Sounding The Current: Chapter 8 – The Light of Hope

Lisa woke up prior to her alarm but well rested. Her Friday morning job was really a Friday early afternoon job and she still had several hours of personal time before she had to be at the store. She sat down with fresh coffee at the table and reviewed the list of meanings, the meanings card of the decorated deck, and her recent experiences.

No matter how much she turned over what the judge had said during the ordeal of the Moon card, Lisa could not find the edge of the judge’s lie. Because of this, Lisa was unsure of Rebecca’s motives for giving her the deck and thus giving the judges access to her life.

“But did she, though? She gave me the plain cards, and probably did something to make that first dream happen, but I was the one who took the Tarot Judge’s hand in that dream. Not her. And what does the judge with her face represent anyway?” Lisa thought about what that judge did in the only dream she saw them in. “Hope. Rebecca had hope that I would use the deck to better myself, so of course the judge wearing her face would talk about that hope.”

Lisa looked back at the list of meanings for the Star. “Understanding, not hope.” She looked at the decorated deck’s keywords. “Hope, Inspiration, Renewal.” She was confused how the two lists could so completely contradict each other. She opened her laptop to look online. Surely there was an ancient master list of tarot meanings that all the decks sourced from, right? There’s been a lot about magic in the news and posted online recently, maybe the original set of tarot meanings is one of them.

An hour later, Lisa closed her laptop lid more confused and unsure about the matter than before. There were more posts, stories, and books about tarot than there were tarot decks published in the world. How the hell was Rebecca able to reconcile them when reading for clients?

She looked at the handwritten deck and the torn page of meanings. Maybe the meanings used were dependent on the deck. Or dependent on the question. Or dependent on what was available at the time. When Rebecca read at the masquerade, she certainly had no doubt about what the cards in front of her meant at the time. But then again, Rebecca is obviously an experienced professional whereas Lisa is still just a…

Lisa caught herself before finishing the well worn put down. It was her deepening belief that Rebecca would not have given her the deck and the list if she didn’t think that Lisa wasn’t capable of doing something with it. So far the theme of each card has been expressed in her life in some way. Either something from within like the Fool, from without like the Sun, or in dreams like the Moon. Because the two sets of meanings she had in hand contradicted each other, Lisa wondered if these heavy thoughts on Rebecca’s motives were not the theme of the Star card being played out.

“Well, I guess I’m both the star and the antagonist of this chapter, this time. No need for anyone to be a bigger bitch than me.” She laughed at what she felt was a personal triumph. “Wonder why the list makes a distinction between understanding and hope.”

Lisa arrived for work a few minutes early, causing one teammate to lose a bet to the other. The two women coworkers asked about Lisa’s restaurant job and the current rumor that Lisa had been kidnapped in broad daylight because of a failure to pay a debt. Lisa grimaced to hear the story of the week, confirmed that the restaurant job was gone, and only added that she needed to rebuild her life.

The three women attended a mall kiosk selling cellphones and cellphone accessories. Though all three women were equally trained, it became quickly clear that Lisa’s role was best away from the cash register. Not because of theft or mistakes, but because Lisa just enjoyed flirting with passersby far too much.

So as the mall opened and Lisa began warming up her pitch by calling out to the day’s first mall-walkers, Lisa found herself not as aggressive with voice or body posture as she normally would have been. As the number of people passing by increased, Lisa’s exuberance decreased until the two women began checking on her to see if she was still there or if she had just quit without saying anything.

Halfway through the afternoon shift, one of the women pulled Lisa aside. “You okay? Hungover or something? You’re not yourself. You let Tall, Thin, and Twink walk past you without saying anything.”

“Yea. I’m okay.” Lisa watched a kid run up to a broken gum ball machine. Even though the coin slot had been blocked with duct tape, the child was happy to have the possibility of getting something good. An adult came to the child and pointed at the duct tape, which made the child very sad and still. The adult leaned over and whispered something in the child’s ear which completely unmade the child’s sadness and the child pulled at the adult’s hand to quickly leave the broken machine and go forward to something further down the mall.

All this happened so quickly, that when Lisa’s coworker turned to see what Lisa was watching, the adult and child had already melted into the throng of people going to and fro. “Something happen? Did a bitch get slapped?” Lisa said nothing at first as the other woman looked around for a sullen “other woman”.

“Eh. Just a slice of life that caught my eye. No drama. Just… Just an understanding.” Lisa turned away and went back to the kiosk. That gum ball machine has been broken for longer than Lisa worked at the kiosk. Which wasn’t long, but certainly long enough for the machine to be fixed, Lisa thought. Screaming kids have ruined more potential sales at the kiosk than any of her and her coworkers’ antics. A happy kid means a parent more likely to spend money.

