Thoughts Skipping from Stone to Stone.
Tuesday 9th of June 2020
Images of places I’ve been, memories of them flashed before me then moved away. Each place, each moment of my history, remembered and then let go of. They’re insignificant now, they don’t matter. I saw myself standing the in kitchen, dressed in clothes similar to mine, but slightly different. I stopped in my tracks, mixing bowl in hand, the me there, staring back at the me here, with a look of what? Disappointment? Disbelief? Did that look say, ‘What a waste?’
Something pulled apart, I felt it, one thing pulling, separating into two, my whole being felt it. The space around me pulsated, blue, black, flickering in and out, distant stars burning.
Then the bell sounds. Times up. Meditation over. What now?
Today I felt like if I just let go of everything I’m supposed to be and just be, I’d be okay. No more expectations, just be.
“Great Mother, may we stay in our uncomfortableness so we may heal. May we drop our defences so we may heal. May we stay in difficult conversations so we may heal. May we be clearly guided so we may heal. Please guide us, please lead us, please show us the way.” – Rebecca Campbell.
I feel like I’ve been fractured and only a piece of me is left in this world. It’s this feeling of being untethered, like a helium balloon left to float away into something unknown. I don’t even feel scared, I’m too detached to feel scared. I feel disconnected, from myself, from everything.
‘The solution seems simple to me. You feel fractured, like pieces of you are scattered across multiple places. Then locate all the different places, find each piece of you and put yourself back together.’
‘That doesn’t sound difficult at all.’
‘Since when have you ever taken the easy path?’
‘Where do I even start?’
‘Right here. With me and The Moon Emporium.’
What are they called in Harry Potter? Horcruxes? Item in which pieces of the soul are hidden. Can’t horcruxes only be created after committing a murder? I wonder who I killed.
In The Moon Emporium, the domain of Luna, she guides me to four objects. I feel pieces of myself in them, locked away and hidden, objects that represent parts of myself denied, supressed.
A pocket watch I carried around with me when I worked at Primark. I’d purchased it just before I started there. It reminded me of ‘Alice in Wonderland’, the White Rabbit. I’d always wanted a pocket watch, the old timey-ness of it, the grace, the historical weight, the idea that it could have been an heirloom, a piece of history, despite the fact that it was a £5 pocket watch bought from Claire’s.
This pocket watch kept time for me throughout my time at Primark. Then when I went back into the purgatory of unemployment, it hung from a nail above my bed, to tell me the time when I woke up.
The pocket watch was to set me apart, no one else used a pocket watch. It was a symbol, a piece of me that shone through the mandatory uniform. It represented me. Then the battery died and I meant to get a new one, but what was the point, it was just a useless piece, unnecessary decoration hanging above my bed. I could just as easily take it down, put it away, forget about it.
The second object, The Thoth Tarot. Not originally mine. They were gifted to my mother by her friend, a friend she no longer sees or speaks to. There was a time when she would visit every week with something new she’d found, discovered. She’d come around with crystals and say: ‘I saw it and it told me it was for you.’
She told my mum to be careful with these cards, they need to be treated in a certain way, if not, they can lead to darker energies. Of course this intrigued me. I was in secondary school, I was a goth, I was into Wicca, I wanted to touch something dark.
My mum never used the cards, so a few years later I asked if I could have them and she said yes. But I never really felt connected to them, they never really responded to me and nor I to them. It was almost the exact opposite, I felt rejected by them. They didn’t belong to me, they didn’t want me, no matter how much I loved them and I did. I loved the art, I loved the meanings, the symbolism, the secret stories they told. They revealed a new way of seeing the world, religion and the potential of it.
Now, those tarot cards remind my of the Basanos from the Lucifer comics, cards with a soul and will of their own.
I’ve since given up with the Thoth Tarot, I abandoned them, but they were a part of me, of who I wanted to be, like the pocket watch.
The third item she guides me to is a mirror.
In a charity shop in Fishponds was an oval, ornate, gold mirror, worth £30 but being sold for £10, of course I had to get it. It was the mirror from ‘Snow White’, it was the Queen’s mirror, magick and powerful. I was listening to a lot of Cradle of Filth at the time and it was the witch’s mirror, a soul mirror, a portal to another world.
“Mirror, mirror on the wall, shouldst not grave pleasures be thy all. For if I shall see thy will be done, grant me the witchcraft of thy tongue.’ – ‘The Twisted Nails of Faith’, Cradle of Filth.
I loved that mirror, it hung on my bedroom wall for years, an icon. Then some Feng Shui book told me that mirrors in the bedroom were bad luck, black holes for money, and it made sense to me. It was as good an explanation as any for why everything in my life had fallen apart and why I was struggling to make ends meet. It couldn’t hurt to see of things improved if I took it down. But with no where else in the house to put it, it ended up in the back of an overstuffed wardrobe and forgotten about.
The fourth item, playing cards. These cards aren’t mine, I’ve never played with them, in fact, I’m pretty sure there’s more than a few cards missing. These cards belonged to my uncle.
When he died and we cleared out his flat, these cards ended up at the bottom of a cardboard box from the corner shop, Quavers, or some other cheap snack brand printed on the side. Things were divided among the family, other things snatched and hidden away. Some things were thrown own, others donated. I got a box of old playing cards, I guess no one else wanted them, looking back in it, it does seem like a free for all mess, scavengers around a corpse, literally. I even remember one of my aunties finding £50 in a pocket of one of his shirts and saying: ‘He meant for me to have this.’ Like he’d planned his death and left that £50 just for her. I was sixteen, maybe seventeen back then and the whole thing was so… surreal. But maybe it gave her comfort to think he knew he was going to die and in knowing it, he left money behind, just for her. It wasn’t just his shopping money or anything.
Anyway, I kept the cards, tattered box and all. They were a part of him, and he was a part of me, still is. The cards are the part of me that he gave me. They tell me it’s okay to be unconventional, to the on the outside, to find my own way. I’d forgotten that.
