{"id":213290,"date":"2026-03-10T16:04:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-10T16:04:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/213290\/"},"modified":"2026-03-10T16:04:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-10T16:04:09","slug":"reading-the-cards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/213290\/","title":{"rendered":"Reading the Cards"},"content":{"rendered":"

A few days before the winds started and Los Angeles caught fire, I went to novelist Janet Fitch\u2019s house for a New Year\u2019s Day tarot party\u2014I brought my mother, daughter, and husband. This is the surreal thing about living in a place like L.A.\u2014one day, you\u2019re reading a book; the next day, the book\u2019s author is reading your tarot cards. There were cauldrons of Russian soup and people gathered around a big dining room table with their own tarot decks, giving one another readings for the coming year. There was generosity and warmth and ease\u2014\u201ca California feeling,\u201d as my mom called it, which makes a lot of sense if you\u2019ve read Janet\u2019s work.<\/p>\n

I read White Oleander<\/a> soon after I\u2019d moved to L.A. It felt like an emotional twin for my first book\u2014a narcissistic poet mother, Ingrid; a parentified daughter, Astrid, who wants to be loved; a leeriness toward the grandiosity of art-making but also a belief in its magical power. The book has an intensity that makes it hard to put down. There is a nakedness to the daughter\u2019s yearning and rage. When I gave it to my mom to read, she said, \u201cUh-oh, everyone is going to think you copied her!\u201d And I knew what she meant. My book felt as if it had been grown from the same soil\u2014the Russian greats; noir films, grainy and depraved; Anne Sexton and other poets.<\/p>\n

The monstrous and beautiful Ingrid is delicious. My shadow self. Yes, by day I am dutiful and present, but what mother-artist doesn\u2019t fantasize, once in a while, about being Ingrid, behaving selfishly, compulsively, prioritizing their work over stability? Ingrid\u2019s open ambitions, obsessions, and fragile ego, her disinterest in the more boring aspects of parenting\u2014relatable! Sometimes children are boring and their needs are at odds with our own! Sometimes we cringe about our exes who wore us down and then broke up with us! Yes, I tend to my child and don\u2019t murder my exes, just follow them on social media and like their engagement photos, but I guess this is the difference between sinful thoughts versus sinful deeds. Ingrid\u2019s disinterest in social norms and her desire for beauty in a life that\u2019s often full of drudgery\u2014there\u2019s something to learn there. When Ingrid gets sent to prison, she treats it like a prolonged art residency. Maybe it\u2019s not MacDowell, but you don\u2019t have to think about what to make yourself for dinner. I admire her single-mindedness. In a country where artists face hostility and indifference, where the National Endowment for the Arts redirects grants from writers to AI competency, maybe it helps to be a little crazy?<\/p>\n

The first time I had my tarot read was at a friend\u2019s baby shower; I\u2019d just finished writing my first book and wanted to know what would happen to it. I asked the reader, Was I on the precipice of the kind of success that would be too much for me to handle? She laid down card after ominous card on the table in front of me\u2014a skeleton on a horse, people plummeting from a burning tower, a woman awake at night weeping, someone lying face down in the dirt with 10 swords sticking out of his back. \u201cIt will take a while for things to happen for this book,\u201d the reader carefully told me, \u201cbut don\u2019t lose hope.\u201d<\/p>\n

In tarot, there are four suits, like in a deck of cards. The wands represent the element of fire\u2014passion and creativity. In the book, these are Ingrid\u2019s suit\u2014and she\u2019s the queen witch. Swords represent air\u2014intellect and logic. Cups represent water\u2014intuition and emotions. And coins or pentacles represent earth\u2014the material world, money, and the home.<\/p>\n

I had a friend who\u2019d read her tarot over and over. Would she stay in her marriage? she asked, hoping each time for the cards to say yes. But the cards did not lie. Usually people know the answers to their own questions, but sometimes they need to keep seeing a heart stabbed with three swords to know what they know.<\/p>\n

