I'd like to see you try and stop me

Hey! Yes! Back and still at it, I can do everything and all at once. Promise!

So here's the 2 of cups. Cups are feelings and compassion, passion, relationships. We started out with the one cup - which is the fountain of feelings. On to two cups. Personally, I have a cup of coffee and a cup of water sitting next to me most of the time. I am hydrated furiously. But the two people with cups - it's a date right? They are on a date.

Connections - the first time meeting, the last time talking. This is the date - maybe you go out and there's a person, a new person, there's a connection or there isn't. Drinks, conversation, the world moves or you just keep going. Or it's the latest date- the rest of the night is a forgone conclusion, relationships, togetherness, bonding, ritual. Or it's a last time, it's been ongoing, it's getting tired, it's getting old, you're running out of things to say and so you drink. Later a movie- so that you won't have to talk and maybe you'll have something to talk about afterward. Or it's the last date. The final moment, the brush off, the mournful goodbye. There's two people and feelings.

Now you ask me - do I think a boy and a girl together is the whole thing of it? That that's the two that is? I say this - you know what. No. But you put the two kinds of people in there. I say the two kinds of people because the kinds of people that are involved in making additional people are the kinds of people that I count as archetypal. Have whatever complex opinion you want about it - I'm just saying - there's lots of kinds of sex and togetherness and it's weird that sex and togetherness are equated. Sex is something trees and fish do. Sex is - really, in a technical way - the way that babies are made. So it's strange that Sex is this thing that involves all kinds of acts that are not procreative. It's weird!

I don't know why I went this way. Dating - you get to this point and think about it. Pollen, pistils and stamens- that's what sex is. Dating is togetherness, the whole courtship and togetherness. Here's the picture. The two of cups. Sharing a drink, a conversation, some looks and then you hold hands. Maybe you go into the bathroom together to paw each other like beasts, maybe you can't make it home or to the car, maybe you're groping the alley. I won't pretend that I haven't been that way. Maybe this is the card that foretells the alleyway grope, the furious new kiss. Or maybe it tells about the real true feeling, the now and the best the realest.



Two cups, drink up.



Like this part- Coming Apart- the 23rd Hexagram - and Aim a spirit who teaches all kinds of witty talk. Dating. It's the whole story.


I don't know if I'll keep this going - I mean, cards - right? Cards. Maybe I aughta, and maybe I aughtn't. Trying.

It's a manic kind of day. Don't judge me too much about my gender-specific sentiments or my ability to paint pictures okay?

Since this all began I had this one in mind.

I consider it an act of some kind of discipline that I didn't paint it before now. Heroic! Well, or anyway, something.

But yeah - I knew my Fool would be The Student. The fool is all about beginnings, origins - Kal-El blasting off from Krypton, Batman's parents getting shot in crime alley, Abin Sur's ring finding its way to Hal Jordan. I could go on (chemistry accident in the city police lab etc...) The thing about origins is - they're just... They are false.

I was compelled to add this -

Which appeared in every schoolbus I ever rode in. Smoking. I mean, I like smoking- who doesn't? Liars? It's smoking, you shouldn't do it but it's a nice time, everyone knows that.

But look at it like this- so you get up early to ride the bus to school and there's a sign on the bus forbidding you from smoking- you've never thought about it and sure your parents smoke, your grandparents too - it's a thing. A fair thing, just something to notice. But in '63 the Surgeon General figured out you shouldn't. And before that people walked miles for a camel and before that people traded other people for tobacco and before that there was the green leaf of the red man - and before that- well there wasn't a columbian exchange. My point is only that there is a history that precedes everything.

Bruce Wayne can say his parents getting killed after seeing the Mask of Zorro made him into batman - but there's the whole thing of there being his parents with the means to see a movie, and then movies, and then Zorro and then Gotham and then guns, and then the Wayne family, Gotham's founders, the Finger Memorial the whole long chain of events - Columbus and the new world are just as responsible for Batman as Joe Chill - that's what I'm saying.

Our origin stories are contrivances- the broad gulf of history has lapped at all shores, it makes all of us and not just by the discrete elements that have shaped our experience directly, but by all the indirect nuanced elements that have led to thins like compulsory education, books, buses, clothes and shoes. There's so much in the world - all of it piling up. When we start to notice it all - really experience the whole of history and all of the West or the East or whatever civilization we belong to bearing down upon us - well then.

Then

Then we get a little curious, we get lost in the details in the long chain, in the elaborate details, we become students of what's transpired and brought us into being. We can't tell what's important, in our origins, before we know what isn't.

The student isn't foolish, just distracted, just sitting on the bus, all alone, forgetful of the moment in the deluge of the past, trying to make sense of what is, and how it came to be. Trying to see and find and have a place among events.

