Tag: Tarot

Chapter Fifty-Two – 4 of Swords

by Jamieson Wolf, posted in A Tarot Guide, Finding Balance, Memoir, Someone Else’s Life, Tarot

I arrived back at Lisa’s with a broken heart.

Every breath I took into myself hurt and I wondered if this would be the way it was from now on. I dried the tears that had started again before I entered the house. I wanted to appear strong, but I knew that this would not last long. I’d resolved myself to the idea that tears were a sign that I was strong enough to cry. I just wished the tears would stop. I had cried all the way back to Lisa’s.

She seemed genuinely unsurprised to see me back so quickly. “Jamieson, you’re home early.”

I looked at her and saw her kind face and knew that I couldn’t keep it from her for any length of time. “Francis broke up with me.” I said, new tears sliding down my cheeks.

“I know, honey. I’m so sorry.”

That stopped me short, and I felt like I’d been slapped. “Why are you sorry?” Her words clicked into my head. “What do you mean, you know? What are you talking about?”

She patted the chair beside her and passed her pack of cigarettes towards me. I reached for the pack of cigarettes and pulled one out for myself. Getting up quickly, Lisa put the kettle on to boil. She was drinking coffee, but she drank it at all times of the day. She knew I liked a cup of herbal tea in the evenings. If she was brewing me tea, I was pretty sure that I didn’t want to hear what she was going to say.

She waited until the kettle was boiled and she poured the water into the mug. I could smell peppermint across the kitchen. Bringing the tea back to the table, she put the cup beside me and took my free hand in hers. “I know because we talked about it.”

“It meaning us? Like, Francis and myself?”

“Yeah, he’s been talking to everyone about his feelings for months now.”

“Months?” I felt the ground move beneath me. Looking down, I wasn’t surprised to see that the earth had opened up around me. If I looked too deeply into the earth, I could see the air moving within it and feel the wind on my skin. “What did you talk about?” I could barely get the words out. It felt like I was having to pull each word from my lips, the air to create them gone for now.

“Well, how young you were, of course. How he loved you but realized that he didn’t love you in the way you needed to be loved. There were so many years between you.”

“That didn’t matter to me!” I told her, letting out a puff of smoke. I watched it float to the ceiling to join the ether and wished that I could find a way to disappear so easily. “I knew he was having difficulty with it; he kept saying that I was only six years older than his son.”

“Then you see the problem. He already had two kids; he didn’t want a third one.”

Whatever words I was going to speak were slapped out of me. I closed my eyes and looked down at my heart which still bore the scars Francis had given me. I held my heart in my hands, and I cupped my hands around my heart to keep it safe. I would not let him hurt me. I kept my eyes closed when I spoke next. “Why didn’t he talk to me?”

“Because he didn’t want to hurt your feelings. He loved you in the beginning, Jamieson. But there was more than twenty years between the both of you.”

“That didn’t matter to me. I love him and never saw age when I looked at him.”

“Yeah, well he couldn’t overlook it.”

“Fine, but he should have talked to me about it. Who else did he talk to about breaking up with me?”

An uncomfortable look came over her face. “Everyone,” she said.

“Like, everyone we know? Define everyone. Like Darnelle and Sophie? Jen?”

“That’s a good start. But when I mean everyone, I mean anyone who would listen. He was so broken up about everything. It’s been going on for months.”

“But we’ve been together for months, almost a year.”

“He started talking to me about it soon after you got together. He loved you but didn’t know what to do.”

“Yeah, well, he certainly knew what to do when I was sucking his dick.” The words came out of my mouth unbidden. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” She pushed my cup of tea towards me. “Francis is an asshole. He may be all flash in the pan and sparkles, but I still think that when you have a chance at love, you don’t start looking for excuses to take your heart back.”

I closed my eyes again and could see my heart. It looked whole again. There were cracks that ran along the surface, but it was still beating. I could get through this. I had to get through this. For a moment in the dark, I was beside Shades while he fucked a woman, and I opened my eyes so that I could let go of that memory. I was always giving my heart to the people who didn’t want it. Here I was having discovered what love could truly be and the magic it could create, but it had been a lie, too.

Lisa could sense where my mind was going. “He loved you, Jamieson. I’m sure of it.”

