Sobriety: 33 years

Ich komme aus meinen Schwingen heim -by Rainier Maria Rilke

I come home from the soaring in which I lost myself.
I was song, and the refrain which is God
is still roaring in my ears.

Now I am still
and plain:
no more words.

To the others I was like a wind:
I made them shake.
I’d gone very far, as far as the angels,
and high, where light thins into nothing.

But deep in the darkness is God.


-from Rilke's Book of Hours – Love Poems to God



As I have since this blog's inception, on the day of my sobriety anniversary I publish this treasured Rilke poem, but with a new image each year.
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(I hope to join the blogging community again soon.  I have missed writing, and I have missed you.
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Sobriety: 32 years

Alone, young birdy


Ich komme aus meinen Schwingen heim -by Rainier Maria Rilke

I come home from the soaring in which I lost myself.
I was song, and the refrain which is God
is still roaring in my ears.

Now I am still
and plain:
no more words.

To the others I was like a wind:
I made them shake.
I’d gone very far, as far as the angels,
and high, where light thins into nothing.

But deep in the darkness is God.


-from Rilke's Book of Hours – Love Poems to God



As I have since this blog's inception, on the day of my sobriety anniversary I publish this treasured Rilke poem, but with a new image each year.
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Sobriety: 31 years

Wind Moon, and Clouds by Cam Davis

Ich komme aus meinen Schwingen heim -by Rainier Maria Rilke

I come home from the soaring in which I lost myself.
I was song, and the refrain which is God
is still roaring in my ears.

Now I am still
and plain:
no more words.

To the others I was like a wind:
I made them shake.
I’d gone very far, as far as the angels,
and high, where light thins into nothing.

But deep in the darkness is God.

-from Rilke's Book of Hours – Love Poems to God

As I have since this blog's inception, on the day of my sobriety anniversary I publish this treasured Rilke poem, but with a new image each year.
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Sobriety: 30 years

Stillness by Michael Sprouse

Ich komme aus meinen Schwingen heim -by Rainier Maria Rilke

I come home from the soaring in which I lost myself.
I was song, and the refrain which is God
is still roaring in my ears.

Now I am still
and plain:
no more words.

To the others I was like a wind:
I made them shake.
I’d gone very far, as far as the angels,
and high, where light thins into nothing.

But deep in the darkness is God.


-from Rilke's Book of Hours – Love Poems to God



As I have since this blog's inception, on the day of my sobriety anniversary I publish this treasured Rilke poem, but with a new image each year.
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Pause for Reflection

The image she kept of herself: sophisticated
elegance, hair swept in perfumed grace, nails
groomed pink clinking against the drink glass,
ice winking from clear blue eyes.

Who she was: the drunk in dirty overalls,
flirty beauty long gone, slurring stories long on
lies, interrupting herself with "Excuse me,"
before puking inside her garment bib.


Written (with gratitude for we women who have attained sobriety) for two writing prompts:

1) Photo Challenge #68, Pause at MindLoveMisery's Menagerie.
Note: Image by wallpaperswide.com

2) 55 words for Flash 55 Plus at imaginary garden with real toads

Sobriety: 29 years

catmasutra-earth-5-elements by Paul Koh

Ich komme aus meinen Schwingen heim -by Rainier Maria Rilke

I come home from the soaring in which I lost myself.
I was song, and the refrain which is God
is still roaring in my ears.

Now I am still
and plain:
no more words.

To the others I was like a wind:
I made them shake.
I’d gone very far, as far as the angels,
and high, where light thins into nothing.

But deep in the darkness is God.


                                            -from Rilke's Book of Hours – Love Poems to God



As I have since this blog's inception, on the day of my sobriety anniversary I publish this treasured Rilke poem, but with a new image each year.
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Sobriety: 28 years

photo credit: MarkGuitarPhoto via photopin cc


Ich komme aus meinen Schwingen heim -by Rainier Maria Rilke

I come home from the soaring in which I lost myself.
I was song, and the refrain which is God
is still roaring in my ears.

