Daily Draw November 13th, 2009

I have to go shopping tomorrow for a few odds and ends and I’ve been having so much trouble with my five year-old HP printer that I’m considering buying a new one even though I don’t have the money. This HP is an all-in-one and the scanner has never been able to do 3D pictures. Even my old $99 scanner did that. It has never printed e-mails properly in plain text, and it can’t seem to feed any paper but plain or light cardstock.

My first inkjet printer was an Epson Stylus 600 and I never had a bit of trouble with it. It printed beautiful pictures and fed paper fine. So I’m thinking about going back to Epson and was reading reviews on particular models. Of course, the one I want is $300, the Epson Artisan 810.

Today’s reading is about the printer issue and what to do. I’m getting tired of having pages and pages ruined and not being able to scan things properly for my website.

This is from the Berliner Pattern Slim Card deck:

Queen of Clubs
King of Spades
2 of Clubs

Gee, this is my week for the Queen of Clubs. It must be a time for cool, rational thinking. She is looking away from me (I am on the left) and looking to the King. Oh yes, she always checks with the King before deciding on big purchases. He looks thoughtful and a bit sad, Not another load of money going out? The Two of Clubs says balance to me, perhaps suggesting I wait for a sale.

The King is definitely my husband, the dark haired older fellow who offers guidance as he’s turned toward me, and I guess that’s me again, although I should be standing offstage. Never one to stand offstage and shirk the analysis of what to purchase, I am dandling my sunflower thinking of possibilities and sneaking looks at the King. That two tells me I’m going to be disappointed. We don’t have the money for a printer, so it’s a bit of a disappointment but not a terribly large one. My current printer still works at least, I just can’t print the Lenormand cards I designed with clip art.

And a caution not to bother the tired King with this sort of thing right now. I think the two card– it’s the Queen and the King–just the two of us, something I might bear in mind when I get wound up about my Self and my needs.

That sorted my big ideas out. Okay, I get it. Sheesh.

Daily Draw November 12th, 2009

I am in the land of I’m So Wound Up With Ideas I Can’t Sleep. I can literally make myself ill when my brain goes into hyperdrive. I have always called it “zooming” and I think other creative people will understand what I’m talking about. I go through these highly creative phases where I spit out new concepts effortlessly and make notes all over bits of paper and research things and order books on techniques and more ideas and I can’t shut the mind down. In the old days I used to talk to people on the Internet and get myself even more wound up, but I don’t talk much to people any more, so I think the world is safe from me when I’m zooming. Just.

It gets a bit much even for me after several days, I start to feel nauseated because I can’t rest. So I’m doing a 3-card playing card draw in relation to this today and using the Dead Hand Chaos Poker deck.

10 of Diamonds; 8 of Diamonds; Ace of Clubs

Diamonds often mean money and they are all lined up so neatly here, it’s all figured out and leads to the cool solitude of the Ace, the energy of the One. There’s an old song by Yes, that has the refrain “Going for the one” that this energy reminds me of. Reaching with Aces, the high-minded cards.

The ten is about money but neutral, and the 8 is neutral and about relationships.The ace is about communication but neutral.

Well my relationship with money is that I don’t have any and when I do, like with Christmas money, I tend to get all wound up trying to buy the perfect things I need. I always buy things that will last, like books or creative supplies, software, anything that I can use. I don’t go out to restaurants or buy alcohol or clothes or any number of such frivolous, ephemeral things, I buy things that I will use to fuel my creativity for years. Of course, when I spend money at all, my husband goes into a major sulk. He should be married to one of those bimbos that buys 100 pairs of shoes or underpants and then never wears them, then he’d have some perspective.

I refuse to feel guilty, I remain neutral. A friend said to me, which I loved: “Guilt is useless. Books are useful.”

That’s a good saying for when you’re going for the one. The endless energy of the Universe and action and usefulness. Communicate that.

GOING FOR THE ONE
Yes – 1977

“Get the idea cross around the track
underneath the flank of
thoroughbred racing chasers.
Getting the feel as a river flows.
Would youlike to go ‘n shoot the mountain masses?
And here you stand no taller than the grass sees.
And should you really chase so hard.
The truth of sport plays rings around you.
Going for the one.
Going for the one.

Get in the way as the tons of water
racing with you crashing thru the rudder.
Once at the start you can gamble
that you really surely really mean to finish.
After seeing all your sense of fear diminish.
As you treat danger a pure collection.
As you throw away misconceptions.
Going for the one.
Going for the one.”

