Vision for the Coming Year

I have in the past thought of becoming a professional fortune teller before it became very trendy to think that.  

Instead, four days before Christmas, I float through Target, oracular, out of mind.   

There are no nightgowns left. There are women’s pajamas with a Gryffindor theme—velour romper with a necktie. I pause before these pajamas, then float on. 

~~~

Before winter break, my son is at school doing his Montessori “works.” He is armed with a clipboard and instructed to do one language work and one math work. He is four. He is pointed toward the letters and pictures, where he is to lay them out carefully and evenly on a mat and match beginning sounds. This is a task he knows how to do, but the C is missing and he refuses. Instead, he dumps the “work” on a friend’s head and laughs. He comes home, where he reads Shel Silverstein poems to himself, refusing to look up. Later he reads a list of astronomy words aloud: dwarf star, Sirius, yellow star, black hole, neutron star, International Space Station. Supernova. I will call the school again.   

~~~

I am afraid my astronomer is doing too much. Astrologer, I meant to say. My astrologer may be doing too much. She may burn out. I pay a small fee for her new-moon workshop, but by the time I look at it, the moon is very much waxing. I look at the PowerPoint slides about setting intentions for the New Year. I am supposed to write down the following:  

This year, I have given up … I have given up … I have made room for … 

~~~

My astronomer comes to the table to eat his bites of turkey and applesauce. He is too excited about gifts to sit still. Finally, he sits on the edge of a chair so he can plant one foot firmly on the floor. He begins eating his roll. The astronomer’s father hunches over to ask him to sit right in his chair, asks him if they have a problem. Glares. I want to dump “works” on his head. The astronomer gets up and wanders away. The glaring man harrumphs out. I make a gesture as if my head is exploding. The astronomer comes back to the table to finish his roll. 

“You can put your brains back in your head,” says my mother. “It’s over.” 

“Askew,” I reply. “They are permanently askew.”   

~~~

As the New Year approaches, I give myself a tarot reading—eight of wands—approaching news, arrows hitting their marks. Allow them to hit the mark before they hit the mark, I murmur to myself throughout the day. Thwock thwock thwock thwock thwock. 

~~~

I go see the latest Star Wars with my mother and brother. Halfway through, my mother is restless and wants to leave, but my brother has seen it and tells her it gets better. (I’m remembering talking my grandmother into taking me to the first Star Wars when I was six, how she muttered through the entire movie.) I study Ben Solo intently. There must be some term for the draw of the wounded man-boy. Animal magnetism. Animus. Jung—explaining how women are drawn to the Warrior-Athlete, the Poet, the Professor-Cleric, the Prophet—had an idea that our psychic wholeness depended on integrating such fascination, as it was a projection of an unintegrated segment of the Self.   

I once got into an argument with the astronomer’s father over who was the real artist between the two of us. I knew then it was over. It was nunh. 

This year, I have given up … I have given up … I have made room for …  

Thwock.  

Joanna Penn Cooper is the author of a book of lyrical prose vignettes, The Itinerant Girl’s Guide to Self-Hypnosis (Brooklyn Arts Press); the poetry books What Is a Domicile (Noctuary Press) and Crown (Ravenna Press, winner of the Cathlamet Prize); and several chapbooks, including Wild Apples: A Flash Memoir Collection with Writing Prompts and Celebrity Ghost: Comics, both from Ethel Zine & Micro-Press. Joanna’s work has appeared in Tupelo Quarterly, South Dakota Review, and the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day series, among other places. Joanna offers online writing workshops through her business, Muse Writing & Creative Support, including a yearly online New Year Writing Retreat for Women. Find her on Substack at Muse with JPC. 

This essay first appeared at On the Seawall (Dec 31, 2018).