poemtry and prose

Lexi smiled to herself, she was proud she called on Naomi to help discuss her tarot problems. Or what she thought were problems. But as Naomi spoke more wisdom and was more familiar about the cards, it became more clear to Lexi that she was being irrational and negative in her views on the cards. Naomi proved her wrong and told her that she should place more trust in the cards and the positive light that they had on her life so far.

And now, as her belly was full with the yummy pad thai noodles and chicken and peanut sauce that was her only meal for the day, they decided to hang around and wander the mall. Even hours after having gotten together for lunch, she had a confidence smile on her face to help last her the rest of the night. After they had lunch they loafed around the mall area, peeking into several shops and window shopping. Lexi ended up purchasing some hair dye from Snips!, the local hair saloon and beauty product store whose tiny room smelled more of flowers and herbal remedies than stale shampoo and chemical hair card product. Lexi, Naomi and the hair stylist that met them all agreed that while her red hair was gorgeous by itself, it could stand to have a little dab of color to lighten the lows and darken the reds of her hair. So they had bought Lexi a highlighting kit that promised to make her hair more copper than the natural light strawberry red head she was born with. Naomi and Lexi departed as the sun painted the sun into a lovely sunset filled with bright reds, muted yellows and oranges with a tinge of pink tipping the edges of all the clouds in the sky. They hugged one another and Naomi made Lexi promise to call her if she had any more weird dreams of the tarot or questions that she could help answer.

Lexi spent the remaining hours of her weekend at home, alternatively reading her research books, listening to and flipping music on her iPod and working on getting her new hair color dumped into her hair. She found that the instructions were not as easy as she had Carlyn, the hair stylist, carefully explain to her, in detail, over and over with her. Carlyn swore that high school kids half Naomi's age could put the stuff into their hair so she should be able to as well. Lexi and Naomi had laughed at the bold statement before letting the stylist know how much of a klutz that Lexi was. Even so, she agreed to try and dye her hair as part of the after-ritual that birthed her into a new life with new promises and challenges ahead of her. This was a bold new step for Lexi and she wanted to give this new life a valiant and hard earned attempt. She was not ready to give up yet so easily.

It took Lexi almost two hours to carefully pull small strands of her long, curly red hair through the dull, swimming cap that had tiny holes in it with a small, white plastic hook. Towards the end, her hands grew tired and Lexi almost gave up on the whole process to chalk up never doing hair dye again. However, she was not one to break a promise and so she stood diligently through the entire two hours to poke about one-third of her hair through the tiny holes. By the end of it all, she had a much greater respect for the women in hair saloons whose job it was to do that repeatedly over and over and over again all day just to make ends meet.

"I hope that I do not end up having to ditch my career so I end up in a hair stylist school," she thought to herself. "Hmm, okay.... so now what?"

Lexi giggled at herself in the mirror. She looked like some pre-operation candidate for brain surgery. That or some demented and haunted girl spirit who had died while they were jailed behind bars in some padded room. "Blargh, brains," she said to the mirror image as she tried to curb the smile that was growing on her face at a fast pace. "Too bad Dy--", she caught herself as she her mouth and brain almost betrayed her into speaking his name. "Yeah, good catch... I really do not want to ruin my first new day of being myself. Let us not go back there, 'kay Lex?"

She picked up the instructions to read how to mix the dye and toners together. Lexi sat the instructions on the mirror and slide the thin sheet of paper between the metal grate that both framed her mirror and held it flush against her wall. Bending over the sink she re-read the instructions once more and grabbed the two packets that she needed to use in mixing the toner. Her hands tore at the metallic and plastic wrapper frantically trying to get the packet open. "Come on stupid thing, open. And do not dump your poisionious dust all over me," she said as she bent her arms far over the sink and as far from her lithe body as possible. She wore an old t-shirt that she kept around for doing housework and painting and replacing the oil in her car. But all the same she did not want to spill too much of the bottle's contents all over her chest.

