a confession: i have started this newsletter at least a dozen times, and i have nothing to show for it. as i’ve said before, i’m a girl who lives a little too much in her own head, and this makes it hard to talk about feelings, sometimes.
on top of which, something about desire has always felt incredibly private. i’ve never liked talking about relationships i’m in until after the fact, even to my closest friends. i’ll write pages upon pages about them in my journals, analyzing them and picking them apart for meaning (hello, virgo moon). but i don’t talk about them, not really.
sometimes, often, i hide behind pop culture. it can be easier to talk about feelings in relation to characters that are not me. several versions of this newsletter started with discussion of moulin rouge and my over-identification with ewan mcgregor’s character (a writer who was obsessed with love, aka me as a teenager). none of those versions were especially fruitful.
so here we are, my darlings, faced with the two of cups.
the two of cups is a minor arcana reflection of the lovers, and as such has similar themes. it’s about coming together, in friendship or desire or both. i love the illustration in this deck, too, which the guide describes as “two people enacting a pinky swear/promise, sealing a pact.”
there’s something about it that screams queer to me, maybe because it reminds me of girlhood pinky promises and crushes on friends and youth. maybe because it reminds me of my friend vanessa’s newsletter, and her encouragement to kiss your friends.
(there was at least one version of today’s newsletter that wanted to talk about queerness, and being friends with your exes, and crushes on friends, but that version too was unfruitful. perhaps some other day.)
let’s all, this week, encourage the tender parts of ourselves. let’s have crushes. let’s come together, as friends or lovers or whatever else.
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this week’s deck: sasuraibito tarot
this week’s crystals: moonstone, rose quartz