the tower
A little witchy shop popped up a few years ago on the main street of the Southern Stars Hollow town where I live, and has become a robust island of crystals, incense, tarot, and books in a sea of monograms and smocking. On nice days, I like to wander around the main street shops and I always stop off at this store, if only to touch some pretty rocks and smell the incense.
The last time I wandered in was right before my birthday, and on a whim I sat down for a quick tarot reading. I like to engage in some kind of contemplative practice around my birthday every year, thinking about the year ahead, and since I view tarot as basically just a tool for journaling/self-reflection—why not?
The first card the reader laid down was The Tower—a tower being struck by lightning and collapsing, the symbol of destruction and breaking down of old beliefs, narratives, practices, relationships, etc.
She tapped it with a fingernail.
“This is you.”
____
I’ve been thinking about that card the past few weeks, because it feels like such an apt framing for my current moment (let alone our current moment). I can feel the tectonic plates shifting beneath the surface and the crumbling of bricks in the tower’s foundation.
It feels like moving from the rigid to something more indigenous to me (baldly stealing my therapist’s expression: find what is indigenous to you, she likes to say).
In the crumbling, I’ve been questioning how I want to show up, how I want to engage.
One answer that has shown up, quietly, again and again, is that I want to release striving, release the impulse to perform or force or accomplish or sparkle, and to simply let my natural gifts and creative impulses take over. That, for example, what I actually want isn’t to be a sparkling hostess, but to simply cultivate community—to listen. To be with.
I’ve been asking myself questions, like: what if I’m actually not, essentially, so serious? What are my stories around lightness and play? What if I take freeplay as not just theoretical but practical, and it actually does expand, open, stimulate my intellect?
And I’ve been wanting new words, new sounds, new pictures—fresh fields and pastures new, if you will. It feels like I’m building something new and while the old material will be incorporated, of course—the poems, music, art, ideas I’ve loved for years—it’s not enough to support the structure of what’s emerging. I’m longing for new touchstones, and I’m finding them (Kate Bush) and searching for more in reading, listening, consuming art outside of my dog-eared favorites. And that’s happening in so many areas; territories of my self I thought were fully mapped are now revealing they’re just the coasts of entire continents.
What will take its place isn’t totally apparent yet, but I’m re-forming, breaking down, releasing, and I call it good.
And most of all—
I’m just beginning.
