nine of pentacles

week of 2/26/23: nine of pentacles

There comes a time every year I need to know the meanings of tarot cards immediately so I can see the future which I have forgotten.

Those times come after winter has lasted months, longer somehow than usual winters, and I have been making potions that take weeks and cloths woven with spells, and skidding across the mountain on skis, and stewing lamb and lentils and tomatoes, and reading every book anyone has ever lent me and then rereading them again. I have been strapping on snowshoes and walking late each morning when the sun weakly emerges through thin clouds, everything thin, everything wan, everything dull. Until I forget that spring could actually come and I ask the sky, will flowers ever exist again?

After a winter like that, after you haven’t seen a flower grow up out of the ground in five months and still there are two months to come of raging snowstorms and wet freezes and cloudy days (how are we to live under the weight of all these metal clouds and also worry about the wretched drought?)--after such a winter, I am wont to slap my tarot cards on the table. Will spring come, I demand. Depending on the year, I ask: will love or money or a trip or, at the least, a distracting bit of drama or an interesting problem come? 

Look, this does have to do with the nine of pentacles, I think. Okay? Be patient. I get frustrated with the nine of pentacles because it dares to say: take a breath. It says: you have enough. It says: you are almost there. It says: even though you have forgotten it, even though it seems like something so far away you don’t know even how to articulate what is so wonderful about it, spring is all around because it is inside you. It says: live in this ever-abundant moment; you’re so, so close.