You know what you don't often see... about a dozen people parachuting over North Adelaide at twilight... I have no idea where the hell they landed, but I thought at one point they were going to come down right in the middle of my street.
It was somehow a fitting end to a very groovy day.
I mentioned yesterday that I'd been looking forward to today's excursion for the past twelve months (and interestingly it's much the same thing that I said
last year too)... this weekend is the
Body Mind & Psychic Expo!
So clad in my new
Croc boots and bright blue hoodie, with a slightly earlier than normal start to the day (not by much though) we got all the usual shopping and whatnot out of the way and headed down to the
Showgrounds. Rather than bother with the drama of trying to find a free park out on the street, we just followed all the other little sheeps and parked in the grounds... not the cheapest option, but not the most expensive car park ever either.
I guess we must have been slightly later getting there than we were last year, because I remember there weren't quite so many people lined up (I don't remember a line at all to be honest), and we spent some time urgently champing at the bit waiting to go in... whereas this time it was "line up, pay, go in"... possibly less waiting around though.
We actually ended up going in a totally different door than we have every other time (and there might not have been any line at all if we'd gone in the other door, who knows)... but it did throw me off for a second, I wasn't quite sure where I was, and where everything else was going to be in relation to me... turns out a lot of it was in exactly the same place as it's been the last four years...
First stop was the "Visionary Artists" stall again so that I could put down both my name and Ma's name with Shiona to get Spirit Guide portraits done (and I just realised that originally we were going to be all "I'll pay for half of yours and you can pay for half of mine"... and in the end we just paid with our own money for our own session... ah well, comes out about the same in the end really anyway)...
We were about third and fourth on the list, and we had maybe half an hour to kill before my session so we did a big loop around the outer edge of the stalls... checking out a little bit here and a little bit there... Ma got all engrossed in the same jewellery stall she went back to about three times last year, I cast an eye over the little crystal animals (where I got my lion last year), and we just generally wandered about. Speaking of lions, the nice folks from
Make-A-Wish had a stall, and they were selling general fund-raising merchandise... key-rings, pencil cases, blah blah (actually other than the pencil cases I don't remember what any of the rest of it was)... but they had little stuffed lions... so cute, so soft, so inexpensive... so, yes, I bought one. Then proceeded to carry it like I was five (held up to my chest, facing out), but only as far as the next stall until I realised what I was doing and Ma had unfolded one of her many, many bags so he had somewhere to go.
Anyway, we made it back to Shiona's stall just as her previous customer was finishing up... then it was my turn...
She definitely recognised me, but then we do kind of have this
ongoing history thing, so it makes some sense... this year's reading was TOTALLY different from last year!
I mean that should be self evident from the image of the finished portrait... three figures, not one... no animal. Last time she touched my knee... this time she didn't... last time I didn't give her very much to go on beyond "whoever is making the most noise"... this year I used the phrase that's actually been buzzing around in my head since we were on our way home from last year's Expo... "My quiet centre".
To be honest, I don't think I'd even gotten as far as verbalising that when she was already off and running, had her eyes shut and seemed to be getting the image fully formed (I think my Zulu arrived that way last time too)... so all the stuff about animals went out the window and she just said that she "needed" to draw this. And really, when your psychic of choice tells you they "need" to do anything, what are you gunna do? Me, I just said "go for it".
Weirdly though, while she was drawing it, I found myself thinking that I knew these three figures... not in an "I went to high school with the one on the end" kind of way (although more on THAT later)... but they didn't feel unfamiliar. And unlike last year there really weren't any surprises (like the lion who appeared seemingly out of nowhere).
And she did comment that "you always make me work"... which is interesting, especially when you see the range of drawings she can do over the several hours we were there, some of them are quite detailed, but the ones she did for both Ma and me are somewhat more hurried, not in a bad way, but more like she's compelled (and I think she used that word to describe this portrait too) to get everything she's seeing/feeling down as quickly as possible.
Also unlike last year there wasn't really an incredibly long story that went with the image... maybe because I'd kind of asked for something particular, so she didn't need to explain that part of the story, I'm not sure...
The three figures she described as being the
Medicine Buddha (who does seems to be blue when you do a Google image search) peeking out on the left... the centre figure she had a couple of names for, not all of which I remember, but she did say something about him being a "gate keeper" (I think I'm remembering that right) and a wise sage... and the angel figure on the right was not exactly the
Archangel Michael, but "has Michael's face".
The fact that there was an "angel" there at all was somewhat surprising... but like I said, the three of them combined do feel very much "me"... I do pull in a lot of the
symbols from various religions and cultures and mix them all up into my own unique blend... and interestingly I have felt like I was being drawn to some angel symbols and images recently (more so at Christmas when there's a lot more of it around)... and Michael in particular. Weird...
But the three of them keep me centred, they pull me back when I go flying off (in my dreams too allegedly... although I never remember any of my dreams, so I'll take her word for it)... and obviously there's a lot of stuff about
the number 3 in religion and numerology... not to mention that whole circle/protection thing...
