Day 122 - Have a Professional Tarot Reading Done

Date: May 8th, 2010

So after telling my fortune myself, I thought "why wait?  I'll go tomorrow".  As a slight tangent, I'm going to point out that the whole "why wait" thought has been happening more and more.  I can't say as I actually know what made me want to get the Tarot reading right away after the fortune telling debacle.  I think it had to be a combination of impatience and curiosity.  In any case, there is a bookstore on Main Street in Ann Arbor that hosts all manner of paranormal whosawhatzits.  I found it when I was doing my Alphabet Walk a couple of weeks back and the fact that its called Crazy Wisdom should in no way cause you to rush to judgment.

On their community calendar I found out that there are Tarot and Psychic readings on a walk in basis on Saturdays, so I headed over there around noon.  Around 1pm, I was still waiting for the person ahead of me to finish her reading.  Usually this would cause impatience to boil up within my soul and sit below the surface, ready to be unleashed at the slightest provocation.  On this day, for some reason, I found myself enjoying just sitting and relaxing.  There was a comfortable chair in a warm room that smelled like fresh, savory tea.  It was just a lovely place to be.

Still, as minutes wore into an hour, I started to get a little peeved.  I decided I would leave and come back another time.  That's when a nice young man named Lex walked over to the table I was sitting at and asked if the other seat was taken.  We ended up striking up a conversation.  I told him about my project and he hold me about several things he does with his free time - all of which sounded amazingly interesting.  He mentioned studio rap sessions and Tai Chi, services at a Mosque and alternative spirituality.  It was all incredibly interesting.  About five minutes after I gave him my card, the man doing tarot readings finished talking to the person before me.

I do so enjoy tricks of timing like that.  Five minutes earlier, five minutes less patient, and I wouldn't have met someone very cool or opened the door to interesting new opportunities.  I sat down with the tarot reader and one of the first things he asked me to do was take the deck of cards and shuffle it.  I had read about this aspect of fortune telling.  The idea is that by holding the cards yourself, you are telling them what about you so they can reflect back the truth properly.

There were some moments that were flat out unexplainable, which, quite frankly, is something I may struggle with as I think about it.  Unlike the TV pros that I love to hate, the man doing my tarot reading was very specific.  I did give him some details of my life, but he pulled out details I did not prompt.  I told him I lived in Indianapolis as a child and he essentially corrected me.  "Was it Indianapolis or Carmel, because I'm picking up Carmel?"  It was Carmel.  Its a suburb of Indianapolis that I lived in with my parents.

That being said, the most interesting thing he pointed out was about my work.  I talked about finishing law school and being interested in being a prosecutor.  He seemed confused.  He noted that I wanted to be a prosecutor, but asked if that was what I was doing right now.  It didn't match the cards, he said.  So I asked what the cards were saying.  He pointed to the card sitting in the spot representing work and told me it was the "Public Defender" card.  Given that I'm working at Legal Service - defending people - it was an interesting revelation.

I must say, I don't know what to think.  He didn't back track or feed off information I gave him and I had just walked up at that moment so it was either impossible or insanely unlikely for him to have known what I was doing.  I guess what I think is that we don't, as a society, necessarily understand what the extent of human insight is.  Perhaps my mannerisms seemed more suburban to him and he took a wild guess.  Perhaps I give off the aggressive defender vibe - that's something I've been told before - and he put the pieces together.  Or perhaps human insight is a matter for faith as well.

As for me, I have one little test left to see if the guy was legit.  If I'm working at a law firm in Indianapolis with former DAs and judges in a few years then he'll be batting 1.000 on the "knowing about Kristen's life" meter.  Wow.  That was about four metaphors at once.  I'm proud.