LEN dodalisque reads for Joan Marie

[dodalisque]

I wonder what weirdness you have in store for me this time.

[Joan Marie]

I'm working on it and will let you know very soon.

[Joan Marie]

First I want to thank you very much nice man for helping me with this problem.
In my village called Schlupsk we had strange woman with pretty cards who helped us in troubled times. Maybe you can do same for me now.

It was year 1919 and times were very hard in Schlupsk but I had great luck and met beautiful woman. I saw she was very hungry so I buy her smoked fish from street vendor and she fall in love with me immediately.

We had so much in common. Her favourite colour is black. My favourite colour is black! Her family killed by Cossacks. My family also killed by Cossacks! It was perfect match! One day sitting by our favourite bog we shared our dreams for future. Hers was to be so rich she could buy her own gravestone. Mine was also to be rich, rich enough to try new drink, Seltzer water. I know these are big dreams, but we were young and thought anything possible.

Cossacks continued to make life in Schlupsk too difficult to bear, so we go on boat to live in United States. Life was not easy there also but compared to living with Cossacks, it was a day at the bog!

I soon get job killing rats at big pickle factory in Brooklyn. It was terrible job but it filled me with hope for future.
Then my greatest happiness came when my wife became big with child. I made her promise that one day our descendants would be rich and powerful.
Then the accident.

I was up on catwalk over factory floor when pack of angry rats chased me and and make me fall backwards into briny vat of pickles just as they were putting heavy lid on barrel. I was trapped. Factory was condemned that day (rats I guess) and there I lay, preserved in pickle brine for 100 years.

I was discovered and brought to hospital. They found for me my only living relative, a great grandson who was same age as me! (I don't count the 100 years in pickle brine, would you?)

I go with him to apartment and you can't believe! This young man tell me he owns SEVEN pair of shoes! Can you believe? And twenty or twent-five pair of socks! He has so many he lost count! And then he offers me drink, seltzer water! I see now that promise I made to my beautiful wife come true!

I ask the boy what he do for money and I don't understand. Something about "app developing" or some strange word. But he tell me he has no money. Not really. I don't understand. He look very rich to me. (7 pairs of shoes!) He lives from inheritance from his grandfather's business (my Son!) who owned brick factory, but that money almost gone.

Well today he got very bad news. Company who promise to buy "app" changed mind and won't buy "app." Say there is some problem with "app." he very upset.

So I have very good idea. I tell him to start Pickle business! It very good business (if you can keep rats away.) Somehow he don't understand and only want to cry in his soup about failed "app". I feel ashamed to see him like this.

So my question kind gentleman with beautiful cards is very simple: I already know pickle factory is great idea, so I don't ask if it will succeed. What I want to know is how can I encourage my great-grandson to believe in himself, to know he comes from strong blood, and to stop to feel sorry for situation and do something!

I love my great-grandson very much but I feel he is lost in this modern world, maybe even worse than me!

I thank you very much for your time. I add now "emoji" that I think is appropriate:

[dodalisque]

First I want to thank you very much nice man for helping me with this problem.
In my village called Schlupsk we had strange woman with pretty cards who helped us in troubled times. Maybe you can do same for me now.

Wow. The veins in my forehead are starting to throb. I'm surprised the village wasn't called Schtuped, though I suppose that is more Yiddish than Russian. In spite of your thick accent I understand you perfectly and hope that my pretty cards are able to help.

[dodalisque]

After hearing your story I realise that I also am lost in the modern world, perhaps even more so than you and your grandson. For I have no knowledge even of pickles or brine or seltzer water or socks or rats or apps or emojis. Especially emojis. That "appropriate" one you sent me looks like a bowl attached to a double-U-shaped pipe, like a very badly designed toilet. The top bend of the pipe is level with the top of the bowl, so to make pickles flow through the pipe you would need to push down on them. If you stopped pushing down on the pickles in the bowl, the flow would stop at the top bend in the pipe. But how this would serve to discourage rats or encourage your grandson I am less clear about. Perhaps my cards can explain.

