The following was inspired by the "Restraint" card in the Wisdom Keepers' Oracle. As soon as I drew it I felt immediate resistance. So I decided to dramatise that resistance, to see what it had to say.
I struggle to look at him, knowing that he comes particularly to teach me about restraint. I don't want to hear, don't want to participate. He frightens me. If I am truly honest, he's actually rather a lovely-looking bloke, but I am not. In my mind I have created him as a "used car salesman" type, shifty and untrustworthy. He's just a shyster, I find myself thinking. The gates are clanging, metal grating painfully upon metal, shutting him out, shutting me out.
And the problem is, he knows. I can see it in his eyes. He says nothing, simply regarding me gently and patiently, waiting for me to be ready. He will make no attempt to force the locks I have put in place, but neither will he retreat. He simply remains, a presence I cannot ignore, much as I would like to.
My eyes shift to the colourful array of his apparel, to the earring that now strikes me as flamboyant. What is restrained about such an individualistic, colourful personality? Perhaps he has nothing to teach me at all. Or perhaps I am wrong, and what he has to say is not at all what I imagine.
But it is. I know it. If it weren't true, he wouldn't still be standing there, so solemnly and confidently waiting, holding the Sword of Damocles above my head. For all his colour and gentle humour, he is the Spectre of Death, come to haunt me, come to judge me, come to end me. Because what he brings is death. Death to everything I know and am. Death to feeling, joy and possibility. Death to hope.
He is still just standing there. I want to look away but cannot. Our eyes are locked. It's stalemate. Neither of us moves and I break out in a cold sweat.
I struggle to look at him, knowing that he comes particularly to teach me about restraint. I don't want to hear, don't want to participate. He frightens me. If I am truly honest, he's actually rather a lovely-looking bloke, but I am not. In my mind I have created him as a "used car salesman" type, shifty and untrustworthy. He's just a shyster, I find myself thinking. The gates are clanging, metal grating painfully upon metal, shutting him out, shutting me out.
And the problem is, he knows. I can see it in his eyes. He says nothing, simply regarding me gently and patiently, waiting for me to be ready. He will make no attempt to force the locks I have put in place, but neither will he retreat. He simply remains, a presence I cannot ignore, much as I would like to.
My eyes shift to the colourful array of his apparel, to the earring that now strikes me as flamboyant. What is restrained about such an individualistic, colourful personality? Perhaps he has nothing to teach me at all. Or perhaps I am wrong, and what he has to say is not at all what I imagine.
But it is. I know it. If it weren't true, he wouldn't still be standing there, so solemnly and confidently waiting, holding the Sword of Damocles above my head. For all his colour and gentle humour, he is the Spectre of Death, come to haunt me, come to judge me, come to end me. Because what he brings is death. Death to everything I know and am. Death to feeling, joy and possibility. Death to hope.
He is still just standing there. I want to look away but cannot. Our eyes are locked. It's stalemate. Neither of us moves and I break out in a cold sweat.