Daily Draw November 9th, 2009

I received the delightful Dead Hand Chaos Poker deck that I ordered as a treat. When in doubt, there’s always something new and interesting in playing cards. The deck is published by Smirk & Dagger Games and on the title card it says:

’cause games are a lot more fun when you can stab a friend in the back.

Wild Bill Hickock is on the Joker and embossed at the top of some cards are instructions that render certain hands dead. For instance, the Ace of Hearts says “All Full Houses are dead” which might be a good thing if you had 3 of a Kind in your hand. The face cards all have blood rivulets and such. A most playful deck.

However, I am just using it for Personal Prophesy draws. I keep getting out of practice with the system, but here goes for today before I start charting more tiny house patterns on a petit point dollhouse rug. I’ve joined a forum for miniatures and my husband said “They aren’t nasty like those tarot people.”

You bet. But don’t bet on a Full House just yet. . . .

Queen of Clubs; 8 of Spades; 4 of Spades

Queenie has secret writing that says “The High Pair is dead.” She also seems to have pricked her hand with thorns from a rose. The blood is quite substantial and is trickling down to her elbow.

Queen – A female, possibly with brown hair. Inventive, intellectual, not into emotional attachments.
8 – Tears, self-pity, crying, can be cleansing to cry, tears put you in touch with your emotions and ready for the future.
4 – Illness or depression–health or mental issues

It seems the Queen needs a good cry to refresh herself and not get sick. Perhaps releasing some emotions (making herself bleed) will cleanse her body and keep her from getting the flu. I believe and have observed that holding all emotions in check can make you incredibly ill physically. We always think of the mental aspect of emotions but they directly affect your body as well.

Directionally, she is facing forward which is a good thing. I would assume this is the same as facing right in this system, to the future. Or I could intuitively feel she is stuck between the past and the future, thus making her live in the now, rather than complete stasis. However, based on the other cards I think she is looking to the future and wanting a good cleansing.

I think she is me rather than someone else. Interesting about the physical health aspect. I have been feeling very well physically, but I might pay more attention to fostering good emotions lest I get sick. “The High Pair is dead” is a good analogy for marriage, isn’t it? Those Valentine roses can prick.

Daily Draw November 4th, 2009

From the Celtic Tarot:

KING OF WANDS

He’s a bit creepy in this card. I once knew someone who referred to himself as the King of Wands. He did have that intellectual fire and creativity, yet was a bit like this fellow with the empty face, but a shadow of a real human. A very good liar, and deceitful. Spooky. It also reminds how creativity can be a dark pit if you don’t bring your creations to fruition. They can be only a glimmer of fire in the head instead of being real.

Once again, I am creating about 50 million things at once in my head, but I’ve got to pull back to reality and actually get a few of them done. All the rippling muscles and seated power need a focus to be of benefit. The lack of a face means deceit to me, so best not to deceive myself either. That spot of red really glows and simmers, like ideas in the mind, but it isn’t getting bigger because he isn’t making his ideas concrete and giving them actual form. He’s going to be the King of Nothing if he doesn’t use his mind in better ways.

Daily Draw November 2nd, 2009

I have geared up again after ten years to complete dollhouses and miniature needlework projects. I downloaded the demo version of PC Stitch and I’m trying out the Pro version. I can use it for needlepoint, cross stitch, beading and knitting for graphed patterns in regular and miniature sizes. So far I’m really pleased with it so I’m hoping to buy it with Christmas money.

I started a miniature French knot rug and I’m finishing up a couple more in petit point and planning designs and painted furniture and wallpapering to finish two of my dollhouses. I’ve got a 1:144 scale dollhouse for a dollhouse I need to finish and I’m considering buying a very fancy 1:144 kit for Christmas. I received permission from an artist to interpret an abstract painting for a dollhouse, so I’m really excited about that as it’s a Kandinsky-type artwork and will look fabulous as a miniature rug. It’s been a long time since I worked on these houses, but similar to unpacking and finishing some old quilt blocks and making new ones over the summer, I’m doing that with my miniatures.

I’ve been too busy to draw a daily card. What scandal is this, too busy for cards? How can this be?

From the Silenus Tarot:

5 OF WANDS

Struggle, and difficult situation. Seek to clarify what is really going on.

Yeah, I suppose you can battle with people about one thing and it’s really about another, so it helps to have a think on what’s really bothering everyone.

