The Fool

I do love the tarot deck and all its artistic manifestations.  Tarot appears in poetry, in drama, in real life; it also appears behind the scenes in ways we never really connected before (or at least that is my experience as I continue my learning).  April Fool's Day is near upon us, and to celebrate there are many Foolish things happening this weekend in Second Life.  I am looking forward to a costume dance, personally... I love playing the fool.  And I'm just naturally such a good little fool.

I might "masquerade it up" a bit, though.  Because there is one thing I love as much as playing the fool and that is the license afforded me by playing the masked fool.  And the license afforded others, masked, and the liberties they take when they realize their newfound freedom to do with the bodies of others what they have only, previously, imagined doing.

The Fool, in Tarot, is a character to embrace.  How could one not?  The fool is the character seeking experience.  Naive, new, fresh, he carries everything he needs (and it isn't much) in his pack.  There is a dog who guides (or who teases; or who distracts; or who represents the driving animal desires that propel the young mind towards permanent experience); there is a flower in his hand; and there is the whole world ahead of him.  The major and minor arcana wait patiently in the deck, shuffled newly for each seeker, in the order determined by the fates and guiding forces.  Experience is about to come.  Experience will permanently mark the fresh journeyer.  Knowledge transforms; knowledge burdens; and knowledge destroys the innocence of the new mind.

On the edge of the precipice, the fool is about to step off into the realm of knowledge and experience.  No longer on dry land, "not in Kansas anymore," experience soaks the seeker and cultivates the tastes of the future.  Appetites are formed.  Cravings develop.  One begins to shape one's own mind and habits, determined to experience more and more.  April Fool's day is so very, very, very loosely based upon this principle that the history is nearly gone.  But it was once, a long time ago, the beginning of a fresh new year.  New starts; new acquaintances; new experiences; new living.  This time of year, the beginning of spring in the West, this is the time of the new and the innocent.  I have my own rituals for this time of year (and we all do, to varying degrees) and this year my ritual includes the daily meditations upon my needs, my shadows, my limited (but growing) experience, and my unfaltering path along this voyage into real, good fantasy.  I give myself license to feel what I want to feel, beginning now.