Thoughts of LoWriter

Fortune Teller

Disclaimer: This is weird and meloncholy. Don't read it if you don't dig it.

They come to me and ask me to read them their fortunes, these students of mine. They ask me to tell them the future of their GPA, though I insist it doesn't work that way. They ask me to fix them. They don't yet know that everyone has to fix themselves.

Like reading palms, I examine their papers, reading their fortunes between the lines of what they have written. I don't tell them the things I see: "You have had a very long life, which will probably seem longer still." "You will succeed in what you do." "You will be faced with many hardships, which you may or may not overcome." "You avoid situations that make you uncomfortable in hopes that this will make them go away." "You are afraid to try." "You have great potential."

Instead, I make suggestions regarding thesis statements and commas. I tell them they are afraid to use punctuation and that this is no way to write--afraid of the things that lend a sentence a rhythm, a soul, a beauty of its own. I do not point out that it is also no way to live. I do not point out that just like every sentence, every event of their lives needs an end. That every event must begin with a capital letter and end with a dot or a question mark or even an exclamation point. I do not tell them that they are afraid to punctuate their sentences because they are afraid to punctuate their lives--afraid that they might be *gasp* wrong! That their narratives lack soul because they have not yet examined the events of their lives for meaning. That they do not have a thesis because they do not like to assign meaning to anything, much less the stories of their lives. That they cannot do comparison and contrast because they have not yet learned how to define differences and similarities in anything but physical terms--cat vs. dog, spoon vs. fork, etc.

I have dwelt too long with people who already know what is wrong before they ask me.

I used to read people, back before I shut that part of me off. I could peg a person at a hundred paces. Give me fifteen minutes, and I could tell you stories about a person's essence--what made them tick. Maybe it was because I was an INFJ, and I could read their body language. Maybe it was because I knew myself so well in those days that I could read the hints on others. Maybe it was because I could hear them think. Maybe it was something more mystical that that, even. Maybe, as some suggest, I could never really do any such thing at all. I can't even begin to speculate anymore. I have had to let it go or let it drive me crazy.

I can still sum up the people I know in a single sentence. I can tell you their flaws and their defining characteristics--the things that make them unique and beautiful. I used to do this as a party trick with drinking buddies who laughed and agreed with every single one. "Do so and so," and they would laugh and nod. "Do such and such," and they would chuckle and agree. I would comply until they chanted, "Do mine, do mine!" I always refused. People know the truth; they just hope to hell you can't see it. They hope that you can't see through the walls they've built to keep everyone, even themselves, out.

I always could.

What I can't do anymore is know what a person is thinking before they know it. I can't feel people step into my space bubble. I once stood in the hall and looked at a person and knew with certainty what he was going to tell me and pleaded with him in my head not to tell me so much about himself. Begged him not to say what I knew he was about to say. He said it anyway. And no, he wasn't breaking up with me. He told me a story about his life that I had known as soon as he had begun speaking to me.

I had a few flashy, useless dreams that came true about a year ago, and since then, nothing. My compass is askew. Now, I have to think with my logic rather than my senses, which is awkward and slow. I used to just look at a piece of writing and know.... know what needed to happen to it. I would hold up the pages and stare at them after reading it, and the answer would come to me, the way dawn comes, slowly at first and then all in a flash. There it would be. "Ah hah!" I'd say to myself, and then off I'd go. Like clockwork. Like magic. Like fortune telling.

Some people don't believe in such things, and that's fine. To each his/her own, I say. I've had people tell me they don't believe that I can do anything special while they are fulfilling my predictions about them. Self-fulfilling? Perhaps. I can't say. I don't know.

These days, the pieces are like jigsaw puzzles, which I was never very good at. Rather than seeing the dawn, I see bits of the dawn and have to work out in my head how they fit together. It is slow. It is tedious. My brain feels stuffed with cotton. These days, I don't know what the story of my life is. These days, I don't know how it will go or where it will end. I used to know that I was living at a faster pace than others--that I was ten years ahead of everyone my own age. I used to know myself and how to be true to myself. Now, I don't feel that way. I don't know who I am or what I want anymore, but as everyone starts to get married and have kids, it starts to feel like I'm the one who's fallen behind. And for the most part, this doesn't even make me sad for me. It makes me sad like Peter Pan who could never grow up even though all those around him eventually did.

What can I say? All I've ever been good at is reading the fortunes--in flesh or on paper or written in the sky, searching the horizon for signs of rain, knowing in my bones when a storm was brewing and when the sun was going to shine.

Take that away and who am I then? A woman afloat in a bucket on the ocean without any idea of where to find a safe port.

And they ask me to tell them their fortunes.

Posted by LoWriter at May 31, 2007 03:07 PM