I found myself spontaneously in the process of an odd bit of writing about dandelions. This was far from the topic I knew I had in mind, about remembering your idea's value through challenges. I could tie that to an unveiling of a new spread I've been working on. Still, I followed the creative impulse to start with dandelions to see where it went. Standing up to go for my afternoon walk, I set to mind that I would think about what I intended the blurb to be. 

I take two walks a day. I use a similar route most of the time because it offers the most interesting sights of the industrial park while also limiting my exposure to getting run over by the sporadic traffic of large trucks. 

These outings are not without their perks. I owe a detailed mental stop motion vignette of a decomposing opossum carcass to these walks. Plus, over a few years of this, I've collected eighty-three cents, usually in single coin installments. Also, I make it a point to supervise an endearingly bonded pair of crows who have settled in the area.  

As I check for updates on the current status of my surveil's interest, I wondered if I should use mustard flowers as my analogy instead. Was it dandelion flowers or mustard flowers that can detect whether or not a person likes butter? I tried to remember what my great-aunt had told me, but the truth is, anything yellow and bright enough to allow the sunshine to reflect its glow onto your chin will work.   

Continuing on my route, I thought it might be a good idea to take a closer look at an actual dandelion for my answers. Where might I find one of those? Then around the next corner, what do you know! I spotted a few small yellow flowers. This area commonly grows dandelions. Some part of me must have peripherally collected and retained the observation from prior walks without notifying me conspicuously, but that is not how my thoughts' chronology played out on the conscious level. Experientially, I was eeking out connections for a narrative from a deeper part of myself as I meditated on my creative idea. This inner part was nudging me to be aware of the tools I could employ in the endeavor.  

This is what I had written before the walk: 

"There are intriguing cartomancers of rarified dark arts whispered to be among us. They are unrecognizable, having graduated tarot, in that they no longer use cards. A graduate dandelion, when in the sun, it is the real dandelion in the sun. A graduate dandelion, when under the moon, it is the real dandelion under the moon. In contrast, most dandelions are merely in the field, among a multitude of card shuffling dandelions."

I suspect I initially wanted to get into tarot's saturation during the time of Covid and how that affects a possible decline of the perception of exclusivity for talent in readers who had been reading for a long time. Still, I know, too, that I equally did not want to get into that because I'm excited about the recent phenomenal enthusiasm about tarot. It is practically threatening exoteric status, which is unprecedented save for maybe when taroc was a ubiquitous gaming and gambling sensation 300 years ago. Soberly, however, in my heart, I know it is not my place to write that piece, no matter how I empathize with what they must be going through. One should write what they know. My two-plus years of studying tarot seriously places me among the newcomers in the field regardless of my life-long dabbling in the philosophies from which cartomancy draws.

So, what was I going to do with these flowers? I did not know: A simple magic operation, a YouTube post, pictures for my first blog? I stopped at the last one. It was fully sprung in seed florets. Of course, the dramatic change of maturation is an essential aspect of the analogy of the dandelion. You can't even make a wish with it until it metamorphosizes into an airborne ready dandelion clock. 

It became apparent what I would write about: Cards are not the 'special feature' as an end. Anyone can own cards, but the skilled reader can follow invisible signs on the trail. Readers automatically look for the tools that will assist in accomplishing an endeavor, even when we are unclear exactly where we are going with it initially. 

That aspect of cartomancy will likely always be esoteric because most people only believe what they see. The cards are a bridge between the two because you can see them, but the holder of the talent is one who can look through what is seen, look through what it means, and look into what the cards say about the question in hand.           

To punctuate the lesson, a shiny penny lay on the asphalt on my return to the office. That makes eighty-four cents and an abstract first blog post. I will have to get to that new spread another time.