Because history is events, now is events - the future - it's a thing we conceptualize as being composed of events, being hastened by events. It's not the future till some arbitrary expectation is met - flying cars, hoverboards - whathaveyou. But are events? I mean - is it even a cogent thought - think of it - Are events? What are they? Can they be said to happen? What is our criteria for an event? Arbitrary. Personal.

The Student - #0 - doesn't know it all, but is starting to, is starting to see between the cracks in the official story, is starting to care about the interstices, the world - and how it's made of less than what it appears - all facts of science and math - and all confusing, alienating and driving. The Student is #0 because the student is at the beginning - not of life or of the experiential existence of the phenomenal world- but at the beginning of an abstracted life- based upon ideas, knowledge and the hard-to-swallow exigencies of life itself.

My Student #0 is lost in information, ready to learn, but learning true things, or alienating things, not participating in the world, but diagramming it - knowing it for what it is. Foolish as that sounds, there is value in that learning, foolish as it is, there is worth to knowing just what it is you are getting yourself into.

Oh #20 - there's a lot that can be said about this gentleman. It's not exactly divisive, but it is exactly a point of fracture. See - the old school will show you the Judgement for #XX.

Pretty straightforward christian imagery right. But whatsit mean? That's what you wanna know and I'ma tell you right now - It means The End of the World. The breakdown of the existing order. It also means that this comes from on high from out of the will of god. That is to say - Superman will save us at the last minute. I like superman, he's my model for the protective deity. He should be yours too - way less ambiguous than competing figures like JHVH and Buddha. Still - waiting in your grave to be saved from death by the man in the sky - that is nertz my friends. And the Christianity in the image was off-putting to old Crowley who changed it up and came out with this: The Aeon

It's the same thing but it tends to imply a mystical awakening - a 6th world kind of thing, the end of old suns. See it's got Nuit right in it. Now... I make it a policy not to hate, but I have a pretty dim view of the glib usage of ancient egyptian mythos by the victorians and their successors. So you're invoking Thoth-Hermes and Nuit and Horus-Re? All at once? See - it's like going to the Renaissance Faire where they invoke Chaucer and Marlowe as contemporaries - it's bullshit you know? Orientalism. And bad scholarship. I get it though - you can go back far enough into the past and look at the 2000 years of continuous Egyptian religion and be enchanted, even to the point of just fabricating a whole mythological idiom based on your christian upbringing - heck it's obscure enough that maybe one dude in a million cares or knows that you're blowing smoke -and hey, it seems really magical right? All's fair - but the image still represents a new order dawning - the same idea - night goddesses eating suns and so on. But again there's no human agency.

To me this is a missed opportunity. The world changes, the paradigm shifts and it's not, or at least, it doesn't have to be because of a gleam in the stars and the will of the almighty. It can be because we want shit to happen. People are Fucking Great - if you didn't know. You should remember that about us - We're Fucking Great.

So I put this together- the Revolution.

Anarchists! Bombs! (I love the round bomb with a burning wick - who doesn't love that?) the Tricolour! Hammers! Sickles! You have nothing to loose but chains and slavery! So the old idols are shattered, the old powers are rolled over, the new order begins, the world forever changed.

Realizing that there is a gnostic hostility to the works of mankind and that that hostility is in some regards the basis of the Aeon or the Judgement I suppose I'll write a little more. See, the Judgement is a sorting out - there's a sense of Justice prevailing over the wickedness of others, that people will be judged for their misdeeds in the coming age - rewarded too - and there will be a real accounting. The Aeon subverts that a little by diminishing the terrestrial role of existence and saying that the new world opens just beyond and that there is a new dawn. But the world I live in is a world made by people and it's people that judge you, execute and reward you. It's people who have dominion and it is people who will overturn the status quo, who are required to punish the guilty and reward the virtuous. That's our responsibility and should not be shirked waiting for superman.

I am about 1/3 of the way through this project and so I wanted to address the project as a whole - as it exists so far.

First of all - the Tarot, and more generally Divination as a practice. Now. As a wise man once said we are all interested in the future since that is where we will spend the rest of our lives. There are many other statements made by wise men and wise guys - nonsensical and mystic are the usual approaches - but there is room in the field for reasonable discussion. First of all - do we recognize the future as being unwritten and created by the present. To me this is not intuitively true. I am not here today to deny or renounce causation - but I am here to suspect it very strongly of being overstated. I do not really think that the past decides the present which in turn decides the future. Put me in with the stoics - I say it's all happened all at once and already - we only have a linear perception. My dream, my ambition, one of them, is to stop or break away from having a linear perception of time. Without getting too esoteric - I am persuaded that a person can experience all the disconnected moments of their life simultaneously. I want to do that.