Now I am still
and plain:
no more words.

To the others I was like a wind:
I made them shake.
I’d gone very far, as far as the angels,
and high, where light thins into nothing.

But deep in the darkness is God.


                                            -from Rilke's Book of Hours – Love Poems to God



As I have since this blog's inception, on the day of my sobriety anniversary I publish this treasured Rilke poem, but with a new image each year.

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Sobriety: 27 years

The Playful Existence by Brihte, via Imagekind

Ich komme aus meinen Schwingen heim by Rainier Maria Rilke

I come home from the soaring in which I lost myself.
I was song, and the refrain which is God
is still roaring in my ears.

Now I am still
and plain:
no more words.

To the others I was like a wind:
I made them shake.
I’d gone very far, as far as the angels,
and high, where light thins into nothing.

But deep in the darkness is God.


                                            -from Rilke's Book of Hours – Love Poems to God



As I have since this blog's inception, on the day of my sobriety anniversary I publish this treasured Rilke poem, but with a new image each year.


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Poetics: 100 Bottles

Bottles by Borg de Nobel / http://borgeous.wordpress.com / used with permission /

100 Bottles

When young we sang
100 Bottles of Beer on the Wall
with all the windows open in
the church camp bus.

      It didn't shock Jesus, who was
   known to have enjoyed wine
in his time.

Still young I had
100 hangovers against my will
even with best intentions to
have just two drinks.

   It didn't shock Mama, who had
      grown as co-dependent
with my dad. 

Less young I said
100 times The Serenity Prayer
with twenty others struggling for
sober freedom.

It didn't shock Mozart, who was
   bone, breath, higher power
      for my soul.



Written for Poetics — Borg de Nobel  — at dVerse Poets. Our host, Claudia Schoenfeld, writes:

The cool thing about twitter is, that you constantly stumble upon lots of interesting people. A while ago, I found Borg de Nobel, a dutch painter in the twitter stream, checked her website and thought it would be cool to invite her to the pub with some of her paintings and have us write poems, inspired by her artwork.

I loved each of the paintings for this prompt, but the one with the bottles spoke to me. Thanks to Claudia for introducing us to Borg de Nobel, and for her great idea.

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Sobriety: 26 years

 













Càrn Mhuinge by Dougie Beck


Ich komme aus meinen Schwingen heim by Rainier Maria Rilke

I come home from the soaring in which I lost myself.
I was song, and the refrain which is God
is still roaring in my ears.

Now I am still
and plain:
no more words.

To the others I was like a wind:
I made them shake.
I’d gone very far, as far as the angels,
and high, where light thins into nothing.

But deep in the darkness is God.

 -from Rilke's Book of Hours – Love Poems to God

As I have since this blog's inception, on the day of my sobriety anniversary I publish this treasured Rilke poem, but with a new image each year.

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The Poetry Bus Stops at Horse Brass Pub

KAT is driving TFE's Poetry Bus this week, with a prompt that will surely inspire all riders. She asked that we think of our favorite pub and to create characters from the name of the pub, then use those names to spin a good tale in childhood verse form.

Funny that, after having not been aboard The Poetry Bus for quite awhile, I would join the crowd for this one. Many of you know that I have been sober for decades and pubs are no longer my thing. But......there was a drinking me long ago who lived for a year in Portland, Oregon, and the Horse Brass Pub was my place. I am obviously not the only patron who found it special. The pub's website announces:

In 2011, the Horse Brass Pub will celebrate 35 years of good beer, good food and good company.  We invite you to stop by the Pub next time you’re in town.  Enjoy a pint – we’ve grown to 53 beers on tap and remember “You’re a stranger no more when you walk through the door of the ol’ Horse Brass Pub”.

Horsey and Brassy Visit Horse Brass Pub

Horsey and Brassy all their lives were best friends
And today they were both twenty-one.
They dreamed of rare brews and wicked good blends
Made from hops and rye grown in the sun.

