Adventures du jour!
Coleslaw + jalapenos + salt –> sauerkraut process initiated.
The last couple of days have been both good and bad, or rather I have felt both good and bad the last couple of days. The days themselves marched forward regardless of my reaction to them.
I’ve been working on a tarot spread that describes what it feels like to run AI prompts: start with a central idea, split off into two options, encounter limitations on either option, come to a locally optimized solution (a pretty image that satisfies the original idea, in this case), and then realize that *both* solutions were necessary in order to create each other; AI cross-pollinates. Good “live” AI is a fermenting sort of influence that learns from and reacts to itself;, no single answer comes directly from one single prompt or influence.
Which seemed like a valuable life lesson, no? Stuff bounces off other stuff, from which unexpected stuff emerges that takes a little from stuff a, a little from stuff b.
Tarot spreads are basically finding ways to express different types of what my daughter would call “sometimes it be like that, yo.”
Anyway, I’ve done this spread a number of times now and am coming to realize that it also makes a really good way to say, “The public is the private,” or “The personal is the political.” Something like: the life you lead personally is connected to something wider in the public sphere, and vice versa.
I got a new oracle deck the other day (Seed & Sickle) and ran it through the spread.—You know a tarot/oracle deck is a good tool when it affects you emotionally. Like all good science fiction, “fortune telling” tools like this are really about the present moment and giving you the ability to consider ideas in a way you couldn’t otherwise. They’re a tool for being wrong.
So I dealt myself the new spread with the new deck and ran into ideas I *really* didn’t want to hear, cried more than a little, and have been in a state of flux since.
One of the things that came out of it (a good thing) was that I feel like I’m no longer discontinuitous from the person I was before I got together with the ex. I’ve felt cut off from that person for a long time; it wasn’t anything sudden that happened per se but a “boiling the frog” situation.
This morning on the walk was an example of how it’s been going: I started out pissed that the ex had cut me off from my old self, bit by bit, basically training me like a pet that he wanted to be tame enough stay with him even though he was cruel and manipulative. The things that isolated me from my old self weren’t *him,* though, but things I did to insulate myself. He would have been far more satisfied with the situation if I were still the same naïve young woman he’d first met; I was much more responsive and easily hurt. Less work.
However, I’ve also done enough work on myself that I’m no longer actually cut off from that old self. I was dancing around like a dumbass yesterday and went, “I haven’t felt this free since…”
And this morning I realized I was walking on the balls of my feet again instead of walking around flat-footed all the time. I’ve recovered enough of my body that it’s mine again; it’s not the body I had when I was in my early 20s, but I can actually connect enough to it that I feel myself to be the same person on a gut level.
So: I thanked & praised my body for protecting me, and asked that it continue to work on reconnecting me back to that old self, which was healthier and happier, if not always so wise. The same kinds of things are happening on other levels as well. Good, but I feel hollowed out, angry, jangly, hurt.
O fucking wasted time! regrets! mistakes made!—Once again I come up against your idiot boundaries. I thought I was being so strong and tenacious. Had I broken earlier it would have been a blessing. That was the personal side.
On the public side, I keep waiting for the “perfect moment” to do something, then wondering why oh why I’m stuck waiting all the time. Had I chosen to be more generous with an authentic self earlier (that is, not just presenting what I thought was positive and acceptable), I would have had a wider, more effective, and more subtle reach. Just typing that out gives me a bitter taste in my mouth. Yay! I tried so hard to be patient and timely that I almost cut myself off from a writing career and doing all kinds of interesting things with my talents.
The card that showed that both the public and the private were tied together (I’m not sure if that’s how I want to say it) told me that all I have to do is be sincere.
Right. I spent how many years living in circumstances where sincerity was the WORST, MOST VULNERABLE thing I could do, and now I’m just supposed to reverse all that? FIIIIIIIINE. At least now (and this was in the spread, too) I can recognize when that sincerity is being abused because I know what to look for instead. Red flags now look red; green flags now look green, too.
It’s not that the cards are right or wrong. Any layout that I could have dealt probably would have had a strong meaning for me at this point; my subconscious is bursting to tell me things that I fight tooth and nail to not have to know, because I’ve never been in a position before where I’m safe enough to deal with what I find out.