Sketchbook - Seven of Cups

On the surface it seems like such an innocent moment, just pure wish-fulfillment. That's what the carnival is for, isn't it? So, drunk on the possibilities, you reach out to accept everything that's offered.

Who cares if it's too much ice cream for just one person, more than you could even physically eat? Who cares about the visible cracks in the cone, the hot summer sun, the carelessness with which it is handed to you -- all the myriad factors actively correlating to keep you from enjoying your fantasy-come-true? Desire eclipses reason, intoxication outpaces temperance.

That's the story of the Seven of Cups in a nutshell: fantastical visions getting mixed up with all-too-real possibilities, blinding us to our true needs and natural limitations.

I get sick almost every time I go to Coney Island, because I think that food you ingested for pleasure doesn't really count as having been eaten. I remember when I bought a cheap piña colada on the boardwalk once, in one of those gigantic goblets that looks like genie bottle; I tried to show the woman my ID and she laughed in my face. "Hello?? This is Coney Island!" she explained, gesturing at the landscape around us. Then she stage-whispered that she'd give me a free refill if I tipped her well. So naturally I wound up drinking two of those hideous corn-syrup cocktails, probably 32 ounces in total, and felt seasick for almost 48 hours afterward. I'm sure the cheap-o onion rings, pistachio soft-serve, and fried oysters didn't help.

(As of today I haven't eaten any refined sugar in eight days. I didn't think of it until after I started, but it just figures that I'd wind up drawing ice cream.)

(And yes, that seems to be our sideshow strongman from the Four of Swords forking it over. I didn't expect to see him again... Initially the arm was just going to belong to an ice cream truck vendor, but the picture wound up having a sort of "Get into my van" quality which, as interesting an interpretation as that would have turned out to be, was not what I set out to evoke.)

Previously On Arcanalogue: The Seven Of Cups