Silicon Dawn and Graduate School
Sep. 20th, 2011 12:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
raxSo I got my copy of the Silicon Dawn Tarot today. (You should all go buy one.) Because I'm having angst over this lately, I decided to ask it about graduate school --- how it was going, why am I here, what am I getting out of it. I realized that rather than traditional tarot spreads, most of which other than three-card draw I've never really liked, I should use an arrangement of cards that meant something to me personally, a means of organizing information that felt natural to me.
Thus, the Pokemon Spread was born.
If you're not familiar with the Pokemon TCG, I'll give a brief explanation of this picture. The six cards to the left are the prize cards --- the things you can get as you advance closer to winning the game. I see them as both "why I am putting effort into this" and "what's going to happen along the way" --- in the game, when you take a prize, you put it into your hand and can play it on the next turn. You go from bottom to top, although you deal from top to bottom. The card up at the top center, not normally horizontal unless it's asleep or paralyzed[0] but I got a weird one, is the Active Pokemon --- the self you're doing the work through right now. The five cards below it are your benched Pokemon, who could come into the active spot later, people you could be or things that you could use to work your way through the prizes. To the right of the active Pokemon is the Supporter card, something that in the game you can play one of per turn to help, well, support you. Underneath the deck is your discard pile, what you have to give up in order to get there. I had planned to flip more than one card until I flipped the 0 of VOID and was like "Oh, well, yeah."
So here's how I read this.
Right now I am paralyzed; according to Peggy's booklet, "this card is lies and giving up hope." Yeah, that's kind of where I am right now, wanting to drop my sword/quillpen and walk away from the fires (pentacles) that feel like they are shrouded hopelessly in darkness. Okay, deck, you get it! Thanks. So what else could I be doing, if I can find a way to retreat?
I could be the King of Pentacles and just talk my shit up like I am the best thing in the world. Sometimes I have a flash of this after an insight or a paper or something, where I am like shit, I am actually good at this, I might actually be able to change something about the way people think about identity. I usually don't act this way but sometimes I'm out with my friends and they are like "Explain Deleuze and Guattari" and I spend an hour talking while everyone drinks cocktails and I think Yes, I Am The Shit. It's nice to know this one isn't in the discard, and I can still play him later.
The three of Swords... well, Peggy says here that "Crisis and pain can serve as the fuel for wonderful things." Yes, it's true. Sometimes you have to permanently destroy your reproductive capacity with knives in order to make an omelet? I don't think that's how it works, but, well, you've got to put yourself into your work, because it's all you have. If I can keep a smile on my face while I'm doing it, I am probably better off.
The Hermit --- to me the gears associate this with swords and thus technology and rationality, but also power, being behind the scenes, pulling the strings, (if you have seen Princess Tutu this will make even more sense) controlling narratives. She's followed by one of the panopticon cameras that travel through the deck, but she doesn't care, she is working on some shit, and oh man when those fuckers see what she is up to, they are not going to know what hit them. Also hips for days and big thick biker legs. Sometimes I have to hide away so that I can come back and really do what I want to do.
Death. I really love this Death. I'm gonna diverge some from Peggy's book, although start from there being stories written on the body. This is arguably one thing I could do --- just give up on grad school. And goddamn does it look fun. It would be (as Krinn loves to say) a tradeoff --- a joyful dance in the rain, unbounded energy that would probably frankly terrify the people around me, and... a loss of color. I dunno, man, I dunno.
The princess of Swords will shank a bitch and not break a sweat. Peggy says "Poor crazy butterfly, she's the only thing that holds herself back from flying." Sometimes I feel this way, too; I'm actually really fucking crazy and just wear it very well. This is close to how I feel now, too; the sky is falling in bits and pieces and I can't fly up and out of it, I'm in my own way, and other people are getting in the way of my being in my own way and I want to cut them. Not really thrilled about this one.
Prizes! Well, the first prize is some shit. I could get vastly overpowered by nasty snake ladies with more swords than me who expect me to read their hidden semiotics and punish me for not so doing. (There are signposts in the holo, invisible in the photograph.) This... feels like grad school, yup. Even if I advance past that point, I get to sit on a throne of Oh Look I Can Follow The Grad School Rules wearing a mask of interest while I look away and wish I was doing my own research instead of taking EVEN MORE CLASSES. (I will have taken 30 classes by the time I am done.) Being the best at classes does not excite me at this point, and it does not excite the Empress, even though she gets to wear a badass dress.
