Still Life with Tarot

On Wednesday, we’ll have a daylong visit from one of my 5-year-old daughter’s favorite friends. Just last Spring, we attended a birthday party at her house and the little girls all came in costume. Some were the standard fare these days, puffy with a Disney label. Others were homemade concoctions of tulle, velvet, beads and pipe cleaners. The party treasure hunt yielded yet more mardi gras beads, rhinestone sunglasses and sparkling disco head bands. By the time we reached the last party game, every outfit had evolved into something stunning and new.

For the final activity each girl had a marbled print balloon tied to her ankle. The object: to stomp the other contestants’ balloons while protecting your own. With great enthusiasm and surprising lack of tears balloons were busted and girls eliminated until it came down to three.
The three remaining preschoolers in all their best finery resumed competition by chasing each other until they spiralled into a circle.

Round and round and round they went, beads and scarves and hair flying, balloons bobbling on their ankles, round and round and round, wild grins on their faces, gleams in their eyes, laughter in the air, faster and faster.
Their dance was not a model of the daily revolution of the earth or the orderly spinning of the planets around their sun. Calamity or time would bring their spinning to an end. The party favors would be offered, car seats buckled, finery tossed in the dirty clothes, dinner served, nightly baths and bedtime rituals faithfully administered.

But none of that mattered. All that mattered was the immediate joy.

I thought to myself, now if only I owned a video camera, I could have filmed this as the perfect illustration of the Three of Cups.

This entry was posted Monday, November 20th, 2006 at 3:12 pm and is filed under Minor Arcana. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.