Horsey and Brassy were out on the town
With intentions to paint that town red.
She had orange hair, his coat was light brown.
Both were wooden - they chipped, never bled.

Brassy was horsey the way that she laughed--
She snorted and shook her wild hair.
She was new to the world outside of woodcraft
Where she sat on a shelf with hardware.

Horsey was not brassy in his thoughts or his ways.
Did not snort in public, rarely tossed his black mane.
Saved his prancing and dancing, whinnies and neighs
For the fine folks at home who 'til now held the rein.

Together they figured the route to the city,
Traversed rocky hills and crossed a huge bridge.
So pleased with themselves they thought it a pity
That their travels weren't known in their sleepy village.

Brassy held Horsey's mane so tight as he clopped.
She sang songs they had practiced at home--
Dreaming of wood kegs when he suddenly stopped.
They were there, ready for a tankard of foam!

Horsey and Brassy smiled at the fine sign
They were thirsty horse and girl puppets
Their boring lives gone - now was their time
To toss some dark brews down their gullets.

Folks at home had their churches, but here is the rub--
Seemed like heaven when they walked through that door.
They stood in the place known as the Horse Brass Pub,
Thanking their lucky stars for evening the score.

There was laughter and music, and instant flirtation
As all eyes looked at the orange-haired lassy.
Brassy sang a hello and spun out a gyration.
All could see that this girl puppet was sassy.

It worried the thoughtful 21-year-old steed
Whose night had just changed completely.
He spoke with the barmaid and the barmaid agreed
To make Horsey's drinks free of whoopee.

So while Brassy drank one beer after another,
Horsey ate Scotch eggs and drank only soda.
After all he loved Brassy and felt like her brother
As he watched her he looked like a horse Yoda.

The barkeep poured Brassy a tangy nightcap
Knowing Horsey was the designated driver.
Barkeep thought the horse was a genuine chap--
Reminded her of her favorite horse, McIver.

"I would call you McIver if you were my horse!"
"I would call you Grand Dame if 'twas true!"
But neither belonged with the other of course.
Horsey knew it was time for adieu.

Horsey pulled tired Brassy from the grip of some suitors
Who protested and wailed when he moved her.
They were fond of that girl and would sure miss her hooters,
Would remember her slurring: "Come hither."

Young Brassy dreamed a horse would bring her the knight
Who would swoop her away to some dreamland.
How could she have known back when she was a sprite
A horse would save her one night from drunk quicksand.

When at home one morning that sparkled with dew--
'Cross the grasslands they heard roosters and goats.
Brassy said: "Horsey, I am safe, thanks to you."
"McIver's my name!" said he, feeling his oats.

MLydiaM ~ December 2010

Puppetgirl ID by Puppetgirl 101 on DeviantArt

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The eve of.......date night at Mac's

I read in the paper yesterday that it was Barry McGuire's 75th birthday. Seventy-Five. He is bald now, as shown in photos at his website. I saw him onstage when I was a child when he was in a group called The Christy Minstrels, but I didn't know who he was until he was out on his own and he released The Eve of Destruction. He has the perfect voice for this song: gritty and somewhat untamed. I thought it was worth listening to again.

 :::

It is driving me crazy that a new Magpie prompt is out and I have yet to read the assortment of Magpies written by others last week. I am not going to allow myself to even look at this week's prompt until I catch up on ones written last week by the kind people who read and commented about mine. I am behind on a lot of things right now, so to those of you whose blogs I haven't visited and to those of you to whom I owe emails, thank you for being here and for not giving up on me! I will try to get myself organized asap.

:::

My 25th sobriety anniversary dinner at Mac's Place (see previous post) was great. Michael and I had a fun date night and I was glad I stayed in Silverton instead of going to the beach for my solo trip on this particular day. I enjoyed my excellent thin-crust Greek pizza, plus bites from Michael's assorted fish platter, while looking around the place where I had my last drink. Mac's was decorated for Halloween (Silverton has always gone all-out for Halloween). The room was full of good cheer and so was I, in spite of having The Eve of Destruction stuck in my mind.......

