October 5, 2025

The Psychic Fair

I start my day with the Psychic Fair. My higher self tells me, “You don’t need to go. You’ve been getting so many downloads yourself these days.” It’s true. Yet I can’t pass up a psychic fair. You never know who you’re going to meet, they could share something you’ve yet to hear. Also, I think it’s good to go for a little chakra tune up. In the way I bring my bike in to my garage guy to get its chakras aligned, I find it’s not a bad time to go for one myself. While I already have my personal “plug”, my right hand woman, back home, I feel it’s okay to explore and discover new ones. So I go.

I pay my entrance fee and do a quick walk around to get the lay of the land. Like slot machines at a casino, you never really know which one will land with you. You just have to feel out their vibe, their energy—and see which ones are currently available. Lots are already busy doing readings. I pass by an older woman who has an empty lawn chair to perform reiki. I bookmark her. I like her hair. She has big, long white wavy hair with unicorn colour strands. I continue my loop around.

Most are already occupied, reading palms, explaining things, laying out cards..so I return back to my bookmark. I ask her if she’s psychic. The reason is because I want to hear downloads. The gnarly stuff. I want her to get in there deep. I want to hear the ooey, gooey funky stuff that no one talks about, yet are the things I feel all the time deep inside and am just waiting to hear out loud. She confirms she is psychic. We do the session. The session ends up leaving me wanting more. She is a reiki master, and what I was actually looking for was an akashic records reading I realize after the fact. Nevertheless, I try to find something to walk away with from this session. I do find some parts of the session insightful.

She tells me that my crown chakra is quite open so I’m pretty tapped into my connection with Source, my guides, etc.. Check, that’s correct. My third eye, also wide open; I “must be clairvoyant”. Check. The only “not moving” ones were my heart chakra and solar plexus. “They just weren’t moving. Now if they were moving backwards that would be a little bit of a problem!” she chuckles. She says it indicates I’m still tied to a loss. “So are you dealing with..some.. sort of..?” her question tapers off and I pick it up with a yes. I’m recently divorced, I tell her. “And those chakras are probably not moving because I’m not looking for love”, I try to corroborate her assessment. “Oh don’t stop looking, dear.” She adds, “We tend to think we’re truly over something, we say we’ve finally moved on. But the body doesn’t lie.” She says, there’s the trinity we often speak of: mind, spirit, body. “We’re all usually hyper-aware of the mind and spirit part, yet we often neglect listening to the body, which actually speaks the loudest and clearest.” I find that incredibly eye-opening. It’s another reminder for me to stay grounded and to honour the raw honesty of my body, despite how assertive I can be with my mind, or how transcendent I think I feel with my soul. I can tell myself I’ve healed, the shadow work has been done, close the book. Yet there are very clear signs in the body that say, “Nope, actually we’re not done yet.” The attachment still lingers, we unknowingly do U-turns internally, and our body is most wise to point out that the emperor indeed is wearing no clothes.

“And don’t give up on love. Please don’t give up.”

Of course I won’t. I love love. Whenever I’m on my period I bawl over wedding videos of a true match because I love real, true love. It’s gotta be true though.

The Water

I leave the fair because I have a symphony to catch. Fortunately it’s a ten minute bike ride. I ride the bridge over the water. I turn my head, pause, and get off my bike. I am in awe of God’s work today. I realize that taking in the raw beauty of the sparkling waters is just as spiritually potent of an experience as one provided by a psychic fair.

The Symphony

I enter a beautiful theatre. I feel like I’m in Europe.

I love seeing all the old seniors filling up most of the seats. They’ve been around the block, it is as if this is I am in on their turf—this has to be at least their 20th symphony. I especially love seeing the senior couples. With their lush and wispy white hair, still dressed so delicately posh, they inspire me, especially informing me on my indulgence in vintage fashion these days. I take notes.. Did I mention I’ve been into brooches these days? 🙂

But those senior couples sitting together...evokes the “I love love” sentiment that broods quietly, deeply in my independence-loving soul. I project flashbacks onto them as they sit elegantly together. I reminisce on their behalf the many dates they’ve had at the theatre. I think of their younger days, their newlywed days, and finish my trance to the visual in front of me at present. Yet when they listen to the music, they are quietly and deeply immersed as individual experiencers. I see them individually absorbing the music, forming their own unique opinions about it, yet not sharing a single thought of it in the moment. I love that they keep the music for themself in the moment, and still share the experience together.

