Isolde

So, I am at my friend Patricia's last night enjoying my post purple sammich torpor and sipping tea. There on the coffee table are always an assortment of magazines, books and divination tools. For quite a while its been The Goddess Oracle deck. Like any self-respecting Tarot card whore, I just have to look. Even though I have seen the deck and Patricia uses it all the time. Divination tools are like crack for me so give me a break.

I always just draw one and live with the msg of that card. Perhaps Spirit spanked me early on for trying to know to figure it all out by adding more cards to the pile. Perhaps they messed with me when I drew too many by making the msg increasingly murky with every card. Regardless, these days I stick to one card/day. Lately I have been feeling all rebellious and shit so I have been thumbing my nose at Spirit and drawing 2. I know. I AM a WILD WOMAN!

So last night I pick up the Goddess deck and draw a card I HAVE NEVER DRAWN BEFORE. Which is quite odd as I own this same deck and used it for over a year. One card per day. There are 44 cards in this particular deck and odds are that I should have drawn any given card about 8 times over the course of the year. So, not to have seen it before last night - well.....that kinda got the girl's attention. ISOLDE.

Shit not that star-crossed lover crap again. How many times is Spirit gonna yank my chain with a promise of true love? Discounting it (yeah, bc that always works when Spirit is trying to give you a msg). I pulled a second. ISIS past-lives. I think this is related to a current realtionship which is both loving and has a past-life feel to it but also has its own set of issues. (Note the use of the word THINK). I just dont wanna hear any more about it. It is what it is. Nothing more. Nothing less. I get a little pissy w/ Spirit who arranged the whole thing to begin with for not doing better by me.

But curiosity gets the better of me. Spirit knows that about me - always curious. And I know it really has nothing to do with anything going on right now. There is something else They want me to see that I am missing. Patricia remembers a bit of the legend of Tristan and Isolde. Boy goes to woo girl for uncle. Boy falls in love with girl and vice versa. Girl weds uncle anyway. infidelity ensues. Boy is banished. Both die tragically. Altho she did not remember how they died. Why I wanted to know that then with an OCD like manner I have no idea. Spirit works my brain like that and I have gotten used to it. Anyway, we end up looking it up on Wiki. What we read there takes my knees out for a moment. The setting for part of this legend is Cornwall, altho they die in France. The very same Cornwall that called to me when we began plotting our escape to Clapton in London. And not just any part of Cornwall, but Tintagel. The very same Tintagel that freaked me the fuck out! Let me start by saying that I loved Cornwall. It is a place I could see myself being quite happy. Tintagel. Not so much. LOL.

I haven't really written about my experiences in Tintagel. They were so raw and created a kind of pants-peeing terror I didn't want to relive. Guess now is the time. The ruins of Tintagel are perched on a little point of land along the Cornish coast. Part of it is only accessible by a footbridge out onto an island. Our entire trip thru England was full of sun and blooming country everywhere. Everywhere except Tintagel. The day we were there, it was overcast, windy as hell, and, oh yeah, it was raining. I had on a poncho to cover me and my camera from the rain and the sea mist. The wind kept grabbing the poncho and whipping it around my head obscuring my vision. Of course that wasn't the worst - not even close. Despite wearing brand new running shoes with very grippy soles that squeak the linoleum when wet, I cannot keep my footing. Everywhere I put my feet out on that headland, they slid and slipped from under me. Every step it was as if the very land rejected me and wanted to throw me off into the sea. No one else had this experience. Toddlers and dogs navigated the steps and walkways with ease. Why did this space hate me so? I don't really have an answer to that. But given my 'ability' to see past-lives, my intuitive guess is that in this space in some past era I was not a very nice person. So not nice that the land or its guardian remembers me still many lifetimes later in this new form. Well that SUX. Not Tristan. Not Isolde. But King Mark. Or someone of his ilk. The villain. The oppressor.

Still, I was allowed to pass thru. It took all of my will and a serious amount of patience on Duz's part as I death-gripped every rail to get thru that afternoon up on the cliffs. But, I walked the entire ruins. I made it by sheer determination. Whoever I am now, I am not that person any more. No doubt I learned a lot in that lifetime of being a dominating schmuck and created a lot of karmic 'debt' (altho I hate that concept). What else did I learn in that lifetime that is maybe relevant to where I am now? To let go the need to control. To let go the need to have things fit into tidily organized and labelled boxes. To let things be whatever they are and to enjoy them in their wildness. And sometimes to give over to the wild and unpredictable part of life that Tintagel embodies. I can keep my footing even when conditions are against me. Would I go back. Not in this lifetime. Maybe not in the next either. But I will remember it always.