The Greater Trumps: (13) The Wheel Of Fortune

A wheel this is, its struts and essence forged of a hundred different metals. It flames with light, it turns its many spokes in sequence to the sky. Oddly, unusually and disturbingly, a man and a woman, the beasts of their acquaintance, the symbols of their language are here too, all turning upon the wheel while an angel with a flaming sword (or a sphinx, or some other inscrutable Power) looks down. What is on the lips of the noble observer, no mortal can fathom.

The wheel seems to turn always from darkness to light; it is almost always the symbol of Fortune, and sometimes rarely of Chance which does not quite seem fortunate. It is the ridiculous but happy optimism of one kind of Fool - and it galls the pessimist because this kind of Fool always seems to have it right. Life, according to the Wheel of Fortune, is generally good. Or almost always so.

=====

When I had just begun dating, I had the misfortune to encounter that extremely persistent song, Noel Harrison's The Windmills Of Your Mind. It seeped into the gaps between the bricks of my consciousness and could not be grouted out. The first part goes:

Round like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel
Never ending or beginning on an ever-spinning reel
Like a snowball down a mountain, or a carnival balloon
Like a carousel that's turning, running rings around the moon
Like a clock whose hands are sweeping past the minutes on its face
And the world is like an apple whirling silently in space
Like the circles that you find, in the windmills of your mind

But the part that really made every subsequent date an adventure on the brink of fatalism (perhaps seasoned with a touch of terror) were these penultimate stanzas:

Keys that jingle in your pocket, words that jangle in your head
Why did summer go so quickly? Was it something that you said?
Lovers walk along a shore and leave their footprints in the sand
Was the sound of distant drumming just the fingers of your hand?

Pictures hanging in a hallway and the fragment of a song
Half-remembered names and faces, but to whom do they belong?
When you knew that it was over, were you suddenly aware
That the autumn leaves were turning to the colour of her hair?

Yes, indeed one ought to savour every moment of youth, every last drop of summer wine. Yet, as Ecclesiastes seems to hint, with the sweet comes the bitter - and time brings out every poignant aftertaste there is. Every heady dose of fortune comes with its little chances and the potential for great loss.