Sketchbook - Five of Coins

There's nothing quite like the feeling one gets upon discovering a customer has left a really shitty tip. It's the perfect crime, a deeply personal affront for which there is rarely any recourse or rebuttal. Sometimes you totally see it coming; other times it comes as such a shock that you end up inventing all sorts of excuses to explain it away. (A mathematical error perhaps. Could happen to anyone!)

But all too often there is a message specifically encoded in the amount left on the table. I'm not talking about the words "F-U-C-K-Y-O-U" spelled out in pennies -- though I have seen that happen. To someone else. It's usually way more subtle, though; tips are about power, they are expressions of judgment or non-judgment. We consider the statement we're making as we calculate the amount, and it often has very little to do with the service that was provided. So when I get a really bad tip, I always have to wonder: was this about me? Or about them?

(I prefer to think it's always about them.)

Anyhow, above is a sketch of an actual tip that I've actually received. Yes, the person took the time to write out that they were leaving a cash tip. No, there aren't any dollar bills hidden just out of frame. In moments like these, I try to temper my discouragement with the knowledge that this experience is literally built into my job. If I was fundamentally opposed to get royally stiffed now and then, I wouldn't show up at all. Right?

Anyhow, this card illustrates one of those occasions when the drawbacks of a situation are more apparent than the benefits. Are you going to let it get to you, and wind up spreading the bad vibe to your other tables? I'd like to think that no reader of mine would not so easily succumb to this kind of self-fulfilling prophecy. Opportunity is all around you, don't let a few losses (no matter how profoundly irritating) wind up determining your next few steps.

Previously On Arcanalogue: The Five Of Coins

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"Refrigerate For At Least A Week Before Eating..."

I didn't set out to collect bad cookbooks, it just sort of happened. Maybe it's all the bizarre "homestyle" cooking I was exposed to in farm kitchens as a child; maybe I was just born this way. Whatever it is, nothing gets me going like really terrible pictures of really terrible food, accompanied by instructions to help you actually make said food. I found today's selection on sale at a thrift store for one dollar. It's brought me at least five times that much enjoyment already.

There are no pictures in Recipes From Peggy's Cove, which was published "in aid of the Peggy's Cove Preservation Society". Well, no pictures of food anyway. There are a few gritty b&w photos of the Cove itself, which purports to be a grim little fishing hamlet somewhere in Nova Scotia. Even the color photos I've found online are in b&w -- you actually have to photoshop Peggy's Cove to make the colors show up. I found

After a hard day of scraping out lobster traps, nothing warms the knuckles like a helping of "Lasagna Salad", chased with a handful of "Savory Gems". Or perhaps you'd prefer a "Clam Whiffle" appetizer followed by the evocatively named "Smothered Rabbit". If it's dinner for one, you may elect to make "Hobo Dinner" and then fall asleep in front of the TV with a half-eaten "Almost As Good As Poundcake" in your lap.

I'm not just picking on the names. In most cases the ingredients or directions are just as discouraging, such as the recipe for "Cherried Cranberries", which contains no actual cherries. If you're going to use "cherry" as a verb (and I beg you to refrain), then the person, place or thing you are cherrying deserves the real thing.

Meanwhile, here is the second half of the recipe for making "Solomon Gundy":

"...In medium size mason jars, put alternate layers of herring and onion rings. Cover with cooled vinegar solution and seal. Refrigerate for at least a week before eating."

If you want more, you'll have to get your own copy.

I think that by now most people know that trends in folk cuisine, such being able to make a meal with literally any part of an animal, are born out of necessity. Hardworking, isolated people have to do the best with whatever they've got handy, and if that means eating "Salmon Luncheon Roll" and "Family Dessert" three nights a week, then by Dagon, that's what they'll do! People cling to familiar tastes, even as generations go by and fortunes improve. No one these days eats "Livers Paprikash" because it tastes wonderful, they do it because it's traditional.

If you're currently struggling, the Five of Coins urges you refrain from confusing your current station in life with who you actually are and what you really want. You can (and will) do better, it says. All the Five-cards in the Tarot represent that "it's always darkest before the dawn" period that precedes the restoration of harmony and balance. If you accept your present hardship as your lot in life, you may cling to it reflexively and fail to grab at whatever is meant to take its place. We are all transforming, and what we are now is not necessarily what we will be.

I shouldn't pick on Peggy's Cove too much, its wiki page claims that tourism is its primary source of income. Nor do I think that a town is incomplete without a four-star restaurant. But if it's fund-raising assistance the town needs, the town might have been better off avoiding cook-books and bake sales. Better stick to car-washes in the future, just to be safe...

Previously On Arcanaloge: Five Of Coins

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"This May Be A Good Time To Retire Your Pig-Nose..."