“Then why did he push me away?” I asked. Fresh tears slid down my cheeks.

“I think he was pushing himself away. Not that I’m playing devils advocate, but I can’t imagine what it was like for him to love you and fear you at the same time.”

I let out a laugh. “Why would he fear me?”

“Because you gave him the love that he’s always been wanted and that terrifies him. He doesn’t think he deserved it, so he runs away from it, hurting people in the process.”

I nodded and got up from the table. I took my tea and went out back, sitting down on the back stoop in the dark. I could see bugs surrounding the lamp by the door. I listened to the wind and the sounds of traffic and other people in the distance going about their lives, unaware that it felt like mine had ended.

In my minds eye, I saw myself holding my heart to my chest. I knew that what it needed was love and care. I couldn’t give my heart to another; I had to keep mine close and love it as much as I could. I would focus on loving myself, instead of loving others who could not love me back. I took the four shards of metal that had been left in my heart and gently pulled them free. I took the time to fashion a box around my heart that would protect it and keep my heart from harm.

I would give my heart the rest that it needed so that it would be able to heal in peace. It was the least I could do after everything that my heart had seen me through. I opened my eyes again and looked into the shadows, knowing that I had to find my peace after I had time to grieve.

I lit a cigarette and the smoke faded in the shadows much as I wished to do.

Chapter Fifty – Ace of Swords

by Jamieson Wolf, posted in A Tarot Guide, Memoir, Someone Else’s Life

I had given the pages to Lisa ten minutes before, and I’d already had two cigarettes.

I hadn’t written a short story for such a long time. I had filled page after page with poetry, bit and pieces of dialogue, but I hadn’t written anything close to a short story since my days in high school. I hadn’t felt that I had anything to say as a story, but there were too many words in my mind, too many syllables sneaking past my lips that I had to find a way to get them out of me.

A story seemed like a good way to use as many words and letters as possible so that I could relieve the pressure that even poetry couldn’t ease. For every word I put down, ten more came to the surface. They didn’t fit in my poems, and it was as if these words found the form of poetry too confining, all shoved into form and shape. When I wrote poetry, I tried to follow the flow of the poem and convey what I wanted to say in as few words as possible. These words felt different. I could hear conversations between two people, and I knew that those words didn’t belong in a poem.

I needed to cut through the cloud of words if I was to get any kind of peace. Opening my current journal, I wrote the first thing that came to mind. It was a short story about a boy named Oliver that didn’t believe in magic, and yet magic was all around him. A troll showed up under his bed and the troll had a flatulence problem and kept farting throughout the story. When I was writing the story, I wrote what wanted to come out and had a fantastic time. Yet, when the story was done, I thought it was silly and stupid. Part of me had been reluctant to show it to Lisa, but she had seen me scribbling away and she wanted to know what I had written.

“You know, this is as good as Charles de Lint,” she said.

I blushed and mumbled my thanks, trying to find words that could express my joy at having Lisa compare my story to Charles de Lint. I knew that she meant it, too and how much she revered his work. Both Lisa and I loved Charles de Lint. My biggest influences for wanting to write in the first place were authors like Stephen King, Tanya Huff and Charles de Lint. I wanted to tell my own stories, but I didn’t think I had anything new to say. Lisa had pushed aside my worries. “Jamieson, every story has been told already. You just have to find your voice and tell you own.”

“If every story has already been told, then why would anyone want to read my writing?” I had asked her.

“Because they will have been waiting to hear what you have to say.”

I hadn’t been so sure, but I had sat down and written my story anyways, regardless of what the internal critic yelled at me. When I got to the end of Oliver and the Trolls, I wrote down the beginning of a new short story. I didn’t know where the words were coming from, but I didn’t want to stop their flow. As Lisa had sat there reading my story and flipping through the pages, I had told myself that even if she didn’t like it, I would keep writing. I knew that I had a story to tell.

“Seriously, Jamieson. I mean it. I mean, I love your poetry but it’s all dark and moody. This story is the first time that I’ve read something of yours that’s funny. I mean, you’re a brilliant poet and I love the spells you write, but this is the first time that you’ve done something funny. It’s so good. You got dark and full of shadows down pat, but I think you have a real gift with humour.”