The packet tore open and expelled a small plume of chemical dust. She sneezed as she opened up the first packet of powder and dumped the contents into the plastic dying bottle that came with her kit. A small stream of water errupted from the sink and Lexi filled it up to the line, just as the instructions said to. She shook the plastic bottle vigerously as she mixed the chemicals together and held her breath as she applyed the smelly and burning mixuture over her head and on the strands of hair exposed through the plastic shower cap. Two hours and a warm shower later her hair was darker and more lush than she ever expected it to be. She spent awhile admiring and adjusting to the new color and childlishly tossled her hair up and over her head as if she was a model posing for some triple x rated magazine. Giggling she let her curly mop fall back down to her sides bouncing as it relaxed into their normal position.

"Well, not to shabby if I do say so myself. I think this is a great and very positive sign of my new life," she said, stepping into a plain, midnight blue t-shirt and red, green and grey plaid boxer shorts. She leapt onto her mattress, forgetting that the old futon barely lost all springs and was not as supple or comfortable as it used to be when she first purchased it in her undergraduate days.

The wood creaked and cracked and gave a little bit under her weight. "Ugh... real bright idea there Lex. Next time, remember that you are not as young as you used to be. And neither is the futon. So why not give you and the futon a break and do not dare to do that again."

She rubbed the sore spot on her lower back and grabbed a book on vocal symbolism in song and nature in aboriginal cultures. It was not her favorite type of reading and she knew instantly that it was going to put her to bed relatively soon, but she knew that she had to read it for her studies and since she had no where else to go that evening, there was no time like the present. Soon enough as she predicted, Lexi started yawning and her body began to fidget as the boring prose started to put even her to sleep.

She looked across the room to the clock on the stove. It was only ten o'clock. Frowning, Lexi now had to make the hard decision of going to sleep or making some caffeinated tea to try and keep herself up a few more hours. She sat in her spot, staring at the second hand on the clock slowly make its way around to the big hand. "I do not know what to do," she said. Then an idea popped into her head. "Why not use the tarot deck to decide for me. I know that the book says that if even cards show up, you can use that as a positive response, and if odd ones appear that can be negative. So all I need to do is focus on what I want to do and keep flipping cards over until I get a odd or an even card. What a brilliant idea, Lexi you are a genius."

She flopped over the side of her futon and reached into her sling-back. The zipper made a strong ripping sound as the inner guts of her bag were exposed. Slowly her hand fished around for the pack of cards. Feeling the soft sleek exterior of the silk wrap, she pulled on the cards to remove them from the bag. She unwrapped the cards and took the deck out and began to shuffle them with a soft snapping sound. When she finished, she tapped the cards in the palm of her hand, cut the cards in half, and dumped some energy into the deck.

"Odds I go to bed on time and get a little bit extra sleep. If they are evens, then I put the kettle on and make some tea and stay up for a few hours more and really try and get some good, hard research and writing on my dissertation done. I really need to hone down on this and get it done so I can get on with my real life and try and become a contributing member of society. I am getting so tired of school and I am sure it is getting very, very tired of me as well" she said as she started turning them over, one by one. She held her breath, hoping that her answer would come sooner than later. Luckily, she did not have to wait too long. The first card she turned over was the Three of Swords.

"Odds it is then. Then settles it," she said to the tarot deck, "I will start my new life with a nice 8 hours of sleep like the doctors keep telling everyone to do but we never pay attention. This will be good for me, as I cannot recall when the last time I actually had a proper night's rest was really." Absent midedly, Lexi started reordering the deck so that the Fool appeared at the top of the deck once more before wrapping it for the night. Without her noticing it, the activity became a cleansing ritual in its own right, allowing her to reset the deck and make things seem all right. It also allowed her to check for missing cards as she was afraid that her futon and blankets might engulf her new purchase up in one sweep. That was an expsense she did not want to lose and she was growing quite fond and intrigued with the symbolism of the tarot. She got up off the futon and headed over to her sling back.