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Pleasures of the Harbor

It is my month of contemplation, the one where everything that gets done gets done inside of me. Octobers have passed me through the looking glass of remembrance for some years now. During the course of this October I will mark, on different days, my 25th year of sobriety and also the tenth year since my mother's death. I have decided to let spill out what will spill, in the sense of posting things that in some way signify aspects/realities/feelings/memories of one or both events for me personally.

Both are represented in the song below. My mother always said she wanted her grave marker to say simply, She Lived. Then she decided she wanted to be cremated and have her ashes scattered in the ocean. My husband and I did the scattering from a whale-watching boat and afterward we tossed in a beautiful large wreath my sister ordered with a ribbon entwined in it that read: She lived. We watched it bob and dip until it was out of sight, the sole and fleeting splash of color on a slate gray, stormy November sea.

And I have, in a sense, lived two lives: the one prior to and the one now in sobriety. I have a few regrets regarding the former and much gratitude for the latter.
 


Pleasures of the Harbor, sung by Glenn Yarborough  (whose voice is musical poetry)


Pleasures of the Harbor  ~ by Phil Ochs
(full lyrics -- not all sung in the Yarborough version above)
  
And the ship sets the sail
They've lived the tale
To carry to the shore
Straining at the oars
Or staring from the rail

And the sea bids farewell
She waves in swells
And sends them on their way
Time has been her pay
And time will have to tell

Oh, soon your
Sailing will be over
Come and take
The pleasures of the harbor

And the anchor hits the sand
The hungry hands
Have tied them to the port
The hour will be short
For leisure on the land

And the girls scent the air
They seem so fair
With paint on their face
Soft is their embrace
To lead them up the stairs

Soon your
Sailing will be over
Come and take
The pleasures of the harbor

In the room dark and dim
Touch of skin
He asks her of her name
She answers with no shame
And not a sense of sin

'Til the fingers draw the blinds
Sip of wine
The cigarette of doubt
The candle is blown out
The darkness is so kind

Oh, soon your
Sailing will be over
Come and take
The pleasures of the harbor

And the shadows frame the light
Same old sight
Thrill has blown away
Now all alone they lay
Two strangers in the night

Till his heart skips a beat
He's on his feet
To shipmates he must join
She's counting up the coins
He's swallowed by the street

Oh, soon your
Sailing will be over
Come and take
The pleasures of the harbor

In the bar hangs a cloud
The whiskey's loud
There's laughter in their eyes
The lonely in disguise
Are clinging to the crowd

And the bottle fills the glass
The haze is fast
He's trembling for the taste
Of passion gone to waste
In memories of the past

Oh, soon your
Sailing will be over
Come and take
The pleasures of the harbor

In the alley, red with rain
Cry of pain
For love was but a smile
Teasing all the while
Now dancing down the drain

'Til the boys reach the dock
They gently mock
And lift him on their backs
Lay him on his rack
And leave beneath the light

Oh, soon your
Sailing will be over
Come and take
The pleasures of the harbor

And the ship sets the sail
They've lived the tale
To carry from the shore
Straining at the oars
Or staring from the rail

And the sea bids farewell
She waves in swells
And sends them on their way
Time has been her pay
And time will have to tell

Oh, soon your
Sailing will be over
Come and take
The pleasures of the harbor


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Sobriety: 24 years

Image via Pinterest



Ich komme aus meinen Schwingen heim

- by Rainier Maria Rilke

I come home from the soaring in which I lost myself.
I was song, and the refrain which is God
is still roaring in my ears.

Now I am still
and plain:
no more words.

To the others I was like a wind:
I made them shake.
I’d gone very far, as far as the angels,
and high, where light thins into nothing.

But deep in the darkness is God.