But this project isn't really related to that. Not at all really. Divination is like Freemasonry or Alchemy - it's one of those things that is seen as having a purpose out of line with its actual purpose. And like Freemasonry or Alchemy - I think that the purpose is to perfect the self. By The Self I am meaning identity across time. Identity is a fungible quality that is thrust upon you by circumstances - that is, you allow it to be dictated by the environment, or it is proactively generated by you - but it is a thing that changes and is made, is mutable. People change, all the time, but they change in predictable ways that are related to their previous experience. What could you say of a person who's entire existence you could know - not just the moments of your acquaintance? This is a real problem of understanding between people. Identities of many types are sewn together through a person's existence and a person you know well - you might know one or two of their identities. So identifying aspects of identity that are common to many - that's a component of the Tarot. The identification of archetypes.

The first pass through the Major Arcana is all about this - 1-9 are kinds of archetypal selves that we all contain and that are available- culturally accessible types. The first 9 cards are a journey through these types, kind of how your life progresses, different masks for different occasions. By no means the only available choices, and by no means the truest representations - but we can look at 1-9 as being - well Statistics, rate yourself in each of these from 1-10 or 3-18 - you'll have a firmer grip on who you are, do that situationally - and you'll have the best sense of self.

Let's make the trip.

First the Salesman He is bold, and confident and draws one into confidence. He is a male archetype, but a young one - the young man, full of certainty and personal magnetism. Power, power of the sort that a young man has. We start out with an identity about persuasion, effectiveness. I have been this person - I have been effective, often.


Next the Girlfriend. Compassion, femininity, expectation, availability. Where the Salesman wants to change the world the girlfriend is interested to see how the world will change her. These archetypes, the first two - they correspond to different views of the role of the protagonist, the young hero. Bold or Trusting. Hero and Ingenue. They're linked to genders - which is simply what it is, it's out of the scope of my abilities here to make a coherent criticism of these gendered identities - I'm only trying to reassert the paradigm in fresher terms. The girlfriend is ready and waiting. We all have been, we all have worn the ingenue mask.

On to #3 the Schoolteacher. From out of the heroic youth we enter, or are transformed by the power of the world. The Salesman is youthful effectiveness, the girlfriend evolves an accepting attitude, because of the trust in the world that is engendered here- by the Schoolteacher. We are trained into the forms and the proper identities of our existence by this force - this archetype, that is the element that tames and trains us - prepares us for reality and right action. We are made part of the world by this agent of the world. Here we cease to be self-made and allow the world to make our identity. We begin to have a public face.


Which flows to #4 The Senator. Here is the fruition of mass-made identity, of masculine power asserted over the world. Not an innate personal power that forms the self, but a masterful power exerted over everyone else. Attainment in the world. This is an identity all about gain, achievement and coercion. Making the world into the world you want, by leaving the internal and gaining strength over the external. It also coincides with your journey - from being a young man or woman, to being trained in what must be known, the measure of things, the colors and the shapes. To being governed by law and civil society.


#5 The Television Instructs us and indoctrinates us into the norms of civil society. We are a community and the community is formed by commonalities, rites and strictures, not only of intellect and behavior, but of expectation and desire. Here we gain the identity of one of the many, or even as one of the taste-makers the creators. We can be entertaining, edifying or purely self-interested, but we can get in front of people and tell them what to like, it might even work sometimes. But we all are one - that's a face you can wear, the hive-mind, and this is the card of that hivemind.


# 6 is Satisfaction - the journey thus far contemplated. Here the paradigms of existence are looked at and thought of, ideas are manipulated, represented, embraced. This is the image of a person integrated thoroughly into the world. Here is a person who has grown in the world and who has and is all the things before him. He is of the society, interested in its products and reliant on all the rest of us to have his plenty. He is able to in turn, produce artifacts conforming to the society's expectations. Satisfaction is the integration and the consumption of the world's bounty.


So journey on to #7 the Infrastructure. Considered as a journey we arrive here by having established an identity - based on our own development and our own total integration into the social order. We have even begun, in The Satisfaction - to create, to contribute to the cultural paradigm. Here that process comes to fruition. Now the linkages are addressed. We realize that our paints and brushes and boards require armies of people around the world to produce, we realize that our coffee and cigarettes journey from across oceans and that the whole world functions because of the roles we have in it. So here we must turn to finding that role. The Infrastructure is a guide to our calling, different routes summoning us down different paths. Different things to offer and different connections to try and reinforce. We begin to Seek The Other.

