Dear reader,

In the spread is a divinatory form in which we hurl words into the world. It is a compositional art. Images, words, cards, all a gorgeous juxtaposition. A spread is a story we tell ourselves, a way we listen to the stories of our ancestors, a way the oracle whispers, sings, recites us a sonnet.

Divination decidedly pronounces a politics of the future perfect. What-will merges into the has-happened. It’s a paradox enlivening the ontological dead. Decolonization is versed in this vernacular.

What the telos of laying a spread? It’s lonely hands laying, looking for the card, the cards, that hold an otherwise way of living; a way to cope, a way to survive the present without resorting to violence.

A spread is a mapping of the underbelly of our social reality. These readers are rogue. We puncture the paradox prophecy presents as portal to a future that is feral, in that it’s unruly in its pursuit of possibility.

All laid out, the spread is a politic that disavows any future constituted by the uneven forms of our collective suffering. It’s a militant, dedicated questioning. We are historians of the future tracking a geography beside the everyday.

The spread is thus a precarious space to theorize. To look for love, freedom, a future with fresh air and clean water, a lingering in lawlessness becomes a necessary enterprise. As readers we must be recalcitrant against the borders of settler state’s space-time.

In the fold is a communion with what could be, a container for beauty protected from terror. We present questions to the cards that frustrate answerability. Power lies where we throw questions and interrogate. To turn all our cards over would be to wander astray.

What we unfold in our spreads is a map like any other, laden with subjective views of the world. As a people we’ve always made maps, first making schematics of the night sky. Maps change with time. They must. Borders and boundaries are constantly in flux. Where politicians wage wars to expand the bounds of empire, artists can read in these maps wide-ranging stories of migration, cultural networks, social identity. You have to be willing to ask a stranger for directions.

The Fold Out is for the rogue readers who want to trace the past-present-future paths beyond the colonized psychic space-time of imperial domination. This series will present clusters of spreads and writing exercises that, through thematic and aesthetic kinship, will map other ways of being, knowing, loving.

This will be a chance to read in a communal space, with my live feedback shining a light though these interior tunnels.

A dynamic, generative approach to spread construction, and interpretation. A divinatory poetics that uses the oracular to direct the word. Via 3 pairs of classes over 6 weeks we will connect the oracular practice of laying cards with migratory movements, fundamentally difficult as well politically charged.

Beginners and seasoned readers. Writers. Mental Health Practitioners. Artists. Counselors. Mentors. Creators working across disciplines. We will read and write together, toward practice transformation.

This is the first set in what will be an ongoing series. I’ve been adding to my roster of class offerings and I look forward to working with folks in the spread to write new worlds into being. Reach out if you have any questions.

Also quick reminder that for about an hour & a half on Saturday 11/1, I’m inviting my paying subscribers to join me in my psychic solarium for the chance to get your cards read.

X,

Christoper