I WANT -
let go of that. Just for a bit. it’s fine.
BUT I NEED TO -
no, you don’t.
YES I DO!! HOW DO I MAKE IT HAPPEN -
do nothing. just breathe.
me and the cards have this one-sided screaming match since years.
When I’m under the most pressure and a throbbing deadline.
Often - when I needed really concrete things that don’t just come along - like a place to sleep in three days, or money to buy food in five. it’s non-negotiable, it’s root stuff, and it needs to happen now.
at that point i’m usually elbow-deep in four plans of action with two backups just in case, like a cook in the zone at rush hour where it’s all bang clang and sizzle and deep focus so nothing burns or overcooks and i’ll sideways pick cards with one hand asking without breaking stride, Okay Which Plan do I follow.
and they say None of them. Wait.
They say a variation of today’s High Priestess :
Rest in the abundance of the world.
Emanate from your priestess self, your mystical essence that knows no disconnection, no hurry, no limits.
That is the job. Be.
Be?
Yes I know. I know crisis is when I most need to gently vibrate my divine self.
Hearing it still makes me want to defenestrate while gouging my own eyes out.
This morning it happened again.
I wanted no room for doubt. I pulled three cards then five then nine.
Give it to me straight, no detours no doubts and please gods don’t say “no comment at this time”.
I turned them over and they said
Stop trying so damn hard.
Your sword is stuck in the mud and that’s not where a sword belongs. You’re scrutinizing one inch of dirt and you can’t see a thing.
The other cards indulged me in patient repetition.
Your top action men are frothing at the mouth to wrench back control, and none of them are the solution. Not your teacher warrior priest magician, none of your so-capable so-competent facets will save the day just because all they need is one damn inch to stick their foot in the door and kick it open and -
They’re all in your way.
They’re all the problem.
Lean back. Take off your conqueror boots and your itching fistful of magic beans, and be a child instead.
Potter in the garden. Self-pleasure. Go for a swim.
What would you do if there was only now?
Cause that’s the only thing that will grow.
The. Only. Thing.
You wanted clear, right?
l< n<l! ?!lk< j!ijepitjpiejswjshtmust!!!!!!!!!!
It’s only been a month since we last had this chat, when I caught my finger in the blender.
I was on a roll. Spring was catching me in the feels, and I’d finally bought a train ticket to relocate to the South of France. I was packing up, job-hunting, flat-scouring, brimming with excitement and the winds of change in my hair.
A day after buying the ticket, I listened to an Embodied Astrology forecast. That woman Renée keeps enuciating every month exactly what’s going on in my life.
As she spoke I actually had to sit down.
“You’ve been trying to settle down for seven years, and failing. No matter how hard you’ve tried, it just never worked out.
Well Uranus finally, finally moved - and that part of your life is over.”
My head was spinning.
Could it be?
I wanted to kiss the ground and weep and fling honey offerings into the nearest bushes, but a sterner voice also strangled the excitement with a ruthless hand and said -
don’t believe it till you have proof.
your hopes have gone up and down and up and down and it tears chunks of you out every time.
wait to see if this is real.
But I had a ticket in my pocket.
A sliver of hope glimmered in my heart in a place long turned dull.
I was so ready. Only grievous bodily harm could have slowed me down.
Well.
The very next day, after an eventful trip to the emergency room I finally flopped into bed, with a shredded fingertip in a bandage and an operation date to patch it up two days later.
I wondered whether to push through and relocate anyway.
They have nurses in Montpellier too. A hand clinic. I’d be there. One step closer to the dream.
I WANT the life waiting for me there.
i want trips to the beach. I want to slip on microshorts and walk to the nearest terrace for iced coffees with new friends. I want my writing breaks to have flamingoes and otters and bougainvillea, i want to turn nut-brown and freckle-splattered and smell jasmine on my night walks.
I’ve yearned and yearned and yearned for this.
I can just go, right?
The cards said Wait to heal and I rolled my eyes in moping defeat and slid under the covers.
Final check-up with the surgeon would be twenty days later. If all went well.
Eternity.
But this is what happened next.
I was ready for the move to be difficult.
Soon after the operation, I couldn’t help myself - I nipped down to Montpellier for a quick three-day stint.
I had three flat visits scheduled. I’d found a host in the minuscule Couchsurfing community for my stay.
All I needed was a bit of luck.
An outrageous bit of luck. Same as always.
Three days passed on an extremely dirty couch. None of the flats fit though I did twist and turn to try and will myself to say Yes anyway. Just give me a foothold. One.
My heart was heavy on the train back north.
It will take weeks to find a home. Probably months.
Hopping from one stranger’s couch to the next, trailing a big suitcase while also looking for a job...
Exactly the precarious living I’d fled one country ago.
I landed back north and stopped pushing southwards. I closed the tabs in my browser for flats and jobs.