One other thing that she said is just now coming back to me... she said that the three of them help me (to be centred I assume), not just because I deserve to be helped, but also because I ask for it... which is interesting... I guess I do that more than I'm aware... not in any specific or directed way, but more in a kind of generalised and somewhat tongue-in-cheek "Help me out here Universe" kind of way. There was also something about them either combining or changing places or lining up to give me what I need, but I honestly don't remember that completely.
She also said that I had a large number of energies (spirit guides) around me and that I'd had a large number of
past lives... neither of which was particularly surprising.
So, like I said... radically different from last year, but still very, very cool.
Ma had her turn next... which in many ways was somewhat similar to my experience last year. I didn't hear all of their conversation because I was busy scribbling some notes down about what she said... but while she was drawing it she kept nodding to herself like she'd done last year with me... and she did comment again that we made her "work"... to which I replied that it must run in the family. Anyway, Ma ended up with an
Aztec (again, wouldn't actually have seen it coming, but it doesn't seem completely out of left field) called Manook (with the spelling open to interpretation).
I think Ma had asked her some kind of very generalised question about challenges with work or something, like I said I wasn't completely listening... but Manook had a headdress full of feathers indicating all the abilities Ma has (which is true), and that she shouldn't be afraid to start new things, because even if she "fails" she'll still walk away with something because everything criss-crosses and interconnects (which is true too... she's done a lot of things and while she might not technically always "succeeded", there have been connections and people who have come into her life because of it. She also needs to follow her passion... and Manook is trying to give her a shove to the front of the line every now and again, making sure she doesn't get overlooked.
So all very relevant and pertinent things.
Once Ma has done, we gave Shiona the requisite huggage (I'm not sure if she does it with everybody, but she did it with me last year, and with both of us this year) and went off to peruse the rest of the Expo.
I think there might have been less stalls this year than in previous years... it certainly felt more "open" in spots, and I think most of the lanes between the stalls were wider. And there weren't any food stalls inside... and I remember at least a couple last year.
But mostly we wandered, bought little bits and pieces... I bought some rainbow "toe socks"... which are kinda crap as far as socks go (they're supposed to be knee highs, but they so aren't)... but the toe bit is cool but really, really weird and just that little bit wrong. We went back to the crystal animal stand with it's slightly gormless employees and found an
opalite wolf and Ma got a seahorse in something vaguely orange beginning with C that I can't remember right now. We bought some of the fudge that Ma so likes (and I don't mind it either) and a few jars of stuff from
Sweet n Spicy (Caramelised Onion, cooked for 10 hours... so good!), looked at a lot of fairly ordinary jewellery and picked up a glass egg thing for Ma's birthday...
The Homo Force (of both genders) seemed to be somewhat out in force... the little homo who got fat that I mentioned
last week was there... there seemed to be a large proportion of "wymyn" around too.
But the "Oh My Gayness - Scary Homo Flashback Award" has to go to the gentleman who was drawing his own particular brand of spirit guide portraits at a very Celtic inspired stall... I'd seen the stall on an earlier sweep of the area and they had some cool stuff... but then I noticed that they had a guy doing SGP out the front who hadn't been there earlier (actually there was a lot more SGP action going on this year... at least five different places this time around, up from two last year). Anyway, I wandered over to take a look at what he was doing... it wasn't really at any kind of finished stage, he seemed like he had only just started... so I was looking around, trying to see if they had information up about how much it cost (not for this time, you understand, but maybe next time)... and they had a piece of paper with the info stuck up on the counter next to where he was...
I still have no idea how much it cost because I never got further than his name... same name as my best friend in primary school who then became my "arch enemy" in high school... but it couldn't be him, right... I hadn't seen him in over ten years, but the height was about right... the hair was much the same... he just looked a little worn around the edges. I called Ma over and once she could see the side of his face properly she said it had to be him. Oh! My! Gayness!
And you know the worst and best parts... even though we were totally evil to each other in high school, he's actually kinda fuckable... but on the upside, I think he looks older than I do... so you gotta be happy with that.
Of course I didn't say hello (really, what the hell would I have said?!?), and made a run for it before all our collective staring made him turn around and potentially recognise me...
I think that was about the time we called it a day... I think we'd been wandering around for a good two and a half, three hours, and I don't know how much more time you could have spent there unless you were having multiple readings and stuff done or attending some of the workshops. We looked at the couple of tragic food stalls outside, nothing caught our eye, so we decided to go.
Continuing the theme, we headed up the road to
The Eternal Spirit, somewhat on a mission to see what they had in the way of Archangel Michaels... the answer, not much... although they did have an awesome male version of
Quan Yin that I couldn't resist... then we took a radical themic departure and headed over to Burnside to visit the
Smiggle store.
They had the cutest little USB Men... and when I get my laptop (I've mostly decided on a laptop) it should come in handy. When we got to the store though, it was like the entire Burnside Under 10's Netball team were in residence, complete with all their mothers (oestrogen overload!), so we wandered off, got something to eat and drink and wandered back a while later to a mostly empty store (woohoo) where I also got Ma a cool stapler to add to her birthday haul (not the most interesting gift ever, but it is a cool stapler).
Then it was back here to sort through our haul, spray the two portraits with fixative and watch Heroes...
And now I'm just generally buggered...
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