Taken by the Wind » Intuition

Books I was Destined to Read

Reannon Muth — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 05:30:00 +0000

Sometimes a book will find it’s way into my hands in such a bizarre and mysterious way that it’s hard not to believe that some higher force is at play. It’s almost like the Universe planned for me to find that particular book at that particular point in my life.

Last weekend I was standing in the gift shop at a hippie commune when I spotted a girl that looked like me (dirty blond hair and a long, narrow face). It was a girl in a painting. And she was holding a suitcase with the word “Adventure” written on it. And across the painting, in pink lettering, was one of my favorite quotes:

“The world is a book
And those who don’t travel
Read only one page.”

Although the painting was what first caught my eye, it was the book that was on display right below it that I ended up buying.

It was a book on writing a memoir.

For a long time I’ve entertained the idea of writing a memoir. But I’ve always shelved the idea, thinking that I’d wait until the day I was old and wise and had all of the answers. Or at the very least, some substantial message or bit of wisdom that I could depart to the world.

I also secretly worried that writing a memoir might seem a tad egotistical and self-indulgent. I mean, isn’t it bad enough that I write about myself on the Internet…do I really need to add a book, too?

But I was curious. So I opened the book and scanned the first page…and then very nearly gasped at what I read.

The book started off “When I was attending…” and then listed the name of my high school in New York. The author went on to to describe her walk home from school and detailed the neighborhood where she grew up, which was my same neighborhood. The author went to my old high school and lived on my same block! Granted, she’s at least 10 years older than I am and I’ve most likely never met her, it’s still an amazing coincidence.

As if that’s not enough, I also bought the store’s last copy. Crazy, huh?

Has a book ever magically appeared in your life like that before?

Healing at a Hippie Commune

Reannon Muth — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 01:26:00 +0000

The Ocean has always been such a lifeline for me. Whenever I’m upset, an hour of listening to the yawn of the waves and inhaling the smell of sun-baked seaweed is all I need to feel rejuvenated; healed. It’s like the foamy waves are the white-gloved fingertips of a nurse washing away my hurt; tucking my old wounds into the pockets of her blue-green dress.

In six days, I’ll say goodbye to ocean. In six days I’ll be packing up my mom’s PT Cruiser convertible and driving to a place where oceans don’t exist. And surprisingly, I’m not afraid.

That wasn’t the case last week. Last week I had one of those familiar, painful “OMG I’m 26 and I don’t know what I’m doing with my life” freak outs. The symptoms (in case you were wondering), involved the “excessive consumption of Tollhouse chocolate chip cookie dough” as well as “obsessive marathon viewings of the hospital drama House.” It wasn’t pretty.

When my mom found me curled up in fetal position on her bed, three hours into a 12 hour House marathon, she told me that I needed help. So I did what anyone would have done under those circumstances.

I went to a meditation retreat at a hippie commune.

Although ‘Hippie commune’ isn’t how it’s residents refer to it (they prefer ‘Cooperative Living Community’), that’s essentially what it is: 250 aging hippies living in the forest. The commune is located in the mountains, about four and half hours north of San Francisco and has a market, a school, a yoga center and a “church” of sorts (temple? meditation center?). In order to move into the commune (there’s a long waiting list), you have to be schooled in yoga and meditation and subscribe to their principles of healthy living (no meat, no alcohol and no drugs).

I’ve always been fascinated by people who abandon all social norms and chose to live life on the fridge of society. They’re permanent outsiders and oddballs, but somehow that makes them the most healthy people in the world. Maybe it’s because they don’t try to hide or run from their weirdness; they embrace it.

They were all so open and so content with being themselves. It was almost unsettling how many conversations I fell into where within moments after introducing ourselves, we were discussing personal subject matter, like so-and-so’s pain over their father’s abandonment or another’s experience of giving birth in a log cabin by flashlight.

Even the ‘wild’ animals that made that commune their home, were so friendly they were like characters straight out of the Disney movie Bambi. Birds flew close overhead and deer walked within a few feet of me, making eye-contact nonchalantly and nodding as they passed. While I was hiking I came across a squirrel lying faced down, spread-eagle in the middle of the path. He looked like he’d been flattened by the tires of a giant automobile and it wasn’t until I was about to nudge him with my sneakered toe, that he jumped up and scrambled away.

On Sunday morning, I attended a ‘purification ceremony’ to cleanse my aura and rid myself of negative energy. The elders of the village knelt before the congregation, wearing white robes with orange sashes. Lit candles were arranged in front of an alter of black and white photos of various holy, spiritual leaders of past and present: Hindu gods sitting in lotus position and Jesus Christ with a sad, half-smile.

We were handed slips of paper and told to write down an emotion that we wanted freedom from. I wrote, in large block letters, the word FEAR. When it was my turn, I knelt in front of one of the elders, nervous and uncertain of what to do. The elder’s eyes were closed and her face was a mask of concentration. She placed her a closed fist on my chest and I tried my best to send all of my mental energy towards the frontal lobe of my brain (“the third eye”).

And then I waited for something to happen.