That surprised me. Up until I had written the story, I hadn’t even thought of writing something funny, but it’s what came out. “I wanted to write about a boy discovering magic,” I said. “There’s no reason that magic has to be huge and terrifying. It’s all around us if we have the eyes to look.”

“Jamieson, the biggest magic in the world if laughter. I know that this story will make people laugh and there is so much magic in that. You need to try writing more. What happens to Oliver next?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, why not find out?” She clicked open her lighter and lit a cigarette for each of us and passed one to me. “I know that all artistic folk like you exist on another plain from the rest of us, you have to in order to hear what you do and be so driven to create. But I’m glad you cut through the doom and gloom a little and found your voice.”

She took a puff of her cigarette and let out a huge plume of smoke and I couldn’t help being reminded of the caterpillar from Alice and Wonderland who spouted wisdom in the form of a riddle. I wondered if I had finally found my voice, or at least another facet of it.

I thought of Alice going down the rabbit hole and I knew that by cutting through the fog of self doubt and writing something different from what I was used to, I was going down my own rabbit hole.

I wondered who I would be when I found my way out on the other side.

Chapter Forty-Eight – Queen of Cups

by Jamieson Wolf, posted in A Tarot Guide, Finding Balance, Memoir, Personal Growth, Someone Else’s Life, Tarot

There were always people at Lisa’s house.

One of Lisa’s friends was a woman named Darnelle. She had dark hair and a quick wit. She had been the one to introduce Paganism to Lisa and she seemed to resent Lisa for how little respect she showed the Magick. When she was in the house, I knew that I was in the presence of an elder and she made sure to let everyone know that.

“You can’t conduct a ceremony without calling the quarters,”

“Says who?”

“Says the way it’s always been done. You must respect tradition.” Darnelle would say.

“I want to make new traditions,” Lisa would respond.

They had this argument often and it got to the point where I could follow it like a tennis match. “But you have to respect the Gods,” Darnelle would respond.

“What do you think I’m trying to do? The whole ritual is to honour them.”

I didn’t understand the push and pull between them. To me, Magick and Paganism made a lot of things possible because it was so open. There was no right way to find your light. This is what all the people I knew in the community had taught me. They were all Pagan, but how each person had gotten to this point was different, just as their journeys were not the same.

I thought of my own journey that had brought me here and I knew that each step I had taken had been one of choice. Paganism existed in a place beyond choice. It simply was, shaped by a person’s ideals and what they believed. Their spirit told them what kind of things they needed. The fact that Darnelle always insisted that her way was the right way grated a little.

Yet she could be incredibly kind. She would stock Lisa’s fridge and cupboards without asking, showing up with bags of groceries. There were quite a few people living in Lisa’s apartment and all of us were on welfare. Money was thin, and the extra food was always a blessing.  She always had a spare cigarette for me, and I loved Darnelle despite her rigid stance on how the occult should be practiced.

I ended up going to see Darnelle on my own and would travel to her place to see her. My mother had walked away from me, so Darnelle became a kind of stand in for my mom. She had two children of her own and they were in and out of Darnelle’s house often. Even though Darnelle had a rigid sense of what was right and wrong in magic, she was keen to help me develop mine.

“I know you’re a warrior witch right now, but what path are you going to take when the need to fight is gone?” She motioned at me with a cigarette between two fingers. “Warrior magic is strong, but it can wear a person out. You don’t want to be guns blazing all the time.”

“I am strong.” I told her. I looked into her eyes, dark like a cave that invites you in but hides so many wonders not ever seen before.

 I took offense to the idea that she would find me weak. I wanted and needed to prove myself to her. Darnelle had this way of seeing what a person carried within them without them having to tell her anything. It was like she could see right into you and would judge you based on how strongly the rivers flowed within.

She lit another cigarette and looked at me through the smoke. “I never said you weren’t. But aren’t you tired of being strong all the fucking time? I told you that you can’t keep going at that rate, you’ll fucking burn out. Do you think I want that for you?”

I lit my own cigarette and took my time to respond. Darnelle demanded respect. You could speak your mind, but she demanded I take the time to respond and not lash out. She always wanted me to think of what I really wanted to say, what the heart of the matter was. “If I’m not a warrior, what am I?”

