ON TIME

I’m anticipating with great pleasure my sabbatical this term. Although I enjoy teaching, I find it that if I have more time I can teach more systematically people other than students. Or people interested in what we call ’weird stuff’. As I like to think of myself as a reader – I read books, Tarot, pictures, children, animals, the universe, stones and water – I find that it helps people to know that there are others in the world who appreciate their time on a level that's not culturally time-bound. We all have an intuitive knowledge about the fact that time is significant, but we rarely have this knowledge consolidated – such knowledge often gets to be perceived as some cosmic gobbledygook. So, we either doubt too much, or we believe in nonsense too much. Here, what I have to offer is this: we are here to pay attention – or so the Zen Buddhists say, or so the Shamans say, or so Bach says, or so the mathematicians say, or so we all say.

To arrive at any conclusion takes time. Neither intelligence nor thought contribute to enhancing the nuance of understanding that time and space alone create. The impatient ones, the ones who even want a reward for their blunders, get a reward. We call it the world of clichés.

I’ll be globetrotting again in search of the present, away from myself, away from repeating myself to death, repeating others to death, away from the past, away from projecting fictions into the future, away from myth and symbolism. On my schedule I have new and old places to visit: London, Tromsø, Harstad, Delhi, Turku, New York, Helsinki, Olso, Copenhagen, and then back to the source, Roskilde. I will conclude a few things, but not before I get out there all the senses available to me. Get them in there as well. I’ll take the time it takes to eat and appreciate those oysters at Grand Central in New York and the roast goat in Tromsø, hear the sound of the drums pulsating at unison with ancient history in Harstad, say abracadabra with the magical Giordano Bruno in Turku, get all Aquarian with John Starr Cooke in Helsinki, greet and greet and greet the holy men in Delhi and Kurukshetra, get hit in my gut by the dust of my 1181 supernova spread all over in Oslo, step into the cathedral in Roskilde and say, I’m back, and so are my senses, or at least my sense of time.

We can’t run away from time, therefore all time is always the right time. The only thing that may be wrong in our ballooning through space is failing to make a few good distinctions. To right that wrong, it takes time. So take it. It's all you've got.

SHAPE-SHIFTER

Breakfast on board the Hurtigruten ship that goes from Bergen and all the way up to Kirkenes. There are things to see on the way, adventure activities on land, kissing huskies and dog sledding, flying over the snow and communing with the spirit of Odin in the Lofoten islands. All very good. But I’m reminded of a pledge I made some 2 years ago on the same Hurtigruten, when I decided that if I should ever get rich, I would buy the entire fleet and enforce a few rules. Starting with banishing all the yakking at breakfast. I listen to people talking over their coffee, all in a very assertive way, all being very formal and reverential. All about the kids’ schools, work and health, and the occasional love grief or frustration. No one is interested in the meaning of life, or the grand nothingness. We pass it ever so gracefully, though. The white Lyngen Alps stare us in the face silently and are inviting us to imitate them. Sit in silence and wonderment. But we don’t do it, of course not, and why should we? How could we? In this civilized world, it’s crucial that we yak at breakfast in a loud voice, as we need to remind ourselves of our mighty powers which we need to exercise as soon as we get out of the house to go to work, to school, or to seduce somebody. The meaning of life is called selling. We need to sell all that we’ve got: Our looks, our brains, our bodies, our souls, our dead ancestors, and our relatives. Everything is for sale, and the ones who can do it best are the ones considered successful. They are showered with rewards in the form of prizes, which then enable the winners to sell themselves some more – now by proxy, meaning that it won’t matter any more how brainy or empty-headed you might be, or how good looking. People will buy your stuff simply because you won a prize. It’s a good life.

Lunch is coming. Free buffet. The other rule that I would enforce if I had the fleet would be the ‘no ‘free’ lunches’ rule. No more eating. Only bread and water. If you want salt on the bread, you can lean over the railing on board and let your bread be splashed with sea-water. There would be retreat rooms instead of TV rooms. No soap operas. The only drama allowed would be the drama created in these silent rooms, where people can get to do yoga, meditate in zazen, and feel the pain of disciplining the body. All for nothing. My chief of staff in charge with the well-being of the tourists onboard will have one announcement only over the speakers: ‘good morning ladies and gentlemen, today we begin the day with selling nothing.’ ‘Guten morgen, meine Damen und Herren, heute Morgen fangen wir an Nichts zu verkaufen.’ ‘God morgen, mine damer og herrer, i dag starter vi dagen med at sælge ingenting.’

Dinner time. Everyone out on the deck. The full moon creates magic, Trollfjorden is not bewitching for nothing, even though the trolls are not interested in exchange rates and more selling. Here you get the magic all for free. By the time you hit the deep arctic, the only desire you will have left would be the desire to think of yourself as one without a self. As No One. You will come home empowered. Nothing will impress you anymore. You will be able to see through a lot of shit. You will wear masks all according to context and circumstance. You will have become a shape-shifter.

BELIEVING

I’m cruising through the Arctic in the North of Norway. I do a Tarot reading here, and another there. I quickly settle the score with the incredulous ones upon being presented with the question: ‘so, you’re an academic AND a fortuneteller?’ I just say ‘yes.’ But ‘yes’ is never enough. ‘Surely you don’t believe in that sort of thing,’ people go, without defining what ‘that sort of thing’ is. I always say the following to this: ‘well, obviously I don’t believe in it. What I believe in is the words of men and women walking down the aisle, swearing eternal love to each other, only to demonstrate the opposite in the end.’ As they say, 50 million people can’t be wrong. They all believe in THAT sort of thing, and so do I, so help me God.

Here’s a recent reading that addressed the above issue. As one can ask meta-questions of Tarot, we asked the following: ‘how does the belief in tarot compare to the belief in marriage?’

I pulled two sets of 3 cards for each, one for Tarot and the other one for marriage:

TAROT: As de Baston (Ace of Wands), Roy Despee (King of Swords) Le Fov (The Fool)

On what you get out of your belief in Tarot, here’s what I said:

Tarot allows you to put your will and belief forcefully to work in the service of your dissecting mind. Whatever you find sets you free. You don’t explain the Tarot, you just let it walk its talk. It will always have an answer that will tell you what you need to know. Whether you believe in the Tarot or not, the Tarot always wins.

MARRIAGE: 3 de deniers (3 coins), Valet de deniers (page of coins), 5 de coupes (5 cups)

Here, the story is this one:

Two get together to tend to a third. But they only use half of their potential. With assets buried in the ground, what you invest in returns as disappointment in love, broken engagements, loss and sorrow.

THE VERDICT: Before I said anything, the woman in front of me disclosed that she is tired of her marriage, that she is tired of who she is in it, and many more things. I myself got a lesson in the benefits of why not to do it.

So, no fortune was told on this occasion. More like misfortune, which is yet not enough reason to give up fortunetelling just because the uninitiated may have a problem with it.

Enjoy your freedoms, and the suspension of (dis)belief.

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Note on the deck: Jean Noblet’s Tarot de Marseille, 1650, as restored by Jean-Claude Flornoy
For more Tarot related posts, go to my Taro(t)flexions website.