Political cartoons have always fascinated me, even as a child. I remember reading the comics section of the paper every morning before school and then skipping over to the editorial section on the off chance that I'd actually be able to understand the grownup joke in the Steve Benson sketch. The pig noses, the talking elephants, the horrifying caricatures -- I couldn't get enough of them, and still can't. That side of me was thrilled to see that Victor Juhasz' top-notch illustrations in this month's Rolling Stone, accompanying Matt Taibbi's blistering indictment of the sins of investment firm Goldman Sachs. According to Taibbi, the fraud commited by the investment firm has triggered every financial crisis in the last century.

More specifically, Taibbi blames Goldman Sachs for manufacturing (and ultimately bursting) five market "bubbles": the 1929 stock market, tech stocks during the Clinton administration, the housing craze, gasoline prices, and the Federal government's recent bailouts. The only copy of the article online now is the scan linked above, but it's worth checking out on paper if you get the chance. Apparently G-Sachs' tactic is to buy up the entire market, unsavory bits and all, to drive up confidence; then they sell it off in lots to second-tier investors who are eager to get a slice of the action -- all the while, they're secretly betting against the success of those investments and making a killing when they ultimately fail.

Hence the bailout section of the article -- when banks lost their shirts during last year's market crash, they mostly lost them to Goldman Sachs. Since a considerable amount of the bailout money those banks received was used to pay off that debt, G-Sachs' essentially got paid twice -- first when the bank reaped enormous profits from its fraudulent dealings before the crash, and then again afterward from the government at the expense of taxpayers. Taibbi claims that the next bubble that the bank has its eye on is the Climate Change bill, which is currently on its way to the Senate. I guess if any news story ever warranted a pig-nose or three, this would be the one.

The Five of Coins has always struck me as something of a editorial cartoon. The Waite version shows us a man and a woman hobbling through the snow, and the stained glass window (of what I presume is a bank or church) just overhead seems to mock their condition, hinting that warmth and wealth shall be kept just out of reach. Along with some of the more dramatic Swords cards, it's one of the most savage images in the deck. While the people in it are who we're drawn to, that looming black wall and window are a sort of third character in the image. In this case, wealth and power do not confer happiness or peace of mind -- greed, paranoia, and worry take over and demand that walls are built to shut others out. The worst-case scenario hinted at in the card preceding has come to fruition; desire for power has completely eclipsed reason and mercy, and all -- even the rich -- are worse off for it.

This is an ugly instinct that we all grapple with. No matter which side of the wall you happen to be on, no enduring satisfaction can come from grasping at everything you can get your hands on; that mentality perpetuates itself to the point where peace of mind becomes impossible. There is no magical cut-off point where you will have "enough"-- by the time you reach your goal, you'll have conditioned yourself to push onward and take more. In a reading this card usually points to the restlessness, discomfort, and anxiety that result from our desires, regardless of whether they're fulfilled. This may be a good time to retire your pig-nose and divert your attention to other aspects of life for a while. Generosity is more difficult to cultivate than greed, but it's a much better long-term investment.

Previously On Arcanalogue: The Five of Coins

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Five of Coins

1. Loss of money or position
2. Worry
3. Carefulness and thrift in money matters.

-- David Allen Hulse, The Western Mysteries

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Five of Coins

This card classically portrays scenes of penury and misery, often with mendicants groveling out in the cold. While care should be taken to immediately tend to any material concerns you may have been neglecting, turning over the Five of Coins doesn't automatically consign you to the poorhouse. It's likely, however, that certain areas in your life are cut off from the attention and support they desperately require in order to function smoothly, and if left unattended the penalties will be severe. You grow desperate for help, but others may not even notice how dire your straits really are. Imagine yourself functioning inside like a great clockwork, five large gears left untended, grinding against each other without any lubrication: eventually the friction causes them to wear each other out, and before you know it you're the kind of clock that's only right twice a day.

Walter Martin and Paloma Munoz have captured this strange sense of isolation and unease in their wonderfully detailed snow-globe scenes, in which tiny carved figures roam frigid terrain encountering one misfortune after another. Some of these globes contain more optimistic impossibilities than others, but even under the best circumstances, there is an all-too-real physical barrier that shuts us out as participants in the scene, forcing us to observe passively as a tiny figure in another world struggles to comprehend their isolation, perhaps quite aware that the warmth and safety they long for isn't even possible, and too small to crack the glass that seems incredibly delicate in our own huge hands.

Whether these fears are all in our heads doesn't matter; they still threaten to strangle our hopes or drive us off the path that leads to security. However, there's solace to be found built into in the very natural order of things. In our world, winter inevitably turns to spring, relentless summer cools into autumn. Plain endurance may not seem like much of a strategy for conquering hardship, but if you remain permeable to changes, you may find that the season changes faster than you ever dared hope. [Via]

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