Psychic Readng

I’ve had this CD-R for a while, little sweetheart. It’s sorta a long story. Years ago, I think maybe around the time Curt died, Paige (remember Paige?) told me about a psychic she’d gone to after her father died. I can’t remember how she knew about him. She kinda had a connection into that world of people through all that Buddhist and soul-searching spiritual stuff she was always on about. I think someone must’ve told her about this guy. Glenn Dove is his name.

Anyway, she wrote down his number and name for me on post-it. It was the tiniest post-it every. Like 1/4 the size of a normal one. I don’t know why. For the longest time it was stuck to one of those wooden storage boxes of mine in the kitchen. I didn’t really imagine going but I kept it anyway. All this is like about exactly one year before you and I met. A few years later, when my mom died, I did actually think about going, but I couldn’t find the little post-it. Sometime along the way I’d either taken it down or it just got lost or something. It had been a while. I couldn’t find it and Paige and I had had a falling out by then, remember? So, I couldn’t exactly call and ask.

I didn’t think about it for too long anyway. But sometime after your own tragic passing the little post-it just turned up, appeared somehow, I found it. I called the number and it was an answering machine. You were just supposed to leave a message. Later they called me back and made an appointment for me. It was crazy because the appointment was about three months or more later. When the time finally came around, I couldn’t go. Something had come up and I was out west with your folks. It may have been around the time we did the play in Seattle.

Anyway, I had to reschedule for even farther away, but the day finally came and I took the train out there - he’s on Long Island. I remember it was a very rainy day. I had to fill out a little sheet, just a couple of questions, like my birthday. That might’ve been about it. He had that on a clipboard when I went into meet with him. I sat across from him, me on the couch, him in a chair, kinda like therapy, now that I think about it. He sorta sat there doing this thing with the clipboard, like moving his hand around on it, sorta like if you were to imagine how you move a computer-mouse around trying to find the spot on the screen that you want to highlight. Kinda a circular motion as if clearing the page. Ya know what I mean? It’s hard to describe. As he did that, he’d talk to me, telling me who was trying to talk to him and what they had to say. He’d also ask me questions that I think I wasn’t supposed to answer. Like just let them land not help him too much. But right away he said things that had a lot of resonance.

He talked about my dad being there. And he knew that both my mom and dad had “gone over” as he put it. About everyone being worried about me. That I was “taking things”. And I was. I was drinking then and not infrequently taking sleeping pills. I’d wake up sometimes on the floor with things knocked over - a mic stand or that book podium of my grandfather’s - in the studio come morning. Like I just fell off the couch or - who knows? - even tried to stand up and just keeled over.

But without mentioning you specifically, he seemed to have a lot of resonant details. He talked about California. About having a connection there. About someone close to me having “gone over” suddenly, unexpectedly, early. He said it was unusual and sad for someone as young as I to have had so much loss in their life. And, most, incredibly, from the very start of the session he said he was getting something about the person’s head. That they were holding their head with their hands, as if something had been wrong with their head, maybe they had been confused or injured or both. It was so like your accident, my little sweetheart, as if he was talking about that. And he stressed that what that person (you, it would seem) wanted to say was that you were alright now. You were fine. Just very worried about me. And that you wanted me to know - that everyone there trying to talk through him now - that you were alright and only worried about me. That I needed to not take things (like drugs and alcohol) and that I must do my work. He went on about that for some time, too. He didn’t know that I was an artist. He didn’t know if what you and the others were saying was about me and a business of mine or something. Just that I had things I was meant to do, my own work, and that it would be a shame, so sad, if I didn’t do it. That I must. That that was why I was still here.

He told me other things too. The session was mostly him doing this kind of listening and trying to tell me what he was hearing simultaneously but at the end he told me a few more general things. He said something about life and death that I had never heard put quite this way. He said that the people that mean the most to us in this life are always with us through eternity. That life is an illusion like a play. That right now I was onstage playing the role of “Michael” and that when I left the stage - and I mustn’t just walk off or leave before my part was done or jump my cues - that I would find those important people backstage in the dressing room. That we would be, as always, together. Like a troupe, sometimes you would be my lover, sometimes my sister, maybe I would be a girl and you a boy. Like that. But, just as Danya said, that I wouldn’t find you if I took my own life.

At the end of the session, he gave me a CD-R. I think I was meant to bring one on my own. That had been an instruction when Paige first gave me the post-it - that you bring a blank cassette to the session and that they record it for you so you can listen later. By this time, he was using digital instead of analogue, so it was a CD-R.

And that’s why I’m writing all of this today, little sweetheart. I didn’t listen to for the first time until tonight. Almost like the post-it itself, I put it away and wasn’t quite sure where it was. I found it a little while ago and uploaded it into iTunes just to make sure I had it saved in case I misplaced the CD-R again but tonight I actually put the CD-R into my latop and listened. There’s more than just what I remembered. I'm glad I listened. And it brought me close to you. I can’t wait to tell you more about that. But just one thing I didn't remember and only did now hearing the CD-R is that the day I was there was exactly 23 months since your accident. The CD-R didn’t have any labeling until now, when I just wrote that on it. Picture below.

Please be with me today, won’t you little sweetheart? Keep me close and under your guidance. I love thinking about you and talking to you. He said something about that too that I had forgotten! Much more later. Love you forever.