Theseus (of minotaur fame) was at the wedding feast of his good friend and the centaurs got a bit out of hand with drink and tried to abduct the women, including the bride, hence this battle. Theseus slayed a few centaurs, in a classic story of good and evil and the hero coming to the rescue.

Murder at a wedding, was there no other way to resolve the situation? That also occurs to me. Yes, the centaurs were wrong and got drunk and unruly, always a bad scene, but is murder heroic?

So, a good old think is something one should consider before acting on difficulties.

Daily Draw October 25th, 2009

Choices, choices, I feel like breaking out in a mad, passionate frenzy and using the Aquarian Tarot. Hey, it may have been around for decades, but it’s new to me.

TWO OF CUPS

Sipping the cider with the loved one today. Is that it, is that all there is? No wild love affairs with golden men on horseback, drifting off into the greenwood in our woollen capes fastened with silver Celtic brooches? No passion, no frenzy, no lust on forest floor?

Affinity, friendship, and harmony shall have to do then.

And a cup of tea might be nice.

In the woods.

Daily Draw October 24th, 2009

From The Book of Kaos Tarot Deck:

I THE MAGICIAN

Sadly, as terrific as the art is in this deck, the booklet is full of senseless bafflegab. Here, The Fool as the flipside of the Magus, supposedly takes Fate into his own hands, binding kundalini serpents to his caduceus for shakti power and assertion of his phallic, true will in accord with the flow of tao through the magickal operation of communion with the holy guardian angel etc. etc.

In essence, creative power, control, and assertion of will, which actually my day was today. I got a lot done, was very organized, moved further along in a bookbinding project, and took steps to finish a miniature kit I bought ten years ago. I do think I found a little magic when I was photographing another 1:144 scale kit I’d finished ten years ago, and then a book fell against it and it went flying off my drafting board onto the floor and did not get damaged. Whew. Bob and Mary live on in their log cabin, although Bob had to be reglued to the base as he went for a bit of a fly. Take the train from now on Bob.

The Magician was in pure form today, without all his trickster nonsense, just intense intellectual focus. No hocus-pocus here, just work and organization and communication, but it all came together like the smooth operator Magus was calculating the functions of the Universe. On a good day, he is the guy you want beside you!

Daily Draw October 22nd, 2009

Every now and then I feel such a distance from the greater world of tarot that I go on a browse over the Internet looking for new decks or books, and generally listening to what people are saying.

There is one recent tarot book I am intrigued by, but I realized that the associations the author adds on to the cards bug me. I feel it an arbitrary imposition if systems like numerology are butted onto cards.

Yesterday morning I was reading what used to be one of my favourite books, and the author’s death grip on Kabbalah for every card was starting to bug me too. Who says Binah means this or that or is related to this card or that? Who says this card or that one obviously relates to 4 or 6 or whatever? The cards never did in the beginning, so who decided? One lady argued with me vehemently about numerology once on a tarot list, saying that her parents had been numerologists and she too had been practicing it for years. So what? Why should I or anyone else add those associations onto cards because you and your parents chose to? Why should I believe what you do?

That’s why I like to putter the way I putter on this blog: Mixing and matching books and cards, and making things to go with decks and occasionally making my own decks on the computer.

No constraints or impositions, isn’t it lovely in the quietude?

Today I am entering the Bafflegab World of Osho and the New Century.

FIVE OF PENTACLES
28 – SELF-ACCEPTANCE

I love the way Rolf Eichelmann put those clouds in the Five of Pentacles. It reminds me of Nigel Jackson’s clouds in the Rumi Tarot. Into each life a little cloud will saunter, wisping across the horizon, shadowing the day. Money, and you don’t need a lot to be comfortable, but if you have less than you need it drags you down. I had a dream last night where I went to the bank to change $40 into lower denominations and they didn’t give me my money back, the just gave me 11 large beads and insisted I hadn’t given them more bills.

Always this feeling of lack, of being robbed in life. Some assertion of infinite abundance would be helpful for me today.

However, Osho rattles on about self-acceptance in the next card. “Heart’s-Ease in the King’s Garden.”

In the picture, Heart’s Ease flourishes because it is just itself and happy. It isn’t like the oak, moaning about not being able to bear grapes or bloom like a rose. God could have made a million Buddhas, Krishnas or Christs, but instead he made me. Their work is done, time for me to do my unique contribution.

Interesting that Osho speaks of priests saying you must be a rose or become a lotus, which very much reminds me of the tarot fundamentalists who say you must do this or that and this card means this or that and adds up to this number and means this.