Your life, forgive me, seems to have been rather grim and uneventful, but you showed great patience and fortitude sitting quietly in a pickle barrel for 100 years until you were discovered and set free. You have much to complain about but you never complain. It does not take much to satisfy you. Even though, like us all, you yearn for luxury and comfort, you know how to live very simply. These seem to be the qualities your grandson needs to learn, to persevere the way you did and to count his many blessings rather than curse his misfortunes. You are also showing great love and devotion by trying to help your spiritless grandson. But I seem to be simply delaying the moment when I must deal the cards and recommend a plan of action. We all need luck to succeed and 7 is a lucky number, so I will choose 7 cards. I also put two extra cards above and below the all-important central card to allow us to expand on the central point.

Mountain (21)

Rider (1) - Coffin (8) - Lily (30) - Heart (24) - Snake (7) - Bear (15) - Bouquet (9)

Key (33)

The Rider is bringing a message in the same way that an idea pops into one's head. You yourself may be the Rider bringing help and inspiration to your grandson, whose enthusiasm for life is as dead as the coffin on the next card. The Coffin also looks like the pickle barrel in which you were trapped. Rider + Coffin therefore suggests that your idea for helping your grandson came to you as a result of your time in the pickle barrel.

The Lily attests to the purity of your pickles and how diligently you protected them from the rascally rats in the factory where you worked. The Heart is the central issue, with the Mountain above and the Key below. This suggests that your grandson's difficulty (Mountain) is in some way also the solution to the problem (Key). Perhaps he is the Mountain + Heart and you are the Key + Heart.

Since you are the same age as your grandson you probably both have a close physical resemblance, and this twin-like similarity between the two of you may be an important part of the plan to reawaken his spirit. The picture of the heart on this card looks quite like a pickle itself. Perhaps more like a pickled beet than a baby cucumber but that's close enough.

The Snake is cunning and nasty, just like rats. The Bear is someone who is strong and determined, like you, but who is also big and fat from having eaten many pickles. The Snake, that is the rats, are hissing at the Bear in the same way that angry rats chased you when you fell in the pickle barrel 100 years ago. The Bouquet at the end of the reading tells us that the story has a happy ending - the sweet smell of success - the sweet smell of pickles. Need I say more?

Unfortunately I have an important appointment with my Wealth Advisor and cannot spare any more time to elucidate further. But I thank you for the gift of this fine bottle of pickles in lieu of silver coins and suggest you get your grandson to send a picture of the selected cards by computer email to the great-grand-daughter of the nice lady with the pretty cards who lived in your village. Hopefully she'll have more luck than I did.

"(I don't count the 100 years in pickle brine, would you?)" - now, that's a funny line.

[Joan Marie]

"(I don't count the 100 years in pickle brine, would you?)" - now, that's a funny line.

Thank you!

Okay, I have to apologise for such a dumb question. This was taken from a terrible movie I just saw called, I think, (I can't even be arsed to check) American Pickle. ?

It's a modern comedy which like 99% of those, it starts with a funny but rather thin premise that serves well for the first 20 minutes or so but then the rest of the movie is just a formulaic slog. I was hoping you might come up with a better ending than they did.

You actually did nail the character (clever, sly, tough) and the happy ending. I'm a little embarrassed about the happy ending. I mean after Shelly Winters getting accidentally/on-purpose drowned by Montgomery Clift last time, it was a kind of a let down.

So the fact you left it as you did was actually pretty accurate. There wasn't any real meat in that situation.

Guess how it ended: The grandson, so impressed by his Great grandfather's ability to make due in any situation inspired him to use his vast tech skills to make the artisanal pickle biz a big hit. But not before he gets in trouble with the health department and blah blah blah.

Or something like that.

These modern "comedies" are such formulas, You can see the arc coming a mile away. You can almost count the pages in the script to get to where the "stakes get raised" and all that crap.

Lesson learned. You need to pick a good book, or a good movie for this exercise to work right.

But it was fun anyway. Thanks!

[dodalisque]

So the fact you left it as you did was actually pretty accurate. There wasn't any real meat in that situation.

Thank goodness. You've made my day. I've been racking my brain for a week trying to think of where that situation could go, so I'm ecstatic that there was no masterstroke that I was missing. The cards that came up were not very inspiring either, so in that respect they were perfect. I don't know if it's the Covid shutdown or what but I think we're all feeling a bit blah at the moment. If we're getting nostalgic for Shelly Winters movies things must be really bad!