Rethinking Reframing

Renaming Relaunching

Mark Rothko

It’s been a minute. I’ve been feeling the need to change my approach to writing this newsletter. It’s not based upon number of subscribers or reader engagement, but it comes from a sense of my own personal transition and change. This writing has always reflected where I am at this moment, with very few filters. When I launched Explorations on the Tarot Journey in September of 2022, it was an experiment in consistency and dedication. If I didn’t feel inspired I wrote. If I had no idea what to write I wrote. I wrote about what I knew, about questions which arose, experiences which affected me, people I love. This approach felt appropriate, and it almost always tied back to tarot, as an exploratory tool for personal growth.

Today it is still a tool I use daily, and share with others in different capacities, but it has become just one of many tools and subjects I’m interested in writing about. Two years ago my intention was to write a book about the intersection of tarot and the enneagram. As I wrote, the connections felt weaker than I’d thought they would, as if I was pushing arguments which didn’t need to be made. For now it is an abandoned project.

So I would ask that you bear with me as I rethink and reframe, as I rename and relaunch. It’s coming and it takes time.

2024 has been blue. The color keeps coming to me in different forms. A blue journal, the book Bluets by Maggie Nelson, a rock, a skirt, the lake, my husband's eyes. Unfortunately, a lot of blue light which has depleted my sleep. In The Secret Lives of Color by Kassia St. Clair, she notes that the color blue was highly undervalued in Europe until the twelfth century: “For the Romans in particular, blue was associated with barbarism: writers from that period mentioned that Celtic soldiers dyed their bodies blue, and Pliny accused women of doing the same before participating in orgies.” Blue evolved into a color considered precious, revered, and even divine, and blue for me in its different shades and textures, has become my friend this year, especially when I’m sad.

The original Rider Waite Smith deck is very blue. Almost every card has blue in it. All the cards in fact, except The Devil. The back of the deck is blue. For Waite and Smith I think the color blue was tied deeply to the intuition, to using the intuition in reading cards. Blue skies and blue water feature prominenetly throughout the deck, as well as blue clothing. I imagine The Devil has no blue because it is a card which represents the loss of true self-perception.

Ray Bradbury talks about blurting in his book on writing, Zen and the Art of Writing.

“The only good writing is intuitive writing. It would be a big bore if you knew where it was going. It has to be exciting, instantaneous and it has to be a surprise. Then it all comes blurting out and it’s beautiful. I’ve had a sign by my typewriter for 25 years now which reads, ‘DON’T THINK!’"

I’m a thinker and it is hard for me, especially with my familial and work background to not intellectualize everything. So perhaps the task at hand is to just write, fearlessly, intuitively, and the reframing will come. Trusting that the process itself unearths more process and the product is the process, not the product.

At heart I’m a generalist. We say in the book trade that the best book buyers and sellers know a little about a lot. I know that much about myself.

I thank you all, old and new readers alike for sticking with me during this time of transition. I feel sure that what will emerge will be interesting, to me and I hope for you as well.

In the meantime I’ll share my own little dig list, from the past few weeks:

What I’m Reading:

The Secret Lives of Color by Kassia St. Clare—this is really a reference book, and sits on my little ledge with books I like to have on hand.

Down the Drain by Julia Fox—boy did she get chewed out in the reviews for this memoir, but I’m enjoying it, as my “light” reading. Her memories of growing up in NYC ring some bells for me for sure.

A Year in Practice by Jacquiline Suskin, recommended by my friend Tracy Benjamin, a lovely seasonal reflection which reminds me of the rhythms associated with the elapsing of time and the repetitions of the familiar.

And always this year, Bluets. Over and over.

xo Hanna