I sometimes look at tarot cards.
It’s not that I believe that they’re predictive. I’m dedicatedly anti-spiritualist; I’m deeply anti-transcendentalist. I don’t believe in any kind of magic, I don’t believe anything supernatural, religious or otherwise. Nevertheless, I’ve always been fascinated by tarot cards. They are symbolically “loaded” and full of interesting interpretative possibilities. In field of semiotics, they might be termed “hypersignifiers.” I guess I view them as a sort of self-administered Rohrsach test, when I lay them out.
Anyway, this morning, I laid out three cards. Recent past, present moment, upcoming near-term future. The meanings of the “past” and “present” cards were unremarkable: ambiguous and uninteresting to me. But the “future” card was striking… in its irrelevance. It was the nine of wands. The interpretative meanings are:
Perseverance — Persisting despite all setbacks and against all odds
Having the hidden reserves to prevail, to defend what is yours
Boundary issues, being defensive
Defining your “space”
“That which doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.”
I distinctly remember thinking: that doesn’t seem to apply to my near future. The recent past, maybe. But just now, I feel as if I’ve reached a kind of equilibrium with respect to my living situation and work, finally. I’ve been settling in. I thought: something would have to get much more messed up for that kind of near-term future to be meaningful or important.
But by the end of the day, today, I was muttering “perseverance, perseverance” to myself. Yes, things felt messed up at school, today. Not for me, directly – but I was witness to some majorly messed-up personnel management (which in-and-of-itself is no surprise in a Korean workplace, admittedly). I won’t describe it in detail – it’s an ongoing crisis, and not really my business, and involves people who probably know about this blog, too. Maybe I’ll discuss details later.
For some reason, I have a really hard time watching other people being treated badly in their work. Even when they somewhat deserve it or have brought upon themselves, as I’m certain is the case, here. But the situation still reeks of injustice and inhumane management. And hypocrisy – that always bugs me. And I have to deal with feeling caught in the middle. I don’t want to hear about it. I don’t have a solution that anyone appreciates or even wants to hear. I don’t want to have to watch it play out in slow motion in the staff room beside me. It makes my life unpleasant. So the rest of it checks out as well. Example: boundary issues – why am I being drawn into this? Why do I have to watch and comment on this?
OK. I still don’t believe tarot are predictive. But, it was a day with interesting psychological resonances. I’m just going to sit by, and try to keep my face looking like the guy in the picture, above.
