To make this easier, and to keep it separate from kasamba (so that I don't lose my mind), just message me to ask for a read.  To message me, hover over my icon.  It will give you the option of sending message or adding friend.  Click send message, then proceed like it was email.

I'm very economical compared to many folks out there, and am very thorough. 

Freshman year of college, back in the mid-80s, was less than easy for me.  I used to wander the small downtown of my college town to escape the pressure of school life.  Like many college towns, there were two areas that might qualify as a 'downtown' -- one area of strip malls and walmart, and the grocery store and the fast food chain restaurants.  The other had only a littlle greek diner with a counter and three tables, small one-of-a-kind stores too seedy to be called boutiques, and a coffee house that opened years before Starbucks was a dream and where you could buy a ceramic pot of the coffee of the day for three bucks.

I lived in the coffee house, and brought what pitiful bit of money I had while crawling the shops and buying things like unworn vintage men's flannel pjs and bits of tatted lace.  I wandered into art galleries, framing shops, whatever struck me.

Once I walked into a store that had one rack of brightly colored clothing, a few books on a low table covered with a cloth, a ficus plant that was large but had seen better days, and on the floor a purple mat with a pile of what looked like the most fascinating art postcards ever.  In typical college student fashion, I thought even I can afford postcards! and crouched down for a better look.  

The shop keeper came over and stood patiently while I thumbed through.  The cards had images I didn't understand, and a multicolored cross on the backs.  I asked her how much.  She said: Eighteen.

Cents?  Per card?

Nope.  Dollars.  For the whole box.

She can't be serious!  I felt like I was stealing from her.  For all of these?  I figured I could frame them, use them in collages, whatever.  I wanted them, and I had a twenty in my pocket that day.  Lucky day to be unusually rich, plus I would maybe still have enough cash left over to get a mug of coffee if not a pot.

I bought them.  Put them in my purse.  Went and had coffee, brought the box of cards home.  Figured to put my favorites up on my wall in a poster frame.

I had read the box briefly at the shop, didn't know what Thoth meant, and figured in typical seventeen-year-old fashion "Whatever!"  But now, when I went to flip through the cards to choose favorites, a little paperback pamphlet fell out.  Instructions on how to read, and basic meanings for each card.

One of my two roommates walked in.  She wanted to know what in the world was up, why I was sitting on my bed surrounded by postcard-sized pictures of wild and colorful things and what was the little book?  I explained, and we decided that I should try out the cards, just for kicks.  Today, it would have been just for the LULZ.  But I had no idea what to read on.

"Read on Tina,"* she said.  Tina was a mutual friend, and she had been acting strangely.  Relationship issues, school problems.

I read.  I shuffled, cut, concentrated.  Dealt the cards in the prescribed order and read the various meanings from the booklet.  It didn't seem to make sense out of the gate.  But, the further I read, the more the cards seemed to say things in relation to one another, like seeing an entire painting as a whole rather than one color value or another as a component.  It started coming together, and I didn't know what to say because what I wanted to 'read' wasn't what the book told me to say!  I did another reading, and another.  The same themes came up when the cards were taken together.  Some of the same cards kept coming up in each reading.  Other new ones came up but seemed just to deepen the meaning that I had already seen.  I wanted to play it off, but I had been getting quieter and quieter with each reading.  My roommate noticed and asked what I saw. 

I figured I was full of it, but said it anyway.  "Um, I think Tina's .... pregnant?  And she's going to be done with school."

This was not the thing to say.  This was 1987, not 1957, but still girls in our circle did not get pregnant.  A few who did disappeared immediately and came back married if they came back at all.  These girls universally got pregnant by their long-term, planning-on-marrying-him-anyhow boyfriends.  In contrast, Tina had only recently started dating a young man in the service, she only saw him every few weeks, and to be delicate it was likely she was not the only girl he had waiting when he was in port.  

My roommate looked at me like I had slapped her, and I felt my face get hot.  I swiped the cards out of formation and stuffed them back in the box, suggested we have a beer by way of distraction.  It worked.  And yes, we were underage, and yes, we drank like fish back in the day.

That was the end of my first reading and I forgot about it.  Until maybe two weeks later when Tina came in crying.  It was Sunday evening, and she had spent the weekend at home.  She had gone to the doctor.

You are probably guessing the rest.  She was pregnant.  No marriage, no long-term relationship with the young man.  I won't divulge more specifics, but suffice to say that by the end of her telling, my roommate was staring at me with her mouth hanging open and I was trying to look surprised despite the feeling that I had seen that particular episode before.  Later, my roommate would tell me that it was "spooky" and I would agree with her.  I packed up the cards for a bit over two years.  I figured that maybe I would still put them on the wall, which was ridiculous since I was so afraid of them I wouldn't take them out of the box. 

Years later, I came back to reading.  I learned to trust my intuitions and the messages "between" the cards.  I don't know why I didn't get rid of the cards when I was afraid of them, but I am glad that I didn't.  I still prefer the Thoth deck out of all the cards that I have owned, although sadly I no longer have my original cards. 


*not her real name