LEN: Joan reads for dodalisque

[Joan Marie]

hello my friend.

Ready to receive your question any time. No big hurry, I have a strange week ahead but I will do the best I can.

[dodalisque]

My name is Alice. I am nearly 30 years old. It is 1843. I have lived for as long as I can remember in a place quite near to the town of Hobart on the southernmost tip of Tazmania facing south to the Antarctic. My father is the Rector of the Anglican church. All things considered, I am lucky to have a friend - Aggie - close to my own age to talk to and share duties with. We are both lucky, I suppose. We tell each other everything. But often that does not amount to much.

Today, when I entered the church to sweep and wash the floor, which I do three times a week, a dark shape approached me from behind. It was a man. He immediately fell at my feet, pleading humbly and begging for my silence and compassion. He had a hood over his head made of rough sacking. Crude eye-holes had been cut in the cloth, but his eyes were hidden in shadow. I could see lice crawling along the seams of the material. The stench coming from him was terrible.

Prisoners in the nearby penal colony are forced to wear these hoods at all times. And indeed the man, who sounded gentle enough, told me he had been unjustly convicted as a poisoner and had escaped and intended to borrow some of my clothes in exchange for his prison garb to slip undetected onto the cargo ship "Constancy" which brings supplies to us twice a year and is currently moored in the bay making preparations for its departure tomorrow. The man must have had information about the ship's itinerary and timed his escape to give him time to hide on board before he had been discovered missing from the jail.

I think I might be in love because I promised I would not give away his secret to anyone. Aggie thought he must be hungry so we took him a little tea and bacon that Aggie stole from the rooming-house where she works. Even a small amount of tea and bacon would be noticed if I took any from the Rectory. He said he will tap quietly on my shutters early tomorrow morning when he comes to fetch the clothes and thank me before he goes down to the ship.

I do not know what I feel or what I should do, so I have come to you because I want to know what will happen when he taps on my shutters at dawn tomorrow morning and how it will all turn out.

[Joan Marie]

Well! This is quite a quandary Alice.
I'm more than happy to consult my cards and see what I can find that might help you.

[Joan Marie]

I do not know what I feel or what I should do, so I have come to you because I want to know what will happen when he taps on my shutters at dawn tomorrow morning and how it will all turn out.

Well Alice, I must say that from your description you have revealed a thing or two about what you might wish to happen.

Let's see what the cards say.

Since you asked 2 questions, I drew two rows of three cards. Since the questions are related, I will read those rows separately and together.

from the Aurum Lenormand by Melissa Wotherspoon

Ring - Sun - Rider
Bear - Whip - House


The first row, Ring - Sun - Rider, tells me what will happen is that you will keep your commitment (Ring) and send this man happily on his way (Sun - Rider). You seem convinced of his innocence and have helped him thus far, so when you hear the tap, you'll respond.
However, I also see the possibility that you will ask him to take you with him. That maybe once he sheds the lice-covered burlap, you'll see your handsome prince and wish to be taken away.

Let's look at the next row, Bear - Whip - House. The second part of your question, how will it all turn out is another matter entirely. I'm seeing the Bear as representing your father, a figure of power and the whip and the house indicate some real discord in the home.

When your father finds out that you've helped this prisoner and done so without consulting him, (why didn't you by the way? Because you knew he would not be sympathetic to this man's plight) there will be hell to pay. And maybe you know this already and that is pushing you toward the option of asking the man to take you with him.

Now I will read pairs, top and bottom, the top card being the strongest influence.
Ring - Bear, this points to you being willing to defy your father.
Sun - Whip, the longing for happiness, getting out of Tasmania and mopping the church floors for the rest of your long lonely life, will make you take the risk of punishment.
Rider - House, leaving home

Now, 2 V patterns:
Bear- Sun - House, Your father has provided you with a safe secure home and
Ring - Whip - Rider, leaving will definitely cause you some pain. There will be physical discomfort and also the loss of your friend, the guilt of leaving her behind and of disappointing your father.

So, what will happen and how will it all turn out?
You are going to leave with this man and find your happiness in this world, but only through much suffering.

And if you chicken out about leaving, you'll still help the man, trading his clothes for something you took from your father and spend the rest of your days with only that lousy stinking piece of burlap to remind you that once you nearly saved yourself, but didn't.

I wish you luck Alice!