As the two coworkers conferred in whispers on the other side of the kiosk, Lisa recalled the Star card’s contradictory meanings. The kid had ran to the machine with hope, but that hope was let down when it was revealed the machine was broken. So, that’s “Understanding, not Hope.” But after that understanding, the kid ran away with even more hope than before. So that would be the decorated card’s meaning of “Hope, Inspiration, and Renewal”. In one scene, the two conflicting meanings supported each other instead of forcing Lisa to accept only one.

The activity in the mall lessened as the natural lull of the day settled in. “Hey, I have a crazy question for you two.” Lisa’s coworkers came close to her as she pulled herself out of her thoughts. This would be the time to exchange party plans for the weekend and warnings about who to avoid at said parties. “What do you know about Hope, capital H? Like, would there be a time when Hope would work against you?”

The woman who pulled Lisa aside earlier now turned away. “What are you on about, Lisa?” The other woman pulled her stool closer to Lisa. “Oh, you mean Elpis? Have you heard about the myth of Pandora? If not, have I got a story for you!”

Lisa had asked her question without any expectation of an answer. She didn’t hang around people that thought deep things for fun and most people didn’t expect her to be deeper than spilled water, anyway. That her coworker not only had a possible answer, but was happy to explain the answer to Lisa was something new and welcoming. “It’s Pandora’s box, right?”

“Not quite. It’s Pandora’s jar, though how she got the jar is the subject of many papers. But to the point of your question, when Pandora opened the jar, all sorts of evil and terrible things fled from it before she could close it.”

Lisa interrupted with pride in knowing this part of the story. “And that’s why people get sick and die, right? Because she was too curious about what was in it, right?”

“Yea, but to answer your question, it’s not about what escaped the jar, it’s about what stayed in it. Elpis, which is the greek word for hope. Elpis hadn’t escaped yet when Pandora closed and sealed the lid again. Now, you asked how hope could work against you. Some say, that Elpis was considered an evil thing because if a person had hope for something that could never happen, they were likely to waste precious time and resources waiting for the impossible instead of taking the time to prepare for the obvious. In this way, Elpis was an ill to mankind.”

She waited for Lisa to comment again, but instead Lisa gestured her to continue. “But some also say that Elpis was a good thing because when a person is in the middle of some really bad shit, when they are at rock bottom and it looks like there is no way out, the hope of something better can inspire them to work towards that something better and achieve it, even though everything around them at the time of inspiration was only giving proof why it was better to just turn over and die. If Pandora had not caught Elpis in the jar, then that kind of hope would have been denied to mankind and there would have been no humans left to continue because they all would have died of despair.”

The woman gave Lisa space to think about the explanation and reflect on it. When Lisa was not trying to convince somebody to do something, she wore her emotions on her face clearer than any 3-D printed mask. Finally, Lisa came to the core of her confusion. “How do you know? How do you know which kind of hope you’re dealing with? The bad hope that encourages lazy people to be lazy sounds really encouraging, and the good hope that overcomes despair probably looks like complete madness to everyone else! How do you know which is which and which one you’re following?”

The woman looked at Lisa as if meeting her for the first time. She didn’t think Lisa was capable of this kind of concern. “Well, that takes examination of your circumstances. You’ll have to look at what’s really going on, even though that means looking at how you got in this mess in the first place. And then you have to look at what you’re hanging your hope on. Is it realistic? If it’s easy, it’s probably not. And then you have to have a good understanding of what you’re capable of, and with that, the ability to ask for help when you need it, I guess.”

And there it was. The difference between the two sets of meanings. Lisa understood the decorated card list to reference blind hope that doesn’t look at whether what is hoped for could be brought into being, and the torn paper to reference informed hope that relies on an honest assessment and understanding of the situation to inform what actions are best to take next. The two sets weren’t contradictory, just the same thing from two different perspectives.

“Did that help with your problem?”

Lisa looked up at the woman in a panic. “What problem?!”

Her coworker patted Lisa on her knee. “It’s written all over your face. You’re facing something that has you turned around and you’re not sure which way is out. Maybe you’ve been sitting with false hope for so long that you don’t recognize legit hope. Maybe those who have a better life if you have a shit one are telling you to stay put so they’ll never have to face what they’ve done to themselves. Maybe you’re at the edge of your jar, and you’re not sure if you should jump into what you don’t know, but you know you can’t stay with what you do. You’re going through some shit, Lisa, and I hope I’ve been a little bit of help to you.”

Lisa nodded and held back tears that she wasn’t aware had been building up inside her. “Yea. You’ve been a lot of help, actually. And yea, that’s right where I’m at. Except it’s not a jar, it’s a cage. And yea, it’s to some folks’ benefit that I stay in it, but that’s not where I need to be, ya know? And how this got called up is some major bullshit to start with, but I’m in the middle of it, and I don’t know how I’m going to see it through… But I’m going through.” Lisa nodded and smiled.

