It’s like reading your star sign. I tell myself it’s not really real but if its good, I’m going to take it. A few weekends ago, on a Friday night stroll around Southbank, a friend walked into a Chinese Astrologer who read palms and saw the future in grains of rice. While my insides thought about that crackpot idea, I moved further up the aisle to the more traditional tarot reader. She was busy. A large-ish, mediterranean man sat in her folding chair encased in her flowing pink chiffon curtains. I waited in the cold and watched her work.
She leaned in close, turning cards, looking at the uncomfortably shifting man sitting opposite her. She had a greying fringe that fell across her forehead and she looked like she knew what she was doing. Not a hard call for a tarot card reader, you look pensive and turn the cards over. It’s not high class drama but when it comes to fortune telling, my preferences stick with the gypsy traditional. I stood in the cold for forty minutes while the giant man listened intently for any hope of a positive future.
I’ve visited psychics on and off for years. Some good, some not, but all with the best of intentions. They are fun. I have to think of them as fun because with my obsessive personality so far I would have died trying to marry a truck driver, a traveller, a helpful talk dark and handsome man who carried my bags at the airport, I’d have taken on a friend’s wayward child and be looking at horses out of my kitchen window. None of which have come true. Except maybe the horses. When they were in the bottom paddock and I craned my neck past the bougenvillias and squinted really hard, occasionally I would see a horse from the kitchen window in Murgon.
The point is, when I am a little lost or can’t make a decision I’ll visit just to see what they say. Sometimes we just need a little sign from a stranger to help our minds make a choice let alone the right one. So standing in the cold while my friend got her rice read by a quack pot I waited for the tarot reader. Waiting and waiting, it was clear the universe was telling me she wasn’t the one for me. With a huff and a sigh, I returned to the Chinese tent to listen to rice lady tell her stuff. I was impressed with her date accuracy for my friend but I couldn’t see how a pinch of rice could possibly tell her the future.
Two weeks later I had a date with some friends at the Plough Inn. The pub that sits in the middle of the markets at Southbank. For the first time in my life I was early and decided to do a lap to check if it was my day with the grey haired gypsy. There she sat again with her deck of peeling picture cards laid out in front with a small boned middle aged woman stationed in front of her. I did another lap and a few stalls down spotted the rice people. A man this time, sat alone in the tent. No customers, not busy and all warmed up in his tiny white tent. I was still sceptical about the rice and headed back to the gypsy woman. Still busy.
I fidgeted outside Nando’s, patted the plastic sheep at the coffee shop next door and considered buying myself an Asian dish just to stay close to the grey haired card turner. It was then that I saw the two skinny blonde girls hovering outside the flapping chiffon. There was a line. And looking at the two of them, they obviously needed the guidance more than I did. It was the middle of winter and both of them had forgotten to put on their jumpers.
I strolled back to the China man and stood outside his tent. I stared at the Chinese Astrology chart and looked at the monkey symbol. I’d never held much stead in the monkey. I went to school, I swam, ran, sat and studied with a bunch of monkeys and there was no way we all had the same characteristics. I walked in, he smiled and welcomed me to a seat. He made me write my first name, my date of birth and the time I was born on a piece of paper.
He grabbed his book of characters and numbers and began his page of scribbles. Characters, ticks, crosses, the words good, ok and fog all appearing in various places. He counted rice grains and sketched where they’d landed. He wrote the years of the past and the present, circling the ones that obviously meant more than others. He wrote the years 2008 and 2009, 2011 and 2012. At the bottom of the page he wrote the years 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020 with the letter G O O D all in capitals.
As the years and the paper filled up I tried to think about what was happening in my life at those times. I resisted the urge to speak and let the man check his figures, rub my palms and let him talk. He said that I had a life change in 08/09. I nodded nervously. It was the year I moved back to Brisbane. He said that since 2011 things have been quite foggy. I’ve wanted things but there has always seemed to be a BUT and my hands had been tied about making any real headway. He said that I had relationships in my life in 2011 and 2012 that were undefined, unclear and made the rest of my judgements foggy. He said they were no good and made me lose my way for most of that time. He said the fog still exists and your hands are still tied but your patience is getting better.
He said you have to wait. Your hands are still tied and there are still buts. You can buy a house, but it means you can’t travel. You can change jobs but you have to start again. You have too many buts yet, and you don’t like to wait. He said that once you make a decision you want it to happen now and you struggle with the waiting. But the time is no good for you. He said relationships, investments and life in general will come with rewards soon enough. You have to wait till 2014/2015 for things to start moving. 2016 for the opportunities. He said stay away from relationships until then. He said that I am smart but I need to go to the doctor for a check up early next year. There’s something wrong with your lady bits. Go to Yoga, it will help it not be bad. He said there will be no babies. Then he looked at his charts and scribbles again, spent several minutes staring at the sides of my palms. With a defeated sigh and lean back into his chair he said Ok there may be one, (with an emphasis on the MAY) but don’t start thinking about it for at least two to three years.
The news was mixed. The delivery appeared honest and the findings written before you for posterity. The ultimate lesson he says is Patience. Learn to wait and slow yourself down to half speed. Not everything needs to happen now and some things are worth waiting for. I leave the tent and head back to the pub. I think to myself that I am tired of waiting. That I am sick of being patient. It’s then that I remember it was my hands and far flung rice grains that told him all of those things and that if I’d thrown the rice more slightly to the left, plucked an extra grain, then maybe it would have been a different story. Ultimately my life is my decision and while I could learn a few skills in the patience department, I am more than happy to learn them at the pub with friends. Well until 2015 anyway. That’s only a year and half and if I’ve waited this long so what’s one more year? But I have decided that I do prefer my rice cooked and mixed with satay sauce. But I may just enrol in that yoga class this week.
life in big frilly knickers 