Moment of Clairification

Yep. I graduated. The ceremony was long and boring and I felt like I disrupted everything when I walked all the way across the floor of the Erwin Center to go to the bathroom. 

So now what? I keep getting asked that. And a lot of times I feel like a really good answer is expected of me. Usually I just smile and say, “I wish I had a good answer to that question.” I’ve half-joked around with a few friends and co-workers by throwing out some random responses with a serious face, garnering fake smiles mixed with surprise, concern or confusion. But really I was only half joking when I said I want to open a coffee shop up east or in Latin America, two places that seriously lack the sit-in-the-shop-while-you-chill-or-work-for-hours culture. (And Starbucks doesn’t count; they don’t even know what a macchiato is.) I was about three-fourths joking when I said I’m considering a career in interior design/restoration, and I wasn’t joking at all when I said I was gonna hang here in Austin and cocktail waitress on the weekends and spend my weekdays at the Greenbelt (but only for two months). I was joking, however, when I said I was going into gardening. I was also joking when I said I was joining the Army. But really, I don’t know what exactly will come after August, and I’ll spend the next couple of months weighing out my needs, wants, goals, and priorities. 

In light of it being graduation day, I visited a psychic with Ashley last night, and she gave me a palm, card and mind reading. My mom lived with a psychic for four years when she was my age, and she’s told me stories about things the psychic told her that came true after many years. As of late, I’ve just been dying to get a reading.

We thought it would be most adventurous to skip the cute little South Austin psychic house right across from my neighborhood and find some place off the beaten path, particularly in a super seedy area. My first choice on Montopolis is apparently not there anymore, and my second choice on E. 7th was closed (at 9 p.m. on a Friday?), so we went to Peggy Marks’ psychic house on far East Riverside. I don’t really think she read my brain as much as my persona, but I think she was talented nonetheless. She used her intuition to decipher who I am and what I want to know about, and she described me and who I want to be in the future almost to a T — almost.

She saw oceans and traveling in my longer-than-usual life line, she said. She said I need to forget about the past and that I have a former significant other who “needs to grow up.” Peggy said I am a “a good preacher to many people,” but that I need to “practice what I preach.” She saw me with a guy who has the first name Joe or John or something with a “Jo,” which is kind of off (and super-general). She said I need to steer clear of commitment for at least 5 years, and she saw a current prospect who is fun and handsome but parties too much and, “even though he’s genuine on the inside, he’s all over the place.” She said I’m a worry wart and a worry about “anything and everything,” and that the backstabbing has to stop (no idea there). She told me I will be rich in the future but have no money now (not a hard thing to guess about someone who just graduated). I was pretty intrigued that she saw twins in my future, though, because little did she know that my grandmother is an identical twin, which supposedly increases the liklihood of me having two mini-humans at a time. She asked me to think of a color and number. She guessed red, which signifies the blood of Jesus, but I was thinking green (calmness). She was also off on the number and guessed 7, which is probably the most-picked number, but I actually picked 9, which means I’m “ready to go,” she said.

Yeah, I was ready to go. I’m still ready to go. But after going to that psychic, I realized they can better serve people who don’t know themselves very well, or don’t like what they know of themselves. I definitely believe that intuition is a learned ability (like learning a language or reading a book), and that some people may even be able to strengthen their intuitions enough to read people’s brains or sense the future. But that would come not from ten cards or the palm of your hand, but from tapping into your own soul and paying attention to it and the energy of others around you. As for the psychics, they serve a unique service for those seeking guidance and truth. Unlike shrinks, they’ve got the power of the unknown on their side in sharing encouraging, constructive assessments and advice. Take away the mysterious lure of tarot cards and lines on your hand, and there lies your dynamic energy — something you have the ability to read yourself.