July 18th, 2010 8:29PM:
me: I was wondering if you could bring yourself to write a few sentences about how you feel you might relate to this card. Really, anything. I'll fill in the rest.
annsley:Yes, I will write something
annsley: but not right now when I'm hungover from daydrinking
me: haha
me: I might use this conversation in the post...
We all have our own preferred way of seeing ourselves, and I'm always interested in observing which Tarot cards an individual is personally drawn to, which expressions of self they choose to identify with. In our haste to classify ourselves, we often forget one of the Tarot's underlying principles, which is that each of us contains all of these characters, they reside in us and surface with very little effort, despite the apparent contradictions that they expose in our personalities. In that light, I find it just as interesting to note the cards in which an individual (including myself) is least interested.
In this series of posts that follow, I do not aim to pigeon-hole certain friends of mine into specific categories of characterization. The assignment of cards was a nearly random process; in some cases the subject chose for themself, in other cases I chose. Some of the images are self-portraits, some of them were shot by me personally. In all cases the subject was asked to consider how they felt they could relate to their assigned card, and I will pass on those reflections to you wherever possible.
Consider the case of Annsley, pictured above. Consider her salubrious Fourth of July barbecue, also pictured. Historically, Annsley is not someone I would've associated with the freewheeling, childlike, unreliable Page (or Princess) of Wands. Annsley is very responsible, a hard-headed intellectual who also happens to be scarily attuned to her own emotions, and is therefore often extremely intuitive with regards to her own motivations as well as those of others. If anything, I figured I'd probably turn her loose with one of the Swords cards.
That brings us back to the barbecue in question, to which I arrived quite late. In terms of drinking I caught up with everyone pretty quickly, and in terms of eating I was happy to pick through the ripe remainders piled high on the picnic table and eavesdrop on everyone's chats. It was in the middle of my third cream-filled cupcake that something occurred to me: Annsley is really good at throwing a party. She's also really good at attending a party. For someone who comes across as so well put-together, she's got a real knack for relaxing and letting things fall spectacularly out of control; she doesn't seem to question how the rebound or the recovery will occur, she just assumes that it will. That's a true gift for any hostess to have -- at my own parties I often find myself too busy imagining how I'll put everything back together to truly enjoy myself.
The Page of Wands is a mingling of the Fire and Earth elements, it revels in the heat of the former and the bounty of the latter. In her Complete Book of Tarot Reversals, Mary K. Greer writes: "You are likely to be frank and candid, artless and unstudied. You might explore things that are close at hand with a certain fearless grace and could be in strange surroundings where everything is unusual and fascinating... it suggests unexpected information, surprises, and new possibilities that might require immediate actions." Anyone who has attended one of the MetaFilter meetups Annsley's organized can probably attest to the veracity of this observation. By the end of these nights, when everyone is sweaty and broke and borderline incoherent, we still feel as if we have accomplished something truly great.
So that's the first chapter in what will be a sixteen-card series of snapshots. My challenge to the reader for each of these: consider how you would portray yourself in these cards. What would you have to reveal or conceal about yourself in order for others to glimpse your inner multitudes? If you'd like to share pictures of your own, please send them to me and I'll put together a gallery for them after these sixteen entries are complete.
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