She shook her head. “No, you misunderstand me. You will always be a warrior, but practicing warrior Magick all the time will tap you out. Look at what it does to Lisa. She lets it be the excuse for her ignorance, uses it to be the reason for her rudeness.” Tapping her cigarette in the ashtray she left it there to smoke while she got up to put the kettle on. Taking out two earthenware mugs, she popped to orange pekoe bags into them and then came back for her cigarette. “No, you can’t be a warrior all the time. You’ve had to fight so much. You don’t have to be a warrior all the time.”

“I don’t know how to do anything else but fight.” I told her.

“Well, then maybe it’s time you look at magic that will help heal you instead of magic that will aid you for battle, hm?”

I watched as she put out her cigarette and went back to her kitchen to get the mugs of tea. I wondered about the idea of actually loving myself and letting myself heal from the scars that I carried not just on my skin, but also within me.

I added some milk and sugar to the tea, and we held up our mugs. “To healing,” Darnelle said.

When we clinked our mugs together, I imagined that I could hear the sound of bells over the whisper of the waves. I tried to listen to what the waves within me were saying and took a sip of my tea.

Chapter Forty-Six – Prince of Cups

by Jamieson Wolf, posted in A Tarot Guide, Finding Balance, Memoir, Someone Else’s Life

“My mother is into the same shit as you are,” Max said.

I let out a snort. “Well, it’s not shit,” I said. “Magic isn’t shit, it’s the people that use it that take it to a darker place that are shit.”

She shrugged and shook her head when I offered her a cigarette. “Whatever. I mean, she was kind of into it before, but now it’s more so what with Francis and her being roommates for so long. Francis is the kind of guy that fills the world with wonder, everyone is drawn to him. I don’t have to tell you that, do I?”

I was surprised to find myself blushing. “Is it that obvious?”

“Hey, I’m happy if you’re happy. Just be careful.”

I felt a moment of panic and I wasn’t sure why. “What do you mean? You don’t think that Francis is a bad person, do you?” I wondered if my gut had led me off course, but I knew Francis with my whole heart and spirit.

“No, no. He’s never been mean. But have you looked at him?”

“Of course I have, he’s beautiful.” I said.

She gave me a goofy grin and nudged my shoulder with her own. “I know that, but when you look into him, what do you see?”

I thought of every time that I looked into Francis’ eyes and the sea that always drew me in. I thought of the water every time I thought of Francis because of the endless sea that swirled within him. Depending on how many emotions he was holding onto, sometimes I swore that I could see fish swimming within the deep waters.. I told this to Max. “I just see the sea.” I said.

She nodded. “Everyone is so taken by it. I was, too. I still am a little but keep myself to myself for the most part.” She shook her head. “He’s never hurt me, not like that. But he’s just so sad.” Max looked like she was going to cry. I too her hand to give her some kind of comfort.

“Just be careful, okay? We got along like a house on fire at first, and he’s been like a dad to me for so long. But there’s just too much there. Too much,” she scrunched up her face, trying to think of the words she wanted to say. “Like, just think of taking a tsunami, the biggest and most epic one you’ve ever seen, and shove it all into one person. That’s like Francis. He holds too much. Haven’t you seen his moods?”

I nodded. I knew that Francis could get withdrawn and lost within himself, especially if he was sewing or creating something. Even after months with him, I knew little about him. I knew nothing about what it was like for him growing up, what it had been like for him growing up. He always wanted to focus on the now and the future, the one that we were making with each other. “I always want to talk about where I’ve come from so that I can appreciate where I am going.” I told her.

“Exactly. Francis never wants to talk about what came before. I mean, since he left his wife years ago, he’s only ever had one boyfriend. He’s been alone for years before he met you. That’s a lot of emotion to handle for someone Francis’ age, let alone you.”

“I love him even with the age difference.”

“I know you do. I just want you to be careful. You see no boundaries and no worries and I’m pretty sure that is sometimes all that Francis sees.” She took my hands in hers. “I just want you to be careful. I don’t want you to get hurt, okay?”

She reached into my pack and took two cigarettes and handed one to me. “Just don’t tell my mom I’m smoking,” she said.

“Your secret is safe with me.”

