Hi friends! Happy Sunday. In this scene, my good friend Diva visits me in Florida and we run off to a psychic community called Cassadaga to find out what the future holds. Since my finances, career, and love life were in the toilet at the time, I figured any good news would be welcome then!
***
Diva visited again for Spring
Break, and her appearance was most welcomed. She whisked me off to Cassadaga, which is a community of
psychics, mediums and spiritualists near Orlando.
Cassadaga was a very soothing
place. The energy there was calm and palpable. The streets are lined with oak
trees fringed in Spanish moss. The
houses there were built many decades ago, and several have big, shady
porches. It is like a trip back in
time to visit Cassadaga.
When I got out of the car and
walked up and down a few streets, I felt lighter than I had in a long time. I
had a buzzing in my head that made me feel light inside. I don’t remember what
Diva and I discussed. We were just happy to be somewhere new, where the people
we’d run into were bound to be cool. And, they were.
We happened upon a guy named
Psychic Bob sitting on a bench outside a New Age shop. He was a tall,
overweight man in a navy blue t-shirt and khakis (not exactly mystical
apparel), but we loved him the minute he opened his mouth.
Diva chatted him up first, as
usual. She said, “Hi there! What do you do?”
“I do readings with tarot cards,”
he answered. “What are you two looking for today?”
“Oh, whatever strikes us,” she
answered. “We just had our auras photographed- wanna see?”
“Of course!” he answered. I liked
him already; I thought it was fun to see a grown man get giddy about colors.
“Hey, I’m Jane,” I said to him.
“Hi Jane, I’m Psychic Bob,” he
answered.
“And this is my friend, Diva.”
“Diva! Well, let’s see the auras
for these fancy ladies.”
Diva showed her aura photograph to
him first.
“Orange, orange, orange,” he said.
“You must be very creative, Diva.”
She nodded. Regardless of the day
jobs she’s held, Diva’s always been an artist, so his assessment was spot-on.
“And you, Jane.” He paused for a
beat to take in the red, yellow, and green. “Yours looks like Mardi Gras!”
We laughed.
“That’s what I said!” Diva added.
“Red corresponds to family and
community; orange can be creativity and can also be survival and sex. The
yellow in there deals with self-esteem, and the green is all about the love,”
he told us.
All were issues going on with me.
All were things I wanted to feel or have or secure. After exchanging glances,
we decided to get tarot readings from Psychic Bob. I went first.
Psychic Bob had a private room that
was used for readings, just beyond the sidewalk where he sat and met passers-by
throughout the day. It was painted turquoise and had a table and two chairs.
The table was covered with a turquoise and gold cloth, while the chairs were
simply gray folding chairs. A tall,
narrow window let in sunlight through a translucent yellow curtain.
I sat down on the gray folding
chair across from him and tried to be nonchalant. I didn’t want to show that my
life was unraveling to a psychic; that would make his job way too easy.
So I said this: “I want to know
about where my life is headed.”
Psychic Bob whispered a blessing
over his tarot cards while he held them in his clasped hands. Then, he handed
the cards to me, and I shuffled them three times, cut the deck, and handed the
two piles back to him. He placed one pile on top of the other and started
laying cards down on the table between us.
I looked at the seven cards. One
was labeled “The Devil” and showed a man and a woman in shackles. Another
showed a man lying face-down in the dirt with 10 swords in his back. A third,
called “The Tower,” had people jumping out of a flaming building. The other
cards had symbols that I didn’t understand.
Psychic Bob took a breath and
started the reading with a question.
“Are you working now?” he asked
“Yes,” I answered, trying to force
some enthusiasm about it. He looked puzzled; his forehead wrinkled up in reply.
He hesitated, and then he asked:
“Why does your workplace remind me of The
Devil Wears Prada?”
My eyes bugged out and I laughed.
He took the burden of my life, the struggle I felt every day, the weight of
this horrible work environment, and turned it into a pop culture reference that
mentioned Simon Baker. What a great way to spend a day off, I mused. At least
he’s making me think about Simon Baker.
“Psychic Bob, it’s horrible,” I
said. “I don’t know what to do. I’m new to this town, and I feel stuck where
I’m working but don’t know where else to go. I haven’t found any decent job
leads. I meet people who seem to want to see me fail. Nobody there wants to
know me or be my friend. It’s awful.”
“I know you are feeling stressed,
but you have to take charge of this situation. Look at this card,” he said,
pointing to the Tower card, with lightening striking the tower, bricks falling
down, and people falling to their deaths.
“You can’t wait until the walls are falling down around you to get out!”
“But what if I can’t find anywhere
else to go?” I asked him.
“Keep looking,” he said. “It’s
always the last place you look, anyway. You have to find a more secure place to
work. That’s the only way you can improve your situation.”
He moved on to the awkward subject
of my love life and looked puzzled again after he laid down seven more cards.
“This card,” he said, pointing at
the six of cups, “talks about happy memories, things that have passed. But, it
can also mean future opportunities and good times. It’s up to you. I don’t think your best days are behind you
at all. We just need to make sure you don’t think that, either. As far as finding someone,
you will have the opportunity to meet someone who lives a distance from where
you are now.”
“Thank goodness,” I muttered under
my breath.
“That you might meet someone? Or
that he’s far away?” he asked.
“Both,” I answered.
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