Food, Desire, and Intuition

Sometimes I see food like war. Since I’ve never been at war, I can only imagine what it’s like, but I notice similarities in my own life. Let me start with desire. I use my intuition with romantic desire, but I also use it in my desire for food. In a restaurant, it helps me decide what will make my stomach feel the best, and what seems the freshest.

Because I’m thin, some people assume I don’t have overwhelming food cravings. Let me tell you, my cheese drawer calls my name all day long. I don’t use ice because then I’ll see the chocolate and vanilla ice cream that I pretend isn’t in my freezer.

I make a lot of promises when it comes to desire. Later you can have it, I say to myself. Gluten free crackers holler for a homemade dip. Because gluten wreaks havoc on me, I eat it sparingly or I’ll get what my dad called heartburn. It’s like Pavlov’s dog, with the pup that salivates when the food bell rings. Pavlov even called the dogs' anticipatory salivation "psychic secretion.”

My dictionary says intuition is direct perception of truth. I know for a fact that I am at war with food. I want it, I fight for it, I shop for it, I slay it, I regret the emotions that get out of hand when I eat too much or too often.

It’s lucky for me that I love to read more than I love to eat. That’s another trick I play. I replace my overwhelming desire for lots of food with other things I like more, like a movie or conversation with a friend.

As in war, I feel a satisfaction when I win my battle with food, even though it’s a gratification that’s never fully realized. But anyway, I gotta go. Time for a root beer float.

Observers Use Intuition

I had a terrible cold for nine days, and when I spoke, I coughed. So I decided not to talk during the social events of the Christmas holidays. Instead, I observed.

One lunch involved a six month old baby, who like me, watched everything that was happening in the restaurant. Her intuition kicked in right before mine. She was the first of us to spot the person at the next table who acted like babies had no right to be there, and she reacted with a tightening of her entire body. When she spotted the man who looked like he wore clown clothes, she was the first to laugh.

All my life I’ve been an entertainer, so I often try to be funny at gatherings. With my cold, I had to listen and watch. The women at a small New Year’s Eve party accepted me as I laughed and nodded, and I observed close friendships and warmth.

Intuition is reception, which can formulate a deeper knowledge of other people. Gifts bubble below the surface of life, so take time to observe and explore the inner workings of the world.

Tarot Cards and the Evil Eye

In the past four months, I’ve worked most weekends at holistic expos and book fairs. My intuition soared, and my muscles strengthened as I carried signs, tablecloths, and books. I made friends, welcomed old clients and greeted new ones. What surprised me were the differences between holistic expos and book fairs.

At holistic expos, I’m thrown into the 60s hippie era. Vendors often arrive late and slowly set up colorful displays, with handmade signs and draped scarves. Patchouli and aromatic oils fill the air. Vendors wear loose shirts or long skirts, and talk about the paranormal, reiki, and healing. With ease, I lure people into my booth for readings, but it’s more difficult to sell my book. In that venue, I’m conservative.

Book fairs are different. Everyone enjoys words and loves to read. Vendors have plain booth displays, with little color and easy lettering, and it smells like a bookstore. When I arrive early to set up my booth, other vendors stand ready. Some look askance at my “buy a book, get a free psychic reading”, although most try to accept it. Instead of the paranormal, we discuss plot lines, sales, and our next work. In that venue, I’m one of the least conservative.

In November, I had a booth at a library book expo. Well organized, it featured genteel volunteers, many authors, and a mishmash of lovely things for sale. People stopped to talk about my book, and I sold a good amount. The only downside was a woman close to my age, who stared at me every half hour from her booth.

As she prepared to leave, she gave me the evil eye. When I was younger, I used to talk music in bars with band members, as their girlfriends perfected their dirty looks. But this was way worse, and if looks could kill, I’d be dead. I assume the book expo woman didn’t like the invasion of my psychic readings. In retrospect, I should have been intuitive enough to approach her, instead of minding my own business. It’s hard to know what to do, when my venue changes every weekend.

I like being a rover, so it’s been a wonderful autumn. Thank you to all who attended the holistic expos and book fairs.  

Psychic Info for Law Enforcement

When I went on the TV show, Psychic Witness, in 2006, I did it to heighten my credence with police detectives. I wanted to eventually train officers to use their intuition and make better use of psychic support. I thought it would be both instructional and fun.

Last week I got my wish. I gave a 1½ hour speech to criminal justice majors at a career institute. I can tell you right away what I did wrong. I should have prepared more exercises to promote interaction and self-awareness. With an off-the-cuff brainstorm, I told them to close their eyes and go back to grade school, to a favorite teacher or class, to the sights, smells, and sounds of their past. At the end of the exercise, I think they understood. They had time travelled to the past. When I had them think about their next vacation, they time travelled to the future.

