Stash

Yet another card that wouldn't let me run away. I pulled the four of coins early on but it repelled me. So I didn't paint it. After I finished the seven and asked for another card to paint on this journey, guess what came up...again? Ugh. Why? why, you ask, Kind Reader, didnt I want the four of coins message? This is not necessarily a negative card! It reminds us to look at our relationship to money. It speaks to the energy that we put into material 'things'. It is the four corners of the castle we sometimes lock ourselves into.

But all I heard when researching this card the first time was "miser", and "greedy". Everyone described the RWS image of the four of coins as "a constipated greedy little man". So, yeah, that was rather a turn off! Is this me? Do I stranglehold what money I have? I'm certainly not, as you can clearly discern, painting what sells. In fact, this whole tarot journey was a freedom from that mentality and fear. My paintings are odd, not easy  Thomas Kincaid waterfalls and windmills. But I AM stodgy. My mom is tight pocketed, squirreling away most of her money "for the future". She is pushing 80 now and her couch is torn out, her chairs glued and reglued and glued again, the paint curling off the walls. I think she gets it from her father, who had to sell apples during the depression, who even after he was the first person hired by social security never felt he had enough. How many of us have this relationship to money because our parents, or even grandparents were struggling?

So this four is not only about money, but for me that was the gist. So my symbols are the ways wealth can be for a person. Are you holding tight to every cent, squirreling away your stash? Are you investing your acorn wisely, pushing it into dark fertile earth where it will grow for you, sprouting into your dreams? Does money weigh heavily on your mind like an acorn about to fall on your head? Will that maybe inspire you- like Newton's apple hitting him on the head. Money sure has a gravity. Or is the gold floating acorn in the sky your God that you worship? Currency is not even real! It's just a concept, an agreement that holds society together. And you can't eat it, but you can buy nourishment with it.  Is it ugly to you, distasteful, or is it a fun toy to play with? Do you use it too freely with no thought to the future? And if you don't have what money you need to get by, I am so sorry to hear it.

I painted the San Francisco skyline into the background because I am still waiting to get paid to start a big commision in SF.  It's more money than I've ever made on a single job and it's weighing on my mind.  I need to change how I think about what having enough money means. Of course my image is similar to Pamela Smiths, give or take a chipmunk head, some extra layers, his grown acorn-oak tree throne, and his red cloak of materialism fading into a beautiful woodgrain sunset. And he is still locked in by the four sides of his velvet castle symbolized perfectly in this upcycled frame.

My good friend died last night, suddenly, and within twenty minutes of finding out the sad news, I got a text that read: "The biggest difference between money and time: you always know how much money you have, but you never know how much time you have."

My journey has me releasing my white knuckled grip on my acorn,  setting some aside for my children, donating more to do some good in this world, but I'm going to be having more fun with it while I'm still alive.