Saturday, May 06, 2006
Tarot and Berlin
The dog and cat are putting on their usual show. Kiwi-the-cat has a new move – he wrapped himself around Charlie’s leg like it was a pole and sunk his claws into her armpit. It’s very effective - big, tough dog needed her mommy to break it up.
I had a crap day yesterday, one of those days in this industry where crisis inevitably hits at 5PM on a Friday. And no one answers his or her cell phones. And here I was due to be at a different location for a different contract, my day not even close to done. By the time I finally got there, I was grumpy and very, very late.
But that’s what I love about working with older people.
“I’m sorry I’m so late,” I said at the door, “I’ve had a horrible day.”
“That’s perfectly alright, my dear!” said the former Opera star who’s never met me. He steered me to the balcony and put a glass of cold wine in my hand and then told me stories about Sarah Polley.
An hour later, I was sitting in a club with a woman who insisted on buying me a Cosmopolitan because she likes “Sex and the City”. She told me about how her mother died in Berlin just after war broke out. She and her brothers had to roam the streets looking for food, trying to avoid gangs. She once had to shake hands with Hitler.
When I later mentioned I study the Tarot, she got this funny look on her face. With a little urging, she told me about how her mother brought a Tarotist fortune-teller to the house because she knew she was dying and wanted to put her mind at ease about her children. The Tarotist sternly and matter-of-factly told the dying mother that this daughter would never be in love, always be poor, and die early.
“I’ve never liked the cards since,” said the woman. No doubt! Who says those things to a dying woman in front of her children? Sixty years later, that’s part of what she remembers of her mother’s death. Psychic my ass - all that reader did was plant the seeds of a self-fulfilling prophecy in the mind of a child experiencing great loss. Jerk. Yeah, I'm talking to you, large Gerta, fortune-teller of Berlin, with the braids wrapped around your head! (Of course you’re long dead by now. Please don’t haunt me.)
I believe there is always choice. Always. Since I'm not psychic, cards are just a tool, a way in, like meditation or prayer. To lift the curtain just a little, to offer insight so the querent has more to work with as they make difficult choices. It’s irresponsible not to present the side of hope.
“I will change your mind about the cards someday,” I said to her as I left. Then, slightly drunk and grumbling self-righteously, I wobbled to the streetcar. Just another crazy out on a Toronto Friday night.
posted by Working From Home Today
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