All Fools Day, All Saints Day, the Tarot

I didn't become a Tarot reader, though that was a plan. The plumb line between a fixed star and intention is often bisected by will or choice. Or by the fact I couldn't memorize the cards to my satisfaction.

And by the way, today is All Saints Day. That means there are over one thousand designated helpers today. For me, that's enough meaning.

All Saints? Good topic. I immediately wrote All Fools, thought: It's quite a compliment.  In the Tarot deck, the Fool is the first card.  She's numbered "0." Definitely an air sign, without much plan, she leads the conga line of Tarot's major arcana and also of the eccentric, intuitive, original.

Some decks reveal the twelve astrological signs are in or hovering near her knapsack. She packs light but has everything needed, all aspects of personality, emotions, possibility, probability, strength, pitfall. Or so I say. Many others, too.

I'm asking the Fool to help me find a way beyond my concerns about process of the emotions and how people react to life--in writing and in life, though, really, mostly in writing. I need something different as I continue writing fiction, or else I'll feel I'm recycling myself.

I hope I return to the Tarot.  This posting feels light, incomplete, inconclusive, like the fool starting out for who knows where.

The artwork is from http://www.artfulalf.com/ and is by Alicia Lee Farnsworth.

won't you

stupid lucky fool
in Andrei Rublev
leaping/
aim

self-seeking understudy
diva’s death wishing/
nah

second lyre to
Orpheus’ first/
okay

thrill world’s
juddering heart/
shoot

lugged squeaking
Heaven-hinges/
awake

{pub. in The Columbia Review, 2008}