Notes on adventure

Hello friends! The lilacs are blooming and covered in rain. My favorite time of year!

I have less and less time for writing now as full time work and parenting gobble up the hours. I will keep up with my substack as long as it brings me joy, likely with smaller projects, until the winds change and there is more time for art and writing again! (I am ever optimistic.)

Today has been heavy. I am very lucky in life, and I still have bucketloads of grief to sit with. These words are for my daughter, who is currently too young to understand them or need them. So instead I give them to you all, along with deep love and gratitude. I hope today is a peaceful day for you all.

Detail from death’s banner on the Rider-White Tarot deck: Linocut on tshirt - Astrid Rooke

Adventures

Once upon a time. Yes, of course. That’s how stories begin.

Adventures; big and small, unlooked for. Small problems that lead us down long unexpected paths, until we find ourselves miles away from where we started, with an unfamiliar map.

Some people already know what adventures they require. They must meet the unknown! They crave it. They take to the dust and the tumult bravely, seemingly born with a pack on their back full of everything they require. Some people do everything they can to avoid the call, hiding at home with a blanket over their head, ignoring the warning signs of discomfort and stagnation, positive that everything is perfect just the way it is. Most of us are simply waiting for it all to make sense. Waiting for our turn, or waiting for a sign: which way? When? What is my adventure going to be?

Its hard work, adventuring. You get holes in your shoes and dirt on your face. You lose precious things, you find precious things, you meet strange people that stay with you for the rest of your life. You go hungry, you get sick, you get so tired you could lie down in the middle of the street and sleep through a parade. It is unforgiving. It will never be as glamorous or perfect as you had hoped. You will make endless mistakes. You will end up in an empty parking lot somewhere, alone and confused, wondering if you’re still the same person you were when you left. You will wonder if you will ever get back what you lost.

None of those details really matter, though. The mistakes. The loss. The confusion. Which path: left or right? The secret is that all paths lead to the dragon in the end. One brings you through a swamp, one brings you through a desert, but in the end you will have to meet the dragon, and decide what to do. Shortcuts are no good, because the path is what prepares you for the dragon, do you understand? You cannot know what to do when you face the dragon if you have not spent a year in the swamp, or a year in the desert, either will do. But once you’ve done that work, you will do marvelously, my dear. You will do marvelously. And oh the magic you will discover along the way! Oh the beauty!

Thats all any story is, is change. Maybe the world changes, maybe you change, but those two things aren’t all that different anyway. Getting comfortable with change, and allowing life to come and go is half the battle. The swamps, the dragon, the heartbreak, the loneliness… it will come and go. So too will the sunrises, the flowers, the friendships and the joyous days of peace.

The universe must know itself. It must know its own darkness, and its own beauty. You are the wonderful story the universe is writing about itself, and it is not over yet.

My dearest; you are the story.

Thank you for reading!

-Astrid