Tarot for the Bardo

THE UNDERWORLD

Valentine’s Day, 1995. Your ex wears his sweater with your dark blood stiffening at the wrists to visit you in the mental hospital. A red rose in a plastic urinal.

SMELLS LIKE TEEN SPIRIT

You disliked Joie at first. In philosophy class, she’s the only one who votes to legalize heroin. You’re the only one who thinks abortion is wrong. She misreads you as Pro-Life. You misread her as a drug addict. You’re quiet. She’s loud. You’re united in the courage to raise your hand alone.

THE CASTLE (see: The Emperor)

Netherlands Fall, 1996. During WW2, Nazis lived here. Afterwards, refugees. The castle-cum-school-cum-dorm is now haunted by a ghost and entitled theater students. Classes are held by the Crusades-inspired 14th century moat. Your unlikely Masshole soul is courtesy of poetry and American Empire.

THE CASTLE (see: Queen of Wands)

Joie teaches you to smoke pot outside under a wooden crucifix. “Inhale,” she commands. Your throat burns, eyes water. Bicycles flicker headlights on your faces. Bells chime faintly as they disappear into dusk.

GHOST IN THE MACHINE

Yardley caresses the attic walls, as if she could contact the dead girl. When you hold out a handshake, she scoffs. “Masshole,” she mutters. Her eyes are tantrum-wet.

The actress threatens the Dutch cooks with termination over the menu. Your heart is with the help. 

Yardley is rich, beautiful, beloved. Yet she complains about feeling like a princess trapped in a tower. Flipping her blonde mane, stamping her Doc Martens.

What would your dad, a postal worker, think if he were alive? In the mirror, a birthmark studs your cheek in the same place as his.

EURAIL PASS (see Masshole, Strength/Lust[i])

Joie rubs her ass vigorously on the seat as the train speeds to Denmark. “The damn gardener,” she says. “Gave me an angry itch.” She grabs your fake-fur lined coat and burrows under. Dubs it your bear skin. You’re mythical together.

THE CASTLE (see: The High Priestess, Strength/Lust)

Joie reads The Coming Plague. The boys raid everyone’s panty drawer, except yours. They circle jerk in The Tower. Is it an honor or an insult, being spared? When you sleep with the professor, Joie says, “He’s Clinton’s age!” He teaches The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Libertinism is the solution to feeling too much.  You’ve battled the beast of depression since childhood. Shapeshifting into what almost killed you saves you. Your ex’s reaction: nearly drinking himself to death and hospitalization. Even Steven, you think as you cradle the phone.

EURAIL PASS (see: The Fool)

At Christiana, you’re high among the graffitied stalls guarded by snarling rottweilers. At a hot spring, you’re high as you float past a naked woman speaking German. You can’t stop laughing. Take the wrong boat to the wrong country. Joie gives The Little Mermaid statue a joint. Stick out your tongue and cross your eyes for the camera. You’re young, for a minute.

SATURN RETURN

At 29, you get engaged. Joie cackling, chants, “You’re not getting married!” You run across the cold parking lot into the T and 2006. She’s right.

SEX MAGIC

After casting the spell, you both fall asleep. The fire alarm and a blaze of candles wakes you. Later, you pick up two Iraq war vets at a bar. What rough beast[ii] is this foursome. You’re amused, smirking above the kneeling soldiers.

THE CASTLE (see: Class Warfare, The Tower)

Newly gentrified neighborhood, NYC, 2007. 

“What are you going to do? Shoot me?” Yardley asks her muggers. It’s their home, not hers.

“Kismet?” Joie says. She mock-crosses herself, and hands you Chomsky’s 9/11.

GREAT BEAVERS (see: Strength/Lust)

The shirt is emblazoned with the name of Joie’s high school softball team. Industrious animals. Slang for snatch. Scissored at the shoulders, you borrow this relic of 90’s sluttery in 2009.

BURNING DOWN THE HOUSE (see: Great Recession, The Tower)

At 33, Amaia dies suddenly. Foreclosure, Joie drops R’s huskily. Home for the holidays, you stand in her doorway. Her mother reads in the living room.

“Dude, don’t die.”

THE MOON CARD (see: Pandemic)

In early 2020, Joie volunteers for a vaccine trial. Her maskless barroom group selfies still strike you as reckless. You don’t know what you don’t know.

THE OTHERWORLD (see: The Emperor, The Empress)

Shortly after Christmas 2021, Joie’s father dies. Her mother has Alzheimer’s.

You can still see Marlene reading in the living room. Over two decades of “Hello’s!” echo, holographic, and go static. Before—Zap!

They disappear. 

THE CASTLE (see: Facebook, The Art Card)[iii]

The professor posts a bust sculpted by his wife. He’s art. You’re middle-aged.

SMELLS LIKE TEEN SPIRIT

At 45, Chelsea overdoses on heroin and her favorite mix-tape in a Walmart parking lot. “Dude, we scattered her ashes in a dog park,” Joie says. “A fucking dog park.” What about Chelsea’s daughter? Growing up fatherless isn’t something you’d recommend. Motherless? 

Your ghost baby kicks. She’s never bought your bullshit. She’d be 25 now, five years older than you were when you voted for suicide and the “Pro-Choicers” gave you the side-eye.

COUGAR (see: The Magician, Strength/Lust)

Joie maintains a youthful illusion with free weights, fasting, and fucking. Her tight gluts bared in Daisy Dukes. Her pussy pursed in denim. “Antidepressants are eugenics,” Joie says. “This kid couldn’t keep it up.” When she saunters down Newbury Street, heads turn.

THE DEATH CARD

You miss the monokini Joie borrowed in 2012. How its flowering psychedelics hugged your curves. Then – a decade later – Voila!

But you can’t step into the same monokini twice.

REWILDING (see: The Empress)

You still have the Great Beavers shirt. Here’s a pic. 

Here are beavers building dams. 

“Don’t die,” one of them says. “We still have work to do.” 

[i] The Rider-Waite Strength Card is the Lust Card in the Thoth Tarot.  Both feature lions.

[ii] “What rough beast” is from William Butler Yeats’ poem “The Second Coming.”

[iii] The Rider-Waite Temperance Card is the Art Card in the Thoth Tarot.