"Comforting the Cartomancer": An Excerpt

Here is a quick look into some of the essays included in Talking to Myself. This essay explores personal feelings of loneliness and anger, while exploring less than traditional methods of finding solace within the self.

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“Do you want a reading?” She asked me on one incredibly dead night at the mall.

Sure, it’d be fun. Behind the registers were cabinets full of merchandise we couldn’t put back out onto the salesfloor. There were boxes of tangled jewelry, socks without matches, and returns from three seasons before. We found a deck that was returned on account of bad juju. It was not a Rider Deck®. It came with a booklet that explained the meaning of each card and how those interpretations changed based on the position it was pulled. If a card looks upside down, it’s in the reverse position, signaling a blocked energy; its meaning the opposite of the upright (advice position) interpretation of the card. Sabrina Matheny of Smoky Mountain News gives the example: “An upright six of swords tells us that we are on our way to recovering from a challenging situation. There is hope on the horizon. A reversal would tell us there is something keeping us from finding our way to that healing.”

I let her go first. She pulled one card, as she typically did each morning before starting her day. She told me she missed her alarm that morning. I could look up the deck, identify the exact card she pulled, and give the whole rundown, but I just remember it was maternal. The booklet explained that fertility was in her future, and the time for reproduction was fast approaching. She was not satisfied by this reading and decided it would not take place of her usual morning ritual. She’d draw another card once she got home.

“It’s not from the Rider, it can’t be true.”

I agreed.

She read my future. It was not satisfying. Now, I have nothing more to report. The cards have been lost on me; their meanings already turned to vapor. If they were correct, they would’ve spelled out “Daddy Issues”. Maybe the Rider Deck® would have predicted the car accident that almost put my boyfriend through the windshield, following me and my guilt to the junk yard where I left him and my car behind. Didn’t the cards see a pandemic coming? The end of life before I got to know it? Why couldn’t they tell me there was no use in planning? If the cards were true, they’d say this.