All that seeking brings us to #8 The Commonwealth. We've really arrived, we've really got ahold of this society thing, we're part of it, in it, part of the great city, and we are to the point of having a role within the city, a function - companionship. And here we start to see why we are together. What holds us all in place. It's the angry giant, it's the menacing predatory king. We're all in this together -we've got to be right? We are fully integrated into... A system that has replicated itself... in us... through a system of training... OH. Oh, we think. Oh, oh we begin to realize. We're all in this together - because that's the way it is, with or without our wanting it, with or without our effort. We've journeyed to a point where we have found strength and security and we're not sure if we have anything besides that, besides those. Is there more to life than just existing?

Which leads us to doubt, which leads us to fear, which leads us to wonder if there isn't more. We've chased and pursued a path that was laid out and ready for us - we've mastered the alphabet and thought it was literature. Why are we doing what we are doing? We look around and see everyone is part of something that has a limited value but infinite strength. And we're not sure how we should feel but we feel alone. #9 - the end of the first pass through the Major Arcana ends with Loneliness. We have followed the common path and are left wondering and perhaps wanting more, we can see beneath the surface of things, understand the metaphor.

So there is a journey. Just one - not the only one. But a path through these 9 symbols.

Someone, the other day, invoked Clarke's Maxim - that a sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic - well. I take Clarke's point, I guess. But I posit another position - that Magic is always distinguishable from Technology for a few important reasons: First - Magic doesn't advance, it isn't iterative, one thing doesn't grow from another- it's a matter of understanding and perception it's always there but not always distinguishable, the act of doing magic is to find or experience what exists - it isn't creative, but purely perceptive, and it isn't observable because the perceptions involved are intuitive and defy experimental reproduction. Which is in fact why the deductive paradigm of science refutes its existence. And 2) Magic is not for accomplishing things while technology is. A technology is adopted to perform a specific task or series of tasks reliably, while magic isn't intended to really accomplish anything. It's a process that sometimes has results and sometimes doesn't, it's innately unreliable and so anathema to technology.

I wanted to say a little something about Magic - which is in the end, a way of thinking and a paradigm for understanding before I get to the second pass of 9 - and before I really start to work out the next few cards and images. The major arcana is either nearly done, or about to get expanded. It's taking me some research, some thinking - but I grow closer and closer still just by considering.

I've mentioned the one journey you could take, with the cards, and I've talked a bit about magic - and how it's a way of thinking and perceiving. These ideas aren't bound up in a system of describing the world rigorously, but in a system of storytelling. Which I'll explain in my next post. Thanks for taking the journey with me so far.

#19 the Transformation. This one kind of took something out of me.

I struggled. First with subject - here's my first attempt:


This was the first time I couldn't make something out of nothing since I've begun this project. I was pretty frustrated, blocked even.

I reached back and thought about where I was when started. Here:

My living room. I was pacing furiously, I was thinking, my kiddo was playing around or doing something on her own, watching a show maybe. And I was bored, I was bored of being shut up and broke and not having much to do. And it came to me - the idea of the Salesman - I just painted it and I was happy. I worked on pictures for about a week after that, one a day. No trouble at all. Easy, flowing. I was inspired you see. I had inspiration. I can't say - It came from this, or it came from that. I can't say where or what inspired me, if someone knows this about how their mind and processes work - if someone knows, I envy that person. So I tried to recapitulate that inspiration.

The external faded, the internal the self - exploding, defined. This is a poor depiction of inspiration, that the focus shifts, that the world fades. That is a fair way of looking at inspiration. That's a fair appreciation of what it is like to be inspired.

But it isn't right, it isn't iconic or valid, not for my purposes. I needed something else.

Because you see, I'm working on #17 - the Star. The Star follows the Tower - it rises in the night sky after the ruinous destruction by fire and lightning. So I need an image, something to depict what comes after ruin. What inspires and inward looking, a new identity - or a new paradigm to view the world through, to interact with. This is the journey you see. We start with Competition - entering into the world - the Arena of the world. Then journey to Concentration, pulling oneself together, inward, concentrating the whole self to the task of the Arena. From there to the Fall -the accident, the failure that comes from trying. Then the Sunset - the end of the day, the world's ending, the transformation from the anticipated to the actual, an understanding that what begins ends, but that an ending allows new things to go forward. The sun sets, we fall to sleep, and then we Wake - Waking comes next and Waking is the new and dawning sense of the Arena, what it is - there has been experience and now we loose a sense of agency, we wake to that. Then are daunted by the Wolves, the engine of the Arena, which drives the competition, that demands concentration, that punishes a fall, that comes out after the sunset, that rouses you from dreams. The cold-hard facts of reality - that's this second pass through the major Arcana - 10-18. The hard truths about Ruin and Destruction and what their role is in the world and in your life.


