for example

so this morning i sat at the cafe with the morning paper and played through exactly three hands of calculation before getting out the tarot deck.

any number of times i have brought the deck and a notebook to this cafe and left them in the bag. today, a different table, facing a different direction.

an aside. one of these days i want to write a separate post entirely on the subject of "will," asking the [cartesian skeptic] to reflect for a moment on the processes that operate at or just above the autonomic level, not quite subconscious but nearly so.

breathing of course, the control of which is often used as a path to meditative states. but also the finer motor actions involved in bringing the coffee cup to your lips, sipping, swallowing, putting the cup back onto the table, picking up the cards, shuffling, dealing them out. on a gross scale, of course, these are consciously directed, but the minute details are so habitual that they have slipped below consciousness.

i am asking you to bring them forward. watch your hands as you shuffle. maybe close and open your eyes at intervals to introduce a sort of stop motion visualization to it. see it as a film in which you are the observer but not the actor. stop talking to yourself.

okay, three cards.

this morning they were the knight of swords, reversed, flanked on the left by the six of swords, also reversed, and on the right by (12) the hanged man.

air and water compatible, so the knight, albeit reversed, is well dignified. in my notebook i wrote "writer's block." the six suggesting a shift in my way of thinking about the problem. hanged man of course major, suggesting a surrender, a letting go.

and so we begin.