"Good night little tarot deck. I shall see you tomorrow evening when I get home from work and can probably play with you more." Then gently sat the deck inside the bag where she hoped that she could have some more time to maybe read and explore the rich symbolism that was captured in each picture on every card. She also flicked the light switch to turn off the overhead light in her apartment and then crashed down on her pillow. Lexi was sleeping in no time flat.

Lexi dreamt that night that she was on a tropical island surrounded by sun-kissed and deeply tan aborigines who spoke in the language of birds but could communicate through piecing together stories woven from images on the seventy-eight card tarot deck that she brought with them. They all had fox-like features on their faces and their eyes twinkled with a slight tinge of mischief in them. They were scantly clad, mostly wearing hand woven fibrous loincloths to hide their genital areas. And almost all had black hair. Even the newborn babies who perched in the protective embraces of their mothers had full heads of raven black hair.

In her dream they were telling her where she could go for food, where to live and how to become a functioning member of their society, all by using tarot cards in a way that they both could understand. They would rummage through a pack of cards that were messily hand drawn but appeared almost identical, if not warped versions of her own Windchaser Tarot deck. When they found and could agree on the card that represented their thought pattern it got laid down upon the soft sandy soil. Many cards were placed down this way as they attempted to build sentences using the cards. And when they were done, she watched as the chieftain stretched out her arm and laid the warped and warn deck into the dream-Lexi's hands.

Dream-Lexi brought the deck up to her nose. A pungent smell of herbs and woody tree pulp greeted and almost overpowered her senses. Dream-Lexi blinked the smell away from her sinuses and nodded in appreciation to the gift she had been given. The she saw the Dream-Lexi respond to their questions and comments by laying down cards of her own to complete and compliment their patterns. The last card that she laid down before the chieftain was The Star. To which they responded quite negatively, as if she had performed some black magick on them. Soon she had many warriors with bones shoved through their noses and brightly colored bird feathers in their hair holding spears and heading for her. They chanted in strange chirping sounds and hushed drum beats came from afar. Lexi slowly walked backwards as she kept apologizing to them, that she did not realize the danger that she had laid out before them. The sweet and stale smell of salt lingered all around her and permeated every single pour of her body. Dream Lexi was crying and could not tell if the taste of the tears came from the air around her or within her own body.

"Nooooooo... I did not mean..." but her words trailed off into the pitch black night sky, with only a beeping sound to comfort her.

Lexi woke that next morning holding her arms crossed protectively over her eyes as if someone had wanted to poke them out with a knife. The alarm that she had sat next to her bed chimed a steady beep beep beep flat tone signifying that it was time to awaken and get ready for her morning shift in the library. Feeling a bit disoriented, and unsure of where she was Lexi stared around her room, realizing that it was home and everything was safe and familiar. She was safe and that nothing had tried to hurt her in the night. However, she could not shajke the feeling that something sinister was lurking around the corner in her dream and that it may have spilled over into the waking moments that was her life. While she wanted to stay in her current position for a little while longer, she also did not have the luxury of sitting around thinking about her strange little dream monsters. Instead, she made a mental note to maybe tell Claudia or Naomi about it later and hopped out of bed to put her feet on the cold floor.

Lexi left her apartment a half-hour later, fully dressed and bundled as warm as she could get in her shelled jacket; yet her mind and body were not fully awake yet. The first and foremost thing on her agenda before getting to work was to go stop by Coffee People to pick up a nice warm cup of caffeinated Indian chai tea latte. It was one of her favorite treats to sip on a nice cold autumn such as the day. Small puffs of condensed breath wafted from Lexi's mouth as she walked the two blocks to the building that the Department of Library Sciences and Anthropology and Culture for Fieldsmith University. Her boots made crisp and crunching sounds as they squished dry and frozen leaves on the pavement.

She waved in greetings to some of her classmates, undergraduates and professors as she entered the building. Her hands, now warmed from holding her small chai latte, the cup with child-like hand scribbles hastily drawn all over the surface, opened the door to Lexington Hall where the library was. On her way past the front double-doors she swifty threw the heavy paper cup of chai into the trash can, freeing her fingers to grapple with the rest of the doors.