-from Rilke's Book of Hours – Love Poems to God

The Rilke poem may look familiar to those of you who remember my post for my 23rd sobriety anniversary. It is the same. I can't imagine ever finding a poem that describes coming to sobriety better than this one does, so I'll probably publish it again for my 25th, and on. The photograph is a change from last year's art, and I may not change it in years ahead. It's perfect.

I'll be keeping to my tradition of taking a few days and nights in October to be at the Oregon coast alone, and will drive over this afternoon. What began in 2001 as a spiritual trip in my mother's memory (she died on October 27, 2000 and we scattered her ashes at sea from a boat out of Depoe Bay) has in more recent years become that and more: my time to connect with my Self.

This will be my first time coordinating the trip on my sobriety anniversary, and I think it will start a trend for the future.  It seems fitting.

When I made my room reservations on Tuesday afternoon the inn clerk said the weather at the coast is indeed what has been predicted: stormy, rainy, windy -- making another first in my October solo trips there. But bring on the storms. I'll be in a beautiful room with private beach access and a book, lots of memories, and maybe some new insights. I'm going unplugged and will look forward to responding to your comments when I return home.

cloud clipart via A Perfect World

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"There is nothing like a barmaid," said the Dame

PORTRAIT OF A BARMAID
-by Dame Edith Sitwell

Metallic waves of people jar
Through crackling green toward the bar

Where on the tables chattering-white
The sharp drinks quarrel with the light.

Those coloured muslin blinds the smiles,
Shroud wooden faces in their wiles--

Sometimes they splash like water (you
Yourself reflected in their hue).

The conversation loud and bright
Seems spinal bars of shunting light

In firework-spurting greenery.
O complicate machinery

For building Babel, iron crane
Beneath your hair, that blue-ribbed mane

In noise and murder like the sea
Without its mutability!

Outside the bar where jangling heat
Seems out of tune and off the beat--

A concertina's glycerine
Exudes, and mirrors in the green

Your soul: pure glucose edged with hints
Of tentative and half-soiled tints.



(from Twentieth Century Harlequinade and other Poems, with Osbert Sitwell)

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Sobriety: 23 years

Ich komme aus meinen Schwingen heim

I come home from the soaring in which I lost myself.
I was song, and the refrain which is God
is still roaring in my ears.

Now I am still
and plain:
no more words.

To the others I was like a wind:
I made them shake.
I’d gone very far, as far as the angels,
and high, where light thins into nothing.

But deep in the darkness is God.

– Rainier Maria Rilke
Rilke's Book of Hours – Love Poems to God

Artwork: Clipart.com paid subscription

The land of cool enchantment

My 23rd sobriety anniversary date is October 15 and, because I don’t have a suitable old postcard for the occasion, Old Postcard Wednesday will become Old Postcard Friday this week.

I didn’t go searching for clips of the Hamm’s Beer Commercial at You Tube. Instead one landed in my late-night world while I was glancing at dozens of clips under dozens of topics. With the first thumps on the tom-tom, this small home office off the kitchen illuminated by two blue handmade ceramic lamps I bought for my mother in the 80s at Portland Saturday Market, these days glowing with energy-conserving spiral CFL bulbs, was just a holding cell for the physical me in front of the computer monitor, that was no longer a computer monitor but, instead, morphed into the curved thick-glass, black-and-white television screen housed in a wood cabinet with the speaker section in front made of a thick burlap-type material that took on the smell of cigarette smoke and dust in the old house on Forest Street in Reno.