We go into intermission. I immediately hear two senior ladies beside me sharing their thoughts. One spills out with no hesitation: “Too disjointed. There’s no continuity.” I am pleasantly surprised by the idea that we can critique this beautiful orchestra. Oh yeah, we can have opinions. And oddly I completely agree with her assessment. In this moment they teach me the ropes of symphony-watching.

The intermission ends and this time only the strings re-enter the stage. The conductor follows, we applaud his entrance. He greets us with his eloquence and offers us his interpretation of the surprise we are about to hear. Drawing inspiration from Sri Lankan festivals, the upbeat pieces are meant to be fun and joyous. He mentions to look out for the imagery of elephants parading as they do in the festivals. He plays a quick riff on the piano to demonstrate the type of tune that will be used, a fun little jingle that even Sri Lankan rappers know apparently. I get intrigued. He fades out and back in with the orchestra and plays us the much awaited number that he built us up about. And then I quickly get severely disappointed. Once played, the sounds hear like a jumble of disjointed melodies. There’s no continuity, I hear myself thinking. It reminds me of this time in grade school where someone was nervously reading out loud as instructed by the teacher, in awkward, abrupt pauses in between words. The funny class clown speaks for the rest of what everyone is hearing and jokes, “That just sounded like you were reaching a bunch of random words strung together.” That’s exactly how this sounds. It just doesn’t sound..right. To me, music induces an immediate cellular reaction..I like it or I don’t. And this one is just bad. Technically complex, I’m sure, yet I feel bad for the string players for having to toil over this complicated collection of sounds as they practiced for weeks. On the programme it’s described as “a melting pot of table-like dance rhythms, funky jazz riffs, and tonal clusters.” Tonal clusterfuck is the perfect way to describe it.

Midway, as if it can’t get worse, the conductor gets off his piano (he was playing random keys the whole time by the way), and starts spitting gibberish into the mic, in a rap-like rhythm. Imagine a kid mockingly mimicking what they hear rappers do into the mic. It was just that for long awkward minutes that seemed to see no end. Thanks, I hate it.

The symphony was off to such a strong start with Mozart, making me tear, making my heart flutter. Then it all went downhill. I wish we could have just stick to good old reliable Mozart, I think to myself. Why do we have to make things overly abstract and difficult? I add another vote of “head scratches to certain contemporary art” into the collective ballot box.

I wasn’t mad, really. I was biting down my tongue so hard trying to contain my laughter throughout the whole number, that it became a pretty fun experience for me. It would have been so bad if I had laughed out loud, because internally I was severely holding it all in that my shoulders jolted a few times from trying to suppress the explosive laughter, which I’m sure the seats behind me caught which was funny enough. Some might remark, “If the music got that big of a reaction out of you, then it’s art.” No, sorry, no. Comedy is indeed art in the same spirit music is, but they have to fulfill their intended purpose, I think. And in order for it to land, it’s just got to make sense with people on first impact, point blank period..in my personal opinion! Comedy without wit or collective understanding of the subtext does not produce laughter in the same way music without fluidity and harmoniousness cannot produce the melting of the heart.

What a terrible waste of talent, I sit there thinking. These amazing string players had to have practiced hours and hours of random jingles (jingles is not even the correct word, as jingles have a coherent memory, whereas this one was literally random notes).

When the programme finally ends I’m so curious what others think. Did they find it refreshingly brilliant? Or did they find it hard to digest as I? For what it’s worth, only about a third of the audience had standing-ovated, so that said something.

I hear the same lady respond to my unspoken ask: “Well that was different.”

Haha, indeed. “Different” is always the perfect, graceful way of saying “it sucked so much ass and I’m holding back a lot of thoughts I can’t say in public.” 🙂

I hear those behind me enter the chat. They sound like they are younger, in their mid 40’s.

“I mean, it was an incredibly difficult piece. So technically complex.” She praises the conductor and the orchestral efforts that went in to accomplishing the tonal clusterfuck with precision.

I personally don’t believe in enjoying music or art for the sake of the technical complexity involved. I don’t care how much effort was put into the work. Whether a lot or little, if it hits, it hits. I like Beethoven, but I also like mumble rap, sue me.

As it goes, you win some you lose some. At least I got away with some good Mozart, but for that I pay with a weird aftertaste in my mouth from..that awkward..thing, whatever that was.