5 of Cups
close up from Take Your Time
How long should grief last?
When is it time to turn around and see that fifth cup, the ace of cups, waiting to regenerate you, to start something new and fresh? Isn’t it okay to wallow in sorrow for a while? Are we just sulking over spilled milk? Our loss is real and hard. How can anyone but you judge your own timeline of healing? Why should we judge how others are grieving? Who knows the sorrow they have swallowed?
What a crazy hard time we are living in. Innocent people are shot or deported while our leaders tear apart our values out of megalomania and narcissism. And we are so divided, families, neighbors, Americans. But we are ALL grieving right now. We are all disappointed. It's easy to get lost in that darkness, to stare into those shadows of humanity. To doom scroll the news. To see only the four broken glasses that can never be refilled. A broken stability. To cry over spilled wine. And for however long you need, my friend, you should take the time. Perhaps you will go deep, following the cracks in the dry earth like a map for healing the spirit, so deep that you will break through the bottom of your paradigm and come out into something new. Perhaps you will find truth and new growth there. Or maybe, when you are ready, you will turn so easily and see that fifth cup, over-brimming with possibility, waiting for you this whole time.
Water flows under the bridge, from past to future, a timeline for grief. And light breaks through the shadows marking the path to hope and renewal. I saw this ‘fairy door’ in Ireland, walking in an ancient forest, and took the photo I used for this painting. I teased my partner that if he went through to the light, a hundred years would pass here for only one day lived in fairy land. Luckily he hung around. Sometimes sadness feels endless- like we are ghosts in time while everyone else moves on. The image of the bridge over the water was in Ireland as well, outside Killarney, (sans sheep). The figure came from a photo I took of a wax person in a dungeon in M’Dina, Malta, a prisoner underground; as we are trapped in our sorrow during real grief. We are also like ghosts, incorporeal, barely there. So my figure was painted in India Ink, washed out, themself broken, spilled out, and disappearing into the cracked ground.
Wait, what?? Four cups spilled? One cup waiting? Traditionally (RWS) the five of cups portrays a black robed figure with three spilled cups before him and two behind. I did lose three women I loved in the last year. So should I have painted only three cups? Maybe. But I feel like the chair has been kicked out from under me, from under the United States, un-united, its four founder legs broken. And somewhere behind me (I'm really having a hard time seeing it) there’s a promise of the full cup. More is broken lately, and less great opportunities waiting- four to one, not three to two. The landlord of the gallery space where I have worked and shown for over ten years has not renewed our lease. The business next door (there for only 2 years to our 20), persuaded our landlord to let them take over the whole building for more rent. Or perhaps it was our landlord's idea. Capitalistic greed at its finest. Yes, it's just business, but meanly done. What cup, what better space awaits us? What can our little community of local artists hope to find? Then there are my two grown children, moved away into their lives, and I cry at the grocery store when I see food I would have cooked especially for them. Ariel Lawhorm writes, in her book, The Frozen River, "Like all mothers, I have long since mastered the art of nursing joy at one breast and grief at the other." Can I look out to the dark shadowed forest of my sorrow and simultaneously drink from the regenerative cup? I think this is what I’ve been trying to do, what we’ve all been trying to do. We are nursing grief and joy together. And like all manic multi-tasking, we flip back and forth between the two rather unsuccessfully. I personally need to slow down. Take time for grief, and then take time for healing and moving on to the next thing. Most people we encounter are overflowing with rage and grief, tension from this political horror show. I had an estate sale for my mother in law two weeks ago. People were horrible. They stole silver plate items and tools, and snapped at my kindness like my four dollar item was an overcharged insult. “Just keep it then!!”, they spat at me. I swear to you, Kind Reader, I am very kind and it wasn't deserved. We are all on edge. Lovely people came in as well, but all I can recall are the stolen items, the mean exchanges, the metaphorical broken wine glasses.
And how do we find the strength to turn and see that cup that awaits us? It's like you have to pretend it’s there until your brain can manifest it’s reality. It is hope. I pulled the magician to go with this five of cups step in my life, and so took notice when I heard this quote in Tarot is fucking cool (podcast #59- 5 of cups) "Making the thing energetically... there's always this core of you in the middle, which is yourself in black- "I" in the cape, but there's always these Bobby play sets that you can put on him... the flow coming through- almost reverse engineering it. So making the thing first physically before the change is energetically out in the other world. It starts to come into play-[it’s] the magician." I love and abhor this fake it till you’ve made it mentality. It seems artificial. As my thoughtful therapist Julia says “insight and behavior change aren't easily coupled. It's not that you're inventing something from nothing but choosing to focus on the positive.” It's the visualization and acknowledgment of something better, the actually kind people who came to that estate sale, the new renters we found, not the thieves. We need to savor the sweet moments in the day so we can bolster ourselves for the spilled cups. We need to give ourselves time to grieve. But when we can, let's visualize what it’s like to be better, for our world to be better. Even if it IS made up, or acted out, let’s visualize our country and our hearts whole, the cracks in our communities and spirit filled with gold, like a Japanese kintsugi cup, more beautiful and real for its sorrow, for the grief it has known.
Take your time.
Incorporeal, you are the ghost of sorrows.
Go deep my friend, follow the cracks in the dry earth like a map for healing. Like a philosophy.
Go so deep that you will break through the bottom of your paradigm
and come out into some new truth. What is the timeline of grief? How long does water run under the bridge, from past to future? I can't judge your grief and you have no idea how much sorrow I've swallowed. Take your time. Be possessive. When we are ready, we will turn and see the path through the shadows. Then, we will fill our wounds with gold and become something beautiful.