Her coworker nodded with her. A mall patron walked up and asked about one of the products on display. As her coworker began to explain the item, Lisa stood up and took her place at the cash register without complaint. It was only as Lisa was finishing ringing up the purchase that her other coworker came walking quickly back to the kiosk. The other woman offered to take over the transaction and complete the sale, but Lisa said that she had everything handled. The two women exchanged looks that Lisa pretended not to see. One of calm assurance and the other of superficial concern.

Her Friday night job was down the street from the mall in a plain boxy building with no windows. She suspected that the building was once a secret agent hideout or some three letter agency’s interrogation complex because the interior of the building was more sterile and aesthetically hostile than the off-gray exterior.

She was thankful the person who inhabited the cubicle prior to her taking it over today was neat. She really didn’t like sitting in greasy crumbs, smelling artificially flavored hot sauce on the phone headset, and feeling perpetually wet textures on the keyboard for four hours at a time. It was bad enough that the customer service script was mentally numbing. With all she had experienced so far with the tarot cards, she really didn’t need any excuse to disassociate further.

However, the shift went without any surprises and ended just as quietly and emotionless as it started. She emerged into a night just as damp and chill as the one before it. She was not looking forward to standing at the bus stop for another thirty minutes to catch the bus back to her apartment block, so she approached a sometimes friendly coworker with cash in hand as he stepped out of the building.

“What the hell is that for?”

“So I can ask you for a ride to my block. Gas money, up front. And besides, I owe you gas money already so this is yours.”

He looked at the money, looked up at Lisa’s plain face, then back at the money again. “Okay, fine, you can catch a ride with me, but we’re even after this! I may not say yes again.”

“That’s fair.” Lisa followed him to his car and entered it when he unlocked the doors.

“You know, while you’re here with me, I have an idea to bounce off of you.” Lisa grimaced as he began an obviously practiced introduction. She didn’t take him to be flirty with her. She just nodded silently.

“So, I’ve been thinking of jumping into a business opportunity, and I’d like you to jump in with me.” Lisa managed to keep a straight face as he detailed the multi-level marketing program he had gotten involved in. She didn’t need to know which one, she knew what the game was with all of them. She made a personal bet with herself about how close to the apartment they will be before he tries to get her to sign up with him, or worse, invite himself into the apartment with her to further explain his new religion.

“And that’s why I think you would be a great business partner for me in this venture and we can make a better life for ourselves. Did you want to come to this Saturday’s seminar to find out more, or would next Saturday’s suit you better?” They were still a block away from her apartment building, but they were stuck at an unusually long red light in an unusually dark night. Lisa wondered if she could use the Sun card’s effect even though this was the ordeal of the Star.

“Well, um, that program is run by a guy who has already been indicted twice for embezzlement. Are you sure this program is the right place to sink your savings into? I mean, wouldn’t it be better to put it in a savings account until you’re sure about this guy?”

He grimly nodded and squeezed the steering wheel. “I knew you would bring that up. But the charges were dropped after it was revealed this was all a humorous misunderstanding. The program is sound and has been proven so via several welcome investigations by the district attorney. If you would meet with…”

Lisa cut him off as the green light cut the red. “No. I’ve looked into that and I don’t have much hope for the program as a whole. Do you have hope in this program? Did you really buy into the upper tiers of sponsorship?”

“I do. I have absolute hope and faith in it. Surely, with that deep a trust and belief, nothing can go wrong! What time will I be picking you up on Saturday?” He was now in the passenger loading and unloading zone beside her apartment. He had not unlocked the doors.

Lisa recalled her conversation at the kiosk earlier about two different kinds of hope. She wondered if the foolish educated hope that was being demonstrated before her was part of the negative aspects of Elpis.

“You won’t. Thank you for bringing me home. Unlock the doors, please. I’m sure you need to get home to plan your sale strategy.”

“Ah. Yes. The doors. How rude of me.” He unlocked the doors and Lisa was quick to take advantage of that. “I hope I can convince you of the need and urgency to get in on the ground floor with me while you can.”

From Lisa’s vantage point, the light from the nearby streetlight seemed to be shining only on the empty seat that she just left. She thought that was appropriate considering that she had heard about this program before and knew just how deep the founder was in stealing other people’s money. He is without a light in his darkness, she mused, and because of that, is taking anyone’s light as a sign of escape. Such false hope, she reflected.

She turned him down as gently and as firmly as she could and quickly entered the apartment. Relieved to have gone a full day without any vision of dream of a judge, she moved the Star card to the bottom of the deck to reveal the Tower card as the next ordeal to pass through. With no morning job to attend, she resolved to look up the meanings after a good night’s sleep.

---

Missed a chapter? Go to the Sounding The Current Masterpost or use the navigation links to read chapter by chapter.