September Sun Rays: Tarot for Transition

Can you see the sun from where you stand in the world? Of late our California skies are hazy, if not outright sun-blocked, so much of the west coast sorrowfully ablaze. We are aswirl with so many challenges and transitions, inner and outer. Zoom school in session, a child in every room of the house. Back in midsummer, tarot coloring this sun gave me some grounding joy. Though the image did not make it into my Heart’s Compass Tarot Workbook (which is winnowed, with the copy editor, and due out in February 2021), I share it in the spirit of process and with gratitude for the soothe of colors. 

One of the sweetest gifts of using tarot is the way it can provide a mirror and encourage a deeper conversation with the self in the service of joy. I’d love to connect, engage, and explore the timeless tool of the tarot with you through Antioch University and San Diego Writers, Ink. I also give away a tarot journaling writing prompt in my monthly newsletter; sign up for it here (September’s writing prompt focuses on the ten of swords).

 

Tarot Webinars at Antioch University

 

From Fear to Love: The Tower and Tarot’s Lover. How do static images on a card support inner personal growth and outward change? Join this webinar for a close look at the way Major Arcana (Big Secret) soul cards like the Tower and the Lovers can help us move from fear to love. To explore the archetypal energy behind both cards, we will look at a number of versions of both the Tower and the Lovers card. You’ll be introduced to some accessible but potent tarot journaling methods. No prior knowledge of the tarot necessary. Saturday October 3: 10 am PST / 1 pm Eastern Time. Cost: $25. For full details and to sign up visit: From Fear to Love

 

Tarot for Transition: Tarot Journaling for Joy. During times of transition and uncertainty, we can lose our connection to our inner compass and find ourselves feeling overwhelmed. In this four part webinar series, we will explore just one aspect of our lives at a time in relation to the transitions we are facing, using the lens of the four tarot aces: The Heart (love and dreams: Ace of Cups), The Hands (wealth and manifestation: Ace of Disks), The Will (inspiration and direction: Ace of Wands), and The Mind (vision and knowledge: Ace of Swords). We will walk through some simple tools for daily connection to the tarot through journaling, taking our “tarot eyes” into our surroundings, and celebrating the path forward as inspired by the energy of the four elements. No prior knowledge of the tarot is necessary. We meet four consecutive Saturdays. Cost for this 4 Part Webinar Series: $99.

 

Saturday October 17: 10 am PST / 1:00 pm ET
Saturday October 24: 10 am PST  / 1:00 pm ET
Saturday October 31: 10 am PST  / 1:00 pm ET (Halloween)
Saturday November 7th: 10 am PST  / 1:00 pm ET

 

For full details and to sign up visit Tarot for Transition.

 

Writing Classes at San Diego Writers, Ink

Tarot Journaling: A Heart's Compass Approach: This class meets Mondays over zoom and is a drop-in class so come and go as you please, we have a beautiful core group meeting at present. I made a commitment to journal through the entire deck, so we will be at this for seventy-eight weeks total. This coming Monday, September 21, we will dive into the eight of pentacles. Cost is $10 a session. Sign up here for Tarot Journaling. 

Saturday Poetry Read and Critique meets next on October 10, from 10 am to noon PST over zoom (we meet every second Saturday of the month). We are a heart-committed and lively group of poets with room for a few more faces. Offered through San Diego Writers, Ink. Sign up here for Second Saturday Poetry; fee is $30 for SDWI members, $36 for non-members. 

Additional links of interest:

My long term tarot buddy Mary Allen converses with me on our Tarot for Two podcast here; we have recorded five so far: 

How does the tarot work?

What do we do with the bad cards?

Is it just a deck of cards?

The Hanged One

The Empress.

You can access them all here:

Tarot for Two Podcasts

 

SDWI Unheard Voices Reading and Writing Workshop: Resist, Rebuild, Perform

Crisis! Today’s troubling headlines, articles, and Tweets can be overwhelming! What to do? Come listen, rebuild, write, perform, and share with us. At tonight’s Unheard Voices Reading (Friday October 26), the fabulous Sandra Hunter reads from Trip Wires (Leapfrog Press, 2018), a collection that personalizes global-scale catastrophe by taking brief looks into the everyday lives of young people around the world from Columbia to Afghanistan to Glasgow and beyond. 

A teacher and avid supporter of women's causes, Meliza Bañales celebrates her new non-fiction book, Adventure Awaits You in Hell: A Survivor's Manifesto (Ladybox Books). 

Tania Pryputniewicz celebrates the anthology, America, We Call Your Name: Poems of Resistance and Resilience (Sixteen Rivers Press, 2018). Audience participation encouraged for a lively discussion

Link to more information:  Unheard Voices Reading

Saturday’s Unheard Voices Writing Workshop with the same three writers has a triple focus: generate, revise, perform! Roll up your sleeves and come join us, again at San Diego Writers, Ink.

Link to more information: Unheard Voices Writing Workshop: Resistance, Resilience, and Rebuilding

*Fee: $30 member, $36  nonmember. Course feel includes a copy of Sandra Hunter's story collection, Trip Wires.

Related Link:


Sandra Hunter on the San Diego Writers, Ink blog:  Sandra Hunter on Trip Wires, Trippings, and Assumptions

Instructor Bios:

Sandra Hunter will read from Against the Stranger, one of the stories in her new collection TRIP WIRES (Leapfrog Press, June 2018). The collection personalizes global-scale catastrophe by taking brief looks into the everyday lives of young people around the world, from Columbia to Afghanistan to Glasgow and beyond. TRIP WIRES earned praise as “a beautifully written collection, both poetic and melancholic. Deeply moving, and often grim and uncomfortable in their confrontations of unimaginable tragedies, each story evokes a bold, emotional response,” according to Katie Asher (Foreward Reviews, May/June 2018).

