The Fool in the Tarot
Is the Fool the hero or the joke? I like best to think of the Fool as the one in the deck about to step off the cliff, to give herself over completely to whatever – romantic love, to a new beginning, a fresh start, a new path – it is the Enthusiast in the deck – the one that says here is a big risk and I will delight in all that it brings – the Fool is the perfect example of inner faith facing life and the journey unafraid. Ultimately the Fool reminds us of things, sacred and forgotten or repressed. The card encourages us to walk our own path and not the path of the “herd” – to trust our inner voice, our intuition, and to embark on our life course with a stout and open heart. Have faith in the goodness of life and people and an undying belief that all will work out exactly as it should. When it comes up in the deck it points the querent to develop faith in her own abilities to make the right choices, to keep the faith, and to walk our own unique path with optimism and hope.
It points to my Zen dropping that has been on my desk for decades – “Whereever you are in this moment, is exactly where you are supposed to be, no matter how things may seem to appear.”
A reminder from my Tia to not feel sorry for yourself – to see the world unfolding and jump naively into its web.
My dear friend L writes to me early this morning from his groggy state of mind – “two things now: one is that i love you beyond belief and the other is that NOW is the better life–you’ve got health, looks, intelligence, personality out the ass, a good job, the bean, money, lots of friends, and precious days (though fewer than we once had) stretching out ahead. “Once upon a time/The world was sweeter than we knew,” goes one of the staggering lines from a Sinatra song. Let’s know and believe that the world is sweet now, even though it isn’t the sweet that we might want. Sometimes everything sounds like a platitude ( I know this sort of does), but sometimes only platitudes will do because there’s nothing more to be said and because in their apparent banallity, they pierce to the core like no high-flown insight could.”
And I taped together the birthday card from S (ripped apart after I ripped him apart) with the Robert Hass poem:
The Problem of Describing Color
If I said–remembering, in summer,
The cardinal’s sudden smudge of red
In the bare gray winter woods–
If I said, red ribbon on the cocked straw hat
Of the girl with pooched-out lips
Dangling the wiry, black-nosed lapdog
In the painting by Renoir–
If I said fire, if I sad blood welling from a cut–
Or flecks of poppy in the tar-grass-scented summer air
On a wind-struck hillside outside Fano–
If I said, her one red earring dangles from her silky
lobe,
If she tells fortunes with a deck of fallen leaves
Until it comes out right–
Rouged nipple, mouth–
(how could you not love a woman
who cheats at Tarot?)
Red, I said. Sudden, red.