Thanks, Mom!

It’s Saturday night in October, which for me can mean only one thing: watching something spooky. Today is also my mother’s birthday, although she passed away in 2000. I have her to thank for my love of horror movies and TV shows. She used to let me stay up late to watch Kolchak: The Night Stalker, a series about a reporter who often ends up writing investigative pieces about homicides that involve the supernatural, none of which ever get published because his editor thinks he’s off his rocker. It was a great little series, and NBC made it available to watch online, so I’ll be indulging in that in her honor starting tonight.

TV character Carl Kolchak at a typewriter writing.
I’ll bet that typewriter is a Royal. (Image: NBC)

Ya know, I’ve always credited my choice of journalism as a career to watching too many episodes of Lou Grant as a kid, but now that I think of it, maybe Carl Kolchak had something to do with it.

Another of my mother’s favorites was was Trilogy of Terror. One night we watched it while we were on the phone, she on Long Island, me in Virginia. That’s one of my favorite memories of her, actually. We would both yell at our TVs at the same time, “Don’t open the door!”

An evil doll carrying a knife in its mouth.
Peace was never an option. (Image: ABC)

I wonder what my mother would think of today’s horror. It’s so much more graphic than it was when I was growing up, and the most popular shows, like American Horror Story (AHS), have an element of dark psychological suspense that can be triggering or traumatizing for some folks. She probably would have loved AHS, actually, although maybe not the seasons with Jessica Lange. My mother couldn’t stand her. She thought Lange “always had the same face, putting a puss on.” But my mother definitely would have loved the seasons with Kathy Bates, who became one of her heroes because of Fried Green Tomatoes.

My mother loved mysteries, as well, and would have loved shows that blended mystery with genres like southern gothic, like the first season of True Detectives—which I find to be some of the most terrifying TV ever made simply because it’s entirely possible that somewhere in the rural South, some dude is right this second walking around wearing tighty-whities and a gasmask and wielding a machete.

I don’t know how my mother would have felt about some of the darker movies, though. She might have liked the Conjuring series,but maybe the Sinister series would have been a little too dark. On the other hand, she probably would have found anything by Ari Aster as ridiculous as I do. Indeed, Florence Pugh very nearly became my Jessica Lange as the first time I saw her was her performance in Midsommar, where she ugly-cried through the whole thing. If I hadn’t decided to ignore my initial reaction to seeing her name as the lead in Don’t Worry Darling and consequently enjoyed the movie, I might still be avoiding her. However, only my deep and abiding adoration of Joaquin Phoenix will compel me to watch Aster’s latest effort, Beau is Afraid, and I’m hoping that Phoenix’s talent will override Aster’s penchant for downright stupid climaxes and flat endings.

What have you been watching this month? And are you a year-rounder like me?

The Most Misunderstood Card in Tarot

Today is Friday the 13th, the perfect day to talk about the most misunderstood card in all of Tarot, the thirteenth card of the Major Arcana: Death. In your basic Rider, Rider-Waite, or Rider-Waite-Smith deck, there he is, the ol’ Grim Reaper, all jaundiced and smug upon his pale horse after running over the king. The cleric is trying to bargain with him, the lady is about to pass out, and the kid is all “ooh, big pony?”

The Death card in a Rider Tarot deck.
Your basic Death card.

When people see Death’s bony visage, they tend to freeze. Their eyes open wide. Maybe they gasp. And that’s just in the movies. In person they also tend to say, “OH MAH GAH, AM I GONNA DIE? IS SOMEOME NEAR ME GONNA DIE?”

Well, no, that’s not what the Death card means. All this card means is change. The change could be a way of thinking, a stage of your life, or the end of some kind of  event in your life that has brought you low or been difficult to deal with, maybe something like unemployment or a lousy break-up. A king’s reign ends when he dies. Whatever has been reigning over your life is ending, is about to end, or has recently ended. Another option is that there needs to be an end to something that is ruling you and not serving you, and you need to get up on that horse along with Skeletor over there and run it over so you can make way for something new. Drawn reversed, the Death card suggests you might be stuck dwelling on something that recently ended, you need to stop resisting the change, and you need to let it go. You need to be like the kid, in awe of the big pony and eager to go for a ride. You know, before you get stepped on.

I own a bunch of Tarot decks, and the Death card in The Star Tarot by Cathy McClelland resonates with me the most of all the Death cards I have.*

The Death card in the Star Tarot deck, where death is cloaked and a phoenix rises beside him
Image: Cathy McClelland, The Star Tarot

Yeah, there Death is again, but he’s a little less aggressive and you can’t see his face. Sometimes change comes gently or in a vague kind of way. But check out that phoenix rising up, ready to take flight. For something beautiful and good to come along, something else must come to an end, and the good thing can rise from the ashes of what came before.

The next time you see the Death card, embrace it. Consider that change usually means some kind of growth or opportunity–or opportunity for growth–and that when you clear a path through the debris of what came before, you make room for something new.

_______________________________________________________
*No, no affiliate links or anything. I…I don’t have enough readers to qualify for any kind of program like that. /me hangs head