Her indoors
We’re all stuck inside right now, for the most part. It can’t only be me it’s doing strange things to.
And strange times always send me skittering back to magic.
I’m a classic introvert, so I can’t relate to some of the frenzied cabin fever I’m seeing on Twitter right now, as the UK enters lockdown-like conditions to combat COVID-19.
I’m not immune, though. I feel like my experience might be a little different - I’m happy indoors with my books and my blog posts. I can work from home easily enough, although my partner’s been furloughed which makes my Zoom appointments a little awkward, since we share a 23sqm studio flat so there’s nowhere for him to get away from my solutions-focused Careers-persona.
To give each other privacy, we put headphones on. I’m baking more, and writing less (this is frustrating in some ways but also this is a global pandemic and I have a day job so I’m doing my best not to hate myself. Not hating ourselves is more important than ever right now, I think). I’ve developed an elaborate skincare routine, so I can lock myself in the bathroom for 20 minutes a day. If I had a bathtub, I’d live in it.
I bought a tarot deck this afternoon.
It’s due to arrive on Thursday, by which time I might well have got over the urge to spread my own destiny in front of me - won’t matter, I picked the most aesthetically pleasing deck I could find so that if nothing else my materialistic little heart will be pleased I own it.
I’m not, by the way, especially spiritual. I’m a-religious, thoroughly humanist - the only reason I went to Sunday school as a kid was because it was free childcare and my dad was a single parent. I flirted with Wicca last when I was a teenager - I’m not sure I really ‘believed’ in it then either, but I took comfort in the rituals of kind-hearted spells, of Do No Harm principles and the meditative qualities of the tarot. For me, the shuffling of a deck is soothing, the careful selection of cards is a storytelling prompt for the psyche; the act of “interpreting” the cards is a meditation, a means of bringing out thoughts I’ve been hiding from, and forcing myself to confront them in the safety of the cards.
My plan at the moment is twofold: firstly, two of my stories have ideas for tarot scenes, which the feel of the cards will likely spur into life. But also, I might revert to my teenage version of meditation, to get back home to myself, indoors.