This is Your Future, Are You Paying Attention?

A long time ago, when I was in a mixed up crazy relationship that an unmovable force kept me in — that, and the smell of his neck — I did a Nancy Reagan. I consulted a psychic.

I went at the insistence of my friend, David. David is fluent in the universal language of the stars. After comparing birth charts, he urged me to get out of my rocky relationship with Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights because “his Saturn is sitting right on your sun!”

Translation? Heathcliff and I could not avoid a “paper, rock, scissors” relationship, in which he was paper when I was rock, rock when I was scissors, or scissors when I was paper. Saturn moves very slowly, David warned. Can I live with that?

He brought me to “Awakenings”, a converted house on Central Avenue in Albany, to attend a séance.

In the parking lot, I felt my skepticism rising when I spotted the very first designer license plate I’d ever seen. It said “psychic”. That was ballsy. I cranked my expectations to the highest setting. “If he can make someone levitate tonight,” I whispered to David in the parking lot, “then he gets to drive around with that pretentious plate.”

David was patient with me. He realized I had no idea what I was in for and whispered back, “A séance is just a spiritualistic meeting to receive spirit communications from the dead…no one is going to float out of their…” and then he stopped himself mid-tutorial and said, “Marianne is here. Oh, good.”

I’m not making any of this up. This is really how it went.

Candles were lit and the lights went out, the collection bowl was passed and the first reading was given by the man whom I dubbed: “The guy with the psychic license plate”, rather than the guy with the “psychic” license plate.

The guy with the psychic plate looked deep into the collection bowl at his feet as if it were a window into the heavens, and gave readings that involved a lot of dots. “…Michelle, I see a relative…a gray haired…man…with a…dog next to him…a grandfather…figure…who wants me to tell you…that your…cousin…no…your sister…is going to be okay.”

Michelle expressed her delight, as if she’d been served a delicious bass, prepared exactly how she ordered it, with the cilantro chutney on the side and three spoonfuls of brown rice, not two.

“That was my mother’s father who passed to the other side,” she whispered to the woman beside her. “He had a German Shepherd. And my cousin, who is like a sister to me, is waiting on test results after she found a lump in her breast. I can’t wait to tell her she’s going to be okay!”

Then Marianne, who appears to have just woken up from a nap, speaks up. She is very matronly. She has long, wavy red hair, and a tan, which doesn’t seem to go with the red hair, but I look past that incongruency because she has an English accent. What’s not to love?

She’s in town to visit her daughter who looks at her mother respectfully when she’s channeling. The daughter, who is my age, positions herself in her chair and listens attentively to the voice coming out of the woman who raised her. I almost wondered if this voice had her own name. Like Lenore.

I’m watching this dynamic and begin to get a little excited to see if she can pronounce something awesome. Something a little more specific than a grandfather with a dog giving the message that a sister cousin will be okay. I could have said that.

She points to me with her hands in prayer position and says, “You’re having a hard time in your life right now, but you’ll come out of this relationship a much stronger person. You’re going to marry…oh, wow….you’re going to move to Columbus…and…oh, my…it’s going to be a great life, and…a great…life.”

I don’t know what happened to me. It was like a movie, and at the climax, suddenly the audio went out. The star-crossed lovers finally bump into each other in the courtyard, away from the crowd inside. Just as he’s about to tell her the words we’ve all been waiting for………(no audio).

That’s what happened to my brain. Something or someone intercepted. I didn’t get the audio. I wasn’t supposed to know yet.

All I was privy to was the reactions of the people in the circle. They oohed and aahed, as if this were a baby shower and I’d just been given a fleece receiving blanket with cherubic cursive embroidered letters that said, “a gift from above”. Ooooh!

I was confused. All I could remember was Columbus…great life…baby shower oohs and aaahs. I had a bunch of questions.

I asked: “Do you mean Columbia Turnpike, not Columbus? Because I live off of Columbia Turnpike in East Greenbush and I just moved there about six months ago. Is that it?”

“No. It’s Columbus,” she said, as if she scraped caked mud off an ancient coin with her thumbnail to uncover the rest of the letters.

I didn’t know where Columbus was. Columbus, Georgia? Columbus, Indiana? Columbus, Texas?

Six years later I married an oh wow! great guy and moved to oooh, aaaah! Columbus, Ohio.

Home of the Ohio State Buckeyes, The Buckeye Nation, and the Columbus Dispatch, where an article from my blog was published on the front page of the Life section!! Hellooo! Pinch me!!

I couldn’t ask for better placement. Next to a photo of Clarence Clemons and a sculpture of Fred Rogers. That means I can frame the whole damn page and I won’t get sick of looking at it.

I’m still on cloud nine from the day before. I had the awesomely trippy experience of talking about my blog via Skype to the Communications Department at my alma mater, The College of St. Rose, in Albany. But that’s for tomorrow’s blog. If I’m tech savvy enough, I’ll have a clip of the audio so I can add it. In the meantime, I have this kick ass Clarence Clemons solo to take us out.

The Big Man

I don’t know who’s orchestrating all of this but I am definitely doing a soundcheck on the mic as this movie plays out. “Is this thing on?” I don’t want to miss a thing. (Dear Dianna, it doesn’t get any better than THIS!)

You've enjoyed reading this post. What's next?

Subscribe to the RSS feed or Email Updates.
Help us promote this article by bookmarking it to your favorite social network via an icon below:

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
•