We’re 49 days and 4 episodes into L’Avventura. Mille grazie to those of you who’ve already jumped-in as paid subscribers. For the rest of y’all, permit me to entice you with something special.

I’ve always wanted to make a deck of playing cards. Finalmente! May I present…

THE CARDINAL POINTS DECK

These bespoke playing cards are a collage: maps from overseas adventures, backyard birds of the Southeast, clacked words from my vintage Underwood typewriter, and lines from The Phantom Tollbooth.

Moving to Italy means paring down belongs. Before I recycled so much ephemera, I gave every scrap one more glance. Amidst bins of ticket stubs, boarding passes, and playbills, I spied maps from favorite travels. The deck is made from these maps of first voyages to Venezia and Chianti in Italia and Madeira Islands off the coast of Portugal.

I may be a city cat, but I craft like a suburban soccer mom. Cricut machine in hand, I cut and pasted maps into the standard 52 cards plus two jokers. Of course, a deck needs suits, and it turned out that my ne’er-hung poster of birds featured 13 black birds, 13 red birds, and so on for white and yellow. Huzzah! And because cards are played upside down and right-side up, I clacked labels in English and Italian on my Underwood. I finished it all with pasted lines from my favorite children’s book, long since tattered from reading it to a passel of children. (My wife is still cross at me for taking scissors to the story-time book, but now it’s just preserved in alternate form.)

The back side of the deck features playful and poeticized anagrams.

What’s an anagram?? Anagrammatically-speaking, ‘astronomer’ jumbles into ‘moon starer.’

This deck’s anagrams are all different scrambles of: playing cards by tesauro
build racy pagan oysters / pains clergy you bastard / cry sin deploy rutabagas / god runs a spicy betrayal / grand suitors play by ace / dares baring a lusty copy / you spy cabaret darlings / aptly gay cobra sundries / inescapably rad rug toys / carbonated girls say yup

They’re printed on casino-grade Poker-size card stock, so they feel damn good in your hands and make that awesome pfrrrrrrrrr sound when you shuffle and bridge. The deck’s sturdy enough for building a house of cards or tossing into a hat.

The name plays off of the maps and the cardinal points of a compass (N, S, E, W), as well as the State bird of Virginia, from whence I’ll launch to Verona soon. And going back eons, cardinal points and colors have long been woven into the ancient and native wisdom around nature’s seasons, cycles, and innate energies. (I’ve added an FAQ on my website HERE if you’d like explore this aspect or each exact bird type a little more.)

Beyond their regular use, some friends are using the cards as a kind of divination deck or morning meditation touchstone. Try this: settle your mind, ask a question, and pick a card. Is it right-side up or inverted? Which number / bird did you draw? What does the color / face represent? How about the quotation? And then turn the card over. Which anagram did your finger or eyes land upon first?

Check out an exchange from just this morning:

The universe sends us messages in many forms – you’ve only to be open to receive them.

I made a small run of 500 and I will send a signed deck to each paid annual subscriber.

And because it’s always fun to share, each subscriber will also receive 3 x one-month subscriptions for gifting to friends.

Bonus to the anti-proscratinators out there. Sign-up in the next 7 days and I’ll also send to you a personalized ‘Nameagram.’ For years and years, as little gifts to friends, I’ve made personal Nameagrams, a select series of lines from anagrams of their name introduced with the line: Wanna know someone better? Simply rearrange their letters. For example, my own name scrambled is: ‘So, a rosé jaunt.’

If you’re keen to join L’Avventura, sign up and then ping me with your full name and mailing address. I look forward to shipping your Cardinal Points Deck and Nameagram forthwith!