Day Four. October 18th. Four of Pentacles.
Definition: Waite says “holding tight to what one has, gift, legacy, inheritance”.
Detail: So, what is the Elsewhere Tarot presenting?
This one feels so apparent to me. It’s the city from the Three of Pentacles, the living city that’s where you want to be, the city pulsing with the commodified life of coins…but you can’t afford it. It’s homelessness in the city. Unhoused-ness. But you can’t leave, because it’s where life is.
Day: I definitely feel this one. I lived in Michigan my whole life until 2018 and never felt connected to it. There’s no scene I felt connected to. No zine scene. No gaming scene. For a while there was a music scene surrounding the White Stripes, but that ended. Before that there was…the Motown music scene in…the 60s. I had creative friends for times, but always felt like I belonged somewhere else. Now I feel different in Denver. There are great arts scenes. Zine fests. Poets like Andrea Gibson in Boulder. But I’ve only barely managed to connect with any of it. It’s expensive to live in Denver. I did an online cost of living calculator before moving and it said 15% more expensive. But it’s not true. Houses are 400% more. Groceries are 40%-60% more than they were in Michigan before the pandemic. I have to spend carefully. Cooking is less expensive than take-out, so I cook probably 29 out of every 30 days. In the six years since moving I’ve never paid to see a live music performance. So I know what it’s like to live in a city like the one on the card. But I don’t want to live anywhere else.
Discovery: I feel like Waite has it right for what Pamela drew today. Hoarding of money. And the anxiety of it that separates you from the lives of others. Look how removed he is from the town behind him. What’s going on in the lives of those people that he’s not a part of because he’s consumed with minding and protecting his money? And he’s not someone who spends his money in ways that enliven him either. It’s a card of how money sets you apart from others.
And so is today’s from the Elsewhere Tarot, just from the opposite lens. Pamela’s figure is set apart from life by having a certain amount of money; whoever is living in the park on the Elsewhere card is set apart by not having it. I see lives like Pamela depicts in the wealthy mansions and neighborhoods just two blocks north of us. Young tech bros with perfect kids who never own toys or bikes that aren’t new. A garden-level apartment behind a bar isn’t the same as a tent in a park, but it’s similarly in the shadow of lives whose wealth gives them anxiety, fear, prejudice, and robs them of life and truer human connection.