Life In A State Of Sunshine

I have a friend who is very intuitive, empathic, and who, for lack of a better word, one might call “psychic.” He just knows things. Not winning lottery numbers, or which roads to avoid on your travels, but the kinds of things that have made you who you are, even though you might have long forgotten them. He doesn’t charge any money or have a sign outside his door that says, “Psychic,” and if you didn’t know any better, you’d never know he has this uncanny ability to read you… i.e. to know you on a level much deeper than where you suspect he knows you.

So that said, I will say that while I do believe that people, maybe even all people, have intuitive abilities beyond the everyday explainable, when it comes to people who call themselves psychics, tarot readers, fortune tellers, and the like, my experience has taught me that most of them are full-of-crap conartists who, because they didn’t do well in their Avon careers, have decided there’s money to be made in hiding behind the lure of the mysterious unknown. In a nutshell, their goal is to pick your pocket while pretending to plot out your future.

Still, it hasn’t stopped me from occasionally taking that step beyond the black curtain to see what kernel of truth just might lie inside some toothless old gal’s Kmart crystal ball. Just for fun, right?

My favorite memory to date is of the time my best friend and I attended a “Psychic Fair” in Seffner. We found the fair by following a series of cardboard signs that had big, black, hand scrawled arrows pointing us way off the beaten path through some pretty downtrodden neighborhoods. We passed by quite a few trailer homes, the occasional pit bull tied to a tree, a mini-mart with bars on the windows… yet we chose not to pay attention to our better judgment. In fact, we turned our better judgment buttons off. I mean, who doesn’t love a fair, right?

When we arrived at our destination, we were mildly surprised to see that the big event was located in a tiny, shoebox of a flat-roof house. Parking was no problem. I simply had to pull up under the attached carport, which had a few balloons tied to one of the posts and a sign informing us the cost for the fair was $20. A little steep you might say, but hey, at least the parking was free!

We entered the house through the kitchen, and were soon led into a messy little room, where an extremely imposing woman sat waiting at a foldout table. Her long gray braids fell loosely over her two-sizes-too-small Western-style blouse. She smiled and ushered one of us to take the empty seat across from her. My friend graciously allowed me to take my turn first, so I took a seat and laid my $20 in the center of the table. After a brief and clammy handholding, the psychic began. Ten minutes into hearing what my future had in store, most of which anyone’s future might have in store (you will take a drive… in a car… no, a truck… maybe a SUV… wear your seatbelt!), I heard a strange puff of a sound, which was instantly followed by a stinging pelt to my chest. I looked down to see one of the psychic’s glittery plastic shirt buttons lying in my lap. Instantly my focus was redirected to the awkwardness of the moment, but conversely, the psychic didn’t even skip a beat. As her predictions rambled, I glanced up at the gaping hole in her blouse and the Just My Size bra peeping out. That’s when I made a fatal mistake. I looked over at my friend, who from her post off to the side had clearly witnessed the whole thing. She was staring at me, flabbergasted. There was no way we were going to be able to regain control. Let’s just say, we did an extremely poor and noisy job of stifling our laughter.

The psychic was not amused. She quickly summed up my life and turned to my friend, “Your turn,” she said. Mind you, she still had not made adjustments to her blouse.

“Nah,” said my smiling, teary-eyed friend, “I’m good.”

We ended up going to the mall after that, and though I was $20 poorer, I do have to say that the all-day-laughs made it money well spent. I just love fairs, don’t you?

At the risk of sounding like an uncultured dolt, I’ve decided to admit that I have always despised NPR (that’s “National Public Radio,” for other dolts like me). Anytime a friend of mine has expressed their love of NPR, I’ve responded, “Oh, yeah, that’s neat,” and then made a permanent note to myself to never let them drive me anywhere. Tooling around town listening to a UN debate on Palestinian relations or a lesson in how to prevent cats from getting hairballs is an idea I find mind-numbingly boring. Add that I’d be sharing the vehicle space with someone who enjoys whatever NPR has to offer, requiring that we ride around in silence so as not to miss a word – well, this borders on tortuous. It’s not that I’m uninterested  in the news or in learning new things. As far as that goes, I consider myself to be fairly well informed. I guess it stems from my ideas of what “drive-time”  should be – and held prisoner by the monotone voice of a highbrow Oxford alum is definitely not one of them. Talk radio? No, definitely not my cup of tea.

Ever since I was a teen with a shiny new driver’s license, I’ve thought of my car as a place of freedom – a place to call my own and be myself, whoever “myself” may have been at the time.  Always, it has been a place filled with music. In my teens, it was Madonna, Prince, and The Bangles and for those darker, post-breakup days, The Cure, blaring through my ‘85 Camero’s speakers. In my twenties, I loved nothing more
than singing Mariah Carey’s “Vision of Love” at the top of my lungs while driving seventy miles an hour down the New Jersey Turnpike into NYC, where I had every intention of becoming the next Saturday Night Live cast member. In my thirties, my musical choices often catered to whatever would put my cranky babies to sleep – unfortunately that had to include the fatuous sounds of The Wiggles – but when I had some time to myself, John Mayer and Dave Matthews Band made me remember I was still a free-spirited girl at heart. As I entered my forties and
took on the challenge of divorce, it was Joss Stone who reminded me every time I got behind the wheel that I am a strong woman. For me, music and driving are like popcorn and the movies – you can do one without the other, but why bother?

