Monday 25 February 2013

Mercury In Retrograde Under A Full Moon

The crazies are out in full force. I spent eight hours at the tarot shop and half--yes! fifty percent!--of my clients today were full on cray-cray!

I began my day by putting on my tinfoil beanie, because I knew I was in for some lively action. Oh, I know people in my line of work should be yapping about “reframing one’s experience” and “choosing optimism” or “putting out positive energy”, but while everyone else sits around holding hands and singing “Kumbaya”, I have to deal with crazies. 

My first reading this morning, for example, was a completely uptight Swedish woman who wanted to know who the father of her grandchild is. Clearly, she was looking more for a psychic than a tarot reader, because she complained that the reading was very general. Well, yeah, Inga, it is, but why are you sitting here instead of calling a doctor’s office for a paternity test? Think it through, Flicka. Sheesh.

I cannot, for the life of me, understand why people choose to take the convoluted route to solving a problem and then blame me when I don't give them satisfaction. Fer fuck's sake!

It really is amazing what kind of information people think you can offer them. A couple of weeks back, I had this client. I'll call her Mary. She was an older woman who began our session by explaining that she was in a relationship with this guy, but she didn’t know if she should break up with him or not because he drinks too much, smokes pot and makes her IBS kick up.  Frankly, unless you are a gastroenterologist, you know an appointment is going go badly if the client refers to her bowel in the first 30 seconds. 

Mary was no exception and was perhaps the most passive person I have ever met. I said to her, “Well, if you’re not happy in the relationship and he makes you feel ill, why would you stay?”

She said, “I dunno.” 

So, I put some cards down, but it was really just a formality, because while I usually like to gently lead my clients to their own conclusions, Mary wasn't actually bright or motivated enough to get there in the half hour we had together. So, eventually I just told her to dump him. I mean, she was having to compete for him with his eighty-year-old mother (with whom he was still living), a fight she was destined to lose. Without hesitation, she said, “Okay.” (I should have also said, “Now empty out your bank account and bring me the contents in small, unmarked bills”, but I have promised to use my powers for good, not evil. More's the pity.)

Having resolved the issue of her current relationship, Mary was all fired up to see what the future held for her in terms of other men. She asked me if she could pray on my cards. (Aw, jeez: one of those.) Naturally, I said yes, because it’s always fun to see what comes out of their mouths. Mary did not disappoint. She said, “Lord God, please let me know what kind of man I’m going to meet, what he’ll look like, what kind of job he has, what kind of car he drives…”
               
What kind of car he drives??? Honey, do you really think my tarot deck is able to tell me if your swanky new beau drives a Hummer or a Pinto??? Jesus, if I could get that kind of detail out of these cards, I wouldn’t be at this dinky little shop reading for God-botherers like you! Holy fuck.

My last client today was so fucking crazy that I couldn't even take a stab at answering her questions. I actually sent her down the hall to talk to the other reader because... well, I’ll let her explain it in her own words.


“So I saw a picture of this guy on the internet, and I don’t know him or anything, but he is on my mind all the time. He’s in my thoughts constantly. When I see his picture, I’m just filled with this sense of overwhelming importance and emotion, and I guess I just want to know why. Like, do I know him from a past life, or am I just crazy?”
(I’ll take “I Am Just Crazy for $500, Alex.”
“That’s your Daily Double!”)

Out loud, I said to her, “I just want to clarify: you have no connection or interaction with this person? You just see his photo.”

“Right.”
“Well, I’m not actually qualified to diagnose crazy.” (Inside Voice: But you’d be my best candidate of the day so far, and that’s saying something, girl.) “And this kind of issue isn’t really what I do, but the other reader does, so I’ll just go find out if she’s available.”

And thank God, she was available, because the thought of spending an hour with this pleasant but twacked-out young lady was giving me schpilkas in my genechtigazoink. I mean, if she’s starting out with a batshit crazy question like that, then there’s no telling where we’d end up. But it probably involves talking to the spirits of her dead hamsters, all of which were named after goddesses.

"Isis was my favourite, so I don't feel like I gave Kali all the attention she needed, maybe because she was always abusing her environment and trying to escape, and I just felt that she was rejecting me, so I kind of resented that. Astarte got pregnant and had a bunch of babies, but she ate them all, because I think Hecate's cage was too close to hers. Anyway, I just lost Demeter and she comes to me in my dreams a lot and I think she's trying to tell me something. Can we ask something like that?"
Yes, we can ask something like that, but the answer isn't pleasant and involves the prescription of powerful anti-psychotics.
Tomorrow, I am schedued to work at the law office where I will no doubt be required to deal with a slightly different set of whackjobs.
Lucky me.


 

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