Just Something I'm Drawn to Right Now

I didn't exactly pull out a map of the United States, close my eyes and circle my finger around the map until honest confusion indicated that stopping would create the feeling of surprise.

After college, working in office jobs for six years then earning a Masters of Library Science degree after I remembered how much I enjoyed working in the library reserve room during college, I landed my first job in a small Midwestern city with a small college. I spent my first six months getting to know the library staff and doing a fine job as a reference librarian. Students even sought me out and I enjoyed helping them learn to use the library newly emerging from the card catalog and hardbound indexes into the world of electronic information. Dressed academically yet fashionably, I started to feel that I wanted to experience the world outside the library.

As the warm weather approached and I walked the five blocks to and from work, I began to notice a group of four people sitting at a sidewalk cafe a little after 5:00 pm. There was a twenty something couple who sat with their chairs close together. They had identical pale white skin and straight chemical black hair. His hair fell over his eyes. Hers was parted in the middle and fell down to the middle of her back. She tended to wear short skirts over ripped tights with flimsy tops that revealed colorful bra straps. When she looked up from the table I was surprised to see the kind of face that should not have belonged to a well shaped young woman with long hair. Black eyeliner did not augment her small eyes. Drugstore red lipstick on her thin lips emphasized an amorphous nose. In a different costume, she could have easily been an anonymous store clerk. He wore pointy shoes, dark jeans, one silver earring and a t-shirt revealing muscular arms and a trim waist as though he had been a high school athlete just a short time ago or with his high cheek bones, big dark eyes and Aquiline nose, an ancient Olympic victor.

The other two people at the table were less striking. There was a woman, about my age, who always looked like she had recently come from work in cardigans, tailored blouses and pleated pants. Her hair was layered neatly to her shoulders lessening the effect of her oversized pointy nose that betrayed her otherwise perfect appearance. A man in his forties with a slight pot belly, medium brown fuzzy hair with a matching beard had everyone gathered around him one time with their heads bowed towards the table. That was the day, after several weeks, I decided to stop at the cafe for an after work tea. I sat down next to their table and pulled a book review journal out of my canvas tote. As I stared at the books under special education my eyes shifted over to their table to see that they were all looking at tarot cards.

“You may have seen tarot cards before,” said the fuzzy haired man to his small group of listeners. “This deck requires a bit more from you.” he looked up for a moment. “There are more symbols demanding your attention.” When he looked up at his audience I could see that his previously nondescript fuzzy face was suddenly full of expression as though he were uncovering a secret.

He turned one card to show a husky childishly receptive eyed man wearing the gold curly pointed boots of a fool. His prominent feet were turned in different directions as though he were in the middle of a dance. The gold in his boots matched the gold sun at his groin. Above his head there was a zero plus the title The Fool. Circles extended out from his muscular chest easily seen through the translucent green armor that he wore over his robust body. Spontaneous images of animals, some with wings, were everywhere as were the holy images of grapes and wheat.

“Want to join us,” first the fuzzy haired man caught me looking then the whole table looked directly at me with my green tea and review journal. The conventionally dressed woman with the pointy nose moved her chair closer to the goth woman easily making a space for me to pull my chair over to their table. I smiled at both sides of the table taking in the scent of some kind of essential oil not quite woodsy and not quite floral. Everyone looked back at the fool card including me except for the woman sitting next to me who looked at my journal.

“Are you a special ed teacher?” she said to me.

“I'm a librarian choosing special ed books for the college library.”

“I could help you. I'm a special ed teacher at the elementary school and I graduated from that college. My name is Rhonda.”

“I'm Allie.” I shook Rhonda's hand.

“Shall we go around the table?” The fuzzy haired man had his hands cupped around the fool. “I'm Glen.”

“Mitch,” said the goth man.

“Florence,” said the goth woman.

“Now can we go back to contemplating the fool,” Glen stretched out his fingers and put his hands in his lap. We listened to him explain spontaneity and connection to natural things as positive aspects of the card.

“We must not, however, get stuck on any one card or it can easily turn negative. Someone who is overly spontaneous behind the wheel of a car could be a dangerous sort of person.” Glen threw back his head and laughed showing a gold molar that matched the gold boots and sun in the card.

“Or near a window on the thirteenth story,” Florence added.

“In a broken elevator with a beautiful woman,” Mitch seemed to look at me as everyone chuckled including Florence who continued to hold Mitch's hand.

