I paint faces at Mardi Gras in New Orleans with my best friend Emma and every year I go and I get a reading in New Orleans, world-famous for tarot, psychics, and especially voodoo. I booked a reading at Bottom of the Cup Tea Room, where they have all these little stalls and they set you up with a reader and you go in there and you can get your questions answered. So I go into this tiny stall, no wider than 4‘x 5‘and the reader was sitting there very thin like an Aubrey Beardsley illustration. He was propped against the wall wrapped in a black scarf with little skulls all over it.
He looked utterly exhausted from battling drunken revelers of the Mardi Gras season (side note: the last thing you say to someone who looks tired is “you look so tired!”) So I cheerfully, but quietly greeted him respectfully I wanted to be sensitive to him.
He looked so over it. So I sit down and I’m bright-eyed and bushy-tailed because I’m finally off work and have a mountain of money. He shuffled the cards, cut the deck into three piles and he asks me, “So what would you like to know? I asked him when and what will my true love be like, when is it happening for me, and any other details about romance! He looked at me as if to say “you can’t be serious…” but then in a deadpan tone, he said, “There’s no such thing as true love. There’s no such thing as soulmates.” At that moment I realize that we were at an impasse and I wanted to switch readers. I had a gut instinct to say thanks very much and leave but I thought he might teach me something in this reading that I’m supposed to know and I want to be open to the message. So I said okay and breathed through it like he was taking pints of my blood with a slightly bent but consensual needle. He drew three cards and he said “it looks here like you do have love coming in pretty quickly. He’s kind of wounded by a divorce or past relationship ending but I like him he’s probably an artist or writer of some kind here with the star, maybe an Aquarius.
And he genuinely loves you so that’s coming up.” So I said, well I’m looking forward to meeting, and what I really want is to find my life partner and be cherished. I’m a great girl, and that’s really what I want is to have a partner to go through life with. I want to be done dating.” And he said, “Well I don’t really see that for you here, but you can always petition Mars.”
I asked him what that means, trying not to let my heart sink just yet and then he said, “You can do this thing where you go outside you find Mars and you just scream at the planet Mars! You keep screaming Maaaaaaarrrrrssss!!! and you scream to Mars what it is that you want and you just keep saying it. Then I think he told me I can do this ritual that involves writing something and burning it and/or putting it in a jar with some other things and burying it in the ground etc., there were some steps that he told me to take but I knew immediately I would not be taking any of the advice, I would not be screaming to Mars because as interesting as it was to hear his prescription to find my best friend, it just didn’t feel right in my spirit.
I am open to the information and I know that with spiritual information I can twist my fate but I would never want to force someone into loving me with a spell or willing them to do it. I heard my friend Veroosh’s voice in my head, “If I don’t get it, I’m not meant to have it.” So I felt kind of disappointed in my reading. I usually do feel disappointed when I seek out a tarot reading for myself. I don’t know why I keep getting them actually. I wouldn’t if I could rely on my own readings to be accurate for myself, but it was not a fantastic feeling for me. I remember how it felt with Aubrey Beardsley’s words washing over me. It felt very lackluster and very non-shiny as if my heart had been colored with a scratchy film of crayon wax. I am shiny. I’m sparkly and fiery and have a full laugh, but when damaged it pretty much takes years to get back to feeling like myself. Like a hand-painted holiday ornament, the same kind that I paint and sell each season which is so visually descriptive, and fun. Without a doubt the most interesting ornament on your tree, but don’t drop me because I’ll never go back to the way that I was.
I know what I want. I want my partner to be a creative visionary like myself and have positive energy to have that certain spark of joy and childlike innocence that I have. I have a great sense of adventure and spontaneity and I expect my life to just continue to be exciting and fun! They mustn’t always be this way; I’m not looking for a performance-based relationship. I don’t know why but this is reminding me of how I love to go to the bar at closing time. Sometimes I get to observe the remnants of the night and feel happy for people trying not to look directly at their cute and messy make-out sessions, one holding the other up, a lusty and stumbly and slappy support system. I adore this.
Anyways. When I’m in love, my life is on fire and it feels glorious and blissful, so if I invest in a love reading for myself and I don’t get the progress that I expect because I’m breathing life into loving myself every day and working on me staying focused on living in the moment. I walk away feeling a little disappointed. “How much time am I spending on desiring what I don’t have?” I hear Veroosh say this too. She said, “To achieve something I have to have the desire and I have to feel love but also there’s a fine line between feeling bad about what I don’t have and ruining the things that are mine. Gratitude needs to be the focus.”
That’s why I like to read tarot for people because I feel like my readings give people hope. It certainly gives ME hope. If there is a tough spot in the reading I always find the silver lining to it and we talk about that and I can go deeper and find the really good things that are coming for my client so it gives a whole lot of uplifting things to look forward to and if they take notes they can watch them come to fruition as if they were watching the reading unfold in real time like a love letter that they held up to the light but waited to open.
“May you find a love that radically accepts the parts of you that you’re still working on.” —Vex King