what.

this is me after this week.

(I know all that metal and leather is a pretty loose definition of business casual but I feel like I pulled it off.)

Okay so.

I don't even know where to start.

I moved to San Francisco.  This is a large dense sensory overload of a place with an ocean and flowers all over and all sorts of people.  I have a nice place with cool roommates and with an amazing view of all the sea fog rolling in in the evening.  I have HBO in my room.  (TRUE BLOOD why didn't anyone tell me.)

I have this awesome job where you're just expected to figure things out and work on your own which suits me just fine.  I have clever coworkers and my office is both right in the middle of the financial district and a ten-minute commute.  My first day they handed me a laptop and my corporate expense card came today.  I am the only humanities-type major in like a two-mile radius which we'll see how that goes.  With all they're spending on me, I know that they kind of own my soul but I realized a while ago my soul is not actually that expensive so this is a mutually advantageous relationship.

The seafood is amazing.

But then so also I'm shipping off for Chicago for a month in five days for some sort of consultant-camp.

I have a long weekend so I'll post more coherent/cogent things then but I'd just thought I'd do a brief update.

every prophet in her house

I went to Utah among other things, and it was more than lovely, but I'm still thinking about all that so I'll post about it later.

I did get this guy though.

But while I was there at a bachelorette party, Angie read my Tarot, which ultimately led to a creepy box arriving in the mail for me.

This is a lady who knows what's up.

(She did not mention this box in her reading, rather she suggested I chill the eff out, which, touché, Tarot.)

So this box.  Sometimes modern existence will offer up these little dark-mirror microcosm moments that let you see aspects of yourself a little too clearly.  These moments could be Netflix strongly insisting that prominents category of film in your life are like Dark Twisted Pervy Comedic Thrillers with Emotionally Unhealthy Relationships or Foreign Cartoons with Hilariously Weird Dubs.  Or like anytime you look at your Tumblr in its holistic form. 

My last moment like this came a couple days ago when I received a box from Amazon in the mail.  It included:

1. Leather Lotion for all my million leather things I don’t take care of properly.

2. A box set of all the Werner Herzog/Klaus Kinski collaborations, because my thing for German things is getting out of control as of late.

3. Rider-Waite Tarot deck

4. A book about the Tarot based on the Rider-Waite Tarot deck so I can actually read said deck.

It all came at the same time which I was not expecting, but then was super happy about because you could really package and market that box as Activity Kit for a Creepy Evening.

Which is exactly what I used it for.

I’ve always wanted to learn Tarot.  It’s a fun trick.  It’s pretend magic.  It’s all archetypal and Kabbalistic and arcane in the original sense of arcane.   It’s probably the only card trick I will ever be able to do because I am clumsy to the point of really not even being able to shuffle, where when I shuffle I still do that thing you did when you were four and had to shuffle cards where you kind of spread them all out like you’re fingerpainting for a while until they look mixed up and then you gather them back up again.  (UPDATE: After some practice, while I am not quite up to maybe sexy Vegas dealer yet I have gotten past four-year-old-with-nerve-damage.  It’s a process.)  

I never learned Tarot as a kid because every time I bought a deck my mother would find it on one of her sweeps of my room and throw it away.  A tack that certainly did its job in quelling my interest, let me tell you.

Also, Tarot in Carnivale.  TAROT IN CARNIVALE.

Why don't they sell these.  WHY.

(Also: Carnivaaaaaaaaaale.  This post took all night to write because I took some time off to watch Carnivale.)

WATCH THIS.  WATCH THIS AND TRY NOT TO BE ENCHANTED, I DARE YOU.

I’m only in like the fifth chapter of my book, which is sadly not enough to tell the future but is enough to feel really pretentious ALREADY and to offer readings to family members, were it not for Tarottes.

I should mention first that my family is to a member neurotic enough that nicknaming compulsions is not even a thing any more.  For instance, the TV Volume Game is the fun game to juggle the various volume controls and consanguineous neuroses so that all possible volume settings are an even number that is also a multiple of five and does not shatter eardrums.

