Crossing the ocean

We’re back. After an interminable journey across the Atlantic we have arrived back to Californian warmth and long summery days. Our adventures in England were fantastic and will be the source of good memories for all of us who went on the trip.

I spent today dealing with several hundred emails that have accumulated over the last two and a half weeks, and the horrifying realization that my transmission has not miraculously fixed itself. In between emails I enjoyed doing a bit more work on my tarot book, which I finally started working on in England. I’ve been thinking about this for a long time, so it’s good to begin writing.

I find tarot fascinating because these are images that people actually use. Most paintings and prints simply decorate a home, which is great in its own right, but the images of a tarot deck not only get used for divination, but act as “a book of keys” that imparts esoteric knowledge to people who are looking for it. I’ve been tracking the development of the deck through time, starting in fourteenth century Italy, moving to France, where Etteilla, then Levi develop it by incorporating Jewish mystical ideas into the imagery, and on to England where several members of the Order of the Golden Dawn add to and reform the deck into the popular collection of cards that became the basis for hundreds of decks by the beginning the new millennium. I need to balance time between writing and painting carefully so that one feeds the other. I see the tarot book as a long term project.

I’m also thinking about painting and the logistics of being car-less for a short period. This is going to be tricky, because all my work is at the University, and I’m 35 miles away. (Have you seen the price of gas? It’s going to cost me nearly $20 a day just to get to work!)