Dancing 'on' Two Pentacles

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Dancing on Two Pentacles

I’ve been thinking about balance. Or maybe what passes for balance when your life is full of contradiction, chaos, and too many things demanding pieces of you at once.

Right now I’m working on the Two of Pentacles — the card of juggling, of instability, of keeping multiple plates spinning while the floor feels like it might fall out from under you at any moment. The irony isn’t lost on me. My life looks messy on paper, and in real life, it feels even worse. Work. Art. Relationships. Bills. Emotional labor. The little invisible weights that no one applauds you for carrying. And somehow, you have to smile while keeping the rhythm, pretending you’ve got it together.

Painting it is almost meditative. I let the brush stumble over the canvas like I stumble through my own life — messy loops, high saturated pigments, strokes that refuse to be neat. The two coins float and twist in a storm I can control only by letting go. The swirl of watercolors bleeding into each other, the way oils smear when the paint is thick, it’s all a reflection of the precariousness I carry.

Instability isn’t always chaos. Sometimes it’s rhythm. Sometimes it’s a dance you didn’t choreograph but are learning to move with anyway. My cat curls next to me, unimpressed, flicking a tail as if to remind me: “This is not the end of the world.” The tiny constant companionship anchors the juggling act.

I think of balance differently now. It’s not holding everything perfectly. It’s choosing which weights are yours to lift and which to let crash. It’s laughter in the middle of panic. It’s rage and softness coexisting. It’s painting a card about juggling while your own life feels like a two-ring circus.

This Two of Pentacles isn’t about perfection. It’s about presence. Awareness. The terrifying exhilaration of keeping everything in motion without losing yourself.

Sometimes the coins drop. Sometimes the floor cracks. And that’s okay. Because the act of getting up, brushing off paint, adjusting your rhythm, and starting again — that is the point. That is the magic. That is the ritual of living fully, even when your hands are full and the world feels like it’s tipping.

Balance isn’t static. It’s a heartbeat. It’s a wobble. It’s the storm and the calm at once. And as I paint this card, I realize: the dance itself is sacred.

Emerging from the Cocoon (Covered in Paint, Teeth Gritted)

Winter always tricks me into thinking I’ve disappeared.

Not dead — just buried under layers of waiting. Waiting for heat. Waiting for time. Waiting for my nervous system to stop buzzing long enough to remember I have hands, and those hands make things that matter.

For months I’ve been in a cocoon phase. Not the Instagram kind. Not the “soft healing journey” kind. The cramped, itchy, half-feral kind. The kind where the studio is a dining room table that still has crumbs on it. The kind where you only get thirty minutes every other day and you have to decide whether to make art or stare at the wall and recover from being alive.

And still — something has been shifting.

I’ve started painting again. Slowly. Awkwardly. Like stretching a limb that fell asleep years ago. Acrylic first, because oil asks for time and warmth and patience I don’t always have. Multiple tarot pieces moving at once because my brain doesn’t walk — it paces. The pentacles coming through first, grounded and stubborn, like they’re reminding me that growth is underground work.

Right now I’m working on the Ace of Pentacles — opportunity, money, new beginnings — which feels almost sarcastic and deeply necessary at the same time. A quiet promise sitting on a loud little canvas. My cat curled beside me like a small familiar, watching every brushstroke like it’s part ritual, part surveillance. Paint water on one side, coffee on the other, fur inevitably embedded somewhere in the texture.

High saturation pigments. Small surfaces. Loud little paintings that feel like they’re whispering secrets while screaming at the same time.

Not masterpieces. Not polished. Alive.

And honestly — the cocoon isn’t just about art.

I just had one of those explosive, soul-rattling arguments with my partner. The kind where your chest feels like it’s cracking open and you realize how tired you are of shrinking yourself to keep the peace. I’m fucking exhausted from being made to feel small. From folding my body and my voice and my needs into neat little shapes so someone else doesn’t feel comfortable.

It hit me hard — that same energy was seeping into my work. Painting smaller emotionally, not just physically. Holding back intensity. Editing my rage and my tenderness before they even hit the canvas.

No more.

The cocoon phase has teeth. It’s where you decide what parts of yourself are coming out alive and what parts get left behind as shed skin.

And here’s the truth: emerging isn’t graceful. It’s messy. It’s loud. It’s crying while you’re cleaning paintbrushes. It’s painting skulls and bodies that refuse to disappear. It’s brown bodies taking up sacred space. It’s softness that bites back. It’s refusing to apologize for existing in a world that constantly tells certain bodies they are not welcome, not beautiful, not powerful.

Every brushstroke right now feels like a small act of rebellion. Against silence. Against erasure. Against the voice that says “be smaller or be alone.”

I’m choosing to be louder instead.

Not fully out of the cocoon yet. Still damp-winged. Still learning how to exist in the open air again. But there’s movement. There’s color. There’s ritual in the act of showing up for thirty minutes and making something honest instead of something impressive.

If winter is about anything, it’s slow growth. Roots cracking stone where no one can see.

And I’m done pretending that growth is gentle. Sometimes it’s an argument that finally exposes a wound. Sometimes it’s anger that turns into paint. Sometimes it’s realizing your body — your loud, vulnerable, sacred body — deserves to take up the whole damn canvas.

The work is coming back.

So am I.

Winters Slow Alchemy (Slow Progress on the Pentacles)

I am making slow progress on the deck. I decided to bring my supplies in from the art room where my water cup was frozen solid.

Slow Magic: Painting the Minor Arcana in Winter

Progress on the Minor Arcana has been quiet. Not stalled—just moving at the pace of breath, bone, and season.

I’ve begun with the Pentacles, an intentional choice. Earth first. Body first. Work, survival, money, craft—the slow mathematics of staying alive. Instead of oil, I’m painting these in acrylic, letting the medium mirror the energy: quicker drying, layered decisions, a willingness to move forward without endlessly reworking the past.

I’m working on two to four cards at a time, passing between them like a pilgrim moving between small altars. When one painting resists me, another opens. When one feels heavy, another feels generous. It keeps the process alive—less like forcing a single vision into existence and more like listening for which image is ready to speak.

Winter feels like the right container for this pace. The world itself is not rushing. Roots are growing underground. Seeds are deciding who they will become. Nothing looks dramatic on the surface, yet everything essential is happening in the dark.

This is how the Minor Arcana wants to be made—not in a rush of spectacle, but through accumulation. Quiet labor. Repetition. Small revelations. Layer by layer. Card by card.

Pentacles teach patience. They remind me that magic is not always lightning—it is often soil, time, and the discipline to return to the work even when progress looks invisible.

Slow progress, yes.

But slow progress is still progress.

And sometimes it is the most honest kind.

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