Pay Attention!

From the Oriental Tarot, the Page of Wands; from the Art of Asia, "Washing Clothes" by Kitagawa Utamaro:

          Looking at this man's rice hat, I thought the dangling bits were corks (like the hat of Granny Jones) meant to shoo bugs away. But his look like bells, making me think of the phrase, "I'll be there with bells on" (an expression of great enthusiasm). With his quiver of arrows and baton in hand, he does look ready for any event that unfolds. The Page/Valet is still at the learning stage where everything he encounters is new and exciting. And while his eagerness is good, he tends to have an attention problem (which generally gets worse when he becomes a knight), quickly hopping from one new thing to the next without looking deeply at anything. The Washing Clothes card is paired with a quote from Jack Kornfield: "After ecstasy comes the laundry." The Zen koan refers to experiencing enlightenment, but also realizing the day-to-day tasks still need to be done. Waking up is not meant to bypass real life; we don't get rid of the mountains, but we become better climbers. The holidays are generally a time when self-care gets pushed to the side, but the cards today remind me not to get distracted to the point where I forget to take care of the basics.