JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

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I love tarot cards—the symbols, the myths, the far-out designs. In Italo Calvino’s The Castle of Crossed Destinies they communicate using the tarot, and it’s so arcane and esoteric I can’t find my damn copy. I enjoy consulting tarot card readers and distinguishing between the bullshit artists who are only trying to sell you stuff, and the truly gifted who are not bound by regular time (Like Dr Strange and his 14,600,000 possible outcomes). There are a couple of tarot decks in my house, but I cannot read them to save my life—the rational part of my brain starts mocking me and I cannot take it seriously. I have no faith in my tarot interpretation abilities, but I have faith in the movies.

Noel, who is now based in Singapore, gave me these Criterion Collection movie postcard sets. I like them so much that like my Penguin Books and New Yorker postcards, they will never be mailed out. However, it’s occurred to me that each movie poster summarizes an entire cinematic universe with its own language, characters, stories, and could therefore be used for divination. Or as I prefer to think of it, studying the themes that surround an issue.

First I had to pick out the postcards of the movies I had seen and remember well, so I had to leave out Carnival of Souls, Cameraperson, Lady Snowblood and others. This left me with 28 cards, whose meanings can change according to the context. These include

You are ambitious and will go far in life, but nobody likes you because you’re a busybody and a teacher’s pet, and your EQ is low.

What you have is not love, but co-dependency and addiction. Get out of that relationship before you kill each other!

Self-explanatory.

Bitch, stop popping those pills, you’re an addict.

Your plan is idiotic. You think you’re going to solve your problem, but your dumbass strategy is only going to make things worse. Just stop.

So you think you should abandon your successful career and try to be a “normal” woman with a husband and brats, bake cupcakes and do home improvement projects. Hah. Hahahahah, you’ll be dead of boredom in a week.

Okay, who wants a reading?

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Question from Ronigurl: I just went paragliding last weekend, and I found it as sedate as my Lola’s rocking chair. Conversely, I hate sliding down playground slides, and will never ride Anchors Away in this lifetime. Is there something wrong with me?

Rumble Fish is about a disaffected teen abandoned by his mother and living with his alcoholic father, who wants to be badass like his brother, a gang member. His brother says gang life is not as exciting as he thinks it is, and wants to be free and see the ocean. They break into a store and set the Siamese “rumble fish” free. In the end the protagonist gets to see the ocean.

Reading: The thrills you expected turned out to be duds. Go see the ocean.