’s enough for now.” I said.

Nodding, Rainbow blew out a plume of smoke and kissed my cheek. “Well, at least you know that I love you and that’s what really matters.”

I sat there in the warmth of the sunshine and wondered if this was enough. I took a cigarette out of the pack and lit it, drawing smoke into my lungs. I pictured the cloud of smoke becoming a wall of thorns, hiding who I had been and who I was going to be. All that mattered was who I was right now and I could tell my own story.