Email: "MARTHA ALLEN: Fortunetellers and aliens"
*To:		<--TO Email REQUIRED!
*From:		<--FROM Email REQUIRED!

What do gypsy fortune-tellers, ghosts, vampires, aliens and werewolves have in common?


    Not much, except that they are all part of our popular  culture, our 20th-century pagan mythology. It is my theory that everybody believes in ghosts. Maybe not all day, but at least at  night.


    Lately, it seems that a fatalistic attitude toward life has become part of our universal belief system. Like a silent tsunami, fatalism has swept the nation, and possibly, for all I know, the whole globe. Where did it come from? It’s as if everyone I know just woke up one morning and started saying, “Oh well, it wasn’t meant to be.” I suppose they find comfort in repeating this axiom, but it always sticks in my craw.


    “How do you figure?” I want to ask, but I know, really, that it’s not a matter of figuring. It is a matter of belief, which is something else entirely.


    Also, these same people I know keep pointing out that everything happens for a reason. Am I the only person left in the USA who doesn’t see this? What is the reason? I want to ask. Is it always the same reason? One big Reason, capitalized, in the sky? But I don’t think anybody else knows either. I guess the whole point is, we’re not supposed to know. It’s beyond our ken. We are just supposed to shake our heads in wonderment and amble on our way.


    If we believe that everything happens for a reason and that everything that happens is meant to be, why even bother to get up off the couch? The way I see it, we could all just lie back and watch our stories unfold, like “Jon and Kate Plus Eight” or “As the World Turns” or “The Beverly Hillbillies” or possibly “The Sopranos,” depending. If it’s all preordained and scripted, it seems a shame that we have to go through the motions, like a bunch of dupes. Come on, just tell us how it comes out!


    This is where the gypsy psychic comes in. I just love the whole concept of the gypsy. Veiled in mystery, she drops hints about What Is Meant To Be, top-secret info to which she is somehow privy. And she must have some kind of dispensation to sell it. Or maybe she is bootlegging. There has always been something shady about the gypsy.


    When people want their fortunes read, all they care about is love, money and sometimes the whereabouts of wandering spouses, murder victims and lost objects. Now, we all wish that the gypsy would just come clean and say, “Oh yeah, that’s easy, behind the sofa cushions in your Aunt Harriet’s living room. That’ll be nineteen-ninety-nine.” But oh no, she has to make it all murky and mysterious, as if  the reception on her psychic screen were bad. Maybe that’s part of the deal. She can ladle out clues, but she’s not allowed to give you the straight dope.


    Go ahead, ask the gypsy something really simple. Like, where is my peridot-and-aquamarine earring, the earring that has most recently gone missing, leaving its mate to languish alone on the dresser top?


    Opposites attract. Like repels like. Nowhere is this more apparent than among earrings and socks. So sad about your favorite pair of earrings. You thought they went so well together. Then suddenly one disappears. It’s as if it fell off the face of the Earth. Maybe it’s swinging from the earlobe of some pirate in the South Seas, maybe it’s under a grate somewhere. Hey, everything happens for a reason. That’ll be nineteen-ninety-nine.


    Sometimes, I admit, I believe in ghosts, ESP and my own Tarot-reading powers. Other times I feel like Horatio in “Hamlet.” Remember when Horatio didn’t believe in the ghost who kept coming up onto the battlements and inciting Hamlet to insurgency? Even though they did not know about Vulcans in Shakespeare’s day — aliens came later — Horatio was undoubtedly the Spock character in the play, refusing to credit something that had no rational explanation. That famous line, remember? “There are some things, Horatio, of which you have no freaking clue.”


    But really, it would have been a whole lot better for all concerned if everybody had just listened to Horatio. Hamlet, naturally, took the ghost‘s advice—he would—and, as a consequence, everyone ended up dead, which was sad. I especially liked Ophelia.


    Oh well, everything happens for a reason.


    Have a good week.

Subscribe to Lake Placid News

Share:

You must first login before you can comment.

Existing Member Login
Not a Member?	Create a Member Account
*Your email address:		<--Email REQUIRED!
*Password:	Forgot Password?	<--Password REQUIRED!
	Remember my email address.