I was four, five, big six, and a night-owl even then. I loved the TV for the kid’s programs after school and on Saturday mornings, but most of all for the shows at night produced for grown-ups and not for me. My evenings began with The Huntley-Brinkley Report. I was often the sole viewer while my younger sister played in our bedroom or outside, and the woman who stayed with us while our mother worked in the casinos floated around in her dream world of finery and fame. She was with us for years — even after our mother married our step-father, who also worked in the casinos, initially going by Auntie Lorraine and then later requesting that we address her as Mrs. Olson, in spite of there being no Mr. Olson — until one day she wandered up the block to visit a neighbor and they locked us out of the house, telling us to wait on the porch. I led my sister back home and called our step-father at work to tattle on the babysitter. His instructions were to stay inside and lock the doors. I do not remember if he specified that Mrs. Olson should be locked out should she decide to return to our house, which she did, but when her bony fingers furiously rattled the single-pane glass on the front door I kept it locked and yelled out to her, “You’re fired, Mrs. Olson.”

The ease with which I directed our little lives that afternoon must have been helped along by scenes from TV, quite likely even a comedy sketch that I adapted for my own needs in crisis. Plus, my fury had been brewing in a stew of confusion after my honey-colored teddy bear, the one with me in portraits at age three, disappeared and I later saw it one day when Auntie Lorraine took us by her tiny apartment for the first and only time. There on her bed was my bear, along with some of our other lost toys. My memory lapses at that point and I don’t know whether I told my mother about the discovery (surely, she would have believed me and demanded my bear be returned) or whether I was silent because of something Lorraine said. Nevertheless, my actions were supported when the folks came home and I recall three angry adults bellowing at the back gate, all smoking in the dark, and then disbursing after Mrs. Olson received her final pay.

There were other day sitters and some who came in the evenings when our parents were out on the town, which was too frequently in their early marriage when they drank heavily and argued — fought — bitterly. Against that backdrop I was buoyed by cats, books, records, and TV. I go back to this vision of myself watching alone, although I know we enjoyed programs, like The Lawrence Welk Show, as a family including one Emmy Awards show when the announcer was prolonging the suspense for the award for best news show and I blurted out Huntley-Brinkley! just before he called out their names and my mother’s head snapped to the side to look at me and she asked How did you know that? and I said they were my favorites. She’d never heard of them.

But everyone who saw TV in those days and for decades to follow knew the Hamm’s Beer Commercials for the jingle and mostly for the Hamm's bear. This was a special world opening to me. I loved the song. I loved the happy bear. I loved the sparkling scenery, the beauty of nature and wildlife made vivid — that it was in black-and-white was incidental — and I loved the feel-good nature of the entire production of each of the Hamm’s ads. They enchanted and excited me. They mesmerized and calmed me. Even now I feel their effect in a part of me where the darkness hides, where the darkness lightens under their spell. It’s the same place that the power of alcohol later sought out.

Dream Waif: a poem

I watched an intriguing DVD last night titled The Secret (not to be confused with the 2006 documentary based on the mass-seller book recommended by Oprah). The 2008 movie, reviewed here, stars David Duchovny as an opthalmologist who loses his wife, sorta... then his daughter, sorta. The wife has uniquely intense exposure to the daughter's teen existence for a time that provides an opportunity to take inventory of her own life's path. In the mix is a drug scene that was oh so familiar.

The parent-child/parent-teen dynamic is something I lived through only one-sided, never as the parent of a child or teen. Even so, when I read old poems that I wrote in adolescence I've sometimes taken that inventory, reviewed what was there and who I was. Not to understand or help a child of mine, but to understand and to heal the child that was me.

My husband delves deeply into the mystery and pain in his childhood, where I'm more prone to skim over mine. I'm not sure why, but I'm more detached from mine. So when I pulled out this old poem I read it first with the detachment of a critic. Then I read it again and saw that I was describing my budding alcoholism without that being my intention. I see real defiance and fragility here. But the poem wasn't a cry for help. More like a salutation and surrender to something I couldn't control and, in fact, embraced for a long time. As the 23rd anniversary of my sobriety approaches in mid-October, this early poem is a reminder of the grace that separated me from the mess my life became as the years went by.

Dream Waif

Just a thought
before I fade.
Gotta hurry
Before I’m made
As the dream-waif.
They may see
I’m doomed to sleep—
fluffed comfort then
mine to keep
if just allowed to gently fade.
Gotta hurry
Before I’m made
As the dream-waif.

