poemtry and prose

The drive back to Lexi's apartment seemed to go on forever. The lights took longer to turn green and it seemed as if every Sunday driver car was out on the road. Lexi channel surfed the radio, hoping to find something good to pass the time by further. She repeatedly pressed the button over and over, moving the FM station from classical, to christian rock, to heavy metal to jazz and finally alternative rock before settling on the silence that the OFF button could bring. Occasionally she looked down at the light blue package sitting precariously on the seat next to her.

Anxiety and fear washed over her, "What have I done? I do not know if I am even going to be using these things for anything. Does this make me a pagan or weirdo? I mean, I am not sure I even believe in this stuff." Thoughts of disbelief and self-doubt ran through her head every time she paused at a street corner to turn or wait for the electronic red light to turn green. Finally, she turned another corner and drove up to the big Elk tree that sat next to her apartment complex.

Lexi parked her car and carefully cradled her package as she slowly and purposefully got out of her car. She fumbled with her keys as she went to lock her car door. "What the fuck," she thought, "why the hell do I feel like I'm trying to sneak something like Meth or Coke or pot into my home? This is really dumb."

The alarm on her car sounded with a resonating BEEP and the light under her dashboard, proving that there indeed was an alarm, flashed and pulsated slowly. Lexi drapped her slingback over her shoulder and headed up the stairs to her second floor apartment. Her apartment complex was smaller than others in the small college town. It only had a few buildings and all were painted neutral shades of tan and grey with light green trim. Each building had big, bold and black building letters attached with shiny screws, now weathered from years of weather and wear, near each starwell. Lexi breathed out a puff of cold smoke into the air and ascended the final steps to her apartment.

Thankfully, none of her neighbors were outside, smoking. They liked to give her shit about her gangly height and frizzy red hair. And of course, their catcalls were always met with the same reaction, a single middle finger extended high into the air. And that was always followed by the sharp sound of her door slamming shut so she did not have to deal with the stink of their cancer sticks and the ooohs and awwws coming from their mouths. Lexi could not wait until she was done with her grad studies. It seemed like she had been in school forever and going nowhere fast. Sure, being an athropological major was a tough road. Even harder considering she chose symbolism and religion as her speciality field, but it was something she felt close to. Her parents never really understood and when she was in her third year of undergraduate studies at Portland State University in downtown Portland, they had decided to stop supporting her. So she had to resort to getting grants, work studies and other means to fund her college education and career opportiunities. That drove a complete wedge between her and her family and after that day, Lexi almost stopped talking to her parents. Occasionally, they would exchange holiday cards or short and terse phone calls but that was about it.

Lexi turned the foyer light on in her apartment and quietly shut the door behind her. She set the keys and the Aquarian Dreams bag on the small internal windowsill that seperated the foyer from her tiny living room and bedroom. She lived in a small one room studio apartment. On the wall furthest from her, was a small kitchen area, complete with stove and mini-fridge built in. A tiny bathroom, with a bath tub, toilet and floating sink sat in a recess just off the other side of the kitchen area. In a fit of wanting privacy, Lexi had bought a wooden pole, painted it black and got some fabric to tie over the pole in a make shift curtain so she and any guests who visited her place, could shower in peace. Not that many visitors actually came to her home anymore. Not since Dylan left her.

She sighed as she stared at a picture on the windowsill. In the picture, she stood, smiling and all dressed up in a long black croquet-style dress with a cropped leather jacket over it and knee high boots. Next to her was a tall, curly, black haired boy with black framed glasses on, wrapping his arm around her. This was Dylan and the image on the window was all that was left of their 3 year relationship. For the first time since she left the store, Lexi had forgotten all about her new purchase. Instead, her attention was now focused towards her ex and the photograph. "I miss you Dylan. I wish that things had ended better than it did. I wish that you would come back to me," she said as she fondled his features on the photograph.

A loud slam sounded from just outside her apartment. Lexi jumped into the air a little bit but calmed down when she realized that it was only the jerk kids returning from whatever mischief they were causing that day. She dreaded what the night would bring as they were prone to drinking. She never really felt safe once they had moved into her apartment next door. But when Dylan stayed with her, everything seemed brighter and more colorful and very much more safe and secure. He was her warm security teddy bear who protected her from the evils of the weirdos outside.

Before Lexi took a step onto her hardwood floors, she removed her boots. They sounded with a resounding clunk onto the floor. She stretched out her toes as they escaped from their enclosed prison and pushed her arms out into the air. Her stomach growled a little bit from having not eaten and Lexi stepped out towards her kitchen. Her diet these days, due mostly because of her classes, was poor and she rarely had enough money for anything more than raman, eggs and some canned vegitables. Which she though was okay because it meant that she did not gain much weight at all.

She removed a small pot from the sink and stared at it. While she had used it the night before, she decided that it was clean enough for another helping of raman. Her right hand pulled out a package of Oriental flavored raman from the cupboard directly above her as she ran some warm water from her faucet into the pot. Once it was full, she quickly opened the package of raman and dumped it into the water and set that on her stove, which she put on medium heat. The gas heater clicked up and light a small fire under the pot. Lexi smiled at the sight, as the gas heat and stove was one nice benefit to having lived in the studio. She was thankful that her landlords also catered to the student's needs and allowed them to have a cheeper rent than most.

While the food cooked slowly on the stove top, Lexi removed her clothes and let them drop to the floor. It was time for a shower. She went into her tiny bathroom and started the water in her shower. Twenty minutes later, she was warmed from the water and well fed from the raman noodles and vegitables. She sat on her futon as she ate and looked at the stack of research books piled around the floor for her books and her final dissertation on the effects of symbolism and how they play a large role in the development of a personal belief structure. Her work was slow going because she had to prove every little detail that there were a set of common symbols and they played a huge role in the creation and development of a basic ritualistic and religious belief structure.

