Ann’s Fashion Tarot, Crimson Edition: The Chariot.

The Chariot says, guess what, you are actually driving this thing.

All this past winter, every time I went into any thrift store, I bought pink and orange everything. None of it was like what I usually wear or could picture myself ever wearing. It all had to be these particular shades, specifically a hot salmon and a warm toasty non-neon orange. Anything in those those colors, I bought. I also a dyed a few things I already had, summer things that were brown, I dyed them crimson or salmon or plum. There was no plan to wear any of it, I just liked how it looked in my closet alongside so much fancy black which is generally my work wardrobe. This new section of the closet just cracked me up.

I didn’t know what it was for until this whole medical event started happening and I was like, oh, of course, I can’t sit around the house in fancy black work clothes! I guess I’ve been building a recovery wardrobe! This excited me beyond belief: 1) that some part of my brain knew I was about to need healing attire, and 2) that this would not be some ordinary convalescence but rather a daily fashion party. One thing I learned was that pink and orange are right next to each other on the color wheel. Guess what’s complementary to that? Directly opposite the pink-orange section of the wheel? Blue and green. Which makes my flouncy getups directly complimentary to my backyard, which is where I spent a lot and I mean a lot of recovery time. 

It was stunning how easy it was to just sit there. I am sure it had something to do with the fact of the complimentary colors. I could be still forever, those days, because that’s not really what was happening, what was happening was some invisible sealing and shifting and some invisible swirling of a salmon/plum combo which is clearly in some kind of communication with the trees and the sky. You would see this if you were driving by. It just really feels like the trees and the sky are excited to have new outfits to pop against.

The Chariot says to look for unlike forces, like keep your eyes really open for them, and assign yourself the role of yoking them together. Not forcefully but over time with some goal in mind. Assign yourself the role and then take it seriously like do not for a second question that you’re supposed to be in this particular driver’s seat and supposed to be nuancing the shit out of a couple things that would otherwise have gone in different, opposing, nonproductive directions. Keep your core engaged and let the forces pull or balk or whatever until things start making sense, which they will.