And then there is how we leave it. The Star stands for inspiration, and guidance down a more enlightened path. Now of Inspiration I can speak at length, but I think no one alive can tell you about the Muses and how to call them. We only know when they're riding us. That's all. Where does the inspiration come from. Why did I think to do this- what I am doing? I don't know.

But now it is a thing I do. I paint these and I am changed- by the act of doing this, by talking about it here, by making something new. By thinking of it. I am changed. Inspiration is the blinding light on the road to Damascus, the transforming light that remakes us, guides us to a better life.

It's not by accident that it follows Ruin - Ruin is the defeat that seems a defeat, that seems to be an end. But it is not, not remotely an end. It is from Ruin that we can adapt into a new strategy, a new perception - we understand the ephemeral then and are found looking for the permanent and are nearly lost without it. But when the important things prove to be immaterial and when immateriality is all that is - when everything is not anything - then we're inspired to a new course. An inward, generative, creative, let us say - spiritual course. This is what is meant by Transformation.


So I had some trouble trying to make an image of that transformation, the one that comes of an altered identity and perception. And I finally came to this. The blank page. Nothing demands attention quite so much as an empty notebook. It begs to be remade. From a single idea, the idea of ordered space useful for a purpose - to an entirely new thing. A blank notebook - it becomes whatever you put in it. A book, a recipe, a map, a list, an angry letter, a poem. It is what you transform it into. Just as you are whatever your inspiration transforms you into.

So #15 is traditionally - THE DEVIL! Maybe you're spooked of the Devil? Maybe not, I bet you can tell what kind of a person you are if you are or aren't. That's my opinion. Well, that's an aspect of my opinion, there's actually rather a lot to it. Why not explore? Yes lets!

So in some ancient forms the Devil is representative of temptation, think of Christ being tempted in the wilderness for example - the Devil appears and tries to get Christ to act all wrong and then Christ resists. The Devil also appears and tempts Job - "Curse God and Die!" The Devil tempts. Kind of a weird thing to tempt a person to - hopelessness? I can see that, hopelessness is a real vice.

Over time this figure changes into a manichean opposite of god, goes from the Adversary meant to tempt creation into an enemy, possibly even on equal footing, the Devil, to be opposed, thwarted, tossed in the lake of fire. Now this is probably the more familiar of the Devils you've heard of and the Tarot kind of works from that, and it kind of mentions the older meaning too. The Devil represents Vice and the temptation to vice. And this... This is representative of a worldview that may prevail, but I'd say not by many. The idea here is that there is a force that tempts you to the wicked actions - this force is purely malevolent and wants to doom you. Now - I don't buy that. That there is a dark force that turns your hand and heart to wickedness - well I don't deny that. But we're talking about dualism and soul/mind/body divisions - I'm not exactly going that way. It's not a dark spiritual force that tempts you to wickedness - is what I am saying.

Rather, the Devil represents the dooming component of human existence - which is our frailty. Our physical frailty specifically. The Devil represents a kind of arrogance, in my mind, that there is a special force that rules over evil and compels you to evil action. Vice is maybe its own temptation, but I theorize something else.

For example. I see the people driving their $100,000 cars in my neighborhood and you know, I daydream about robbing them, I totally do. Because I want money. Which is gross! But here's the thing - the wolf is at the door, the menace is in the world, there are menacing forces that would drive me to do such things. Or maybe you've grown too attached to someone, you'd rather they were dead than without you, or you're menaced by another who looks to outcompete you, or you've got a vague anxiety that the person you are with is going to be the last person to love you, the last person to touch you. You can have these fears and they'll tempt, tempt or drive you to vice. I don't suggest that people have any innate wickedness but that their fragility predisposes them to it. Not a fall of man - but the story of the fall of man kind of sums this up. The immortal and invincible person is of course the good guy - there is no danger that he faces.


This of course doesn't allow for mad-dog killers and the sort. Serial murderers and ladies that execute their babies in bathtubs. Genuinely I don't think those people are wicked, I think they are probably very crazy and that is sad.

So the Wolves. The wolf is kind of the same as the person - pack hunters, tribal and so forth. We're similar in our ecological neighborhood. But the wolf, you know, they have a few million years of adaptive advantage over us, they're more capable, dangerous - they're more effective and less fragile. They're a paradigm of human fear, a good marker of human frailty. The wolves at the door, the danger that waits lurking. Man is a wolf to other men - the big bad wolf- it comes up and hasn't faded imagery wise.

The wolf means another thing too though.

The beneficence of human genius. Cause the dog is a wolf and it's our best friend. Not mine you understand, but I get it - a dog, you can get somewhere with a dog, it is the primordial danger and fear turned on its head, made a tool. A useful tool to turn against our other predators, other people included. It's a sign that this fragility, while it tempts us to dark deeds - is also a tendency that can be mastered. The frailty endemic to the human condition, that creates the human condition, it can be snatched away and have its nature changed. Because we're better than the world, we can solve the puzzle of biology and darkness and primordial fear.

