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_{From the exhibit Private Lighterature . Townsend Center for the Humanities , University of California, Berkeley, October 25th 2006 - January 10th 2007. Dedicated to Aurélie Vialette.}

_{Special thanks to Tony Cascardi & Teresa Stojkov}

^Once upon a time somebody read me the cards. I am not going to annoy you with all the particular details; actually, they are not even slightly interesting to you. The process of reading somebody the cards consists essentially of telling a story grounded on two different data: a question asked from the person whose cards are going to be read, and the order of a certain number of illustrations printed on the cards’ sides. This is only a variation of what Gianni Rodari deemed to be the binomial of fantasy, seed of every grammar of fantasy itself. As it happens in every single plot, the storyteller has to adjust the narrative to times and spaces, and the person wishing to practice the hermeneutics of tarot ought to have the third eye: the saffron one, wide open, in order to be able to read, at the very same time, the effects provoked by the story, the Tableu of the Question, on this public constituted by a single person wanting to read his future life. As you all can imagine, all this is particularly difficult. If you are not a very well-skilled narrator, or if your saffron eye is half-blinded by the spice’s perfume, the best you can do is to avoid traveling around the world reading the cards to everybody, left and right.

What seems to be more difficult is the final thesis, the moralité, the corollary, the ontological assertion, the fulmen in clausis, the punch line closing the tarot reading in the same way that the last hit of your heels on the floor means the end of a staircase ascension. Two cards are waiting to be uncovered in the margins, showing only their misleading, uniformed underside. They are the card for the origin and the card for the end. A card for the birth, and a card for the destiny. Here they are, these two cards, now posted through expedited mail by the wondrous mandarin’s hands who, by mixing them, interprets the pianoforte of my history. Precise hands that, lo and behold, indicate what has been, and what will be, with no order, two cardinal points and no compass rose, just as a sentence pronounced by the Delphic oracle in which there was only orientation, no pointing. Two of cups for the birth.  The Hermit for the destiny.

How beautiful, the oxymoron happiness. You cannot even imagine how pleasant it is for me. The cups are filled, like the grail, with abundance, with the answer adequate to the question, or, at least, with the right questions. Perceval should not worry anymore. And when they come in twos, he should neither worry for the bleeding spear: the two imposes, ever since the birth, peace with the other, sociability, appertaining to a world grounded on a mysterious love. The Hermit, on the contrary, hunches his back with a wise, researched solitude, the depth of the forest, the trust in that all stories come from the narrative blueprints of dreams.

The Hermit from the tales I know cannot be sought, there is no possibility of invoking him. He simply appears among the oaks, at the rhythm of chance. Sometimes, somebody comes. He roves for a while through the woods, before fortuitously finding me. We smoke, and we fill with wine two cups I have always covered by the roots of an ilex. I know what he is looking for. He wants to sacrifice a lamb for the day after. A lamb that would not come back like a lion. He waits over there, until the victim, ignorant of its destiny, simply passes by. He points to it, and thus by this sword designed by the finger in the air, the lamb becomes marked. This one is seventy euros worth. I will spend the evening sharpening my knives, so that the day after I will be ready to descend from the holm oak grove to the hamlet.

They will wait discreetly for me. They won’t be in any hurry, since what I am doing is illegal. They will give me alcohol and tobacco. Afterwards, we will move to the dark garage in which the act will take place. While I skillfully operate the knife, while my shirt gets stained with blood, while my dog eats the lamb’s spleen, while with my fists I split the flesh from the fur, they will ask me to tell them a story. It is always the same one, the one they have known since the beginning of time. It’s the story of my twin brother who lives in Paris, and with whose business benefits three countries could be maintained.