The Devil card says, you better thank me for my service, if you expect the ability to move on.
As noted, Abby let me read all the writings that went with her drawings, which amounted to a one-hundred-day journal. The notes weren’t wordy but she was thorough. Sometimes it was like “made a sandwich.” Sometimes it was “how do you feel love, how do you know you’re loved.” Or “can feeling love coexist with feeling less-than-wanted, or is wanting in itself a problem.” It was glorious to read all this because while I have no Abby-specific data to back this up, at this point I know two things: 1) What’s troubling is probably always going to be what’s troubling, and while that can come across as discouraging, another way to see it is: hey, younger-than-me person, at this point you really have a finite set of things that trouble you and it’s probably not going to expand and will probably even shrink, so take heart that you are a known quantity. Take heart that what you know now is all the knowing you need. You are only going to get better at managing the fear when fear shows up, because it’s the same variety every time, and guess what eventually it won’t even show up. And 2) I am not kidding you, eventually it won’t even show up. This is why journals are great. You can look back at what you wrote when you were eight or eighteen or newly thirty, and realize, oh my god, I was worried about the same stuff back then as I am worried about right now. Except now it’s just stuff that happens and it doesn’t come with worry. How about that. And next thing you know a figure like this one, the drawing above, stops looking like a menace with chains, and instead it looks like a dance just getting started.
Abby, outside Satori Violet where she teaches and dances and oh oh does she teach and dance.
Abby, Kato Ballroom.
Abby, street, sky.
When The Devil card shows up, it’s like, ok so you have habits. Maybe addictions. They in themselves are not patently simply bad. Be nice to them, thank them for their service, keep your eyes and ears open so you notice when the service stops and instead parts of you are getting eaten away. When that happens or ideally just before, start the dance.
ann rosenquist fee 