kingtycoon | #14 - It gets better from here (Reply)

Lately, lately this is the worst part of my day. I don't have good recall of my dreamlife and only sometimes has it not been so. I remember when I was small I had a substantial series of dreams where I explored the volcanic underworld. Some other times I've had similar dreams - nightmares I guess? Where I was deep under the earth and fending off or hiding from or hoping desperately to elude dangerous tribes of underground monsters.

These dreams - they've been, when they've come on, really, really vivid. I never have seen you there, or you or you my romper-room friends. Always all alone. This is a telling matter. I was thinking of things, styles of privation, new difficulties that I might ever have to tolerate. The truth is that I'm super great at tolerating things. Most things, enduring you know? That's a trait I have and a good one. But the thing that I have the hardest time enduring is definitely companionship. Figuring that out about yourself is one of those things, one of those times where you are alerted to the possibility that you are in fact crazy.

Now, I'll be real clear - I disavow being crazy, I don't wanna be and I don't wanna have elaborate or even just vanilla personality disorders, neurological dysfunction or any other compromised internal system. No-Sir! Now - you tell me if it's better to be on the lookout to head off such problems, or is it better to not ever even think about them. Are you saner if you don't? I don't like thinking about it! Anyway - that gets to the point here - which is Temperance. Temperance is the last of the 3 virtues in the Tarot - the first being Justice - which you may recall I have subverted already, and Strength - which I've likewise had my way with. Temperance - #14 here, is the final virtue elaborated in the Tarot and it's the one that I had a hard-ish time contending with.

First of all - Virtues - hard nuts to crack. In the past I narrowed the vital virtuous behaviors down to these three - Sincerity, Compassion, Courage. I thought - you can't be honest, what's honest in a relativistic world? Then I thought you can try kindness but not everyone likes that - what's kinder than kindness, I said Compassion, you act in the interest of those who are worse off than you, treat them the way you want to be treated the whole story. Then I said Courage - because without being forthright you can't pull off the others. I went with those. Justice, Strength and Temperance = not in evidence. Then there's the 7 virtues of catholicism - Purity! I like those okay - I like them as ideas you can put value to - ratings, numbers- you can have a metric about yourself. Then the 5 constant virtues in Confucianism. I sure do like Li - Propriety - untranslatable but kind of like Dharma - I like that best. But again I've kind of subverted the virtues in the Tarot and aren't really thinking of replacing them with virtues of another stripe either. Symbols.

So what is it when you think you might be crazed, or trapped in a backward phase of your life, childish, or doomed, or else you start from sleep troubled by looming dread? See that's what's meant here. The tempering force of awareness, self-awareness. I thought about making this gentleman into something else - The Job was an early contender. #14 is cyclically related to #5 the Hierophant - so making The Job - I could've painted in the computer screen and then had it as a parallel to the TV - but I thought, TV is sleeping too. It's a long rest, the dreamworld. It's a thing you have to shake off when it is time for SRS BZNZ.

This Fella has one foot out of the bed and one foot in, he bridges the world of consciousness and sleep - he's in between the day and the night- so it follows #13 the Sunset pretty usefully, and he's just become aware - just got up.

See - bed-headed and bright eyed, clutching the bed furiously, not quite ready to give it up, but what can you do? When you wake up, when you're awake? When you are awake you have to get out of bed. That's the tempering. That's the awareness. You know you are asleep, and you know you are no longer. You know - when it is time, to give up the things you have given up.

Temperance has a relationship with Recovery, uppercase all the way -the 12 steps and Carrie Nation. It's to do with achieving a state of self-awareness that allows you to chart a new trajectory. It isn't a pleasing self-awareness either, it's sudden revelatory consciousness, and it hurts. Alarm clock like or sun in your eyes, or sudden ugly dawning realization. So I have this - Waking.

I... I fretted this week, a bit, from time to time. I have concerns, of a kind, and I had doubts. Mortal doubts struck me. But here are facts. When you wake up you get out of bed, but when you aren't awake, you stay there.

That's the honest truth.