The Hanged Man

A lifetime ago, someone offered to draw me as a Tarot Card. I randomly picked The Hanged Man, and I kept it even though the artist tried to get me to re-draw. The design came out well, and it captured a lot of aspects of my life from that time period; but I never displayed the picture anywhere due to factors of drama. I’d largely forgotten about it, though it was squirreled away in my picture archive.
 
Today my order of hobo coins came in. And tucked in the package was a bonus item from one of this artist’s previous kickstarters. A tarot card. The Hanged Man.

Memory. It’s a funny thing.

Memory is such a funny thing.  Scrambled and chaotic, it doesn’t have a user accessible file structure or an index, and the search engine is for crap.  Sherlock referred to it as his Mind Palace.  I find that term particularly apt, because in reality you are not standing in the middle of a field with your memories stretching out in all directions and plainly visible if you just look in the right direction.  Rather, it seems like my memories are piled up in corners, stacked on flat surfaces, and wedged between unrelated volumes.  My point of reference seems to dictate what I can perceive, and due to the chaos I might be standing in the middle of a room of related memories, but I can’t see the one I left in the hallway.  This framework was painfully reinforced today.

It’s been a rough week.  I’ve spent a lot of it wracked with grief.  This morning was different, though.  Instead of grief I have been high strung with anxiety.  I couldn’t figure out the source.  I vacillated between wanting to go to work to be around people, and wanting to stay home and hide.  At the top of my thoughts was that I had a package arriving today, and did I want to be home for it or did I just want to get it later.  Over and over, round and round, it was diving me crazy.  In the end, I went to work because it was the least financially impacting decision when all the other factors kept cancelling each other out over and over.

What was the package?  Does it matter?  It was a cute kickstarter I bought into a few months ago.  Custom designed coins done in the style of depression era hobo coins.  Hobo coins were crafted works of art that used coins as the base, but with intricate designs inlaid over the original design of the coin.  I saw the kickstarter on BoingBoing, and thought they would make really cool trinkets to give to friends and strangers.

So, having decided to do something, rather than get stuck in an indecision loop, I headed to work.  I’m walking own Market Street, on my way to my office, and my phone chimes with a delivery notice.  My hobo coins have arrived.  Cool, right?

My next thought was “Now I can give Sam and Elliot… the… coins… I… got… them…” and Boom!  I’m leaning against a lamp post on Market Street bawling my eyes out.  Sure, I’ve been thinking about Elliot, and thinking about the coins arriving, but as my conscious mind moved around my Mind Palace, it was never at the right spot to see the various memories in the same frame.  My subconscious mind, on the other hand, really wanted me to just go back to bed and avoid this day all together.

Memory.  It’s a funny thing.

The International Rule Against Stealing Images

There once was a website called “The International Rules” where the owner posts his ‘rules’ on life. He says he is going to turn his rules into a published book. He also deep-linked a picture of me into one of his posts without proper attribution. Such things garner my retribution. mod_rewrite is my friend, and Gilbert is my bitch.

I wonder, will he publish this page (NSFW now that I’ve had my way with it) in his book as-is?

-Chris

[ad#adsense-horizontal]

I use Amazon affiliate links in some of my posts. I think it is fair to say my writing is not influenced by the $0.40 I earned in 2022.