Cartography 12: Queen of Hearts
On going dark for a while
New Year’s Eve is a black hole.
New Year’s Day is a promise you have passed through that black hole.
That’s how it seems today, at least.
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When I started this series two years ago I meant to do it as one- I didn’t even make it through the first quarter. Naturally I was disappointed, but I told myself that I was too busy with work (I was) and that nobody would particularly notice the absence (they didn’t). So I was happy to let it sit in the dark, undisturbed, intending to return to it eventually finish what I had started.
The work didn’t let up, and I thrived. I was getting paid well, recognized at work, and getting external validation from any number of sources divorced from my writing and whatever I was trying to make this series. I think I really didn’t understand it either- each week was more intuitive than planned, letting patterns and themes naturally suggest themselves and subsequently shaping them into communiques from myself to the world. Sometimes I landed on insight for myself, others I felt like I had just done the work but regardless, one thing was always constant: I felt I had mapped something, committed it to paper and pushed it out hoping it might serve as a roadmap for someone else.
If it did, I never heard about it. That’s just the nature of working on projects like this, though. Maps are utilitarian tools.
So many people say the way out is through, but that fails to answer an essential question:
What if this is where I’m supposed to be? What if I’m already where the map intended me to be?
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The number 12 is a dark place in astrology. It refers to a sign associated with the collective unconscious, a vast ocean of hidden monsters and repressed emotions that easily consumes everything that enters it. It’s a place of porous boundaries, irrational thoughts and and patterns, hidden enemies and silent supporters, that area that sits just behind your field of vision, the back of your head that you can never see or interpret directly, the parts of your life soaked in darkness.
It’s not the only dark number and place- 2, 6, and 8 concern similar themes- but the 12th place in our lives refers to something deeper that we’re unable to access by normal means in our lives. It’s a collective darkness, a limbo that only those with second-sight can navigate clearly while the rest of us grope around looking for some sort of handhold or marker to guide our way. And even if we find one of these rare mystics that can guide us through, how would they communicate it to us? Language fails without reference. It becomes a game of the 3 blind men and the elephant, all grasping and groping in a collective interrogation trying to decipher the signals of what constitutes a pachyderm and never being able to compile a picture.
New Years Eve is a decidedly 12th Place holiday. We’re all groping in the dark hoping to describe something new, hoping the place we are headed is better than what we are leaving behind. And why shouldn’t we? The train of time pulls us inexorably forward along the track, and the fact we’re underground makes little difference to us all.
So the question remains- if we’re all in this dark place together, in this black hole day, maybe this is where we’re supposed to be.
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Over the years I’ve collected a few favorite quotes about New Years- Dorothy Parker’s supposed cable demanding to know why we’re having another, Gramsci’s exhortation against time and capital’s inextricable link together. Songs from a lifetime of subculture fighting the slipping away- “this is the new year, and I don’t feel any different” “it’s the end of a fucked up year and there’s another one coming” “The air is cut with cyanide in honor of the New Year”
Everyone seems ready to escape their past just as much as they fear and hate their future. We’re creatures of pattern recognition- why wouldn’t past performance be an indicator of futures?
And somehow, every year, some of us survive the black night and barrel headlong into the light and day of the new 1st, not our first and potentially our last.
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New Year’s Day rises with the sun and promises made to be broken- work out plans, diets, promises to get sober and love more and to travel the world and take in all the goodness. Don’t work too hard- that’s how you’ll spend your year. Keep a little money in your pocket- that’s how it will come in, through the front door. Eat your peas and collards- luck and wealth will follow you if you cook them with a penny in the pot.
This is the passage of the zodiac, of the calendar, of the clock- from 12 to 1, rinse and repeat.
And I have to ask myself, once again- what if this is where I am supposed to stay?
I won’t pretend to have answers or patterns that I’ve scryed in the mists of the New Year. But I have learned a new skill in the dark- that of trusting my own cartographies and trusting the maps that I send out into the world.
I’m willing to surrender to the uncertain spaces whether tomorrow comes or not.
It feels like a resolution to me.