This is not a thing I am making up.

My family has two cats, Clochette and Tiger Lily.  Clochette is a neurotic little half-Siamese sausage of a cat that I don’t have much use for.  Tiger Lily and I, though, are sister spirits.  We both for example suffer from a specific form of Tourettes subnamed Clorettes, because it involves an insatiable urge to mess with Clochette whenever possible. I remember something similar growing up with my placid little brothers—I would poke, tease, whatever just to mess up their equilibrium.  But so another form of Tourettes is sweeping my family that could be subnamed Tarottes.

Practicing readings with my family has been really fun, but some of them are not as interested in readings as “accidentally” touching my cards.

One of the (admittedly loose) rules of Tarot is that you do not let anyone touch your cards because the energy gets all polluted.

Once I mentioned this, everyone seemed to develop a new purpose in life, with that good old Tuckfield single-mindedness you may know so well. 

I fended them off pretty well.  Shockingly, it was ultimately Tiger Lily that betrayed me.

Traitor.  And your namesake was so honorable.

Now my cards are all polluted with kitten energy.

This was going to be the whole blogpost because it's late and while I was going to post about, oh, all the things that have happened in the past month (which important things I never talk about, ugh) I got distracted by Tarot and spent most of the now-early-morning looking up Carnivale clips and teaching myself the Celtic Cross.

But since my cards were already tinged with Kitten Energy, I decided to break another loose rule of Tarot and decided to do a reading for myself.

Here is the one with all the cards:

And here’s the one with the Major Arcana which is more fun because the pictures are more fun and the whole thing is more dramatic:

The first two cards are the sun and the moon.

Like these guys but less intense, because, Rider-Waite.

Like the general trend for all my readings which means the general trends of my thoughts/subconscious is that this is going to be a dramatic clean break.  I am going to have to let go of a lot of the authoritative and often damaging figures/experiences/institutions in my life and let go what they do/will think about me.  I need to calm down and stop trying to control every aspect of my existence and just let things happen.  Most of all I need to trust the validity of my own feelings and experiences, and that will help me get to some sort of integration and complete un-fragmented non-cognitive-dissonant self.

Basically and in short, chill the eff out.

(Thanks, Angie.  You lovely psychic lady, you.)

Fun fact: I have loved this time in Austin. 

Like concerts with cute guys.

It has given me time to regroup and reconnect and redefine, etc.

Like go to friends' weddings where we all rocked out to Pulp and Blur like we did when we were 15.

Or end up at surprise jazz concerts in art museums.

Or collaborate on comics about Norse gods for indie publications.  (Hint: I did not do the drawing part.)

 But I am more than feeling that this time is over.  I’m swirling into old patterns and getting sucked down by drowning people who don’t want to be saved.

And at some point you have to admit that you can’t save them against their will, and the most you can do is keep yourself from getting pulled under.

In short, although I love my family, my friends, and Austin, I really am excited there are only two more weeks.

Even those these hills are two minutes behind my house.

Also, but so now we're getting down to the wire I am a little panicked. 

Because holy crap.  Do they know my major was only 30 credits and is kind of made up anyway?  That my last book I read was a comic book?  That the only things on my Kindle are Nabokov and Grant Morrison and the Mighty Boosh?

Like, I got that letter from the Dean that all humanities graduates get, and it went on and on about my increased sensitivity and sophistication and understanding I should have now for the world, and when I read it I was literally eating chocolate chips for lunch and watching cartoons in my Sherlock Holmes pajamas.  

The sophisticated face of BYU liberal arts graduates.  Totally not wearing Nightmare Before Christmas pants or anything. There is not an old film noir on right now either.  I'm not making a weirdly twee face because I have this thing about smiling in pictures.

(And to think that lady from BYU's gender-based complaints department thought I couldn't understand sarcasm!!)

 I might like pin The World card up, or something, to remember to calm down.