More on June 7 - after afternoon

I was talking about the subject of the earlier post with E and she said she's known a lot of people who kept it all together as drunks, but were maybe more self-centered than others. Self-centered could mean unapologetically selfish, or just clueless about the effect of their actions on other people. I told her I thought I was self-centered, and kind of a fuckup. She said "absent-minded." This reminded me of something.

I was in New Orleans 11 years ago wandering around at night and came upon a girl with a palm reading stand sitting in the dark. Nearly nobody was around, it was in the courtyard of St. Louis Cathedral which was closed up for the night from visitors or services. Side note, her face was painted white and she had black lipstick and she said she was a Satanist. Anyway, she read my palm for five dollars. Sitting there in front of me she studied my hand. She said I've had what I didn't realize were some "million dollar ideas" so far in my life. Tell the truth, there've been a few times I thought I was on to something I later did nothing with. She listed off some things about my life to come that I don't remember but one of them was getting married, which she said in that same listing way, as if she were telling me I'd buy toothpaste more than once over the coming years or have a mailbox on my home. The tone was different than the comment about the million-dollar ideas, which the way she said it sounded like she found me interesting. Then she paused, studying more closely, and there was a look of what I perceived as caution or alarm as she said "...and you'll have two kids." I didn't know what to read into that. It scared me. Would they be born hopelessly deformed? Would they die? Not so far. But that comment was another story. What I remembered today was her saying I had a long life line, but that I was very accident prone. This much is true. And it certainly extends from being absent-minded. She was also right about the marriage.

I don't know if I'm a fuckup, or self-centered, or just absent-minded. I do know I feel sometimes messily put together. When we're that way, it's the unique and creative, adaptive way we sew it all up again that makes us interesting, isn't it?