It was fucking hot around 11 AM on All Saints Day, November 1, 2009 when I drove down Harbor Boulevard in Anaheim, CA to the run down house that the Psychic operated in. The neighborhood in this area is amazing. The not-so-carefully-preserved 70's architecture, paint peeling, colors a faded garish golden hue, and homeless guys sharing a drag while loitering in the local park, sweltering in the California autumn heat. My car was heating up quickly, the smell of antifreeze and water emanating from the hood. Damn mechanics.
I thought I had gone too far, but the sign loomed ahead on the left, and, making a quick turn I parked down a residential street. There was a house for rent right next door, the lawn of which I walked through. There were turquoise wrought iron screens and gates with the Chinese Double Happiness symbol worked into the design in front. I thought about how grand it would be to live in a suburban palace like that.
Coming to the front door of the Psychic's house, I rang a bell and paused. After waiting several seconds, I thought about ringing again when a shadow appeared. All psychics look the same. They are older, cordial ladies that smell like incense, and dress in very comfortable clothing. They are in a state of perpetual relaxation. They are like bodhisattvahs, the way I will be someday.
She tells me lots of things. I will live a long life-- I knew that-- but that I will have a brush with death. This scares me because I am very afraid of killing myself, and her next revelation, about the dark cloud that hangs above me chills me even more because the odd experience of having your life completely dismantled has definitely been on my recent afflictions list. But then she tells me that God is on my side. God, who I thought had abandoned me when I was 11, when my parents' marriage fell apart, my brother declared his atheism, the other started dealing pot, and I realized that I couldn't trust anyone ever again.
But she really made sense. She told me that it was a curse, that someone had put this on me and my family. And that the source was human, human malice. What a shudder that went through me on that muggy day. I couldn't stop thinking about it. I thought hard about my life, my future, about the old dreams I had of becoming something, of helping people and loving them. And how I barely felt anything nowadays. I wanted to be a regular girl again, who was silly and drew pictures all day and thought of whimsical ideas. Was my life really so far fucked?
I thought about it that night, watching the lights from late night traffic race across the ceiling filtered through Venetian blinds. I sobbed a little because of how sad it all was. How pain and bad feeling could kill you. I didn't want to wake him, but I did on accident, and when he held me I felt better. The caresses and soothing words pulled me upwards, the way you might claw your limbs through water trying to reach the light of the surface, but every moment of stillness saw me sinking further. And I suddenly had a most vivid and terrible image of myself as a living corpse in his arms, emotionally, mentally dead from misery.
On the Day of the Dead, I was reborn. I remembered things, remembered myself. And I knew what I had to do. I had dreams again, but I also had a divine obligation. I had been struggling to find meaning and figure out what it was that would fulfill my psychological needs in this world, but now I know also that I have intense spiritual work to do as well. Somehow I will lift the curse on myself and my family, and I've no doubt that this will elevate me to Buddahood by the end of my life. Saving everyone else... that will come later, but for now, I will find the root of the evil and charge through it with eyes of fire.
