26. The Centaur (i)

“The clock in the back of the deserted house (everyone’s sleeping) slowly lets the clear quadruple sound of four o’clock in the morning fall. I still haven’t fallen asleep, and I don’t expect to. There’s nothing on my mind to keep me from sleeping and no physical pain to prevent me from relaxing, but the dull silence of my strange body just lies there in the darkness, made even more desolate by the feeble moonlight of the street lamps. I’m so sleepy I can’t even think, so sleepless I can’t feel.” This episode begins with a restless nights for two literary alter-egos: Fernando Pessoa's Soares and Richard Matheson's (I Am Legend) Neville. Pessoa grapples with insomnia, intertwined with alcoholism as well as various existential anxieties in Fragment 31 of The Book of Disquiet, a meditation on sleep, death, and the nature of being. Neville, the protagonist of Richard Matheson's I Am Legend, finds himself seemingly the last human on Earth, haunted by the undead. His struggle for sleep mirrors Pessoa's, hinting at a similar psychological issue: the manifestation in his life of the Death Drive as explored by Freud in his 1922 essay "Beyond The Pleasure Principle". Also, a fascinating historical footnote: Pessoa's role in crafting early advertising copy for Coca-Cola in Portugal, resulting in a government ban on Coca-Cola imports that lasted for over 50 years.

"Sadly, or perhaps not, I recognize that I have an arid heart. An adjective matters more to me than the real weeping of a human soul. But sometimes I’m different." -Fernando Pessoa -- Every so often, I sit down and write a letter to Fernando Pessoa, the Portuguese poet and writer.I not only write but also send each letters to the postal address where Pessoa spent the last fifteen years of his life before dying at the age of 47 with cirrhosis of the liver - most likely due to the alcoholism. He hasn't written back to me yet, even though I put my own name and address on every missive I send (Steve W., 111 Ruskin Gardens, Kenton, London, HA3 9PY). One day he, or someone very much like him, will perhaps write back. I live in hope.

The second part of my Tarot Cure Pilgrimage to Treadwell's Bookshop to see if one of their finest Tarot readers (Madame Kalathaki) might have some wisdom to share with me on where my last relationship went awry, and what I need to do to keep the next one (when it comes) more enduringly on the path of Love. This episode of the Tarot Cure is sponsored Naomi Shihab Nye's Red Brocade:  The Arabs used to say, When a stranger appears at your door, feed him for three days before asking who he is, where he’s come from, where he’s headed. That way, he’ll have strength enough to answer. Or, by then you’ll be such good friends you don’t care. Links & Music for this episode: Alain De Botton on our crazy minds, hearts, souls (in love & out). Marina Abramovic on her tempestuous relationship with her former partner Ulay. Kendrick! (United In Grief) - please don't sue me/break my balls Mr Lamarr for using 30 seconds of your genius on here, ta :-) Peter Gundry - Lucifer's Hymn  Wet Leg - Chaise Longue Randy Newman - Short People SG Lewis - Finally (CeCe Peniston cover) for Monki on Radio 1  Funk The Revolution - Finally (CeCe Peniston cover)  Aydar Gaynullin plays Piazzolla's Libertango Alejandro Aguanta performs Zorba's Dance by Mikis Theodorakis's  Laura Nyro - It's Gonna Take A Miracle

In which I take myself off to consult a professional tarot reader at London's main hub for the Tarot Cognoscenti (Treadwell's Bookshop) to see if she can help me with the "stuff" that I’m still trying to work through in relation to my last romantic relationship.   One of my favourite centaurs (Alain de Botton) also shares with us his theories on Romanticism and Love, whilst Marina Abramovic digs into her infamous, and all-too-thorny relationship with fellow performance-artist/lover/muse: Ulay. 

Before falling in love with the Enneagram, I had a thing for Tarot.  And so I decided to put this thing into a podcast called The Tarot Cure.  Here's an Omnibus edition of those episodes, spanning the length and breadth of my 50th year.  It was a good year :)

Sophie (psychotherapist, single) asks a burning question that her friend Steve (psychotherapist, also single) might also like to have answered: "Will It Ever Happen For Me?" -- This episode of The Tarot Cure is sponsored by two poems:  REQUEST Please love me And I will play for you this poem upon the guitar I myself made out of cardboard and black threads when I was ten years old. Love me or else. -Franz Wright THE HOUSE OF BELONGING I awoke this morning in the gold light turning this way and that thinking for a moment it was one day like any other. But the veil had gone from my darkened heart and I thought it must have been the quiet candlelight that filled my room, it must have been the first easy rhythm with which I breathed myself to sleep, it must have been the prayer I said speaking to the otherness of the night. And I thought this is the good day you could meet your love, this is the gray day someone close to you could die. This is the day you realize how easily the thread is broken between this world and the next and I found myself sitting up in the quiet pathway of light, the tawny close grained cedar burning round me like fire and all the angels of this housely heaven ascending through the first roof of light the sun has made. This is the bright home in which I live, this is where I ask my friends to come, this is where I want to love all the things it has taken me so long to learn to love. This is the temple of my adult aloneness and I belong to that aloneness as I belong to my life. There is no house like the house of belonging. -David Whyte