Meliza Bañales will read from her new non-fiction book ADVENTURE AWAITS YOU IN HELL: A SURVIVOR’S MANIFESTO. From her teaching to her activism, all of her work in speaking up — shouting out — has been in support of women’s causes. Meliza says, "Just remember… someone is [always] going to dislike you for being too honest — or not honest enough. But better to be too honest, because the people that really appreciate it will find you.” This is Meliza’s honesty without mercy.

SDWI Poetry Instructor and contributor Tania Pryputniewicz will read from the newly released anthology, AMERICA, WE CALL YOUR NAME: POEMS OF RESISTANCE AND RESILIENCE (Sixteen Rivers Press, September 2018). Born in response to the 2016 Presidential election, the anthology combines voices of poets from across America–from red states and blue states, high schools and nursing homes, big cities and small towns–with the voices of poets from other countries and other times. From Virgil and Dante to Claudia Rankine and Mai Der Vang, from Milton to Merwin, from Po-Chiu to Robin Coste Lewis, these voices, now raucous, not muted, now lyric, now plain–join together in dissent and in praise, in grief and alarm, in vision and hope.

Fortnite Widow: A Fortnite Poem

Fortnite Widow

                                   

“Dinner’s ready, come to the table when you die,”

my refrain, arrived home from another two weeks

of caring for my mother. I’ve lost my sons, my

husband too. He’s nicknamed himself The Medic,

tiny voices of six-year-olds from Canada, New York, 

England asking, Are you a boy or a girl? a fair 

question, my husband’s character a buff female

who wears black and white camouflage, a pink 

backpack, her hair in a pony-tail. He stationed

our couches in rows like airplane seats and bought 

a second screen, his gold controllers at the ready.

He used to sit behind my sons and shout Navy SEAL

tactical advice. Which they tolerated, then shortly

met with sincere pleading: Shut up, Dad. Once they

confided they played worse when he watched,

I told my husband, You can’t give advice

unless you learn to play. Regrettably, he does

just that. Here he is again, doling out Band-Aids

to the wounded, swearing now that he’s visible

and knocked by snipers, outraged when pick-axed

to death, Why can’t they just leave me crawling?

most often taken out by the storm itself, lamenting

the treasure he’ll forfeit as the cone of light

descends to claim his Medic’s soul, his plate

of meatloaf and peas congealed under

dewed plastic-wrap on the kitchen counter.

This poem is dedicated to my mother, Mary (1947-2018). And every other mother listening to the sound of Fortnite day, night, dreamtime, and all the hours between. Seven months after my mother passed away (we lost her in January to cancer), I was finally able to write poems during the Write Like You’re Alive 31- day challenge hosted by Zoetic Press this July. And after dashing off thirty somber poems, I needed a little comic relief. 

Rest assured I passed the poem by my husband; he is no stranger to starring occasionally in blogposts, whether it was the time he brought home a puppy without warning (Hopeless Carnage: Sisu the Siberian Husky and the Song of Sedna) or the time he fell in the ocean with a chainsaw and a cell phone (Feral Wife: Two Chainsaws, the Ocean and an Untended Husband) or the time someone called the cops on him when our child was having a tantrum (Car Tantrums, Non-parental Observers, and the Cops). I am not proud of the Fortnite mayhem under our roof, but we are in negotiations to stem the take-over, one day at a time, and isn't the first step just to admit the feral reality? How are you coping with Fortnite Fever? 

Fall Poetry Classes

I love teaching at San Diego Writers, Ink on the second Saturday of every month in the Inspirations Gallery. I am blessed to meet with a fabulous group of writers; we speak from the heart and give our best feedback to encourage the strongest incarnation of your writing self. Here’s a link to the class: Second Saturdays: Poetry Read and Critique. Walk-ins and all level of writer welcome; bring a poem of your own to share with us and you’ll come away with worksheets, submission targets, and example poems to keep you busy until we meet the following month. Our theme for next month is the wide wide world of sports and we meet next on Saturday, October 13.

Or if you prefer, join me online for Poetry Basics which starts *note amended start date: Wednesday, October 3. Whether you are a seasoned poet or just finding your way, come examine the building blocks of poetry. We use the question “What is poetry?” as our guiding inquiry and take a close look at how sound, imagery, comparisons, voice, revision, and titles work together to create your best poems.

Fall Readings

I’ll be reading from the anthology Unmasked: Women Write About Sex and Intimacy After 50 in New Mexico with Renate Golden, Barbara Rockman, Marcia Meier, and Lisa Rizzo at The Society of the Muse of Southwest on September 29, and Op.Cit on September 30. Visit my Events page for more information. Here's a blurb about the anthology by Gloria Steinem:

“Sex for women after fifty is invisible for the same reason that contraception, abortion, and sex between two women or two men has been forbidden: sexuality is supposed to be only about procreation. This lie was invented by patriarchy, monotheism, racism and other hierarchies. Sexuality is and always has been also about bonding, communicating and pleasure. Unmasked helps to restore a human right.”

         -- Gloria Steinem

And if you can't make it to the reading, here's a link to the original version of the story I first shared here on Feral Mom: From the Unsharable Files: Self-Care, Hammers and Sex in a House with Three Children. The rest of the anthology is full of such a fabulous range of experiences, forays, failed and consummated dates, the choice to abstain, and more from women aged fifty and on up. It's a beautiful read, full of perspective and wisdom, definitely something I wish I'd read when I was younger so I'd realize just how wide the spectrum of choices is that we have before us when it comes to love, self-love, risk, and joy.