Thinking about her dissertation and the ideas of symbolism reminded Lexi of the new tarot deck that she had just got. "Well, I guess I better start playing with it. After all, I did just spend some cash that I do not really have to spend on frivolous things like this. " She set the bowl back on the counter and grabbed the bag from the windowsill.

First she removed the book from the bag. She sat it in her lap and opened it up to a random page. Most of the book did not make sense but she knew that it was okay. It was how she normally started to work on digesting content. She would peruse through a book first and then attempt to read it cover to cover. This particular section was talking about how tarot cards should never really be touched by another person's hands unless explicitly told by the owner of the deck. It all had to do with how the energy was kept and transferred into and from the cards to work the magick behind them. This book took the stance that if someone else other than the owner touched the deck, then the deck would need to be cleansed of the intruding energy either by fire candle, burying the whole deck in a bowl of sea salts or purified by a smudge stick (which was a bundle of sage or cedar tied together with a string and then light with a lighter until a stream of smoke waifted off it). Lexi shook her head and immediately wanted to dismiss the idea that someone else's touch could taint a pack of cards to the point that it needed special purification but she held back the urge to close the book and return the whole get up back to the Aquarian Dreams.

Instead, she flippped forward a few pages and came across a strange section. Naomi had mentioned to her about how tarot decks could be used in a full ritual setting. This book actually had a whole section written about the process and procedures of doing just this. Apparently, you could invoke the energies surrounding the planet to actually help nudge and push them to work more in your favor for a particular outcome. Lexi briefly scanned this section and then stumbled across five well laid out tarot rituals. The book's author had included some small sample rituals to go with the rhectoric on tarot usage in rituals. Her eyes came across a ritual to help creativity come out, a stereotypical ritual to help one get a better job or position at work, one to be done to honor the full moon, one to help protect a person from negativity and hexes cast by others, and finally one to alievate a broken heart in a relationship to help the person get over the bad times and cleanse themselves for a better and brighter future.

It was this last ritual that caught Lexi's attention and pulled her into wanting to read the book and work with the cards more. She wanted nothing more than to attempt to get over her feelings for Dylan. When he first told her that he no longer wanted to see her, it devistated her. She could not eat or sleep for days and instead, laid silently in her bed, crying. He was her protector and best friend and only family member for the longest time and she really did not know how to survive on her own. And just when she thought there was no real way to help ease her broken heart, here was a book and a tool that she could maybe use to help her get over her pain.

Lexi grabbed a few post-it notes and quickly jotted down some ideas and stuck them to the appropriate pages in her book. She then set it down and decided to focus on the deck itself. After all it was the deck that kicked off this new excursion.

The bag rustled and crackled as she withdrew the Windchaser Tarot from the bottom of the bag. The black box, still slick and smelled of newness, had been smeared with her fingerprints from taking it out of the protective covering of the shrink wrap. Slowly and carefully she slipped out the flap that held the box shut and removed the cards. Before she even looked at the cards more closely and in depth, she held all seventy-eight cards up to her nose and inhailed deeply. The sweet but bitter scent of the paper mill mixed with whatever printing press inks were used to develop the deck filled her nose. She wrinkled it and decided that while the smell was not the most pleasant thing she had smelled it was better than some of the college text books that she had purchased over her 8 years of studying.

This time, she gradually took her time as she flipped through all the images in the deck. Once more she sat staring at The Fool again. Under the darker light in her apartment, the card seemed a bit duller than it had appeared when seen under the bright flurescent lights at the store. Lexi felt the lined, linen texture of the card and traced the outline of the gargoyle pedistal. She moved the card from side to side hoping that if she held the card at a better angle, then some connection deeper than what she already had gotten would leap from the card. The drawing still took her breath away and she really had wished that she could get in contact with the artist and find out what inspired them to craft a deck so deftly and delicately and yet contain very personal and emotionally stirring messages.

Smoothing out a spot on her matress she gently set the card down and slipped the next card into her hand. This one, entitled The Magician had a man with a black, feathery raven mask on his face. Grayscale wings colored from black to grey to white grew from out of his back. These were adorned with necklaces and beads that hung off the feathers like jewelry worn in one's ears. He perched atop a slate slab of stone which was speckled with dark green moss. In his hands, he held a small clear crystal globe that seemed to shine with the light of a sun that hovered high above him off the card. There was something primal and powerful about the card and it seemed to set the tone for the whole deck.

"Now I see what Naomi meant about how addicting collecting tarot cards could be. This deck is absolutely amazing. The symbolism is truely unique and stark and I have never seen anything like it before. I know that if I decide to cover the cards and meanings in my research I may have to get several other decks to compare and contrast."

Lexi spent the next few hours looking at the deck and reading sections of the book. She stretched out and stared at the clock at one point and the time read midnight, or witching hour. "Crap," Lexi said, "I should really get some sleep before the weekend escapes me and I do not get anything done."

Before she went to bed though, she decided to take the book and Naomi's advice and pulled out the pack of Dragon's Blood incense. Lighting it off her stove, she blew out the flame on the stick with a sharp blast of air the moment that it caught fire. Carefully she put the deck in one hand and as the incense stick burned for a bit, filling her apartment with the powerfuly mossy and musky sent, she gently passed the tarot deck through the smoke that billowed off the small tip of charcoal. She passed the deck back and forth slowly through the smoke for three more times, thinking that the connection between the three goddesses and other infamious religious trine numbers would do the trick to cleanse the deck of whatever psychic energy goop was on it before she bought it.

"Well, I guess that is it. I guess you are cleansed and are now officially mine," she said as she put the stick out and carried it back to her bed where she softly set it down next to her pillow. After her lights were turned off, she slept.