But lately, I’ve been hearing more and more from people (people I really like!) that they heard some fascinating bit of news on NPR. So last week, I decided to embark on “The NPR Project” – a self-imposed, 3-day study in talk radio. I vowed to listen only to the NPR station, with an open mind, every time I drove anywhere. Turning the radio off was not an option. I wanted to see, if like Brussels sprouts, I could learn to love a thing I’ve always hated.

Morning one, on my way into the office, I turned on the radio and was greeted with the lyrical sounds of a high-pitched piccolo or some other instrument from the Renaissance Period, and it was everything I could do not to say, “I’ll start this thing tomorrow!”  Then the announcer welcomed me back to The Diane Rehm Show, and as the piccolo faded, in came the sound of the most dreadful voice on radio I have ever heard. This woman, who sounds like a constipated smoker, began the discussion of gender equality in America. I wish I could tell you the points that were being made, but honestly, I was too caught up in visualizing this old broad broadcasting while doing her “morning business,” that I didn’t really hear a word she said.  Diane Rehm, bless her heart, hopefully has a face for television because she most certainly does not have a voice for radio. I pulled into my office, happy that I work so close to home.

Over the course of the next three days, I listened to a variety of talk radio shows. To give credit where it is due, I will admit that I did learn some interesting things about the world that never seem to make their way onto our local news programming. For instance, it seems the people of the Netherlands are, in general, quite opposed to immigration, including those immigrants who have called their country home for many years. According to what I heard on NPR, they are sending their immigrants back to where they came from in droves. I always assumed the
Netherlands to be a peaceful place, where the people danced around windmills in their clogs while smoking weed, so to discover that they wish themselves to be a “pure” country and actually have a government that supports racism – well, now I’m left feeling disgusted and driven to boycott tulips and Edam cheese until those people get their minds right.

I also learned, granted it was from a nasally woman whose voice reminds me of that little wacky scientist from “The Incredibles,” that Paris Hilton has a huge fan base in Istanbul and travels there quite often. The price of fame, I guess. Foreign affairs, setting a proper table, the newest book by Jeopardy-winner, Ken Jennings, and the anticipation that at any moment someone was going to ask for the recipe for Schweddy Balls – well, this was how my experiment played out.

And on day three, a rather long day of driving to work appointments and running errands, I found myself feeling overly thankful for a lengthy musical interlude between talk shows of twangy, Bluegrass banjos. Despite my increased knowledge base, I’d had more than enough of talk.

“The NPR Project” did not open my eyes (or ears, rather) to the magic of listening to talk radio. Though it did inspire me to daydream and take more notice of the world flashing by me, I hold firm that there is no room on my pre-set buttons for the NPR station. I will admit, however, that there is much more to be learned by listening to NPR. In truth, our local news channels and newspapers don’t begin to cover it all. But even though I discovered some new and compelling things, my opinion remains the same. Listening to talk radio is a mundane way to get oneself from place to place. Let’s just say this: Brussels sprouts can be sautéed in bacon and topped with parmesan cheese, but talk radio can not be jazzed up enough to inspire me to roll all my windows down and chair dance at the red light. In my car I will remain an uncultured dolt, and that’s okay by me!

When I was a little kid, I always suspected I’d be pretty shriveled and ineffectual by the age of 40. I remember counting up the years and realizing it would be 2010 when I turned that ripe old age, hoping maybe it wouldn’t be too bad by then. I imagined flying up to my George Jetson-style condo in my flying, jet-powered wheelchair, wearing a velvety magenta tracksuit like my grandma used to wear to the Winn Dixie every Saturday morning.  Of course my version of the tracksuit had shiny silver racing stripes down the sides and a sharp, v-shaped collar.  I knew I’d be old, but I always imagined I’d be a trendy ol’ gal with cool stuff.

When I was in my twenties, I thought about how life would be at the age of 40, and I saw my future self as wise, wealthy and important. I still believed that by that age, the best of my life would’ve been lived already, but as a young adult I at least knew enough to dismiss the idea of the jet-powered wheelchair.  The tracksuit, on the other hand, still hovered on my horizon.

So, here it is… I’m half way through the big 4-0. Funny, I don’t feel very wealthy or terribly important, and I certainly wouldn’t label myself as wise. Weirdly enough, I feel like I’ve entered into an all-new state of self-discovery. Like a newborn, I feel uncertain, yet eager to explore my life. I feel like I want to know myself, my friends, my family, and most definitely my children, as well as I can possibly know them. I want to understand them. I suddenly feel less stressed about what the future holds. I feel like I’ve relinquished the desire to control and hold tight onto the reigns of my life, and honestly, that feels a little reckless. I feel cool and confident and healthy. I feel like I could totally rock a velvet tracksuit with silver racing stripes down the side, though I prefer a cute little skirt, thank you. I have embraced the idea that I have no idea what my future holds. Sometimes, I almost feel like I’m dumber. Maybe that’s what being wise is all about?

I wish I had some profound thoughts, but I don’t. I like being forty. I like myself. That’s about it. And wow, it is now the year 2011, and I just want to say I am soooooo happy that I am not shriveled and ineffectual. (This is where I congenially shake my head at my childhood self.) I would, however, pay very good money to fly through the air on a jet-powered Rascal!