So I wrote a story a while back for Meow Wolf’s exhibit in Santa Fe. Known as “The House of Eternal Return,” it is really more of a phenomena than an exhibit, filled with gads of discoverable back story and clues and mystery. What follows is a fictional biography about the creator of the mysterious playing cards you find within the house. It’s all about my dad, CJ Freeman (who in the story is “CJ Winship”) and his fictional female twin. Writing this little bio was an interesting process for me, as it seemed almost a spiritual parallel, or like it could be a plausible other lifetime for my father and his twin. The story took on a life of it’s own, nearly “writing itself.”
And cards are so wonderfully curious, aren’t they? When laid out in groups, they become as still frames pulled out of a movie reel, giving us clues into a larger narrative. So please enjoy the story that follows, inspired by the King, Queen, and Lady of the Heart Suit.
CJ Winship: A biography
Charles Jonathan Winship was born in Waterhead, England as an only child. In conception, however, he was a twin. His sister perished in the womb, stillborn.
Charles was a child of wild imagination with few friends, and was known to have ongoing communication with his unborn sister through dreams. Of this he documented over a 30 year period in journals of various sorts, where he refers to the sister as “Theramina” or “Theramina the Red.”
One of the most curious things about the twins’ communication was that much of it occurred in a kind of private sign language with playing cards. At one point Charles wrote that “Theramina turns playing cards off what I can only describe as a living, swirling playing card deck, and flashes their faces to me just as I awaken.”
The bulk of Charles’ journal entries remain enigmatic, as they contain only a type of playing card shorthand with no interpretation. Some entries, however, include comments on the cards noted, and others reference dates and events which had not yet occurred at the time they were written. Presumably, Theramina was able to access information outside of linear time, and communicate matters of future concern to Charles.
Cards create a story. Part of card deck by CJ Freeman found in Meow Wolf House of Eternal Return.
When Charles was in his 29th year, he was informed by Theramina that she wished to incarnate into a physical body so that they could at last be together in physical form. The only way to do this was through the bloodline. She was to be born through Charles’ own seed as his daughter. Since Charles had no wife or sweetheart, the twin indicated that he would be guided and given a sign as to the woman who would carry Theramina as his child.
Charles and his daughter, born Theramina Winship, were as close as two could be, like two halves of the same soul, for in fact they were. Charles and his chosen bride (Ellen Potts, mother of Theramina) never became truly close. It seemed as Charles’ heart was filled with the affection for his twin, and Ellen was inherently jealous by nature. Neither really took the marriage very seriously, and Ellen had many affairs, and so did Charles, although Charles heart only ever belonged to one.
In later years, Charles painted portraits of his own family into a highly unusual playing card deck. Eventually, he created images for all 52 cards, plus jokers, with characters from the “living and swirling deck” of his dreams with Theramina. Only 6 copies of a handheld size were made. Charles and Theramina were painted as the King and the Lady of Hearts, and Ellen, the Queen of Hearts. The King and Lady were shown wearing the matching moonstone rings Charles had commissioned for Theramina’s 16th birthday, which symbolized their connection through dreaming.
It was rumored that Charles painted as if in trance, with eyes half closed and only at night when the planks of wood he painted upon were lit by dim moonlight. Driven by a mysterious dream reality and lacking formal art training, he never used paint brushes but only his fingers.
Over time, Charles become increasingly reclusive, and Theramina eventually married. It is believed that their regular dream communication ended, but that they remained always in contact through letters in playing card notation: a language kept secret between them all the many years.
Charles was said to have the power to alter a person’s destiny by gifting them a playing card. Whenever possible, this “gifting” was done anonymously, as Charles’ believed this made the influence of the card more powerful. He would sneak about under moonlight, leaving cards on people’s doorstep (for example,) or place a card on a path being traveled upon, so that the card seemed to appear by wind or other chance. It was once a common saying in the North of England when finding a random playing card to say, “It is Winship,” although few knew the origin or deeper meaning of the saying.
(View a “real life” bio of CJ Freeman, whom the above fictional character is based on, HERE.)