In which I return to my tarot card experience, and briefly ponder the meaning of life.
I’ve just had my tarot cards read. It’s not the strangest thing I’ve ever done, but it’s up there. If I take into account that they were read by my landlord… well, let’s just say that I’m sure that won’t ever happen again.
Her name is Karen Coffey and she is a psychic who specializes in tarot card readings. She runs shop at Pyewacket’s in Vineyard Haven, an antique shop that carries an eclectic selection of antiques furniture, artwork and memorabilia. Karen is four feet tall and must weigh 50 pounds. She has a slender frame and platinum blond hair that falls to her shoulders. Her story is nothing short of astonishing. A brief, interesting introduction: she went to Woodstock ’69 in a hearse. She worked with James Taylor and Carly Simon. She once picked up a hitchhiking Shel Silverstein on the island. And she read the cards of the man who would become the Dalai Lama.
But these are minor blips in her lifetime. Forest Gump moments of serendipity. Her life is much more than a few interesting celebrity anecdotes, and I would wager that Karen will appear and reappear in my writing as the summer unravels. But I’ve just had my tarot cards read. This column is about my experience.
I won’t go into what was said, or each and every card, their symbols and significance. I will say that Karen interpreted a brief and fairly accurate, albeit skeletal, reading of major events in my life thus far.
I emphasize skeletal because it is too easy in these moments to paste meaning onto our souls. I mean to say that I walked into a room that afternoon with the intent to have my tarot cards read and thought to myself, I want to hear something good. I expected it, even. And with that in mind, I or anyone else in that situation could very easily ascribe meaning to even the most general of interpretations. The cards read that I was deeply hurt and disillusioned in the past. I have learned from it, am stronger for it, and have moved on to what I would say is a fairly damn interesting and happy life since then. Fair enough, that’s largely true. But it isn’t unique to my life. Far from it.
All of which put me in a… well, let’s call it an interesting mood. That kind of thing happens when your life has been boiled down to six index cards and 25 minutes. The story of my life, I thought, was largely the same as my neighbor’s. How bleak. We are born. We learn hard lessons, experience joy, and then we die. Now what?
We get off the couch and we move forward. The thing that struck me the most about Karen’s reading was the breadth of influence her interpretations alluded to. Christianity, Buddhism, American Indian folklore, eastern mysticisms, all of which do one thing in many different forms: provide meaning and direction to our lives. They are not the same. Some focus on the individual, the suffering; others strive to transcend the individual and the pain. Their philosophies are wildly different but their message at its most basic is the same, as was the tarot card reading: life is hard. Work harder to make it seem less so.
It is as easy–even easier perhaps–as a middle class American to have his life reduced to a simple archetype and then pout and wonder why he exists. Not very many people in this world have that luxury. The disadvantaged souls have to earn their keep, to better themselves by any means necessary. I have a lot of catching up to do.