It gets a little better from there, though. There's the Chevalier of Pentacles, who normally has SPENDING POWER (in this case it's covered by the other prize cards, which is appropriate for graduate school) and is a FUCKING DRAGON-RIDING BADASS. The more I work on my shit, the more that can be me. I can already talk the talk sometimes (King of Pentacles) and I've got something in the works (Hermit) but I'm not ready to go throwing fireballs yet. Once I am, I can sing the song that makes me out of nothing even as it binds me to the narratives I create; I can be historicized. I am seeking to both participate and disrupt this process as part of my academic project --- the large History watches over my library and my workspace as I do my work. I know this is a goal, and I can get there.
And when I do, those snake ladies with their two swords won't have anything on me. EIGHT SWORDS. Overkill, as Peggy says, and I don't take it quite so negatively here --- it's a set of tools that I can bring to bear on a situation, and I can reach into one of the only places Swords breaks the color pattern, reach out of analytics into something more flowing, and pull out the tool I need. Because I'm forging swords, here. But if I'm taking the older woman out while she's asleep, am I any better than the other swords cards? Is this really where I want to end up?
The root of the powers of Water provides an alternative, one that Peggy says is feminine and fertile and reactive. It's basically the opposite of the 8 of swords except I also see it as where all of these tools come from. If I end up just that, frankly, I'd be sad. That's not what I want to be. But if I can find a way to balance the two, just like History balances binding herself with creating herself, then I'd be somewhere.
What's going to support me most? The two of pentacles --- confidence, energy, how on my best days I can stare anything down and just smile. Okay. I can buy that. Watch out for burnout, though, fire-girl.
And what I'm discarding is the 0 of VOID --- potential. I could be doing anything else; maybe not anything anything, but frankly I have the resources and the time to do most anything instead of this, and I am discarding that in favor of this graduate program, playing this particular game, seeking this path. If I wanted to, I could scoop up all these cards, and while I'd almost certainly not get this set of prizes again, I could play a different game, and have that potential again.
But in the end I'm not ready to do that again. Maybe if I still feel like the Chevalier of VOID in another year.
[0] If you flip a reverse card, that means it's confused. THIS SPREAD IS AWESOME.
Thus, the Pokemon Spread was born.
If you're not familiar with the Pokemon TCG, I'll give a brief explanation of this picture. The six cards to the left are the prize cards --- the things you can get as you advance closer to winning the game. I see them as both "why I am putting effort into this" and "what's going to happen along the way" --- in the game, when you take a prize, you put it into your hand and can play it on the next turn. You go from bottom to top, although you deal from top to bottom. The card up at the top center, not normally horizontal unless it's asleep or paralyzed[0] but I got a weird one, is the Active Pokemon --- the self you're doing the work through right now. The five cards below it are your benched Pokemon, who could come into the active spot later, people you could be or things that you could use to work your way through the prizes. To the right of the active Pokemon is the Supporter card, something that in the game you can play one of per turn to help, well, support you. Underneath the deck is your discard pile, what you have to give up in order to get there. I had planned to flip more than one card until I flipped the 0 of VOID and was like "Oh, well, yeah."
So here's how I read this.
Right now I am paralyzed; according to Peggy's booklet, "this card is lies and giving up hope." Yeah, that's kind of where I am right now, wanting to drop my sword/quillpen and walk away from the fires (pentacles) that feel like they are shrouded hopelessly in darkness. Okay, deck, you get it! Thanks. So what else could I be doing, if I can find a way to retreat?
I could be the King of Pentacles and just talk my shit up like I am the best thing in the world. Sometimes I have a flash of this after an insight or a paper or something, where I am like shit, I am actually good at this, I might actually be able to change something about the way people think about identity. I usually don't act this way but sometimes I'm out with my friends and they are like "Explain Deleuze and Guattari" and I spend an hour talking while everyone drinks cocktails and I think Yes, I Am The Shit. It's nice to know this one isn't in the discard, and I can still play him later.