“Getting a little too spontaneous with dinner ingredients while preparing for a dinner party,” chuckles turned to laughter at Rhonda's comment. Glen was loudly hysterical. I was grateful that we were outside and a truck was driving by while they were all having themselves a good laugh over spontaneity.

The following day it was assumed that I would join them again after work to look at The Star card.

Glen explained that, according to the most authentic authority on tarot, the star represents the full expression of feminine strength.

“The star is our evolution towards the age of Aquarius.”

Mitch had a startlingly good voice when he began to sing in a quiet falsetto the song from the musical Hair.

“Tiny Tim anyone?” Glen was not smiling. When Mitch smiled and a little color crept into his pale skin, I noticed a dimple.

“Without being sure of Mitch's intentions, I can tell you that Tiny Tim and falsetto singing in general are a perfect example.”

“Of what?” I added quietly.

“The Age of Aquarius,” Florence looked out from her made up face. “It's evolution, reaching for the star, the age of the feminine.”

“Is that like women working and men staying home to take care of the kids,” said Rhonda in her blazer.

“It's more like falsetto,” Glen prompted.

“Reaching toward self expression out of your normal range. Men reaching toward a voice out of their normal range. That's the star. The feminine star.” Florence stared at her coffee as she forged for an explanation.

“What's the feminine star?” Rhonda asked.

“Harmony and understanding, sympathy and trust abounding, no more falsehoods or derisions, golden living dreams of visions, mystic crystal revelation, and the mind's true liberation,” Mitch continued in his falsetto becoming slightly louder.

“Peace will guide the planets. Love will steer the stars,” I paraphrased from the song.

After our conversation about The Star, I made my first social plans outside of lunch with library staff. The next day after work Rhonda would have tea at my apartment and help me choose special education books for the library. She had only been meeting with the pagan witch group a short time and it seemed that we both needed a breath of banality. I also made a plan to meet all four of them at a local nightclub on Saturday night.

Having tea at my apartment out on the small balcony overlooking a tulip garden, I found out that Rhonda was dyslexic. In her first few years of elementary school, she impressed all the adults in her life with her art work. Her parents paid for art classes outside of school. Because she was considered gifted, it was baffling when Rhonda could not learn to read the books they read to her diligently every night. The special education teacher said it was a perceptual problem and, for awhile, Rhonda said she rode on the short bus.

“The short bus?”

“You know. A more derogatory term would be the retard bus.”

“I don't think of it that way.”

“I bet you did when you were a kid.”

I thought for a moment remembering the “short bus” in our neighborhood.

“I guess you're kind of right but I don't think I ever said anything.”

“Thinking is enough.”

“Anyway, even though my friends in the neighborhood stopped playing with me after school, my special ed teacher was my friend. She's probably why I'm a special ed teacher specializing in reading. She taught me how to read.”

“Did you have other friends.”

“I became friends with the kids in my art class. I want to come over with my water colors and paint those tulips.”

I smiled wondering if Rhonda was as protective of her long nose, peering our from her perfect haircut, as Barbara Streisand was rumored to be.

“How did you get to know that group?”

“The witches? I was just walking by the cafe a few weeks before you. Glen was talking about astrology at the time displaying a big chart on the table.”

“What does Glen do?”

“I don't think he has to work.” Rhonda smoothed down the collar of her shirt with both hands. “He just likes to sit at that cafe and share his knowledge.”

“Interesting but slightly scarey,” I commented.

Rhonda put her ankle on top of her knee, pulled up her herringbone pant leg and pushed down her sock to display a blue mark next to her ankle bone.

“It's a tattoo,” she kept looking down at the blue mark. “Glen had a ceremony at his house, where he lives by himself as far as I can tell, to initiate me into the group. He read something from an ancient book. I think it was Celtic. We repeated the words. After burning a lot of sage he gave me this small tattoo.”

“Did it hurt?”

“Just a quick little burn to make this tiny mark to show I'm one of them.”

I looked at Rhonda who was wearing a button down silk blouse with her herringbone pants. “One of what?”

“Just someone who believes in the powers hidden in nature I guess.”

“Do you?”

“I don't know. It's just something I'm drawn to right now. I want to learn more about it and the tattoo is really very small. It could be a bluish freckle.”

