I have been reading tarot cards lately. I have been fantasizing about opening an oddities shop where I sell crystals and candles and bells and bones and other witchy knick-knacks. In the back room, through the wood beaded veil, I’ll have a table draped with printed silk and I will read palms and do tarot readings. I will ask for your birthday, time and location and tell you your moon and sun signs, rising sign, and where the planets appear in your houses. Then I will tell you what that all means. The information will hit home with you and you will leave with a greater sense of purpose, an understanding of your place in the universe, and the grace and ease that comes with the confidence that everything is exactly as it should be. Ideally, my shop will be in the floor level of an old house that my family lives in. As customers come in a bell will ring, but when no one comes in, I will just be at home with my family. The shop will be open most times, unless I am not home (and after 7 pm). I will drink tea and invite groups of friends and philosophers to come over to tea. Perhaps it will be a central meeting place for a book club. There will be an area for meditation and yoga. I will also have lots of plants growing in a beautiful window wall. Kilim rugs and other woven textiles will line the floors and walls. My personal collection of oddities, carved book holders, brass crabs, bundles of dried sage, will fill shelves and deep windowsills. Vintage chairs and tables will be situated randomly. A basket overflowing with brightly woven Mexico blankets will casually ask all who enter to bundle up and stay a while. I will play music. Whatever is tickling my feet to bump around at the moment. And there will be books everywhere. For sale, rent or trade. I will try to read all of them and organize them in a way that makes sense to me so that when someone comes in looking for something they might be turned on to something in a different subject, but maybe leaning in their direction of interest. And of course I will be able to find exactly what they are looking for when they come in asking, “I just want to know what types of things I can eat and do to balance my internal organ function with the changing seasons.” I will direct them to a practical guide on Eastern Medicine, or some such, and send them home with a little bag of herb tea to sip while they read in a sunny window, my acupuncturist’s phone number, and a big warm smile. This shop will be profitable, but really just enough to pay the bills and fund more finding and collecting to keep it freshly stocked. People will come, more and more, all by word of mouth. It will be aesthetically pleasing and interesting. Visitors will see something new each time they come in. I may even sell vintage clothing. Leather boots and purses will line the wall in one room and above it will be a line of easily wearable day dresses and sweaters. Wallpaper. Beautiful wallpaper. A beautiful little space that I can live a simple life in.
There is an old brick house up for rent on the main street. When I look at it, it fuels my fantasy. Big front porch. Shed in the back. Zoned commercial and residential. . . I don’t want to lose my house. I love my house. I love all the things in it and the way it’s set up and all of the memories that are built in. Just thinking of it being stripped from us brings tears to my eyes. I see my son’s face looking at me and asking fearfully,” Mom, can coyotes break our windows and get into our house?” I assure him that our house was built strong by daddy, with lots of love and protection. Our windows are thick and strong and no bad things can reach us in here. He feels satisfied and safe and confident as he settles into sleep. I don’t want to lose that. Please don’t take it away. The fantasy eases my mind, a temporary distraction, some glimmer of an alternate reality that can feel equally safe and warm and loving. I don’t want to lose my house.
I feel like I have been living in a dream state. Or waking from one. Every time I clean my toilet I am aware that I may not be cleaning this toilet by the end of this year. I may be cleaning a different one. One that someone else I don’t know has been shitting in for years. There might even be some of their piss under the tile that I can smell but can never reach to clean. And I am thankful for my familiar shitty toilet. How could I have ever loathed this task? I am aware that ownership is a construct of the ego. That you can’t really OWN anything. All that is really mine is my body and my soul. I guess that is even up for discussion these days. Anything else can be stripped away. It’s safer to not form attachments. But how can you not? I have not mastered love without attachment. I want to keep the things I love near to me. Every stick of this house has been touched with my family’s love. Our family can love new sticks of new houses, but I don’t want to start over. I don’t want the fantasy. I just want to enjoy the reality of my current life a little longer. Please. The future is uncertain. I don’t want to think about it. I want to fantasize about an alternate universe where we all live in a charming little brick house and I tell fortunes and sell oddities and vintage things. Other people’s memories. Not mine. I will hold on to mine. A little longer. As long as I can.
I feel the wheel turning. Puts lots of shit into perspective. What a silly girl I have been. Oh well. . . Whats for lunch?
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