Duality & the Writing Process

Whenever I lay out the tarot cards to do a reading on myself, two identifier cards, or court cards, consistently come up: the Queen of Swords and the Queen of Cups. These two cards are representative of the two dual parts of my thought processes.

The Queen of Swords keeps her emotions in check, relying on logic to make decisions. She is apt to be intelligent, organized, and adept at noticing and expressing sarcasm and irony.

The Queen of Cups, in contrast, is focused on the world of emotions, prone to discounting logic in favor of her romantic ideals. She tends to specialize in poetry and caring gestures in social contexts.

These two seemingly incongruous aspects of myself work in symphony to aid me in my main pursuit: writing.

The Queen of Cups gathers material. Through her, I observe people and the emotions they inspire in each other and in me. She notes the lovers standing on the street corner and the soft way they don't look at each other, but allow the backs of their hands to brush. She takes in the scent of mint and rhapsodizes on the symbolic representation of virtue. She heeds the wistful slant of light on the lawn and connects it to the fading nature of love. The Queen of Cups is the portion of my though processes where my stories are conceived.

The Queen of Swords spins the material. She notes the irony in the romance, breaks down the scenes that the Queen of Cups produces and finds the crucial fissure that makes them shiny, new, significant. She finds it hilarious that the lovers have seen each other in the most intimate way, but cannot look at each other in public. She laughs at the inconsistent definitions of virtue that society offers us. She cynically observes that although love may fade like the light, there's always a new day, and always a new love. The Queen of Swords is the portion of my thought processes where my stories are articulated.

I could not write without this duality. It can be maddening, to see life from two such disparate perspectives, but where the different points of view intersect, I can produce beautiful works of art.