Echo

I’m watching the Warriors game, and it’s a tense 4th quarter in which they’re completely blowing the game after building up a nice lead. So the situation is serious, the game is almost over and it looks like the Hornets are about to tie or win the game. The players set up, Warriors possession, and Mike Dunleavy Jr. goes to inbound the ball. The station cutting together shots of players, looking intense, from different angles, building the drama. And then the announcer says, kind of amazed, “Thunder just knocked over Dunleavy. The MASCOT just knocked over Dunleavy.”

And they quickly cut to a wide angle of the players, and you see Thunder strutting away, playing to the crowd, and Mike wobbling a little bit and looking around like, “What the fuck? Did that really just happen?”

I wish the camera had been on that scene when it happened, rather than just catching the tail end of it. I thought that really exemplified the conflicts of nature within professional sports. On one hand, the athletes take it so incredibly seriously. There’s a lot of ego involved. These tense moments on the court that mean the difference between winning and losing may as well mean the difference beween life and death. They’re here to do a job; a delicate job–squeaking out a win–that requires almost godly focus and discipline.

And then there are the fans who came not so much to watch exceptionally skilled athletes as to have the all-inclusive wild night out, who merge into a rowdy crowd and demand to be entertained, who dance like morons to be on the Jumbotron, whose life missions at that very moment is to catch a rolled up t-shirts shot from a cannon…as watch the Mascot run around being goofy like a hyperactive village idiot. No offense to village idiots everywhere.

How can the players work under this condition?

Yeah, they get paid millions to do it. Deal with this circus around what they have dedicated their lives to. But it really takes away from the gravity of their abilities, doesn’t it? Like, I think thundersticks should be banned at basketball games. I know the teams will hand them out for free to people sitting behind the visitor’s basket. It was some marketing genius’ idea of making the fans feel more involved in the outcome of the games. If they make enough noise, they affect the other teams ability to score and thus, contributing to a win or loss. And yes, one could argue that a good player should be so focused, that even the distraction and noise of thundersticks won’t distract him. But honestly, I’m not a purest, but if I were a basketball player and had to deal with that noise and distraction every time I was trying to gather myself into a tiny pinpoint of focus, repetitively every few days for months on end, my nerves would be shot. I would have a very short fuse. It’d be really easy for me to snap, in just a heated enough moment.

I mean, you remember Ace Ventura, right? “Laces out” ? Dude, I’m telling you. This is a very, very serious matter.

NBA not banning thundersticks during games= Athletes snapping = Sean Young strapping her penis between her legs.

Check my math. I think you’ll find that I’m not wrong.

So I can’t keep straight anymore which people know I can read tarot cards and which don’t. This is a facet of the mystical side of me that I am very, very private about and very protective of, for fear of persecution and ridicule as much as to keep this ability private because I don’t want people who don’t really need it demanding my help (if I want to read for people or feel like I have something to tell them, I’ll offer. Because when I read for people, it’s not akin to a magic trick for purposes of entertainment. It’s a draining process of digging deep inside someone’s psyche/soul and bringing out hidden pain as part of a healing process). But I’ve always loved the artwork of the cards and wanted to share it, though I let very few people close to my deck. So considering I’ve been working at a scanner company for over a year now, I just figured out that I can scan them and post them so you can see some of my favorite cards. These cards are some of my most personal and private belongings, so be nice, okay?

This card represents me…Air behaving as Fire. Courageous, impulsive, stormy–the slayer of darkness and invisible demons. I absolutely *love* this card.

This is, artistically, my favorite card in the deck. I’ve stared at it for hours before, absorbing its details, the concept of unity despite polarity. Disparity creating unity. Tension creating balance.The blind cupid, the omnipotent, faceless father. ..this card never ceases to intrigue me. It’s also the Gemini card.

The Tower. This card shows a building crumbling and on fire as people fall out of it. A little story about this card…in August 2001, I was in the bay area visiting my family and we had a small get together with my extended family. At the party, my mom convinced me to read for people. I am most comfortable with reading 2-3 weeks ahead because free will often changes outcomes, so the further away a time frame is, statistically, the less possible it is to be accurate because of the amount of free will that can modify a person’s course during every second. So I read for a bunch of people, and this card came up in everyone’s readings. In hindsight of 9/11, that was freaky. But that’s exactly the kind of thing this card represents. This card comes up when someone has tried to build a house on a bad foundation. They’ve repressed problems, ignored them, yet they go on with their lives like nothing’s wrong (like all the tension that had been covered up by our government’s foreign policies. And then the Tower makes the situation blow wide open, forcing things to be dealt with). But those buried issues rot away at the foundation until a huge, terrible event happens that crumbles everything that person had been trying to build. You never want this card to show up. It means you’re going to have a devastating experience that will completely shake up your world, forcing you to deal with the things you’re trying to run away from. You will be so much better off in the long run, but in general, you should be taking care of things in all hopes to avoid the types of events represented by this card. It’ll be things like, a person running away from emotional issues and burying themselves in their work. The tower comes along and blows things wide open…a relative dies, a relationship ends painfully, the person is laid off, so that they can no longer hide their head in a hole and are forced to deal with something. In the end, the Tower is a good thing. But it’s the disciplinarian. You usually want to be conscious of your issues and deal with them as much as possible to avoid this type of event. This is the explosion. It’s like when the doctor has to break your legs again, so that they can set correctly and you can grow. But it is always, always very difficult. I always get very worried when I see this card and emphatic with the person that they have to deal with something. Unfortunately, usually, when people have been avoiding issues and hiding them for so long, they’re set in their minds not to deal with those things. Until something forces them to.

This card I see a lot, too. Two swords being bent by a third. Interference. Dark, stormy emotions. Intense pain.

It’s the threesome card–two in a relationship, one on the side, all connections very very intense. In other words, the “affair” card. But it’s more complex than that. Because love and human relationships is very complex. Sometimes it can mean that someone is unhappy in their current relationship and has strong, secret feelings for someone else, not necessarily acted upon. But depending on the impressions and feelings I get along with this card for the particular person I’m reading for, it almost always comes down to one of two questions: “Were you cheated on?” “You’re in love with someone else, aren’t you?” This is one card I can specifically pick up a lot of energy and impressions on pretty easily. Because if it comes up, the pain is usually pretty great and pressing within that person in regards to a certain love situation.

And this…is my future life partner. Stable, kind. A fair leader. Earth behaving as Water. The soulmate I get to walk a large part of my journey with. He has always come up consistently for years. I really can’t explain to you how all this works, but his energy drops in on me sometimes, whoever he is.