it’s funny that the four of swords appears now, when my life has felt frantic. august is a month when folks in portland are very much aware that the grey is coming; everyone is filling their calendars in anticipation of the barrenness to come, like bears preparing to hibernate.
part of me wants to start now. the temperatures have dropped and the skies are overcast. but even then that frantic feeling starts creeping in: i have so much to do, so much to prepare, so much to write. (here is the gods’ honest truth: running a d&d campaign really is at least a part-time job. and somehow i suckered myself into running two!)
despite the years of buddhist meditation under my belt, i often forget to return to my breath. the meditation i learned to practice in college is deceptively simple: all you do is focus on the in-and-out of your breath, as though your mind is keeping sentry at a village gate and your breath wanders in and out. you don’t follow it, you don’t count it, you just notice as it passes.
and then, of course, you realize that you’ve been thinking about something else - the noise from the street, or what you should have for dinner, or how annoyed you are at that one thing that jerk did earlier. once you realize this, you can try to realign your focus back to your breath.
the four of swords isn’t about meditation, exactly, but it has always felt like a meditative card to me. it speaks to how necessary rest is. this week, darlings, make sure your calendar isn’t so full that you forget to recover your energy. (unless filling your calendar is how you do that! in which case, go wild!)
this week’s deck: the dreaming way tarot