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kingtycoonWhen I had a car I remember hating it. There are all those lights and buzzers and indicators all just waiting to go off and beg for your attention. A car is a weird possession that is needier and more demanding than even the most dependent person. A car is a thing you can have that constantly makes you feel like you've fucked up your life. "I need gas! I need service! I need oil! I need non-trivial weekly expenditures!" Which is to say - fuck a car, I don't want one.
A phone - now, that's the thing right? It's demanding but you just have to give it some attention here and there, "plug me in!" It says. "Lift me over your head!" It asks. Now - it's still pretty stupid, overall, it does nonsensical things like chirp endlessly and flash and warn and advise that it's battery is low, it has no signal. Dumb old phone, you'd have so much more batteries if you'd calm down about telling me you have no batteries.
So anyway this is the 7 of Phones. It's not about the fragility of devices - that's free bonus wisdom for you.
Nope, 7 of Phones is about surviving. You're out in the woods, you've got no signal, just the one bar (of 7 here) and you're getting all kinds of indications that you have fucked up at life. You've missed all these calls, your battery is dead, nothing is right! But you're still alive. You've succeded (in point of fact) where it seemed like you wouldn't.
You're the little phone that could. Somehow, you've got the juice to make that one last call, that one final contact - and that's all that is needed to make it. To win.
The 7 of Wands - which I repudiate/recapitulate here is likewise fairly stark. A simple image - a guy with a stick has beaten up six other guys with sticks who appear off screen. It's a simple image, and it means a lot. Top Dog right, you're at the peak, the pinnacle of the pile. By doing. See that's always near with the phones - doing. So you've done, you've made it, you beat all the others and you're low on gas, limping home, making that one last call that will make all the difference. You are still alive, still in the game.
In this respect the 7 of Phones is identical to the 7 of Wands - just restating it in a contemporary way. Competition is important here, but more than that is winning the competition, or at least advancing to the next round. You may be depleted, you may be crippled by the effort, but the victory is far from Pyrrhic - you've succeeded where you might have failed.
Now - to me, this one means a few special things - notable and real. First of all - you see how it's just a frame with a christmas-tree of lights there all going off. That's not just lazy painting - that's got some meaning. Out in the woods, all on your own, there's a fragility - you are ephemeral, haphazardly struggling against what is out there. Here I've toned down the competitive angle, mainly because I've dealt with that elsewhere, and go for the man v. nature aspect. Man v. himself. Race against time that whole thing. Because here, and really this is the thing - you've got to the top of your game, succeeded, as has been said throughout the phones - and who is there to lose it all for you but you?
So that.
Now me? I've been scarce this month, no doubt - and it could have been on me to not ever paint another one of these and not win at my own game by letting myself just lose it all. That could have been. But really, it was never in the cards, so to speak, because all along I've been secretly winning the other thing you can do with your life, which is to write books. So I wanted to mention to you that I beat NaNoWriMo four days ahead, the middle-draft is printed and en-route to my own house to be carried around and marked up nice for final-drafting. That's the way to do it, when you write books I think. All this month, putting down the 89,000 words of this book I tell you I felt fragile like I was near to dying - because you know - you're about to make a book, a real true solid thing that has mass and is carried in your hands and feels satisfactory and right in your mitts - and you can fuck all that up and let it go- you could straight up lose.
So that's the 7 of Phones for you - you've won but that's just the start of things - there's always someone or something or most of all, your own damned self getting ready to let it all go for lack of sense and seeing how fragile a win really is.
A phone - now, that's the thing right? It's demanding but you just have to give it some attention here and there, "plug me in!" It says. "Lift me over your head!" It asks. Now - it's still pretty stupid, overall, it does nonsensical things like chirp endlessly and flash and warn and advise that it's battery is low, it has no signal. Dumb old phone, you'd have so much more batteries if you'd calm down about telling me you have no batteries.
So anyway this is the 7 of Phones. It's not about the fragility of devices - that's free bonus wisdom for you.
Nope, 7 of Phones is about surviving. You're out in the woods, you've got no signal, just the one bar (of 7 here) and you're getting all kinds of indications that you have fucked up at life. You've missed all these calls, your battery is dead, nothing is right! But you're still alive. You've succeded (in point of fact) where it seemed like you wouldn't.
You're the little phone that could. Somehow, you've got the juice to make that one last call, that one final contact - and that's all that is needed to make it. To win.
The 7 of Wands - which I repudiate/recapitulate here is likewise fairly stark. A simple image - a guy with a stick has beaten up six other guys with sticks who appear off screen. It's a simple image, and it means a lot. Top Dog right, you're at the peak, the pinnacle of the pile. By doing. See that's always near with the phones - doing. So you've done, you've made it, you beat all the others and you're low on gas, limping home, making that one last call that will make all the difference. You are still alive, still in the game.
In this respect the 7 of Phones is identical to the 7 of Wands - just restating it in a contemporary way. Competition is important here, but more than that is winning the competition, or at least advancing to the next round. You may be depleted, you may be crippled by the effort, but the victory is far from Pyrrhic - you've succeeded where you might have failed.
Now - to me, this one means a few special things - notable and real. First of all - you see how it's just a frame with a christmas-tree of lights there all going off. That's not just lazy painting - that's got some meaning. Out in the woods, all on your own, there's a fragility - you are ephemeral, haphazardly struggling against what is out there. Here I've toned down the competitive angle, mainly because I've dealt with that elsewhere, and go for the man v. nature aspect. Man v. himself. Race against time that whole thing. Because here, and really this is the thing - you've got to the top of your game, succeeded, as has been said throughout the phones - and who is there to lose it all for you but you?
So that.
Now me? I've been scarce this month, no doubt - and it could have been on me to not ever paint another one of these and not win at my own game by letting myself just lose it all. That could have been. But really, it was never in the cards, so to speak, because all along I've been secretly winning the other thing you can do with your life, which is to write books. So I wanted to mention to you that I beat NaNoWriMo four days ahead, the middle-draft is printed and en-route to my own house to be carried around and marked up nice for final-drafting. That's the way to do it, when you write books I think. All this month, putting down the 89,000 words of this book I tell you I felt fragile like I was near to dying - because you know - you're about to make a book, a real true solid thing that has mass and is carried in your hands and feels satisfactory and right in your mitts - and you can fuck all that up and let it go- you could straight up lose.
So that's the 7 of Phones for you - you've won but that's just the start of things - there's always someone or something or most of all, your own damned self getting ready to let it all go for lack of sense and seeing how fragile a win really is.
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no subject
Date: 2012-11-27 08:14 pm (UTC)(Seriously though all you ever talked about was how much you loved cars! I was like "cars are bullshit" & you were all Noooooooo.)
no subject
Date: 2012-11-27 08:18 pm (UTC)Leaving forever is something you might want to sometimes do and it's super hard without a car.
no subject
Date: 2012-11-27 08:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-11-28 07:19 pm (UTC)