When Janet read my cards, I asked her about my third book, which I\u2019d started but put on hold to take on other work. Would I finish writing it in 2025?<\/p>\n

She laid out a Celtic Cross spread. There, the card representing my \u201cchallenge\u201d for the year, the five of pentacles\u2014two beggars in the snow, behind them the stained glass of a church glowing invitingly as they stand on the outside. It\u2019s not a very auspicious card (duh!). I remember Janet looking at the beggars and saying, \u201cYes, this looks bad, but all the other cards are so good.\u201d Tarot is about context and interpretation: \u201cYou\u2019re in poor-me energy, even though you\u2019re surrounded with support.\u201d<\/p>\n

I kept telling myself that all year, as various things happened that made me feel like a beggar in the snow. No, I would say, the snow crunching under my bare feet. Everything is here. You just need to turn around and go toward the light.<\/p>\n

So, would I finish the book?<\/p>\n

I would not, she told me.<\/p>\n

(I did not.)<\/p>\n

I got a deck and started reading my cards myself. I thought of Ingrid being all about the wands. Well, I kept getting coins. Pentacles, pentacles, pentacles. Why do I, spacey and impractical, keep getting pentacles?<\/p>\n

\u201cCome back to earth, bitch!\u201d The cards seemed to be saying to me. \u201cYou\u2019re needed here. Stop floating away!\u201d<\/p>\n

I realize the irony of turning to the occult just to be told to get a grip.<\/p>\n

This New Year\u2019s, I was out of town, and so I laid out a spread for myself. Would I finish the book in 2026?<\/p>\n

Yes, most definitely, the cards said.<\/p>\n

Or this, anyway, is what I heard.\u2022<\/p>\n

Join us on March 19 at 5 p.m. Pacific time, when Fitch will sit down with special guest Dylan Landis and host John Freeman to discuss White Oleander<\/a>. Register for the Zoom conversation here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

REGISTER FOR ZOOM EVENT<\/a><\/p>\n

\"cover<\/p>\n

Knopf<\/p>\n

SEARCH FOR HOME<\/p>\n

Critic Lauren LeBlanc reviews Hannah Lillith Assadi\u2019s Paradiso 17<\/a>. \u2014Alta<\/a><\/p>\n

\"a<\/p>\n

\u00a9 Luis J. Rodriguez<\/p>\n

ART AS SAVING GRACE<\/p>\n

Past CBC author Luis J. Rodriguez\u2019s Always Running: La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A.<\/a> turns 30 this year. Vincent Price Art Museum will be showing related photographs from April 14 through June 13. \u2014Vincent Price Art Museum<\/a><\/p>\n

\"feng<\/p>\n

Kayte Deioma<\/p>\n

BUILDING CONFIDENCE<\/p>\n

West Hollywood poet laureate Jen Chang has created a program, Feng Shui Poetry in the Parks, that has Boyle Heights students using nature around the city as a point of inspiration for poetry. \u2014Los Angeles Times<\/a><\/p>\n

\"a<\/p>\n

Penguin Press<\/p>\n

THE HARD PROBLEM<\/p>\n

Stanford neuroscientist David Eagleman reviews Michael Pollan\u2019s A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness<\/a>. \u2014New York Times<\/a><\/p>\n

\"california<\/p>\n

Alta<\/p>\n

Alta\u2019s California Book Club email newsletter is published weekly. Sign up for free today.<\/p>\n

REGISTER TODAY<\/a><\/p>\n

PREVIOUS CALIFORNIA BOOK CLUB NEWSLETTER<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A few days before the winds started and Los Angeles caught fire, I went to novelist Janet Fitch\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":213291,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2308,7,9,8,40248,97950,97949],"class_list":["post-213290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-art","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-magic","tag-tarot-celtic-cross-spread","tag-white-oleander-by-janet-fitch"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=213290"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213290\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/213291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=213290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=213290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=213290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}