A contested place

The Court Beneath the Court

There was a sentence neither player said.

Place

A single worn ball rests over a dark blue layered surface with faint submerged traces.
Traces below the surface suggest questions, not evidence of another person’s secret. A plate from An Atlas of Uncertain Courts.

Imagine two partners agreeing on every detail of the score. They remember who served, where the return landed and which side won the point. Asked what happened between them, they begin in different places.

One starts with a call that never came. The other starts earlier, with a movement they had meant to explain. Under the rally they can both describe lies a second, unfinished exchange.

Depth Schools call this the Court Beneath the Court. In its accounts, the lower surface holds shots not attempted, words swallowed and tensions left unnamed. Nothing visible above has to change for the imagined place to become crowded.

The sceptical objection is close at hand: an unseen court can be furnished with anything a reader wishes to put there. Once a silence has been assigned a motive, the person who was silent may have to struggle to be heard. The Moon troubles the High Priestess here; attention to what is withheld can turn into confidence about what was never known.

One possible beginning is small: “I kept waiting for you to call.” It gives the partner an experience to answer, rather than a secret to confess. Their reply might reveal hurt, confusion or something neither had considered.

The lower Court has offered a way into the conversation. It has not supplied the reply.

A leaf from An Atlas of Uncertain Courts.

What does this bring to mind?

A story can leave you with a question of your own. Encounter three cards together and explore what they bring to it.

Begin a reading

Continue through the Court

Three ways onward