I wondered if I would go so far as to get a bluish freckle from Glen. For now, I was just happy to be interacting with people outside of my job. Rhonda helped me choose several books on how to teach reading and went home vowing to return with her water colors. I looked forward to Saturday.

The nightclub was upstairs in a room with wide wooden floorboards. Faces, that seemed to range in age from twenties to forties, appeared in the dark lighting. Mitch and Florence stood up from their bar stools. Mitch's white t-shirt and Florence's filmy off the shoulder bubble shirt moved toward me through the crowd. Soon Rhonda joined us wearing a short beige shift paired with matching large plastic hoop earrings. Glen came over to tell us we all looked beautiful.

“You're the most beautiful people here because of what you know.”

Wondering if I was included I moved away from them in the green mini skirt and fish nets that I believed accented my slight figure. Soon I was dancing with someone with short hair, button down shirt, khaki pants and a slightly hungry look in his blue eyes. With a warm hand he led me off the dance floor to sit down and tell me he was a graduate student in education. His goal was to set up a working organic farm with an ethically based education program for emotionally disturbed high school students. He believed that he had a special talent for working with behavior problems.

“I was once labeled emotionally disturbed. Now I'm reaching for a different star,” he said with a gleam in his eye.

“The tarot card,” I said quietly.

“Did you just ask me if I had a card?”

“No. I mean yes.”

“Here's a card for me wearing my other hat as a blue grass fiddler. I'm passionate about the fiddle. Why don't you come hear us play next Friday?” He wrote down the name of a grange hall on the back of the card and handed it to me.

While I looked forward to next Friday, it was Mitch who walked me back to my apartment in his white t-shirt and black jeans planning to return to Florence who was still at the night club dancing. During the five block walk he talked about a book he was reading by someone who was well known among certain circles as a master of the occult. Listening on and off I realized I was probably not a true witch feeling more interested at the time in what could be interpreted as a date planned for next Friday. Standing on the walkway in front of the door to my building, Mitch said good night and quickly kissed me on the mouth. He then turned around and walked back to Florence.

I went inside my small apartment with a single bed and a few other things acquired over six months with my head spinning although I was certain that Mitch only kissed me with the sensibility of a pagan and it didn't mean anything about anything.

Four months later I had become friends with Rhonda and watched her form a gradual relationship with an insurance lawyer who dressed as conservatively as Rhonda and had oversized ears that stuck out at an angle from his head. We found plenty to talk about outside of tarot cards and Glen's followers. I didn't really want a tattoo even if it was only the size of a freckle plus I was busy falling in love with the man I met at the night club. He left me at the end of the four months for someone with a perfect hourglass figure who was active in the Unitarian Universalist Society. After my break-up I began running everyday at five am breathing the Midwestern winter air and crunching through the snow in my sneakers as if I was in my own private warm bubble. After working hard all day sometimes well passed five pm, I fell by ten into a deep dreamless sleep. In the spring I stumbled across Glen sitting by himself at the sidewalk cafe. He noticed me looking at him and invited me to sit down immediately pulling his deck of tarot cards out of a large zippered jacket pocket. He turned over The Hermit.

“Taking some time for yourself lately,” Glen said as he looked at the card with a picture of a hooded figure turning away so instead of seeing the face the eyes fell on the figure's hand in the center of the card near the source of light.

“I guess you could say that,” I replied looking around the room for the others.

“Take this card,” he pressed the card over the top of my hand. “Look at the light and the hand. Imagine your temporarily turning away from your social life and going into dark places with a lantern that lights up your hands.”

“What does that mean,” I pointed to a three headed dog in the corner of the card with one head looking backwards and two heads pointed forwards.

“The dog represents travel between the spirit world and the physical world. Cerberus is the three-headed dog of Hades. Notice there's an imbalance. Two heads are pointed toward your physical world. As you carry your lantern into the dark places notice that it's lighting up your physical hand.”

I could hear a low giggle beginning in Glen's throat as I recalled sleep so deliciously deep that the day seemed to begin a minute later as though a switch were being turned off then turned on again. Full of renewed life I had been happy all winter to go for a solitary run and watch the sun rise in the big mountain free sky.

Now Glen was embarrassing me again with his laugh that was always a little two loud. “Don't forget to turn around.” I could see his face turn red above his fuzzy beard as he spoke between guffaws. “Just don't forget to turn around,” he explained as he pointed to the back of the head on the hermit card.