Charming, but single

So, I realized that I never blogged about having my tarot cards read on New Year’s Eve, out in a famous Square of a city I love. I remembered this evening when I was rooting through my far-too-full Kathy Van Zeeland purse and pulled out a clear glass stone with a white pattern inside of it – the Tarot Card Lady gave it to me to remember my reading. I went with my girlfriends for a party and we decided to mosey on down to the Square to hang out and in the process stumbled upon the Tarot Card Lady.

Now, before people start leaving indignant comments about tarot card readings being complete bull, I will preface the retelling by saying that I did this after loads of peer pressure and with a healthy dose of skepticism. I was the last of the four of us to have a reading, mostly because my curiosity was piqued by my friends’ readings. I’ve been with friends before who had readings in this same Square – I was never willing to part with a few dollars for what I viewed as a glorified guess based on nonverbal cues.

The Tarot Card Lady sat at a small cloth covered table with two folding chairs-in-a-bag. She spread piles of well-worn tarot cards across the table and had me pick from stacks, laying them atop each other in a pattern, asking me questions along the way.

Of course I was most interested in my love life (or lack thereof). This was entirely to be expected. I was with a group of single women (one has a long-term boyfriend, but is unmarried).

Had I written this sooner, I might remember everything that she said. I only remember the high points, and I will give her that many of her comments were spot on. And I can only hope that her predictions ring true.

I do remember the first card she pulled because she said, right off the bat, that I was very smart. I smiled and nodded. She continued that I was very strong, but I was also extremely emotional and closed off.

I figured she was three for three on that one.

She said that my financial situation has improved (it has) and would continue to do so in the coming year. She pulled one card and said I’d built up a Wall to keep people out; that I’ve been hurt in the past and I don’t want to let men in because of this. (Pretty typical fare for a single 28-year-old, no?)

My skepticism permeated the reading. She kept returning to this Wall I’ve built up to protect myself from being emotionally harmed and said I’d need to figure out how to bring down that Wall in order to find happiness.

She said I’ll be a good mother and I, feeling a wee bit exposed having all of my girlfriends and hundreds of people milling around within earshot as she described my shut-in personality, asked cautiously, “So, I will find someone and have a family?”

The Tarot Card Lady looked me straight on in the eye, crooked her eyebrow and said, “Yes, have you not been paying attention?”

“Well, I know, it is just that everyone around me seems to be getting married. And I’m always a bridesmaid, never a bride,” I joked. Self deprecation is a familiar friend and my only life-long companion.

“Stop. Stop right there.”

“What?”

“Don’t say that,” she said. “If you keep saying that it will come true.” She continued that each time I said negative things I was building my Wall, which I needed to dismantle brick-by-painful-brick.

“You will find love. And you will have a good marriage.” she said.

And, yes this really happened, as she laid out the second deck of cards and talked about my love life, a newly married bride and groom entered the Square, walked past us with their photographer and stopped to pose for a portrait. The bride’s roses were bright crimson red – so bright I can see the exact hue in my mind right now.

“Do you see that?” she asked, excitedly motioning to the couple. “That is a very good sign. A very good sign indeed.”

I will find a man to love, she said. But it will not be easy. Because of the Wall I’ve surrounded myself with and because I compare every man to the one who hurt me and immediately find fault. Because I am scared.

And he’s scared too, she said. We will meet, I will know him immediately as my soulmate, but there will be much for us to overcome, as she said he will be emotional too. We will both have to work through our brick Walls together, and it will be hard.

“But, you are lucky,” she said. “Because you will find your soulmate and you will be together forever.”

As she finished I handed her some money and she picked a smooth stone from the table, where she’d laid out stones on many of the cards. She pressed the clear piece of glass in my hand and said it represented true love, beautiful and pure.

I dropped the stone in my purse and left her table with a smile.

Perhaps she is full of it. Maybe she read my cues and told me what I wanted to hear. Of course she picked up on my skepticism and could have judged me as closed off. Regardless, I left with a bit of hope for the future, a foolishly renewed faith in soulmates and silly ideas filling my head.

Later, I told my Mom about the tarot card reading, assuming her religious ways and conservative nature would make her mortified that I’d participated in such a thing.

She just smiled and asked, “Did she say WHEN you’d be meeting this soulmate of yours?”

The other day I was feeling grumpy. (Okay, I’ve been feeling grumpy many days recently, actually.) I tend to fly through things going 150 miles and hour and I’ve been feeling cramped by my injured ankle, which is still in a cast with a slight (but healing) fracture. (And yes, I know so many have it so much worse than I do. That of course, doesn’t ease my annoyance.)

Anyway, this video made me smile. (Song originally by the Kinks, but performed here by the Preservation Hall Jazz Band with Clint Maedgen singing.) Shot in New Orleans before the hurricane and edited and released after, it’s a quick reminder of the lazy, relaxed atmosphere down there. The Cajun Boy has more detail on his blog, where I happened to see it in a particularly moody moment the other day.

Mardi Gras is in full swing and soon it’ll be Lent. I’m not the most religious person, but I have to say that I might adopt this song as my mantra for those 40 days – “You gotta slow down your life or you’re gonna be dead.”

Maybe, just maybe, I can alleviate this complicated life.