the goddess is alive and stepping on my foot

it's the end of a long lonely winter. not physically or emotionally lonely, but spiritually lonely, in that place where spirit and core identity are one...

every so often in one's life the Divine is truly immanent, and then the rest of the time, "i got nothin'." and this winter, i got nothin', coming up empty, nothing but boredom and discontent - again, not physically or emotionally, but spiritually, in that place where spirit and core identity abide...




aftershocks. we moved away from home - the family left the nest, we sold what we could and threw away the rest - relocated, bought (into) new houses, filled new rooms, reconfigured - poorly, from my perspective. because the last of the children left and now it's just me and jpw and two cats, rattling around a big family house full of rooms closed up for the winter, unused, so we don't have to heat them, nothing lives in them...

and in the quiet house, the strange city, it's been a winter of work and work and work and work and no play.

but the work was supposed to be the play! i loved the story of the toymaker who had a motto hanging over his workbench, "never worked and never will." play is the work of children, it is their laboratory science, their edification; work should be the play of grown-ups - or at least, in the case of artists and agitators with day-jobs, it should at least finance the playtime...

well, my winter has been work and work and work some more. a pile of creative projects - knitting, collage, embroidery, clay - started and set aside, literally gathering dust.




all work and no pray. no play. no pray.

no real pray - just words - no grace, only law. and i'm okay with law. but i remember grace.

over all hangs the pervasive question, what happens after this? we're never going back; there's nothing to go back to. we are homeless. what happens after this?

i drew up lists and researched and weighed options and calculated relative risks. work, money, a tolerable life. meanwhile, my spouse furrowed his brow and added "mrs. henry's mental health" to the list. our little ship of state really needs me to not collapse, to keep on doctoring - but the doctoring is driving me to collapse. collapse of spirit! of identity! i must continue. keep calm, carry on.




but - what happens after this? homeless, there's nowhere we can move to that will bring us all back together; we can't stay, it's too sad and lonely here. proximity? to where home used to be? vs. earning power: those jobs in the middle of north dakota sure pay a lot - could we do that for five or ten years, make a heap of money, finance the kids' launches into the world?

that's what other doctors do. but my number one fear all along was selling out. giving up the real project for the superficial activity.

finally i just started yearning for a Sign.

my daughter asked me, well, what kind of a place do you think you'd be happiest in? i said, i'm waiting for a Sign.

preceptors asked me, are you staying? are you going to try to get a job here in the system? i replied noncommittally, but inside i repeated, i can't decide anything, because i'm waiting for a Sign.

jpw said, i'll go anywhere you want to go, and i said, i won't know where we should go until we get a Sign.

so the months went by.




then one day on a whim, over the phone, first wife's tarot reading:

covering me: the queen of wands. well, she is me, after all.

crossing me: the hanged man. first wife disregards the whole upright-reversed thing - i do not, because of the way i shuffle - but anyway, just the hanged man, his essential nature, without spin.

behind me: the judgement day, the slumbering souls all rising out of their coffins to the sound of trumpets. before me: the empress.

the empress! the empress!

the empress!




above me: the ace of pentacles.

below me: the three of swords.

within me: nine of pentacles.

without me: six of cups.

i should note here that first wife uses a different deck than i do, and it doesn't have pentacles, and the face cards are different, and so on, but i was translating it all into the idiom i was most familiar with.

hopes and fears: eight of cups.

all and everything: ten of cups - and i'll be damned if that's not what anyone in their right mind would call a full-fledged, genuine Sign.




i've always seen the nine of pentacles as a kind of junior empress - an empress in training? as little girls bake tiny tiny loaves under the dim bulb of their easy-bake ovens, while their grandmothers toss the well-known ingredients into the biggest bowl to make some new kind of cake imagined into reality, not planning so much as enabling, half by magic - so the nine-of-pentacles lady has cultivated her pretty garden, and it's growing - but it's not the jungle of abundance the empress rules.

i'm just saying.




the six - well, of course, "a card of goodness that encourages kindness," as one interpreter said - sweet, nostalgic... but also a new solution.

then with the eight of cups a pilgrim goes on a mission to find the missing cup. it's a leap of faith - possibly a foolish one - and note the pilgrim can't take the cups along with him. or her. how else, though, to complete the set?

apparently the ten of cups lies at the end of the trail. the trial. the trail. so many cups! the queen of wands is somewhat taken aback -

but jpw isn't. he has asserted more and more firmly that if we don't find a place to live where the social environment is supportive, rather than destructive, of my way of thinking/acting/believing, of my path - i may crack up.

cognitive dissonance is making me sick and he will not permit that to happen, if he can stop it. because if i get sick, all that remains of our big life falls apart, and then we're really screwed. so - no high-paying hamster wheel in north dakota.

instead, out of the blue i made a connection with someone who practices the way i want to practice, who lives in the kind of place i'd want to live, and then she invited me to come and stay, she offered to help me get started, she knows the ropes, she has the resources, and her number one message is, "every doctor should feel happy and inspired practicing medicine."

it sounds so elementary, but you don't usually see it in action. it's like the toymaker: never worked, never will.

so there's what happened next: the empress.