"Good morning Denise," Lexi said as she walked into the library break room. "Did you have a good weekend?"

"I did. Thanks Lexi. You seem happier this morning. And you look different, did you do something to your hair?"

Lexi instinctively reached up to pet her hair, "Actually, I did. I decided that it was time that I stop moping about the apartment over you know who and tried to make life more enjoyable. So I went out and got a highlighting kit."

"You did that by yourself? Wow, it looks sharp. Much more deeper red than normally. I personally love it and think it looks great."

"Thanks," Lexi said smiling. She left her coat and bag in the room and went out to go check on the counter. It was early, but Lexi knew that Fieldsmith University tended to have a lot of early rising undergraduates looking for the quick fix paper solution in the library to satisfy the paper requirement they forgot to write over the weekend. Instead of quickly taking her place in the advisor's chair Lexi stopped dead in her tracks.

Normally her desk space was clear, save for the computer system that she used to check books in and out and reserve books for other students. This morning, however, the familiar outline of one of her tarot cards, from the Windchaser Tarot, sat on the desk. Lexi looked around the office and did not see anyone in sight. Slowly she walked closer, hoping that her mind was only playing tricks on her. Unfortunately, it was not.

She loomed over the smooth grey granite counter. There, sitting smack dab in the middle of the counter, next to the computer, was the Death card. Brightly colored reds and yellows and oranges leapt off the page and into her mind's eye. In the center of the card sat a red and orange phoenix who was beating its wings. It's shiny black beak was pursed open, like it was calling out as it was being reborn into the world. Lexi was stunned. She rushed back to her sling-back and pulled out her deck. She brought it back up to the front desk with her and sifted through the first 12 cards. Sure enough, someone or something had gotten into her bag while she was talking to Denise and put that card on the desk.

"Who did this?" Lexi muttered under her breath. "And why? Is this someone's sick idea of a prank and they are trying to scare me? If it is, then it really is not working. I cannot really be fooled by my own possessions." Her voice waivered a bit, showing that while her statements were a bit bold, they were also meaningless as the sight of seeing her own Death card appear on the counter sitting silent like a bad omen, did slightly scare her a bit. She looked around the room again but did not see anyone. No one was in the stacks either. Only when she was convinced that no one was around to accuse of stealing the card out of her bag, did she pick the Death card off the counter and slid it back into its place in the deck. She then quickly returned the deck back in her pack where it was sat in the break room.

"If I get time today, I am going to ask Denise about getting some locks put on the cubicles back there. I really do not appreciate people sneaking around in my bag and taking out my personal belongings," she said, making a mental notes for herself.

Soon after, the library filled up and Lexi found herself with a full workload and undergraduates swamped the counter all day until the end of her shift. She attempted to check books in and out as fast as she could, and during the small snippets of space that she had, she spent that time reorganizing class files and packets that many of the professors kept in the library's old-fashioned grey filing cabinet for their students to check out and photocopy at their leisure. It was a never ending job, but one that she enjoyed doing. In a way, she was hoping that Fieldsmith University would keep her on as a library aide full time once after she graduated with her Masters. After all, she already knew the filing system and worked hard at the periodicals and making sure that the library had new and exciting books to use for the Anthropology department.

With all that she had going on during the day Lexi soon had forgotten all about asking Denise if anyone broke into her bag. And by the time her shift was over, she was beat and wanted to do nothing but go home and crash. Lexi left the library feeling very tired and mentally drained but also strangely fulfilled as if she finally had a day where she did something in her life that actually mattered that she worked hard.

"You know," she mused while briskly walking back to her apartment in the cold autumn air, "I wonder if that tarot deck is to thank for all this. I know some weird things have been happening after I got it but my life does seem to be changing for the better. I mean, it does seem to be like it is helping me take matters back into my own hands and helping me to direct and take charge of my life in ways that I never really thought I had it in me. Maybe I should try my hand at one of those readings when I get home."