Look at this idiot will you? What's he doing naked in the forest tying himself to two different trees?

The question of course is - what are you doing by not doing that? What's wrong with you that you can't try? Try anything.

The Hanged Man - is what I'm working from. It's the card that informs a book I remember really liking, but being strongly affected by as well. Actually I wouldn't mind reading that again. Maybe I'll try and get it. Anyhow. The hanged man is interesting for all kinds of reasons. On the one hand it's kind of a garbage pile for tarot meanings. Suspension, failure, traitors, failure, indecision. It's got a lot in there, but I think about Traitor. You know - you can tell how useful your divinatory tool is based on whether it would help out a king looking to behead some people. Traitor. I think about if I'll need to ever look for a traitor and if my finished cards will help me. Could be.


I have the fall here, and you can see that it is autumn-ish. But the idea is really that this guy has KOed himself trying something that looks stupid. But Trying -that's the main thing. A long time ago my father, who had a hard time understanding and then translating his understanding and finally communicating with me in any way - he told me "You never try because you're afraid to fail." Which - I have to say. My old pop is one of the greatest of all men, true fact, permanent hero of mine, but he never could figure me out. Cause true-fact, I think my problem is just how comfortable I am able to be with failure. It's basically something I don't even worry about. That's probably a problem right? Probably not helpful. But Trying- see you really do try your best, or close to it. You put that effort out there. Who knows what your best really is - I don't know? I have thoughts of untapped reserves of power and lifting cars over my head - to me - that's my best. I think of it. My adequate... Well you're looking at it.


Felt just bad today, malaise, guts wrenched, tired. Used up or spent. Wrote a lot, walked a lot, kissed and hugged and had some joy. But somehow catharsis is blocked, I'm blocked - up in my inmost-self. Something. Probably need more rest, or sandwiches. But in the meantime I still got this done, I'm still working through it - I'm still trying. It might be a nonsensical idea, it might be the greatest waste of time ever - but it's trying. You fall, you get up you repeat. The Fall is part of process.

Someone was asking me about victory, or a card about achieving goals. I don't think I will ever paint such a card, or ever use such an idea in my reading of them. Because Process is everything, the trying, the effort. What's the use of success? Of finishing? Except that you're free to try the next thing. The Fall represents an important point in the Process - the starting over.

Or the quitting. There is always quitting too.

Not that I will.

So it's come to this. The Journey through the arcana continues to this point - Competition. When last we met you may recall I had made #9 - Loneliness. #10 - in my deck and in the more traditional interpretation both have a similar flow - inasmuch as whatever flow there is is wholly contrived...

Look here -the Hermit to the Wheel of Fortune - it's like a shut-in! Shut-ins are hermits! Shut ins love gameshows!

Except well - really the Wheel of Fortune is a break from the ongoing cycle - we leave the first cycle with Loneliness - a disheartening departure, but as we return to the origins we recollect the Salesman - who started the first cycle. Competition is essential to the Salesman. But it is also the downfall of many of them.

Here's a story about when I used to sell cars. I've used it in the past to try and illustrate some of the points of Game Theory - specifically the Prisoner's Dilemma. See - the brand of car that I sold had about 20 dealerships in the region. There was a vast glut of competing dealers - and every one of them was in cutthroat competition. Now... You've gone to the Car Dealership right? You've seen that sticker on the side of the car - the MSRP - the price. That's the price that's on the car - you go to any store and there's a price-tag on it - you probably don't negotiate (true-fact you don't do that because you aren't Egyptian, we try and bargain about everything) but on a car? You do. In fact the price on the car is much, much higher than the ones advertised in the Newspaper daily. Now - there's certainly an element of Bait and Switch, but in reality in all the years I sold cars - I saw one person, only one, ever pay the MSRP for their car. It was a big deal too. Now there is a legend that in far off places where there aren't a lot of dealers, maybe just one - there, the dealers expect and get the MSRP sticker price. That's the legend.

So how come there's all this movement on price? Downward movement? Because! Because one dealer wants to win against the other dealer. Their sales-people aren't salespeople - they're weak. They can't stand firm, and the customer is canny. So the Dealer starts to sell the car at a reduction below the Sticker, then there is downward price-pressure and soon all the dealers are lowering their price and price, only price, becomes the basis of the canny customer's purchase. The point is - that if every dealer strictly aides by the MSRP - then every dealer will get more money. But if there is a chance that one dealer can get all the business by lowering prices - then they will. Which exerts that pressure - and soon everyone is racing to the bottom.