“They drive the whole garden crazy, everything starts dying – because nobody can be anybody else, that is not possible.”

“That’s what happened to humanity. Everybody is pretending. Authenticity is lost, truth is lost, everybody is trying to show that he is somebody else.”

It is not possible to be anyone else but yourself. (Strange how they insist on it though. Yikes.)

Thank goodness I can’t be anybody else.

Daily Draw October 21st, 2009

Okay, the trick today is to use stuff I have at hand. That means no poetry today as all the books are upstairs. My eye falls upon the Color Idea Book:

“Don’t overlook your cabinetry as a place to use color. Unexpected combinations can add pizzazz to your kitchen or bathroom. And be creative in the use: Consider a different color on an island than on the perimeter cabinets, or paint the doors a different color than the cabinet box. If you’re thinking of using colored cabinetry, first consider your countertops, since their color and pattern will help inform what color you use on the cabinets.”

Oh what fun! These people have obviously not been stuck with a 40 year-old kitchen with limited floor space and cabinetry all a mish-mash of styles. To be quaint, my kitchen would be called a “galley” kitchen, because it’s narrow like a galley on a ship. The cabinets don’t match as some were ripped out for a dishwasher and had to be rebuilt, and some were added later. I have them painted white with pale grey handles.

Here are the examples from the book:

Isn’t that nice?

And from the Rumi Tarot today (which is suspiciously coloured like the cabinets in the decorator photo):

ACE OF SWORDS
“Be like a polished sword,
free from tarnish.”

One of my personal cards which I call the Reach Card, because it symbolizes reaching for new ideas and fresh starts and creativity.

Maybe like this. . . no matter what your surroundings you can polish them and keep them free from tarnish. OR no matter where you are, your thoughts can be polished and free from tarnish.

The “Greater Struggle,” as Nigel Jackson explains in the book, is a Sufi term to denote striving in your own heart to overcome and win victory over negative forces and the ego. Keep tempering and shining the sword toward this purification.

Yeah, the old ego wants a gorgeous kitchen that doesn’t look like I’ve lumped green paint over decades of old paint and grime. It’s not going to happen.

Keep polishing amid the greater struggle. . . .

Daily Draw October 20th, 2009

Today I am pairing The Art of Tibet Knowledge Cards with a poem snippet by Yehuda Amichai.

Amichai wrote in Hebrew so this is an English translation. He is very respected and I read a couple of his poems and liked them, but then couldn’t connect to the larger volume. I think sometimes love of poetry for me is in the small words and sentences rather than the larger poem. Ideas and words that leap out like the sun from behind clouds.

BOWL AND STAND

This is from Batang in eastern Tibet from the 18th century. Jade bowl, repoussé and openwork silver stand; 6.25 inches.

Repoussé is a type of embossing where the pattern is hammered out from the reverse side of the piece. The word means “pushed up” in French and comes from the Latin “pulsare” which means “to push.” Famous examples of repoussé are the Statue of Liberty and Tutankhamun’s mask. The region of Batang is now under the control of the Chinese government. There is still a large monastery there with hundreds of Buddhist monks.

Fine utensils were used to serve tea and other refreshments to lamas and guests during ceremonies and audiences in monasteries. This might have been used for ceremonial rice or small fruits placed on a low table in front of the lama. The jade cup sits on a lotus flower and the lower base has lotus petals. Each of the eight petals fanning out from the flower contains one of the Eight Buddhist Emblems:

1. The Umbrella or Parasol

2. The Golden Fish

3. The Treasure Vase

4. The Lotus

5. The Conch

6. The Auspicious or Endless Knot

7. The Victory Banner

8. The Dharma Wheel

And the stanza by Yehuda Amichai that I turned to at random is from a poem called Indian Summer at Princeton:

Indian summer is Jewish summer
In your heavy eyes that always fall out
Because of their heaviness and because of the sadness
Of your face holding them.
Not because of dryness or the forgetfulness of fruit, but a falling
From heavy remembering. The ground keeps moving away from beneath us,
These leaves keep on falling.

Not unlike the heavy remembering, when Batang was Tibetan. In the 18th century this little jade bowl was carved like an eye to fit a socket of lotus, now falling from heavy remembering. The victory banner and the wheel look up from their petals and see the heavy eye of the lotus, and those leaves keep on falling into the pond of the golden fish, waiting for someone to sound the conch again.