2024: The New 52

This title has other reasons, but there was a major DC relaunch of all of their characters in 2011, ending existing series and starting 52 new books. 

I like titles that hold references to other things, but I should mention that I really hated those relaunches. They were messy and sadly lacking in nuance and subtlety. While I am harder to please than some for superhero comics, that was not just me, That relaunch is largely remembered as a train wreck.

Catchy title, though.

I like using titles for posts that play or pun on other titles. I like those types of connections. I like incorporating them into themes.

For example, when I was turning 31 I thought about having a birthday party that focused on 31 flavors or Baskin-Robbins or something. I didn't get on the ball in time. If Bresler's had still been around I would have just started planning then for a party in two years, but they were sold in 1987.

Also, because my birthday is so close to the new year, I often make that my real new year, like maybe that's when I start my resolutions.

Around this birthday, I was thinking about 52.

There are 52 weeks in a year, and 52 cards in a deck. 

There is a movie called 52 Pickup, and a card game, kind of. ("Game" may be too strong a word.)

I had also thought about the different forces that are in my life right now. Certainly death is a preoccupation, with my mother in hospice, and my need for money, but also I was starting to think about what gardening I will do this year, and other things that could happen.

Death. Growth. Love. Wealth.

Well, "hearts" and "diamonds" fit in pretty easily. Spades seemed like death, but you use a spade in a garden, right? And you could club someone to death, but it just didn't work.

Spades are death. Clubs are clearly some kind of tree or rosebush or a trillium.

Therefore, I decided that I would get a deck of cards, and each Sunday I would pick one and then write about it.

It was much easier to decide what the suits meant than what the different numbers mean.

I mean, I may not have been completely certain on which suit meant death, but then the first time I reached in I came up with the Ace of Spades. That was clearly the impending loss of my mother. Spades gets to be Death! 

At least for the face cards I kind of had in mind that the king could represent patriarchal forces, and then the queen could be my own energy, and the knave could be chaos or luck. That's what the Jack of Diamonds did represent when he came up, factors beyond my control in relation to money.

However, then I was thinking about Hearts, it could make sense to work down with family members. If my father is the king and mom is the queen, my brother could be the jack and then I guess my older sister is the ten. Fine, that's logical, but what do I do with the Nine of Hearts?

I mean, I had been thinking about the symbolic value of various numbers, and I even checked out a book on Tarot for ideas. Time to look at that. 

Apparently, nine can stand for completion, as it is the last of the single digits. For hearts, maybe it could be about the termination of love, or whether it had run its course and what that meant.

There are still various numbers where I don't know what they will mean, and it seems unlikely that they will be consistent across suits.

However, if there's one thing that we should all know, it's that writing prompts do not behave in an orderly manner.

Or, perhaps the name doomed it, and it will be a train wreck.