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LESTOILLE-LEMONDE
In an interview, artist Damien Hirst said "You might say very clever things just by feeling your way in the dark." I think he has a point. By feeling our way in the dark, we learn to create a whole reality based only on the few things we manage to touch. This way we learn that when an experience is presented to us we don’t need to pay attention to everything. No matter how big a river may be, we only need a few sips of water to quench our thirst. The tarot's images are full of colors, details, symbols and characters. Trying to understand an image by scanning each single color, each single symbol and each single detail in it would be like gulping down the whole river! That's why we compare one image to another, one name to another, so we can pay attention only to these few things that, by being repeated more than once, are impressed upon us. We find a message in the similarities among images. Then we qualify that message by noticing the differences between these similar things.
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What is in the soul of words? The vowels always carry a vibrant message. When we unlock LESTOILLE and LEMONDE to look at their souls, a similarity catches our eye. LESTOILLE's soul is EOIE, while LEMONDE's soul is EOE. This is enough for us to work on and wonder. Today we can give the consonants a rest.
EOIE-EOE
We cannot help be inspired by the fact that the souls of these two words are so similar, especially since the two images also resemble each other: both feature a blond woman as main character. This blond woman, free of clothing to represent freedom from material burdens, is often thought to be the soul, the anima, or the anima mundi. In other words, the soul of two words representing souls is almost identical, just as the women depicted in the images.
Almost.
When two things are alike, we will find more information in their differences than in their similarities.
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In EOE, we see LEMONDE as ephemeral glory. The horizontal flow of the letter E contrasts with the self-centeredness of the letter O. That letter O, which reminds us of the mandorla centered on our woman, stands between the two letters E. This tells us that glory is like an Inn we find at the roadside. We can enjoy its comfort for a night or two, but then we must keep going. In any case, there is a fluid rhythm in these three letters: "advance" (first letter E), "rejoice" (letter O), "advance"(second letter E), that could be translated as "rather be a river than a pond". On the other hand, EOIE shows a stop in the rhythm illustrated by the letter I, as in an errand we must run before feeling free to dance with the world.
The letter I regards the letter O like an individual staring at a void; or more precisely, like the woman in LESTOILLE stares at the river into which she pours the contents of her jars. With the letter I beside the letter O, the woman is standing outside of the mandorla, and we notice that if the letter I jumps into the letter O, it will create the image in LE MONDE. The letters O and I are telling us that, if the woman in LESTOILLE wants to become the woman in LEMONDE, she needs to release all that water, and then throw her entire self into the stream. No river holds itself back.
It is a good thing that we have the tarot to help us reflect on such things. As in any other kind of poetry, visual poetry should help us build ourselves a soul. It is so hard to do this on our own that we can't help but envy how lucky diamonds are. Diamonds can take thousands of years to go from dust to light. We have only a few decades to attain our full lustre.
Until next week,
Enrique Enriquez
New York, 2008
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