The three of Swords... well, Peggy says here that "Crisis and pain can serve as the fuel for wonderful things." Yes, it's true. Sometimes you have to permanently destroy your reproductive capacity with knives in order to make an omelet? I don't think that's how it works, but, well, you've got to put yourself into your work, because it's all you have. If I can keep a smile on my face while I'm doing it, I am probably better off.
The Hermit --- to me the gears associate this with swords and thus technology and rationality, but also power, being behind the scenes, pulling the strings, (if you have seen Princess Tutu this will make even more sense) controlling narratives. She's followed by one of the panopticon cameras that travel through the deck, but she doesn't care, she is working on some shit, and oh man when those fuckers see what she is up to, they are not going to know what hit them. Also hips for days and big thick biker legs. Sometimes I have to hide away so that I can come back and really do what I want to do.
Death. I really love this Death. I'm gonna diverge some from Peggy's book, although start from there being stories written on the body. This is arguably one thing I could do --- just give up on grad school. And goddamn does it look fun. It would be (as Krinn loves to say) a tradeoff --- a joyful dance in the rain, unbounded energy that would probably frankly terrify the people around me, and... a loss of color. I dunno, man, I dunno.
The princess of Swords will shank a bitch and not break a sweat. Peggy says "Poor crazy butterfly, she's the only thing that holds herself back from flying." Sometimes I feel this way, too; I'm actually really fucking crazy and just wear it very well. This is close to how I feel now, too; the sky is falling in bits and pieces and I can't fly up and out of it, I'm in my own way, and other people are getting in the way of my being in my own way and I want to cut them. Not really thrilled about this one.
Prizes! Well, the first prize is some shit. I could get vastly overpowered by nasty snake ladies with more swords than me who expect me to read their hidden semiotics and punish me for not so doing. (There are signposts in the holo, invisible in the photograph.) This... feels like grad school, yup. Even if I advance past that point, I get to sit on a throne of Oh Look I Can Follow The Grad School Rules wearing a mask of interest while I look away and wish I was doing my own research instead of taking EVEN MORE CLASSES. (I will have taken 30 classes by the time I am done.) Being the best at classes does not excite me at this point, and it does not excite the Empress, even though she gets to wear a badass dress.
It gets a little better from there, though. There's the Chevalier of Pentacles, who normally has SPENDING POWER (in this case it's covered by the other prize cards, which is appropriate for graduate school) and is a FUCKING DRAGON-RIDING BADASS. The more I work on my shit, the more that can be me. I can already talk the talk sometimes (King of Pentacles) and I've got something in the works (Hermit) but I'm not ready to go throwing fireballs yet. Once I am, I can sing the song that makes me out of nothing even as it binds me to the narratives I create; I can be historicized. I am seeking to both participate and disrupt this process as part of my academic project --- the large History watches over my library and my workspace as I do my work. I know this is a goal, and I can get there.
And when I do, those snake ladies with their two swords won't have anything on me. EIGHT SWORDS. Overkill, as Peggy says, and I don't take it quite so negatively here --- it's a set of tools that I can bring to bear on a situation, and I can reach into one of the only places Swords breaks the color pattern, reach out of analytics into something more flowing, and pull out the tool I need. Because I'm forging swords, here. But if I'm taking the older woman out while she's asleep, am I any better than the other swords cards? Is this really where I want to end up?
The root of the powers of Water provides an alternative, one that Peggy says is feminine and fertile and reactive. It's basically the opposite of the 8 of swords except I also see it as where all of these tools come from. If I end up just that, frankly, I'd be sad. That's not what I want to be. But if I can find a way to balance the two, just like History balances binding herself with creating herself, then I'd be somewhere.
What's going to support me most? The two of pentacles --- confidence, energy, how on my best days I can stare anything down and just smile. Okay. I can buy that. Watch out for burnout, though, fire-girl.
And what I'm discarding is the 0 of VOID --- potential. I could be doing anything else; maybe not anything anything, but frankly I have the resources and the time to do most anything instead of this, and I am discarding that in favor of this graduate program, playing this particular game, seeking this path. If I wanted to, I could scoop up all these cards, and while I'd almost certainly not get this set of prizes again, I could play a different game, and have that potential again.
But in the end I'm not ready to do that again. Maybe if I still feel like the Chevalier of VOID in another year.
[0] If you flip a reverse card, that means it's confused. THIS SPREAD IS AWESOME.