I Had Pizza With A Tarot Star

“Do you like pizza? I know the best place in town for pizza,” she asks. 

“Yes, I love pizza. Pizza sounds great!” I eagerly agree to meet up with Tarot legend, Dana Bellings,* creator and priestess of one of the first feminist decks from the Return to the Goddess culture of the late twentieth century. Her deck was my mom’s very first one, and when I started to learn the craft, my mom gifted me the same deck.

I am grinning from ear to ear, pacing under the shade of our campsite where our camper is parked. This is our last stop on the Oregon coast. The air is chilly; I have on my Columbia dark gray wool sweater, black jeans and black jungles. 

“Have you heard of Whole Foods?” Dana asks. 

“Yes, they have it where I am from.” 

“Okay, that’s the place--you get a huge slice for 3 dollars. With any toppings,” she says. 

“Oh, okay, yea,” I stutter bit, “sounds good. I’ll meet you there.”

After talking with my mom and a few close friends, I decide that this is an opportunity I should not forsake. Even though it means heading four hours back into Oregon, even though our pizza date is scheduled for February 14th. I imagine us laughing at inside tarot jokes and somehow downloading the book of mysteries simply by gazing into Dana’s pizza eating eyes. I imagine strangers recognizing her and feeling blessed to be the one in her company. 

“I imagine us laughing at inside tarot jokes and somehow downloading the book of mysteries simply by gazing into Dana’s pizza eating eyes.”

With this new vision in mind, my partner and I drive back and land at the Lennon house with our friends Morgan and Marie, who are kind enough to host us.

I tell Dana over the phone, “I will have on a teal long skirt, like a mermaid.” She doesn’t have a cell phone. When I get to Whole Foods, I wait out front for her. I see an old lady pull up to a handicap spot right in front; as she is exiting her car I approach. 

“Hi! I’m Kennedy! Can I help with your bags?” I say. She smiles at me.

“No, I am actually meeting someone.” Taken aback at the misunderstanding, I say, “I’m the person you are meeting! I’m Kennedy?” She laughs and does the normal greeting stuff. Then she gets a cart.

Okay...I think to myself. I guess she’s going to pick up some groceries while we’re here. No biggie.

I am a bit apprehensive about the meeting for some reason. In hindsight I have learned that pedestals are for plants, not people, and our reverence and awe can be shot out of our hearts with a deep gratitude and compassion that I had not yet learned at that moment in 2015. I feared being let down by a potential mentor or being victimized in some way. I was a spring fern full of disempowered thinking and projected needs.

First I follow Dana to the deli counter. She asks the worker for sliced ham but, “last time they left the rind off, I’d like it like that again.” The woman comes back with a slice. 

“This is what it looks like, I mean I can cut the rind off for you…” the woman says. 

“Yes, thank you,” Dana answers as I try to speak to the worker with my eyes: I’m so sorry, I don’t really know this lady. 

“You know I wrote a travel guide?” Dana asks me. 

“No I didn’t!” 

“I did, it’s a lesbian erotic travel guide.”

I look at her thinking wow, that’s awesome. But then I get this vibe that I get when ogling older men make me uncomfortable, so I just log it and move on. Then the thought crosses my mind: oh my, have I accidentally found myself on a date? It is Valentine's Day. But I put it to the back of my head. Next is the pastry counter.  

“I like the vegan brownies, excuse me, I don’t see the vegan brownies in here,” she says to the attending employee. 

“Looks like they are being wrapped up now, how many would you like?” they ask. Dana looks at me. 

“Want one?” she says.

“Sure!” I answer, still remaining optimistic. I pick out a kombucha to drink with lunch as a treat. 

Girl. Now I don't think there is anything wrong with asking for what you want, but I am being taken back to every moment I’ve ever sat by as a grumpy family member disrespects a server or complains to the manager. 

These folks are just trying to get through their work day. The employee doesn’t seem too upset though; maybe they deal with a lot of special requests? 

Then we get to the hot lunch counter. They don’t have a plain mushroom pizza made, so she asks the worker to make a whole fresh pizza with mushrooms only and to give her the biggest slice out of it. I cannot. I pick a premade slice to be warmed back up and try to remain humble and distant. What I now know is that this woman likes to put people out, like, total white lady status. 

Or is she just an old crone who knows what she wants? I've got a mantra going in my head now, stay positive Kennedy.

We go sit down. I’m pretty sure she doesn’t have her top teeth. So she gums her pizza while we talk. She pulls out her other two books and gifts them to me, super sweet. I am grateful for the gifts. I hand her the blue lace agate, seashell pendulum I made and picked for her as a gift, all sweetly wrapped. She opens it, holds it under the table while she looks at it.

“Thank you,” she says and puts it in her bag. Now, I know I am a sensitive person and try to check that, but my little feelings were hurt.  She gave me an obligatory thank you. So I try to tell her about it.

