Psychic

Did I tell you that I am a fortuneteller? One of my many personas in a full house in here – so much so that friend Rocco Zanino brought me back a small plaque from Sedona, Arizona that says, “Please allow me to introduce my selves”. I embrace all of my parts joyfully, defend them raucously.

The ‘parts’ of me comes from an assessment when I was guest at Charter Hospital for the Blessedly Questioning of life out in the real world. That’s those of us that can no longer make sense of what happens out there. You know the ‘real world’, the one passing for sane that’s full of wars, graft, pedophilia, anger, murder, hate, terrorists, illicit affairs, back stabbing, jostling, liars, mutilation, car crashes, bigamy, muggings, rapes, bombs?

One segment of my personal Persephone Journey, dark night of the soul, happened full tilt in a state of grace at the funny farm. I fought going in and fought just as hard when they wanted me to leave. It was safe, protected, and they read bedtime stories every night. Someone prepared every meal, gave me crafts and art for my hands to do, actually listened and took notes when I spoke, made sure my bed was made, saw to it that I rested and took total care of myself, and marveled at the things they found out about me as I peeled back the pain of my wounded soul.

My doctors handed me my records when I left. I must have made an impression. On the induction interview page, one of the rule outs was ‘multiple personalities’. But now, don’t we all just have multiple personalities, different faces – one for the public, one for our in-laws, our bankers, the holy man, the cops? So. I sought out and embraced all of mine.

I read fortunes for the Zodiac Club tonight. No. They’re not into astrology, but affiliated with the Salvador Dali Museum in St. Petersburg across the bay from me. Me and friend Teresa Olsen were hired for the evening’s entertainment. She’s an intuitive. I read cards. No. Not Tarot, but a regular deck of 52 – the same one you play poker with.

I became psychic at birth. We all are. I believe that the ability developed along with our efforts to walk upright, our skulls sliding on our spinal column to align with a larynx that allowed us the ability for speech. We had to have some form of communication when we were lying there in the grasses trying to stay away from the tooth of a predator. Was it safe to run? Should we stay put? There’s a big Saber Tooth over there. If we walk downwind, we can get around him with no problemo. Animals have IT. We're animals. We’re no different. I believe science will catch up with the idea of psychic phenom someday because the new physics that is finally discovering Divinity in the realm of mathematics makes me hopeful of many things.

Being from a family of believers that listened to the gift and embraced it encouraged me to accept my own. My ancestors on both sides of the gene had examples of IT – my dad had a sister that died at a very tender age who was born with a veil over her face, the caul of skin that his people told him was a sign for second sight. She supposedly foretold the manner of her death. My mother’s side had readers, tales of the goings on of the afterlife; dreams of the passing of loved ones. My mother read cards, my grandmother read tea leaves, my great read from opening a bible, one before her was a scryer with a bowl of water, yet another was a ‘root woman’ with no legs who healed a black man with advanced gangrene during the Civil War.

Teething on the knowledge that the entire spectrum of life that is visible to a child was very all right. It was expected that we children listen to our dreams and intuitions. I thought everyone had full-blown psychic experiences of the world and remember being very confounded when I found that was not the case. Speaking with entities not entirely ‘here’ happened frequently. There was a state of mind I got to when I ran where my feet never touched the ground. If I could do that today, I’d fly. Magic was the norm.

I settled on the deck of cards because that’s what my mom used and a friend and mentor who was an old North Carolina mountain man used the same and taught me to see past the numbers and faces on the cards. When I lay them out in the three standard patterns I use, I see sentences, words, pictures, and I let you know.

One of my early visions involved sitting on the horse staring at the water down at Six Mile Creek. I was lost in some daydream when the water took on an eerie, smoky glow and I saw my father grab his chest. He fell down in the bedroom trying to steady himself on the bench by the dresser. I KNEW the movie I was seeing on the water was happening real time in some sentient part of myself, turned the horse around and galloped pell-mell back to the house almost jumping a car on the county road out front.

We hit the front yard; I bailed off the horse and ran inside flinging open doors as I went. There was my father, lying just as I’d seen him in the water pool by the creek. I pounded on his chest, blew on his face, and watched some color return to his blue lips. I called my mother at her work and the ambulance was there very quickly.

Other episodes saved teenaged girlfriends out on a night’s cruise. I just finished telling Donna Jean about this dream I’d had of a girl with long, pale blonde hair in a black dress sitting between us on the front seat of Donna’s dad’s Ford Fairlane and how a car had run a stop sign and plowed into the side of us. The results were bad. Here we were at the Dog and Suds in Brandon and our friend Janice Blanton came over. She’d been with her dad and had asked him if she could ride with us. So there she sat, long, pale blonde hair, black dress and all. Of course, Donna had to tell her about my vision. We quit laughing when a car ran a stop sign and only that second of Donna being jokingly and elaborately cautious saved us from what would have been a terrible death. He didn’t have his headlights on. Just as in my vision.

So I grew up with it. Any woman who has children knows what I’m talking about when I say that you just know when something’s wrong with one of your kids. How many times have you thought of so-and-so and picked up the phone to call only to find them on the line trying to call you? Ever thought of something and it appears right in front of you? Have you men had a gut feeling that you should drive a different route and find out later that some idiot was driving a tank through town right on the road you were supposed to take and didn’t?

I have an elaborate discussion involving Doppler sound and Einstein’s theory of bent space that I could give you where I could debate that there is a mechanism we have to see or feel the other side of the loop of time. I also know that there are charlatans who film-flam an unwary public and give the gift a bad name. Think Ghost with Whoppi Goldberg laughing it up. It doesn’t matter if you believe or not. It doesn’t matter if you laugh and think that I’m half a bubble off. It doesn’t matter if you chalk it up to coincidence and probabilities that I’ll get some of the stuff right some of the time. I can’t see love either. But I know it’s there. Am I trying to convince you to believe? Nope. I don’t care.

Please do not come at me with religious folderol about conversing with the Devil. I don’t believe in that. There’s nothing evil in what others and I do. It’s natural. I’ll quote you passages from your bible that will tell you it was a part of life at least that far back. And it was accepted as an okay thing.

How long have I read for people? My first reading was when I was about 13 years of age for some of my mother’s friends. I began being paid for it in my 20s during the rocking 1960s where psychism became chic once again as it has throughout history. It helped put bread on the table for my son when I was a struggling single mom. I still read for clients that have been seeing me for up to 25 years. I read on the phone for folks living in other states and they stop to see me when they travel. I’ve read for corporations and businesses that would cringe if the news got out. I’ve read for cops and doctors, professors and lawyers. I even have a reading name – Madame Zucchini.

You know those signs on the sides of the road of a palm face up, usually in lurid neon? Yep. Those. One day in the early 1980s, my friend Alice Halverstadt was talking to me in her garden in Aspen, Utah. I was down from Montana on a jaunt away from the cowboy I was dating who was driving me crazy. Alice always let the word out I was in town and the folks lined up for readings. Paid for the trip and my gas. She decided that as such a big hit, I needed a professional name. Picking up and waving a large, green fruit in the air, she declared, “I got it! You’re Madame Zucchini!” Sounded right. It stuck.

So. Back to the future. I spent the evening reading for the gentry from the Dali Museum. Tomorrow, I have a gig at the St. Petersburg Pier in their semi-annual Psychic Faire to attend tomorrow. Gack! That’s in less than four hours so I need sleep! Or I predict that I’ll be a bleary eyed psychic for the folks!