I waited.
I finished a mosaic table. I sowed more in two weeks than in my whole life before that.
Time went by slowly while my finger healed frighteningly fast.
I passed my last check-in with the surgeon with flying colors and called Kate, a friend also in the midst of moving to Montpellier. She was heading there to flat-hunt ten days later - a little later than my own vague plans.
Maybe we could go together? She said Yes please.
I waited just a little longer.
And then everything started to shift.
I hopped on a train and we landed in her family’s flat, our very own private base of operations for the next ten days. It was such a luxury. The shaded balcony gives out on cypress, olive- and fig trees. Frogsong rocked me to sleep every night and I met all of Kate’s family. I drank like mother’s milk the companionship, the swelling feeling of summer, of arriving at last, of possibility.
The first night we arrived there was my birthday. Kate flew off the couch to grab a felt bag with a cat painted on it - her creation kit. She perched back on the opposite side of the couch and proceeded to lay out minute plastic boxes holding polished chips of lapis and tiger’s eye and moonstone, fermoirs in silver and gold, colored beads.
Back in her Paris flat, I’d admired the bracelets and earings that hung next to the bathroom mirror. Kate makes fairy-like jewellery - delicate, exquisite, and utterly unlike anything I’d ever choose for myself. If I were to choose.
Her eyes raked me up my neck, earlobes, fingers and wrists. “What am I making you? necklace?... earrings?” her voice trails off as she sees.
I shrug “I never wear jewellery.”
She blinks. “Never?!”
I shake my head, fingers skimming through the pretty things glinting in front of me. She steeples her fingers and squints at me, assessing the challenge.
“What else could I make you.... “
As instructed, I make a little pile of the things that catch my eye. A fat gold disc. Asian-looking motifs like square triskels. a box of beads the color of wet moss.
“What if I make you a key ring.”
My head snaps up. “Gods.”
She grins “Perfect?”
“Perfect.” I stare at her. “You have no idea how perfect.”
My current keyring was a leftover tassel I’d made during lockdown knitting sprees. I’d been based in New Zealand. Every three months the government contemplated whether to renew our tourist visas, or suddenly kick us all out to fend for ourselves.
We’d be told we could stay a week before our visa expired. Every time.
Things on the home front - had barely changed since then.
And now I had a local person who came from from this soil, offering to make a charm for me.
An object to anchor my belonging here. As a birthday gift. With full intention and love.
Could things really change?
Our flat-hunting routes would sometimes join. She’d point out the sights, her old high school, I’d push the pram with her sleeping nephew while she strode up staircases to shoddy buildings and came out shaking her head. We debriefed and cooked at night, sharing the day’s discoveries of happy dogs and gardens and horrific moldy bathrooms.
I found no less than three places that would do for now, my shoulders dropping a little more every day as reality whispered “Not this time. It won’t be a struggle.”
Before our 10 days were over - Kate and I both signed contracts to our new homes.
And we were moving ten minutes’ walk from each other.
After three nights of obsessive, alchemical night toil with her pincers, Kate handed me a glorious key-ring “unlike anything I’ve ever made before. No idea how that happened”.
It looks like a netted Sun.
We celebrated our dashing success. We toasted to the sweetness of life together and adventures to come, and just as planned she returned to Paris and I moved in.
I bought bits of furniture for the first time in my whole life - not just candle-holders but a carpet, two lamps, a bedside table and giant plants. It felt absurdly decadent and like I really shouldn’t cause how was I going to transport THAT later when... when?....
I shushed myself and started a ritual of morning coffee under our trees, watering a young jasmine plant I’d just put in the ground and repeating to myself in wonder
This is my home.
A month later, I’d just stepped outside phone in hand, checking the roadmap to go dancing when Kate calls me. Her video shows her face and then turns towards some buildings : “Yo, you busy? Guess where I am?”
She’s on my street. We make a dramatic victory dance at each other on the sidewalk, hugged hard and fell in step towards the nearest park.
“You been to the waterfalls yet?”
She glances at me “The -? Ooooh” a wide grin lights up her face “I see how it’s gonna be. You’re gonna show me all these places I’ve never seen, in my own home town.”
I bob my head “It’s what new kids always do.”
We trade news while the sky turns a rich purple, and she takes my arm in hers and says:
“You know this is my absolute fantasy come true, what we just did? I swan over to your place just in case you happen to be available, and so we hang, no plans... Just flow. Just so easy.
It feels like things might just be easy.”
I squeezed her arm.
All that happened while doing what I was told - sitting back.
Waiting for the easy path to beckon.
So when I pulled cards today, to see my collection of kick-ass men all turned upside down - I know what they’re saying.
Little one.
Stop trying to control the tide.
Wait.
Potter in the garden.
Self-pleasure.
Go for a swim.