This happened a couple of weeks ago, so the memories are fuzzy.
This is also my first note of 2009, rather than get freaked out about it and feel some need to write something funny and or meaningful, I’m just going to write it, so as not to worry about it. This, despite its tone, is progress.
Every now and then I decide I want to get advice. Having been shown undeniable truth in the merit of (for lack of a better word) psychics, I’ve pretty much accepted that despite my logical protestation (“Wait, they can do what? My ass they can.”), that they are real. At least some of them.
So. I tried to get in touch with my local psy–is there a better word? I’ll just use Guide. That sounds newagey enough without sounding completely dismissible. The reality is that the Guide is more like a conduit who can get you in touch with your Guides, and pass important information. (“2009, the year of ‘What the f@#k are you writing about Phil? This has nothing to do with Dogs OR your girlfriend or King’s Quest. You are SCARING me.”)
But my local guide was booked solid. So I called around, and my friend Anisa said that her friend (and I’ll make up the names, just cause maybe I should) Eagle Sunstar, also does readings.
“Eagle Sunstar?”
“Well, her real name is Lindsey.”
“Of course.”
“She’s very good.”
“Uh-huh. Well how do you know her?”
“She teaches yoga.”
Okay, my world of belief is VERY very shaky, and, in some regards, very binary. You can be an exotic dancer or an investment banker. Not both. You can be a professional football player or the leading authority on drosophilia. You can…do you see where I’m going with this? This is a crappy belief system, and I’m going to try to (personally) disavow myself (and everyone else) of it as soon as possible, but it’s still there, so I’m working with it.
But until then…
Either you are Lindsey, the yoga teacher, or Eagle Sunstar, the psychic reader. Not both.
Well Anisa sensed my doubt and insisted, several times that “she’s good.” I went into my tire-kicking mode, but didn’t know how to kick the tires on a psychic/guide.
If someone is trying to sell me a car, I can ask about miles per gallon, years since last service, what is the reliability of the make and model? Blue book value? That kind of thing. Here, I was stuck sounding like an idiot…
“Well, is she…you know. Good and stuff? I mean. You know what I mean right?”
“It’s different, she reads cards.”
Craaaaap. Not only is she not the person I’m expecting, she does something different. You spend two hours convincing your friend to vote, and then when they finally agree that they should, you try to explain the electoral college. Sometimes it’s just too much to ask.
Ultimately, I decide to call Eagle. Her voicemail picks up, and she (surprise) does not identify herself as Eagle, but as Lindsey. I decide to play along, just in case
“Hi, uh… Eagle. Lindsey. This message is for Eagle, er… Ms. Sunstar. I’m interested in having my cards read. My # is [my number]. Thanks, oh my name is Phil.”
She calls back, we talk directions, she asks my birthday, and eventually I show up at her house.
The FIRST thing she does is give me a stack of paper and say “You’re a Virgo, so I know you’re going to want to write everything down.” (I do, and did.) The first thing I did was take my wad o’ cash and place it on the table.
I have a fear that people will think I am trying to rip them off. I rarely pick things up in stores, so they don’t think I’m trying to steal it. I try to pay up front for things, even things that I shouldn’t. I make a big show of tipping, so they know I am going to. I think it stems from an incident, when I was 10 or 11, going to Toys-R-Us. On the way out they asked to check my bag. But not my (white) friend’s. Messed up, but now I have a guilty complex.
Anyway, I placed my wad o’ cash, as a a sign of “I am not going to rip you off.” But then I looked at it and thought maybe it looked more like I thought she was a psychic hooker, just seconds away from tucking it in her new-age thong. Then this line from the birdcage popped into my head, “Your money’s on the dresser, chocolate.”
She started to do my reading, and that stripper $30 was just burning a hole in my peripheral vision so I tucked it under the paper, which probably made me look dodgier than if I’d never brought it out in the first place.
How Card Readings Work
I don’t know if you’re familiar with the iChing. It sounds a bit like if Apple started fabricating cash registers. Or Chinese people. Or one-hit-wonder-rappers. Er, One-hit-wondurrrs.
The theory behind the iChing is fairly simple. The universe is intricate, and infinitely complex, but not random. Every single bit of the universe has the ‘story’ of the rest of the universe inside of it. You’ve had this experience before.
You’re walking down the street, you turn on your iPod, on shuffle, and it RANDOMLY goes to some song which is EXACTLY what you were thinking/talking/feeling about earlier. Man, that’s crazy you think. Then you carry on.
I haven’t read up on the i ching in like a decade, but my basic memory of it is that there are sticks, with numbers, and the numbers mean something, so if you think about some stuff, then throw the sticks down, you’ll get numbers, and then you apply the meanings associated with those numbers to the stuff you were thinking about, shazam: advice.
Animal Card Readings are similar.
The deck is filled with a bunch of cards with a variety of animals. She asked me the first thing on my mind (I had two), so we started talking about the first: my career. She asked me to ask my question, and I did, and she asked me to pull out 3 ‘random’ cards, and I did. I received the Boar, the Bear, and the Butterfly (48/5/9).
Wait.
I don’t want to get bogged down in telling you what my reading was, card by card. That would sort of miss the point. I’ll summarize.
We talked about my career for ten minutes, and we talked about (what I really wanted to talk about) my relationship for about twenty. I was scared to ask about the relationship first, because I didn’t want to seem like I was two seconds away from wondering about Edward Cullen and Bella Swan “OMG I love her, what now?” I figure if I waltz in, discussing my career, and then as an afterthought mention my relationship, then I’m in the clear. Is it manly to think about your relationship? I dunno. I hope so. Because I think about everything that means something to me, and it would seem stupid to put this on the backburner.
So… oh hell what can I tell you now? I can’t go into the details of my relationship reading, because that’s … here, here’s what I will do.
A few years ago I was working as the assistant to a producer for a movie starring Paul Giamatti. The producer decided that they wanted a Shaman to bless the set, and that I should go find said Shaman. Yes, it was a weird task, but Google is your friend.
I found someone who does that sort of thing, and I asked them about doing a little Shaman work on me (Again, I’m always down). That’sa story of itself, but basically she asked me to lie down and not think about anything while she “read” me from afar. I did that.
I crawled onto my bed. Closed my eyes, and tried to blank my mind. Within minutes I got he (this is weird, feel free to ignore it) distinct feeling that I was an [animal]. She called me back, and said “Your animal is a [The Animal I Suddenly Felt Like I was].”
Anyway.
My…love, and I, in our very first conversation, we talked about (everything) including this, and we found out that when she was called a certain name when she did some work with native americans. Her name was [Her Animal]-Healer. When she told me this I was a little disappointed that it wasn’t [My Animal]-Healer, but then I decided I don’t want to be anyone’s pet project to fix, no pun intended.
With me, so far?
We pulled 12 various cards during the course of this stage (relationship) of the reading, there were no duplicates.
The first card I pulled out (it literally JUMPED, or FELL out of the deck while I was shuffling): her animal.
The last card, for the last question: my animal.
Well, it freaked me out.