My point is that competition is A complicated idea - particularly when it is competition for a fungible indistinct resource like money. So this component of Game Theory is included in my picture here.

See the numbers? That's right from the Prisoner's Dilemma, it's a race to the bottom, throw the other guy under the bus? Well, you've a lot to gain - but if he does the same - well you're in trouble yourself. The best policy is to co-operate - but it's not intuitive to a lot of people, competition is a profound element of the world.

And that's why it gets this discussion here. Now - how did I get to competition from the Wheel of Fortune? The Wheel of Fortune is meant to indicate the randomness and the chaos of the world, chance - everything begins from out of chance- or some unknowable design. Now to me, looking at the card, and the idea in it - I came to Fortune first, the idea of a fortune. Spin the wheel and hope, go on your journey to win your fortune.

And that's the notion I started from. Horatio Alger stuff - seeking a fortune. That's very Western, that's very naive and antiquated, romantic. It's no wonder that it is so closely allied to the concept of natural law - another childish conceit that our polity is built upon. The idea is that there is a fortune for everyone. That's the idea in America, everyone can get rich and you look up to the people who do. But really, really and truly - everything, and I mean down to the minimal fortunes of people like, say - me. Everything I have I have essentially out-competed everyone else who doesn't have the same things i have. I have a blue coffee mug and that's one less blue mug for you. If you don't have one and I do? Well that's a fortune I won that you will never get. The same is true for everything you have and that you don't have. There aren't unlimited amounts of million-dollar ideas out there - there's not even an unlimited amount of millions of dollars. Anything you have you outcompeted someone else for - your education, your car, the gasoline in your car. It's all very hard won.

But I tend to see competition as being kind of irrational. Particularly in the society where there is great abundance. We're not competing for survival at all, but really - really because we've been pitted in competition by greater powers that gain advantage by our competition. It's because we're all in these death-spirals that I have made the figures indistinct -they're not meant to be relateable, well, one is not meant to be more so than the other- they're both in the same situation, they're both just as stuck and both just as eager and insistent on victory. They're the Same is what I'm saying


I won't speak against the nobility of contest, of winning, and of loosing - but there's more to it than that - and it is not randomness that determines the winner, but competition. I suppose that I see that the willingness of a few to win less would mean more winning for all. Not always a popular idea, but true.

In the end I think I'm better at painting that photography, or maybe my camera is poor, or maybe my lighting is crummy, anyway, this one is (and take my word for it) nicer than it looks. But it's also pretty complicated and hard to explain. It was hard to think about too.

Here's the image I was going off of. You notice that it's #11 in the Waite deck - but that's to do with Astrology and I honestly haven't included any astrological themes so far, I don't know if I will. Astrology is cool and all, I won't speak against it exactly - but this is my deck and it's all about the Wasteland and my experience and I don't see a lot of stars in my city. When I do - I don't recognize them, so Astrology is out. But Justice is often enough and traditionally the 8th card. So I started thinking about Justice.

This wasn't awesome for me - it turns out that I don't really value justice as a virtue. True fact, I think of Justice as being fairly regressive as a quality - right up there with Honor. It is altogether worse to have Justice than it is to have something else, that Justice, conceptually, negates. This was just a feeling I had, a sense, but I wanted to understand it so I did a little studying. What is Justice? I looked into it and thought about it a lot. In the end I concluded that Justice is a concept in the West that is based on principles of Natural Law - which I do not condone. Life-Liberty-Property - okay? Sure you have these rights? Except that no. No, that's a purely western and I think, reckless construction. Now in that state where you have those natural rights, then Justice is a significant concept because you're constantly going to be in conflict with other people. Your liberties and properties, maybe even your life is always getting on the toes of everyone else's life liberty and property. So you have to have a system of justice to figure things out within the paradigm. You with me so far? So I thought and thought about what that all means - and I couldn't get anywhere. Locke is, fine I guess, Tabula Rasa.... hey man, if you say so. But people who know me know I tend to hold with Hobbes, a little more. And after looking into Utilitarianism etc... I found that I liked Hobbes a little better in terms of his ideas about Justice.

So this image was very informative for me. The Leviathan, the state, the power of the overwhelming giant-king. See? I put it in there too. Giant menacing kings.

At this point though - the symbolism kind of spoke to me. The sword- my sword is the Sharpie Pen - the pen being the sign of political stakeholders (i.e.: Legislators) and intellectualism (i.e.: Me and you). So a pen, he's got that big pen? Sure, I get it. And the little village, heck I like that little village, that speaks to me.

But what's my idea here? What's my thought? What is the concept I'm trying to convey that will eventually have a mythic and mystic connotation when removed from this (overwrought) context?

