3 Major Arcana + the Dec 29 Cancer Moon
I'm demanding your time to read what should've been a journal entry.
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How did I end up pulling The Devil, The Hanged Man, Death, and the Ace of Wands in a single spread?
Full moons demarcate the ending of a cycle, and this last one of the year, the full moon in Cancer on December 29-30, is an apropos ending to the year. Cancer is at once at home in my moon sign and the moon itself; it is a sign of reflection, nostalgia, and the unconscious. If you participate in the woo (and why ever not), it helps to reflect on one’s progression since Cancer season this summer. But in this amorphous year of days melting into each other, what can be said of growth? Well, do you feel like the same person you were in January? In July? I know I don’t.
This summer I wrote about the July 15th cycle and the date’s significance in my life over the past couple of years. July 15th, 2018: the absolute change of my family dynamic. July 2019, the absolute change of myself. July 2020…I have my photo library and dream journal to pick up the pieces. Dreams of Japan and airplanes taking off in streaks of gold, high school friends, hauntings in houses, and nightmares of people I don’t speak to anymore. Like all the other months, I took photos of food, dressed like an aristocratic clown, screenshot mentally ill memes, and learned new music. I questioned my gender a lot this year. After a whole pandemic of playing dress-up and working from home next to a mirror, it was probably inevitable. I don’t feel like the same person I was in January 2020.
The Devil, reversed: Alex, you have gained self-awareness and a need to release from your addictions and negative cycles
The Hanged Man, reversed: Alex, don’t linger, don’t stall
Ace of Wands: Alex, you feel a breakthrough—go for it
Death, reversed: Alex, you’re resisting change and adhering to comfort—just release
9 of Swords, reversed: Alex, you have a desire to leave this nightmare
This isn’t the type of newsletter I typically write—I’m taking up the space in your inbox and day to selfishly separate and mark nostalgia, mark time for myself. You know, I’ve indulged in introspective apostrophe throughout 2020, but I haven’t played “Border Song” the recording (I have played-played it a few times this year) in over a year. It’s playing, and I can feel the time separation within it. The song now produces nostalgia instead of reverence; I know I can play it now, measure it. For some reason it also produces secondary nostalgia for the short road trip to fiery Salem, MA I took this October (3 month processing time for nostalgia these days!), tertiary nostalgia for my deep running phase in spring of this year, and quarternary nostalgia for what I thought was good clothing in January (teal corduroy on teal corduroy).
Employed but quarantined at home, I kept working in a kid-like emotional state that dug deeper and deeper as the months passed. If I’m being honest, my lifestyle didn’t really change that much because of COVID. If anything, it went back to what I was familiar with—spending hours in a bedroom or outside telling stories to myself. And what is this newsletter, if not telling stories to myself? It’s a selfish endeavor, really, to preserve myself so blatantly on the internet. When I was a kid I played this game of gluing my eyes to floors and collecting “treasures.” It was the highlight of visiting department stores, which were positively littered. I would ruthlessly scan shiny marble floors for dropped rhinestones, coins, sequins—anything shiny, like I was a crow building its nest. I soon became a dragon protecting its hoard, keeping a special drawer for these department store treasures, filthy from the floors brushed with New York City. It’s an obvious analogy to make between these childhood “treasures” and, perhaps, the newsletters of this year, or possibly surprising friendships, or insights gained through hours of solitude, or days of wine-drinking and music that have somehow remained crystal-clear in memory. It seems like an obvious analogy, but no, there were no “treasures” to be found this year. It was a year. It was another year of exhausting self-improvement, and feeling with my fingers the veil that separates precious, knowing life from endless, frightening, comforting unknown, and a year of making it through. I lost none in my inner circle, though my network of acquaintances was pruned enough (due to chance, illness, and suicide) to counter any of the accumulated productivity and relentless self-improvement. It was a year, and it will continue to be a year until it isn’t. Do you feel like you’re the same person you were in January? If you do,