Chapter Forty-Five – 10 of Cups

by Jamieson Wolf, posted in A Tarot Guide, Memoir, Personal Growth, Someone Else’s Life

I was taking off makeup when Francis came home.

Francis had invited me to stay at his place rather than at Lisa’s and I had been there for a few days. I felt like I was in a dream of some kind. Part of me was terrified and excited all at once. Francis said that I should feel safe and have my own space. He offered me his and I didn’t have anything to say at the moment because I couldn’t find the words.

I knew the gift he was giving me. He was like me in that his space was his sanctuary. It was his retreat away from the world that had harmed him. I knew how he felt. I would keep everyone away from me, but I love them too much. I wanted to be known but to somehow be invisible. Francis understood this kind of balancing act. Wanting someone who saw you for exactly who you were but being afraid that you would finally show them everything and then they would run.

By letting me stay in his room, Francis was letting me see him, every crevice of who he was. He had been a nomad like me, gathering their belongings into whatever they could and setting up shop in the next place that would have them. Looking around the room, at the array of shawls, dresses and fabrics, the books and journals filled with notes, magazines and bottles of nail polish; it was like living inside this glorious room of wonders that held all manner of magicks. I knew that by letting me stay there, he was letting me know he really was and the fact that he trusted me at that level was the greatest gift.

He would be away for a couple of days and had asked if I wanted to stay with Stacey and her daughter Max. His room would be free, and he told me that I could get a break from Lisa that way, too. “I mean, I love her and everything, but she lives like a pig.”

I kissed him and said “Yes, and yes.”

“Yes, to staying here?”

“Yes, to that and yes, I agree with you about Lisa. But you’re speaking with someone who sleeps on a roll of foam and she’s given me a place to sleep, so I can’t judge.”

I thought staying with Stacey and Max would be somewhat stilted and awkward, but they were both wonderful, welcoming and funny and both of them had Francis stories. Stacey said she had worked with him for a very long time. “He’s made me swear not to tell you the really naughty things that he’s done, but I told him that I’ll keep it PG.” She gave me a very saucy smile. “But I promise not to tell if you won’t tell if I do.”

“Yeah, except your definition of scandalous and my definition differ greatly.” Max said. “Trust me, what those two consider off the charts isn’t even a top ten hit.”

I liked Max. She had the most direct way of talking to a person that I really appreciated. She almost had no filter, but she was very diplomatic in her scorn. She was a few years younger than me, but we were fast friends. She had a wicked sense of humour that would light up the room or make a person the butt of a joke and I always wanted to be around her joy.

I felt like I belonged and that Stacey and Max were just part of my chosen family. Stacey even had her boyfriend over at one point and we were like some kind of family unit, and I took a moment to take it all in. It was a lovely family dynamic, and their presence helped me when I was missing Francis. I missed him with all the emotions of a young heart, which is to say that I missed Francis with everything that flowed within me. I sat, read, wrote, talked with Stacey and Max and I missed Francis. I had never let myself care that much about another man. I had always held myself closed in some way; there was always some part of me that they never knew because it was just safer. If they never knew all of me, it would be easy to walk away.

I had finally been able to be open, seen and loved by Francis and his own chosen family. It was a wonderful feeling and helped to ease my heart a little. The emotions were still there, but I could see past them. I still needed to distract myself from missing him.

I had put on make up that morning, one eye done in orange eyeshadow, eyeliner and mascara and the other eye done in purple. I had wanted to be ultra fabulous for when Francis returned home, but as the day wore on, it looked like he would be arriving late. I had decided to take off my eye make up and just be myself as that’s who Franic fell in love with. I was in the bathroom when there was a knock at the door. “Yes?” I had just taken off most of the orange eye but still had some clean up to do and the purple one.

The door opened and there was Francis. He came into the bathroom and kissed me, even with the orange make up marking my face like a tiger’s stripes. “You’re home!” I said and kissed him back.

“We knew that he was on the way home, but he wanted it to be a surprise.” Max said from the bathroom doorway.

At that moment, kissing Francis and being kissed by him, my world was complete, and I finally felt at peace within myself. I was full of joy and wondered what I had done to become so lucky. I was seen and loved for who I was, and I was surrounded by people that loved me for me, not because of any obligation. At that moment, I knew that I had finally found my place in the world. I finally felt at home.