 “It’s a pendulum, I make them from recycled and found treasure.” No interest. Once again, I chock it up to: she is old, she knows what she likes, she just doesn’t like this and that is okay.

Through our conversation she is giving me sassy crone mind, insular, like I'd entered her orbit and started swinging around her axis, the head wind strong. She is speaking vaguely and impatiently but with a hint of hope for me. 

“Ask me anything you’d like,” she encourages.

“Okay, so I have this connection with the three of swords, it just keeps coming up for me,” I tell her,  “it is just in my mind a lot, do you have any insight on what that could mean for me?” 

“What card is that in my deck again?” she asks. 

….um you don’t remember your cards. This is awkward, I think to myself. 

“It is attention,” I say. 

“Well I guess you need focus in your life, you are just wandering around, floundering with no purpose,” she answers. Harsh, yet direct. Am I floundering? 

I mean things were grim in my relationship, like all those space movies where the astronaut somehow gets ripped from their spaceship cord and they’re just vacuumed into blackness. I had skipped the Red Woods to hang out at Whole Foods, and while I felt like I was on the Great American Road Trip it also felt like I was running from something. I mean, four hours in reverse is like a silver fish in the tub, alone in the one splash that remains.  I didn't feel like I was floundering at the time, but perhaps my flop was more apparent than I had realized and boy, did that statement inspire some propulsion in me to understand my flailing over the next few years. Spoiler alert, it was trauma.  

I had an expectation that she would encourage playfulness, be playful and full of laughter. That maybe she would appreciate the sentiment of meeting a fan, share about how she invites her intuition out to play. As we talk, I’m getting the sense that things have not been easy for her, financially, maybe, or interpersonally. I read a meme once that said something to the effect of, “diviners and witches live on the outskirts of society; don't expect social courtesy from them.” I’m starting to worry that I am eating pizza with my fate. That life might batter the joy from my spirituality too.

Dana tells me about her family and life. I am thinking, maybe she also has a relationship to the three of swords.  She shares about how she hired these two people to help her out with the business but the lady was bipolar and went off on her about not paying her, so she had to fire her. And that she also had to fire the man because he was coughing and sneezing all over her computer keyboard. She thinks that’s why she got pneumonia. She asks if Solis is good at computers. I tell her he is. She says she can’t pay us much but that she could pay us a little to help her out. Like right after telling me about the previous employees. No thank you, my mind says. If I didn’t feel so many alarms going off in my body,  I might actually consider it. 

She’s upset that I carry a Rider Waite Smith deck in my purse. 

“Why are you carrying those old men around?” she appears offended. I’m taken aback but I understand why she feels this way. She is the creator of a feminist deck afterall. I feel embarrassed, like I’m in trouble. 

The straw that breaks the camel’s back--although there is no straw or camel, only me sitting with a tarot idol on Valentine’s Day--comes next.

“May I have a sip of your kombucha?” she asks. My eyes go wide. I think my jaw slacks a little in shock. 

Did she just ask for a sip of my drink? I'm one of those people that can’t hide a feeling. I am thinking What The Chariot, my cheeks flush pink. 

But I say, “sure.”  

I am usually all about sharing, but I don’t even know this woman and she is sipping my kombucha. I feel angry, like you just shamed me, told me you had pneumonia, told me I have no purpose. I feel toyed with, like maybe the three of swords is happening right now, but through a dense fog. Kind of how they make it look like a rainy day from the inside of grocery stores so you stay longer. Have you noticed that? By this point I’m ready for the rain. Cold ass Oregon winter rain. 

She must have had a much different experience than me, to think we had grown kombucha-sharing close, but I did let her so maybe we did get that close. I am hard to flabbergast and she did it. 

Turns out, the meeting was a beautiful mirror for leaning into life, for accepting witches for where they are at, for practicing empathy as devotion. Our brief Valentines day hang was a salve for what I interpreted as Dana’s lonely heart and ego as much as it was for me to meet a Tarot star. 

“What impact did this experience have on me? A crater sized impact, full of moldavite. I don’t think there is much that is more important than human connection, storytelling, story hearing, story creating.   

”

The whole thing was wildly surreal, a story of magic meets reality-moment. I was considering sitting across a deck for a reading from her but landed more squarely and perfectly in a cafeteria with pizza between us. I am glad I didn’t end up getting a reading because I gained more from our meander around the grocery than I think I would've from a reading.  

Looking back I understand that she is unique and quirky, and human like me. She knows what she likes and doesn’t like. She has a strong sense of space and how to occupy that space. She is harsh and straightforward, qualities not seen in many women. I respect that. 

I send her love and pizza energy, and postcards. I lost her number so I hope she is well. I am thankful to have spent an afternoon at Whole Foods, eating pizza with a human who gifted me humanity and the pizza was actually pretty good too. 

*Names have been changed to be respectful of people’s privacy.√