So I consult the I-Ching, and it's showing me Hexagram #8 - Holding Together - Union So I had it. The union of people. From there some of the imagery came. Now - I'm kind of happy that I paint these things without a plan or special insight, and maybe I'm doing a lot of after-the fact rationalizing. but look.

Here's the little village in the valley with the wall of bricks in a ring. The Bricks. Unity - apart, alone? What's a brick? Together they make the strong wall that holds the predatory giant king at bay. More than that they're a ring, it's a ring - the union of lovers, the sanctioned, unbreakable union. Together - together and united the little village in the valley is not menaced by the king, he may prey upon them, but together they resist his overwhelming strength, force him to reconcile, to wait. His pen, the law, his official strength, it looms over the village but the walls are strong. The roads - the roads join together, all unity of the hill. There are the terraced little farms on the hillsides
in the image of hexagram #8 - they're common, together, the road leads to the safety of the village where they are joined together into the one road.

But what about this guy?

This shirtless little weirdo? Well, this came about. Honestly this was a hard painting to paint. I had ideas, but couldn't make them come together, I actually erased and repainted it a few times. But I kept having this other hill. And I thought - it's got to mean something, and the menacing king. Look - Justice, conceptually - is delivered by an overwhelming power - in our society justice is handed down from the court, it is decided by the bureaucracy. There is an element of inequality inherent in systems of justice - of all vs. all within the concept of Natural Law. So this shirtless little madman represents that - the idea of the individual claiming his rights, challenging the power of the king. He stands atop the other peak and is not effectual, not against the power of the giants. He carries his own pen, trying to go to the battle, thinking that it is a swordfight. See, he's undone already, he has contended according to a lopsided system that automatically doesn't favor him. He is aggrieved and considers Justice to be something he deserves, but that he must fight for. Because Justice has within it that quality of inequity. So there is the little village, that is untroubled by the predation of the great, because in communion the many have the power to resist. So... Commonwealth.

I suppose I should note that these cards, these ideas flow out of one another, into one another - there's an organism being made. $6 Satisfaction leads to a journey - the journey requires the #7 Infrastructure, which suggests the unity of action, but is also a destination for the querent - #8 the Commonwealth.

I know what you're thinking. Look what you've painted Kingtycoon! Look at that. How the heck does this relate to This

I have answers for you. A few.

First of all - look at that image. The Lovers. I love the period at the end - The Lovers -Period. Obviously though, I think there's more to say. Look at Adam and Eve and their bellybuttons. Look at them. Stupid. There they are in the Eden, in paradise. They're about to go the wrong way. But look - look at the magic figure connecting them. You see these lovers -but the figure putting them together is central to the whole image. That's the figure I connect with in this image, and that's who I kind of focused on.

The Lovers has some traditional meanings involving a few conditions. First of all - Choice. So my figure, and I say MY kind of insistently - if you didn't know or can't tell - this is pretty much a self portrait - you can tell because of the green kitchen table. Just like mine. So this figure is presented with choices - there are choices - right there on the table. Do I eat? Smoke? Drink the Coffee? Paint? Write? Read? Write? Do I look at the empty chair and feel... Something? Want? Need? Loneliness? And then you look at the card and see it's called Satisfaction. So are you happy because you have choices? Or are you happy that you've made the choice that you've made?

YES.

And really, just look. Peanut Butter & Jelly. Coffee & Cigarettes. They go together don't they? They're more identifiable, comfortable pairs than Adam and Eve any day. Paint and brush? These things are on teams, together. Paper and ink, books and more books. There are pairings, combinations - you put things together- you create. You choose a thing to make. That, the fruition of your combinatory exercise - you're GENERATIVE CAPACITY - that's satisfying as hell.

It's also a choice. The choice of human things, of material, creative endeavors, which to pursue? Creation? Art? Learning? Chemical dependency? Or... Look at that Empty Chair. There's room isn't there? You can collaborate, there could be a collaboration... Why isn't there?


See this is the Eden. This is the paradise that you can be tempted away from. Hell, as you know, is other people. Here is the suggestion of peace, of heavenly paradise, and there's that empty chair. There's that temptation to seek out the other. A girl, a lady - someone else. That's the temptation - to abandon paradise for something else. Or - or to invite someone else to the paradise. Empty chair after all. Available space.

So I've accommodated the concept of choice, of desire, of pleasure, humanism, personal values (I missed you Wikipedia! I missed you so bad.) But where is the Sexyness? Where's the beauty? The Physical Attraction?

Seriously? You're asking? Look at this motherfucker



So there it is. #6 - Satisfaction.

True story - the name was the hardest part. rejected ideas:

#6 - Kingtycoon
#6 - The Lover
#6 - Bachelor
#6 - Loner
#6 - Paradise