Why do our burning questions burn in the way they do? I try to answer this by looking back at the phenomenon of PostSecret, and how burning questions often tap into core needs, longing, and yearnings such as the yearning for orientation, meaning, coherence and understanding, as well as self-direction, competence, belonging and connection. [This episode also features an Intro to a new Tarot Cure offshoot: The Burning Questions, where I sit down with a guest to have a chat about a question that is burning within them: be it a personal issue or one related to a topic close to their heart. Some kind of creative intervention is then applied to each question (a tarot card , a poem, a piece of music or art) in an attempt to "try to love the questions themselves - like locked rooms, or a book written in a foreign tongue (Rilke)", but also with the hope for some magic, insight, and an interesting conversation. Listen to The Burning Questions [on Spotify] [on Apple]  -- This episode of The Tarot Cure is sponsored by the following passage from Letters To A Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke (translation: Charlie Louth): “But all the same I believe that you need not remain without solution if you hold to things like those now refreshing my eyes. If you hold close to nature, to what is simple in it, to the small things people hardly see and which all of a sudden can become great and immeasurable; if you have this love for what is slight, and quite unassumingly, as a servant, seek to win the confidence of what seems poor – then everything will grow easier, more unified and somehow more conciliatory, not perhaps in the intellect, which, amazed, remains a step behind, but in your deepest consciousness, watchfulness and knowledge. I should like to ask you, as best I can, dear one, to be patient towards all that is unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms, like books written in a foreign tongue. Do not now strive to uncover answers: they cannot be given you because you have not been able to live them. And what matters is to live everything. Live the questions for now. Perhaps then you will gradually,, without noticing it, live your way into the answer, one distant day in the future." -- Music: Hania Rani – Live from Studio S2 Sting - Fragile (Piano Cover) Celestial Sphere by David Crowell

Are you getting huffy and puffy about online dating? Or maybe One Of The Other Things We Tend To Get Huffy and Puffy About (the list is endless)? If so, this one is for you: giving birth to Max, poetry vs. evolutionary psychology, incense vs. incensed, and Cain versus Abel. All with added Hot-&-Spicy Jungian Sauce :-) Thanks, as ever, to Sophie for her FFA (Free Free-Association) of The Five of Swords. Each FFA involves Sophie, freely-associating around the episode card which until that moment she had never set eyes on before. I see these FFAs as buckets of cool spring water from The Well of The Collective Unconscious. This episode of The Tarot Cure is proudly sponsored by Satya Nag Champa Incense, "the world’s most commercially successful incense blend. The first secret recipe for Satya Nag Champa was formulated by the founding family of Shrinivas Sugandhalaya and has stood the test of time as the most beloved floral incense in existence. To this day, every incense stick is hand-rolled in our factory in Byatarayanapura, Bengaluru." AUDIO EXCERPTS: A Billion Wicked Thoughts: What the Internet Tells Us About Sexual Relationships by Ogi Ogas & Sai Gaddam This Jungian Life - Episode 84 - Anger This Jungian Life - Episode 153 - Resentment Notting Hill - "Just A Girl" Scene MUSIC: David Crowell's "Celestial Spheres" Sting: "Fragile" (piano cover by 낮사람) Photronique: Boom, Boom Meredith Monk, Facing North

This episode takes a walky-talky dive into my favourite scene in the Wizard of Oz: "The Wizard Revealed", exploring the healing powers of Hierophants & High Priestesses versus that of Persona-fied Schmucks like toi et moi. This episode of the Tarot Cure is proudly sponsored by KURKURE NAUGHTY TOMATO SNACKS: "A sweet and sour tomato flavor with just the right amount of chili powder. Kurkure is a perfect 'namkeen' snack which makes one fun-loving and quirky. Made with trusted kitchen ingredients, it is a perfect tea time snack. Kurkure Naughty Tomato has the taste of tangy tomatoes blended with spices which gives it a sweet, tangy and spicy flavour. It is an embodiment of endearing human." (description supplied by PepsiCo India, with thanks).   Thanks, as ever, to Sophie for her FFA (Free Free-Association) of the card. Each FFA involves Sophie, freely-associating around the episode card which until that moment she had never set eyes on before. I see the FFAs as buckets of cool spring water from The Well of The Collective Unconscious. Music: Photronique: Boom, Boom Right Said Fred: "I'm Too Sexy" - Pointless Celebrities '90s special Performance DoGa Kalyan: Symphony: III. Scherzo  Andrew Byrne, "Striking" (for Strings & Chopsticks) The Tallis Scholars perform Josquin

This episode discusses our core existential fragility through a pink child's bracelet found on the side of the road, the violent and sometimes even bone-breaking choreography of Elizabeth Streb, as well as my mother's recent mishaps with "The Jaws of Fate". This episode is sponsored by Dorianne Laux's poem What Is Broken: The slate black sky. The middle step of the back porch. And long ago my mother’s necklace, the beads rolling north and south. Broken the rose stem, water into drops, glass knobs on the bedroom door. Last summer’s pot of parsley and mint, white roots shooting like streamers through the cracks. Years ago the cat’s tail, the bird bath, the car hood’s rusted latch. Broken little finger on my right hand at birth— I was pulled out too fast. What hasn’t been rent, divided, split? Broken the days into nights, the night sky into stars, the stars into patterns I make up as I trace them with a broken-off blade of grass. Possible, unthinkable, the cricket’s tiny back as I lie on the lawn in the dark, my heart a blue cup fallen from someone’s hands. -- LINKS: Elizabeth Streb talks about her work.  Maggie Nelson's The Art of Cruelty: A Reckoning. Chase Eagleson acoustic cover of Sting's "Fragile".