Threatening they creep—
cling—hover
pouncing if they once discover
I’m the dream-waif.

Guards of the ego
with pieces of dreams
bragging of assets—
intelligence—features
and veil their schemes
to remain creep-cling creatures
with only one mission:
Of the dream-waif,
Submission.

The nightmare army
won’t come far
attempting to tear me
off this star.
The warmth is soothing
deeper
deeper still.
It won’t be long
the wait
until
I’ll be encompassed
by the calm;
I’ll be surrounded
with the dawn.

For them, the bog.
For me,
the balm.

© MLydiaM "Lydia" 1969

I am The Moon?

I first took this Which Tarot Card are You test at another blog I visited. Having saved it into my drafts for a possible post, I took it again some weeks ago. Then Friday night I answered the questions again, but this time with intended honesty and more ease. I've always had a problem with tests such as this. They are subjective, or I am. They might try to trick me, and I always am ahead looking out for the tricks. They have exciting selections, where I might be feeling my real answers would be among the more boring selections. As a former college classmate said to me once, Who makes up this stuff? Maybe that's the best question of all.

Caveats aside, my three tests yielded three different results. I took it the final time because I, admittedly, tweaked my answers the first two times to impress myself. I wasn't impressed. However, as with tests along this order, I found some truths in the results from the first two tests. Here, then, are clips from the first two:

#1 You are The Devil:
...Perhaps the most misunderstood of all the major arcana, the Devil is not really "Satan" at all, but Pan the half-goat nature god and/or Dionysius. These are gods of pleasure and abandon, of wild behavior and unbridled desires. This is a card about ambitions; it is also synonymous with temptation and addiction...

I don't balk at the devil analogy, as I find the piece I included here to be strikingly descriptive of my drinking days. Also, I truly believe in acknowledging and confronting our darker nature. It's something the counselors at treatment in 1985 pushed me to do. I was so adept then at compartmentalizing my life. I could switch on this sweet act, only it didn't fly with ex-addicts. They knew that if I didn't get real in that place that I'd never stay sober in the real world.

#2 You are The Sun:
...This is the light that comes after the long dark night, Apollo to the Moon's Diana. A positive card, it promises you your day in the sun...this card symbolizes discoveries made fully conscious and wide awake...It is a card of intellect, clarity of mind, and feelings of youthful energy.

The piece I included from the sun analogy reminded me of the sweet sunny act I used in my former dual existence. But it's not like that, of course. I take this as a reminder to myself that being positive, expecting my day in the sun, is no longer something that I need use to deflect a dark truth about me. It feels good to write about my darkness, as it feels good to express true happiness. Some days I feel a sense of beautiful well-being that fills me with joy. I wish there were more of them. I wish Mike would lighten up, too. Things can get awfully serious around our house and it drags me down.


It seems noteworthy that this description for the Sun card makes reference to another card, the Moon, the long dark night. Because when I took the test the third time, the time I was natural with my responses, it said that I am The Moon. Certainly, of the three the full results regarding The Moon felt the most authentic for me presently. As authentic as any online Tarot card test could be...

You are The Moon

Hope, expectation, Bright promises.

The Moon is a card of magic and mystery - when prominent you know that nothing is as it seems, particularly when it concerns relationships. All logic is thrown out the window.

The Moon is all about visions and illusions, madness, genius and poetry. This is a card that has to do with sleep, and so with both dreams and nightmares. It is a scary card in that it warns that there might be hidden enemies, tricks and falsehoods. But it should also be remembered that this is a card of great creativity, of powerful magic, primal feelings and intuition. You may be going through a time of emotional and mental trial; if you have any past mental problems, you must be vigilant in taking your medication but avoid drugs or alcohol, as abuse of either will cause them irreparable damage. This time however, can also result in great creativity, psychic powers, visions and insight. You can and should trust your intuition.

What Tarot Card are You?
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