The best part of my speech happened when I relived and relayed my work on murder cases. I discussed how to deal with a psychic (don’t say much, just ask a few important questions) and tried to explain to lay people where I get my information. I even had one woman push me about my source. She wanted to know definitively if it was God. I didn’t have that answer.

What I hated was….well…most of it. When I work on a case, it’s sickening and heart-wrenching. With police detectives, I state what I know and think, and be done. At the institute, when I talked about a murder case from the past, I again felt sick.

I might speak to classes again, but not as a regular gig. It was the right thing to do, but it didn’t feel so good.

How to Raise a Son

When my son turned from a baby to a boy, I didn’t know how to help him become a man. So for ten years, I researched the mothers of great men. They gave me advice from the grave, as my grandmother used to say.

When Flora Disney had no money for paper, she praised Walt’s toilet paper drawings until she had to use them. Pauline Einstein sometimes didn’t understand Albert, who the neighbor kids called Father Bore, but she tutored him and forced him to join her on piano and violin duets for hours each day. Music later helped him make intuitive leaps with his theories. Abiah Franklin’s young son Ebenezer drowned in a tub of boiling fat for her husband’s soap making. Her grief and fear probably forced Benjamin to stay outside and find adventure on Boston’s wharf.

Rose Gershwin laughed when her son, George, pretended to be a cripple on the street so he could get money for the movies. She told him the rich and famous would do him good, and it served him well in the music industry. Allene Hughes loved Howard almost too fiercely, but his forced isolation developed his mechanical abilities. Another hovering mother, Nancy Rockwell, came from a family of male artists. She steered Norman in the same direction.

Mattie Slye taught Roy Rogers harmonies and guitar, and Mittie Roosevelt instilled a love of history in Teddy, as she encouraged his crippled sister, Bamie, to help raise him. Walt Whitman developed his love of words and stories from his mother, Louisa, and Anna Lloyd Wright steered and praised young Frank’s abilities in the building field. In an unusual move for that time frame, Ann Astaire managed Fred and his sister’s dance careers. Orphaned George Carver had a series of black and white substitute mothers who encouraged him to follow his educational path.

All the mothers I studied gave their time and their love, their brain power and their skill set. As I took pages from their life books, I raised my son, and he’s now a fine young man. A mother’s influence shapes a son.      

excerpts from my book: Carriers of Genius: Conversations with the Mothers of Twelve Famous Men

Hired Help for an Old Lady

People in their eighties don’t like to hear me call myself old. But I am old. Now, when health problems arise, I ask my doctors “why?”

“It’s age related,” they say. That’s the only proof I need.

Except when I look in the mirror at my face, I like old. The kindness of strangers, my patience, intellectual clarity, and confidence all work in my favor. Being old justifies a lot of fun things for me. I like that the boy next door mows my lawn, and my Monday piano student shows up every week to weed and help me clean. At my age, I have friends who are in their 30s and 40s, but a teenager rarely wants to hang out with me. When I pay them, all that changes.

My mower leaves for college tomorrow. He taught me to have a sense of calm, even when the snow became higher than my knees. My weed gal, now called a Turf Engineer, starts her senior year in high school at the end of the month. She taught me to stick by my principles and be myself. Even at my age, that can be difficult.

Hired helpers become real friends. They enter my home, accept my foibles, then wait patiently for their gas money. They don’t care that I’m a bit of a hermit. They don’t care if my hair is a mess and I wear stained clothes around the house. Their intuition takes them through life, and will steer them through the perils of college and freedom.

I embrace old. At some point, maybe in another thirty-seven years, I’ll make way for the babies, as my mother did five years ago. But for now, as Ann Margret (and I, in high school) sang in Bye Bye Birdie, I “Got a Lot of Livin’ to Do.”

Medium or Psychic?

The official name for my profession changes. Now it’s Medium. I looked up the word in my enormous Webster’s dictionary from 1983, and found the tenth definition: a person serving as an instrument through which another personality or a supernatural agency is alleged to manifest itself. How about that word, alleged? No wonder I kept my abilities a secret in 1983.

I prefer Psychic. Here’s the first definition from that dictionary: of or pertaining to the human soul or mind; mental. What I don’t like about that definition is the word human. I guess I should get over it, since I gather it came from: in the hue of a man. All of us came from women, so I prefer huwoman. I doubt I’ll see the day that the word is changed. Dust to dust.

My favorite monikers would be Angel: a messenger (third definition) or Prophet: a person who foretells or predicts what is to come (sixth definition). Both have connotations that don’t sit well with a lot of people, but when I’m ninety, maybe I can switch to one of them.

I used to be called a teacher, now an educator. I used to be called a stewardess, now a flight attendant. I used to be called a singer, now a musician. In high school, the jocks called me Shoulders McGee. What does it matter? I’m still me.