[dodalisque]

Logical, cogent, insightful, convincing, and pretty damn close. The question comes from a short story called "Means of Escape" by one of my favourite modern English writers, Penelope Fitzgerald. (Her novel "The Beginning of Spring" is the loveliest book of the 20th century. She's the Mozart of English prose.) What happens is that Alice's only friend Aggie intercepts the convict on his way to Alice's house and has sex with him, which convinces him to leave with Aggie. Why didn't Alice think of doing that? Alice, Aggie and the convict must all have been desperate for sex in that desolate hell. But Alice was too nice and proper, too religious, in the narrowest sense of the term, and so is condemned to a lifetime of loneliness and misery. Hardly fair, I suppose, but that's life. A possible clue is that Aggie was the one who thought of taking the man some stolen tea and bacon. Even the stealing is a little clue. Perhaps she is a little more compassionate and empathetic than Alice. More giving.

The convict never actually taps on Alice's shutters at all. She waits for him all night, laying on the bed in her traveling clothes with her bags packed, and then watches the ship sail out of the harbour and off into the distance. When Aggie is discovered missing, I suppose she works out what has happened. There is no-one for her to talk to about it. Alice receives a letter of thanks and apology from the man 8 years later. Mail delivery would not have been very frequent back then. He and Aggie are living happily in Portsmouth, England with a couple of children. No letter from Aggie. What a betrayal! But, the writer is saying, women, even the very best of friends, are virtually compelled to betray each other in a world where their chances of personal happiness are so restricted. It's a sort of feminist parable.

I find the story a very funny and bitter parody of a common dynamic in male/female relationships, at least according to the complaints of a lot of my female friends. Any woman searching dating sites nowadays looking for even a half-decent guy must surely sympathise with both women when their idea of a hot date is a stinking convict in a filthy hood (blind date?) on the run from the law! The convict is a pitiable figure too, as all men are who are seeking to "escape" from their own stifling masculinity. He has escaped from the world of men - the penal (penis?) colony - untrustworthy, faceless, stinking, lonely, desperate men - and throws himself on the mercy of the first woman he finds. There's a funny line when Aggie is told about the lice crawling on the hood: "Oh, I suppose the prisoners are responsible for doing their own laundry." The implication is that bloody men will allow lice to crawl all over their face before they will feel compelled to do their own laundry. Penelope Fitzgerald is the master of deadpan humour.

I'm not sure where the actual story is lurking in the cards you drew. Perhaps if the Bear was Aggie instead of Alice's father. I know the Bear is often associated with feminine or motherly qualities. The Whip makes a good "betrayal" card. I'll give it some more thought and maybe we can tweak the reading together. I'm currently trying to do the reading for you about the boat trip and the wayward boyfriend but when that's done we should have another look at these cards.

[Joan Marie]

I'm not sure where the actual story is lurking in the cards you drew.

I'm sitting here trying to reverse-engineer this reading.

By the way your story was a good choice because of the good twist in it. It's a real test of the reader's skill for not looking for the expected conclusion in the cards. Although in hindsight, I should have caught that thing about Aggie and the bacon.

I'm seeing a couple of things though. When I did the "V" readings and you have Ring-Whip-Rider could mean somebody is running off with the guy and getting married but it ain't you.

Then the opposite "V" Bear-Sun-House could be someone with more power than you (Aggie because of the sex) will have the happy home.

Reading the first row, Ring-Sun-Rider looks, again, like someone's riding off happy in to the sunset.
The second row, Bear-Whip-House, well whip +house is never good.

Where I really blew this reading was in ignoring any role that Aggie might play. Except I imagined her as hurt being left behind. So just a passive role.

Hmm.

Anyway that was great fun! I'm having a look now at the reading you did for me about my boyfriend on the lake.

[dodalisque]

I'm sitting here trying to reverse-engineer this reading.

How about reading the 6 cards as two narrative lines: the promise (Ring) of the happy (Sun) arrival of the man (Rider) results in enormous (Bear) suffering (Whip) in your lonely house (House). But that still leaves most of the questions unanswered. When I started these exercises I sort of hoped I would see the whole story, but I'm starting to realise that the cards might focus on small areas of the whole and leave us as readers to fill in the gaps. I know when I read "live" for someone I tend to feel as though I have the person's life pretty much figured out, but what an absurdly arrogant assumption. Even if you do get an accurate intuitive feeling about their personality, their actual lives are infinitely more complex. "Humility is endless," as T.S. Eliot says somewhere.