I cut the tarot deck on the lectern. The card for ‘The Sun’ appeared. My fortune for today. I had just copied a drawing of stylized Mona Lisa someone had used to illustrate a tarot card. I wanted to go out into the sun to get a copy of my drawing on scrap paper with a worn old orange crayon.

I have a scanner, but it is not hooked up to the computer I use to put things online, so I go outside into bright sunlight to take pictures with my Iphone. I took the tarot deck with me and went to the back yard to find a sunny spot. Was ‘the sun’ in my future?

Yes.

I found a sunny spot at the bottom of the back stairs. Grey wood above gray rock. What could be better. Rough texture and smooth texture. I put my drawing down and reached for a rock to hold the paper in the breeze.

The wind blew three cards off the tarot deck and I scrambled across the yard to find my future.

I could see ‘The Fool’ face up under the stairs. My original top card, and today’s fortune come true, ‘The Sun’ was next. The card was on top of a black plastic bag filled with construction debris. Face down – I knew it – was ‘Death.’ Death does come to us all, and ‘us all’ includes me.

So I ended up taking a different picture than I had planned only a few minutes earlier. Funny how the future creeps up on us like that and blows our plans away. I wonder if there is a ‘Wind’ card in anyone’s tarot deck. Maybe time for me to draw my own tarot deck. Only seventy-eight images and a tradition to start with.