My psychic seeking side kick and I were ushered onto the balcony of a small apartment and told to have a seat while we waited for the crude to brew. There, as we did on the ride up, we wondered what, if anything, we could properly ask. When seeing a psychic it is best to be very articulate and smart with words. I liken it to being in the presence of a genie. Popularly, you only have 3 wishes, so choose wisely. Like we did in the car we thought about what we could ask, and what we would want to know. I had assumed that when having our fortunes read we would simply ask questions and have them answered based on what was left on the sludgy bottoms of our cups. But, like the poor saps that we are, we settled for the most generalized questions in career, travel and love; though in retrospect I should have asked why I had no direction in this life. But that's enough emotional pandering.
Haven gotten my things ready (pen and paper), the old woman stiffly pulled herself through the open door and gave us our respective cups. She said to take our time, in which I humbly obliged. I reckoned I wouldn't get a chance to learn how to make good Turkish coffee any time soon, nor would I find a coffee shop that sells it, and in trying to ask her where she bought the stuff only wondered how on earth I was going to understand the broken English that relayed my reading if I very well couldn't understand the broken English that was trying to give me directions to the store that sold it. It didn't matter though, because I was drinking something pleasantly creamy, pleasantly gritty, sweet on the tip of my tongue and chalky in the back of my throat. Perhaps a metaphor for life, though I'm never one to believe such trite cynicism. It is the tough people that outlast the tough situations after all.
As my company and I neared the end of our small, small cups we were interrupted from drinking anymore, our resident psychic telling us to leave the sludge; which for me, was a shame, because it was the sludge i enjoyed smoothing over my tongue like fresh concrete at the end of every past cup. If I could liken it to anything, I would liken it to just that: stone. Patchouli may be a more palatable analogy, but I could liken the flavour of the cup's sludge to nothing other than the smell of the air when rain hits the hot sidewalk, or when, as a child, my friends and I would see just how many stones we could put down our throats without swallowing them. Hey, some kids eat dirt, I sucked on stones.
Respecting the privacy of each reading, our old resident psychic escorted me off the balcony and into her dining room wherein which I was given the luxury of watching Turkish soap operas on satellite TV. She apologized that there were no other channels, but I took it in stride. Having grown up a devoted fan of Passions, I thought I could certainly get into a soap opera with a plot that revolved around a wedding celebration, Turkish women that were, to use the street vernacular: 'fine huneyz', and jealous men with large mustaches pulling guns on loved ones only to be shot in the back by hilariously stereotyped, old Turkish women. that really did happen. Man pulls gone, shoots man, long, long pause, points gun to fine huney, camera shows each back and forth from shoulders up, gun shot sounds, long, long pause, man drops, old woman in shawl and giant framed glasses stands over his limp body with glock (that means gun). Now, it was hard to catch up to the next show that followed, especially having never watched it before, but I'm pretty sure a black smith welded a woman's wedding dress. That's the impression I got when I saw him working in his studio and visited by some young woman after which he went into a back room and pulled out a box with a wedding dress. Did I mention how gorgeous the women were? Don't believe me? well here's the show. The Internet's a big place, and I can find anything if I try.
Now, I don't know if it was the soap operas or my recollection of the coffee, its sediment settling on my tongue as I drudged through it sweet creaminess, but I was getting excited. Maybe knowing coffee was in my future, maybe love, maybe money, maybe everything a psychic likes to humour customers with.
By the time I was glazed over my friend had finished her reading and I was on my way to the balcony. Having finished my coffee before all the crazy soaps I was given the specific instructions to place the saucer over the top of the demitasse and hold the cup with both hands, fingers over the saucer's now flipped bottom, and thumbs under the demitasse's bottom (or was it the other way around?). After, I was to flip the cup over and let the sludge, and the rest of my future settle. I was asked my birth date and to give my left palm, stretch it out, and wait for the resident psychic to pair my hand up with the diagrams in what looked like an old worn out paperback. Guess what came next? I was really hoping for something dope to happen; unfortunately, I was saddened by the news that I would have 2 kids in the future (though after noticing the grimace on my, the psychic comforted me by letting me know that I don't have to have the kids, but will have the kids. Dang). I would have a long healthy life (dang), and was with four women, 2 really breaking my heart in the past, and for that reason am very adverse to loving anyone else- ever. Spot on psychic lady, spot on.
She had informed me that I had grown up being afraid of heights, and though accepting her claim having no real experience with the stuff, I recalled while driving home that I did in fact hate the idea of heights, always refusing to clean the eavestroughs at home and never accepting the invite to climb the roof for fear of falling. I traveled short distances recently, I don't like big cities and one of my friends continuously beats me with a stick. She even showed the figure with the stick in the residue on the inside of the cup. I've been a dropout in the past, and present (which confused me) until I also realized last night I had given up on school in the new year. Damn, she was good. Aside from that, I'd have a wonderful career, but in order to succeed need patience, which I do not have. I am, according to her, very stubborn. I'd also live near the water, but with real estate prices, I don't know how that could possibly work out. Seriously.
She said she saw me at a gathering (strictly metaphor) and that everyone was watching. Many people, she said, are jealous of me. I couldn't understand why. I didn't see it, and when I doubted it, she showed the cup yet again, and aside from the thick sludge on the bottom that she said was my neurotic worrying, she showed me a part on the canvas of the inside that looked like peeks and valleys with dots in each one- people with eyes, she said. Watching me. Always watching me. I'm smart but have terrible esteem and feel myself weak though I am very strong. She kept coming to this point throughout, as if it really irritated her. She couldn't understand why someone like me was. I was flattered. Then again, it could have been the coffee. Somewhere along the line she asked me who 'D' was, and I couldn't for the life of me figure it out. I still can't. She also saw a woman- not tall or short, and with sandy coloured hair who 'like' likes me. Whoa. Unfortunately, according to her, I don't like her. Alas.
The culmination of all this love talk led to her grabbing my right index finger and telling me to wipe a specific spot on the cup and show me my smudged, coffee beaned index. She asked me who a woman named 'C' was. Again, I had no idea. I didn't know any. And if I did I was confident I weirded them out. We would, she so bluntly put it, fall in love. That's right folks, big victories in love soon enough. I also had to learn to say 'no.' Because it had been a personal vocation of mine to always say 'yes' to people, though I always act as if I'm refusing, which explains my poor progress in life. Maybe the saddest part of the reading was that I was too trusting and that I shouldn't, she informed me, ever trust people. And with that, I wondered how I would ever fall in love? And one last time, I was berated with why I was so down on myself. She assured me that if I was positive, if I believed in myself, in a couple months' time things would change. My life would change, everything would change. And that if anything ever brought me down, to write it down and throw it in a river. I tell you this, dear readers, I would like her to be right, but there are the generalizations I'm leaving out, and my friend feeding her a lot of my life before I went in for my reading (which is no fault of her own, the poor jeunesse thing). We had a lot of the same things said, and I could have very well taken it as hocus pocus, or mumbo jumbo; but I could also take it as being two sides of the same coin, and if I'm to start believing in myself, I should start with that.
We thanked her, paid what we owed and left, but not without remembering to look for a place that sold Turkish coffee by the bag.
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