The fault lies in ourselves, that we are underlings

I do not see it as a desperate act that I saw an astrologer on Friday afternoon, or that I scheduled a follow-up appointment. I think of it as an exploration, part of a journey. I'm also firing up the therapist hopes again, will meet on Friday with someone new. I no longer expect an instant therapist connection, will think of this as a getting-to-know- each-other appointment. If it doesn't work out, I will move on to the next lady on the list.

It's no wonder I want to see this woman again: according to my astrologer, I'm brilliant, perhaps charismatic, a leader. I'm someone who is goal-oriented, who needs a career (!!). I am reserved. My integrity is important to me. I seek emotional healing through my writing (hey, has she been to the blog?), but at the same time I tend to overintellectualize my emotions. In marriage, I'm all about love and commitment, but am a perfectionist and have a tendency to be nagging and cold when disappointed. Maybe I test my partner continually. Yeah. Maybe. And maybe I need to let go of the perfectionism.

It seems strange to pay someone to tell me who I am, to show the complicated relationships between the planets and me on the night I was born, see how they may pull me this way and that. And, of course, I am a skeptic about the whole thing, no matter how much I want to believe that this is the key to me. One of the first things she said to me was that she wouldn't have been surprised to hear that the last couple of years have been tough -- the planets were doing some crazy shit (I paraphrase). Her statement hit me in the heart. It can be a relief to see that things outside of my control may be influencing my life. I don't want to examine this practice too closely right now, want to let my rational brain quiet itself for a while. I want answers. I want hope.

I want a psychic.

When I was a kid, I was obsessed with the occult and the unexplained: vampires, werewolves, ghosts, ESP, aliens, astrology, spontaneous combustion, out-of-body experiences, the ouija board, Bigfoot. I read whatever I could, was totally convinced of the reality of the soul, of the influence of planets on my psyche. I knew the dead floated among us and could deliver messages through a medium or maybe even directly. I had dreams of separating from my body, remember waking up one summer afternoon in the Little House after a nap with the distinct feeling that my soul, my spirit, had been trying to push out. I wanted to be free to explore the cosmos without the pesky physical world getting in my way. I was disappointed that it hadn't quite made it out, hadn't escaped for an hour or two.

This desire to elude my life, my dependence on others, to leave my physical needs and shell of a body behind, was strong. The one time I took LSD in high school, I hoped it would give me the ability to leave my body temporarily. I had Shirley MacLaine on the brain. My boyfriend D and I walked together in the dark from his car to the Little House, our steps crunching against frosted grass. I stared at the winter sky, jacketless. I felt no sense of the cold and D, concerned, made me put on my coat. The stars were close, I could practically touch them, but my soul remained stubbornly attached, stuck in the physical world with its out-of-proportion shapes and mangled ways of being.

Eventually, my rational mind took over. I discarded any official god, have toyed with the idea that all we are is physical, though I still have my doubts and hopes about the spirit. I am a person who believes in the things that I see and experience. For example, I know Kevin visited me the night after he died, so maybe I can say that there is something nonphysical about us, something that sticks around however briefly after our bodies give it up. Despite my skepticism, I am pulled to the intuitive, to the mystery, to the unsaid and unknowable. But to give in to it feels intellectually lazy. Superstitious. Or ridiculously hopeful. Who doesn't want to be reassured that there is something beyond our fingertips, that our souls are, as the astrologer claimed, eternal?

We all need something to believe in.



Title from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, Cassius to Brutus: The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.

Image of Shirley MacLaine in a publicity still from the 1965 movie, "John Goldfarb, Please Come Home."

Tags: astrology, astrologists, the occult, ghosts, ghost in the machine, God, Shirley MacClaine, Belief