Minutes ticked by and I grew uncomfortable. What was taking so long? When I’d observed the others being purified, the whole process had taken a minute, max. Was my negative energy so dense that it was uncleansible? I could still feel her fist pressing against me, when I hears her whisper: “You can go now.”

I opened my eyes and was surprised to my find that both of her hands were at her sides. How long had I been sitting there like an idiot, hallucinating the feel of her hand on my chest?

I walked over to the candles. I felt embarrassed and selfconscious, but I lit the slip of paper on fire and watched as the word FEAR dissolved into ashes.

It’s been two days since that happened…and I know that I’m risking sounding crazy by writing this…but I really, truly feel well, cleansed. I’m about to embark on a life-changing journey…and I’m completely unworried. Maybe it was just the experience of multiple serenely ‘shiny happy people’ telling me that I have nothing to worry about and that “there are no wrong choices” or maybe it was just a placebo effect, I have no idea.

Today I went to the beach and sat on a piece of driftwood and wrote in my journal. I was wearing my dad’s big floppy hat that he bought in Peru, a pair of over-sized sunglasses and this giant, moronic smile. The dog-walkers, surfers and fishermen probably all thought I was a man woman. And who knows, maybe they were right.

But I feel hopeful about the future…which is something that I haven’t felt for a very long time. And I guess I have the hippies to thank for that.

The Palm Reader

Reannon Muth — Sat, 16 May 2009 05:59:00 +0000

I’m usually not the type of person to pay 10 dollars for advice from someone who claims to see the future in a few fine wrinkles on my palm. But maybe it was because I was once again jobless, homeless and directionless and wanted some answers so badly that I was willing to suspend my disbelief. Or maybe it was just because I was caught up in playing the role of tourist in China (temple, shrine, dim sum, museum, repeat) that I just temporarily lost touch with my cynical side.

Whatever the reason, I ended up fortune teller shopping with my mom, my friend Kanako and her boyfriend last Sunday afternoon, and ‘shopping’ is definitely an accurate way to describe it. There were over 50 psychics all with ‘offices’ located in closet-sized doorless cement stalls in what resembled an abandoned two story strip mall. The stalls only had enough room for a desk, a couple of stools and a few framed photos of Buddha or some celebrity client or generic white tourist.

Kanako and my mom walked up and down the aisles and peered at the psychics in silence, hoping to pick up on their ‘vibes’; sense the ‘real’ psychic that was somewhere hidden among the dozens of phonies who were smiling widely and beckoning us into their offices with calls of “Hello! Hello? Come! English!”

My method was a little more scientific. I wanted someone who looked the part. I wanted someone wise, wrinkled and with a habit of speaking in half-finished sentences in thick-accented broken English. In other words, I wanted the Yoda of Chinese fortune-tellers.

I found her on the second floor, in one of the stalls hidden near the Emergency exit. She was reading a newspaper and smiled serenely when I asked about the price. I chose her because her sales pitch didn’t reek of desperation. In fact, she looked like she could care less.

She turned out have a ‘nagging mother’ approach to psychic readings. She barked out all of her questions and glared at me when my answers weren’t sufficient.

“You live long…85 age. You understand?” She examined my palm and frowned. “But you marry very old.”

“Where does it say that?” She was indicating the entire left side of my hand, which made it difficult to tell what line she was looking at. I felt embarassed because although I’d resolved to not believe in shopping mall psychics, I wasn’t prepared to be told that I was going to be an old maid. “How old?”

“Mmmmm…Very old. 31.” Before I could comment on that, she continued. “You want husband?” Again, I tried to answer but apparently this was a rhetorical question because she rushed on to say: “You too picky.” She took out a piece of paper and wrote the following message, pausing as she scribbled to tap the message, glare at me and say: “You understand?”

“Don’t too much worried.
You must forget past love.
Don’t trust – Can’t find boyfriend.
Hard-working – Can’t find you boyfriend.
You too picky.”

Apparently I was also too ‘stubbornd’ and bad-tempered as well, as she went on say in an impatient voice…as if I was the 100th 20-something Western woman she’d given this exact lecture to that day.

She then told me to put fresh flowers in the west and north corner of my house (“buy compass!”) and I will then meet my good husband sometime this Autumn.

She also told me that I’d have three children, be promoted to a ‘manager’ (“no…supervisor!”) at the of 35.

After scribbling out another series of illegible, garbled sentences, she set down her pen and leaned back in her seat…apparently the reading had worn her out.

“You have question!” She said sternly.

“Uh, yeah. What about my career? What should I do with my life?”

I leaned forward, hoping beyond hope that somewhere under the 80′s perm and grandma glasses was a genuine mystic who held the answers to my purpose in life.

“You too much think, you understand?” She said, exasperated. She wrote out the word ‘think’ and underlined it three times. “You too much worried.”

With that, she folded up the papers and stuffed them in a red envelope, along with a picture of three balding, bearded men carrying a snake and standing next to two children who were riding a fish and holding a giant tomato.

My mother and I, praying at the neighboring temple. People journey to this temple to pray for success and good fortune in their careers. I prayed to find a job. We bowed, made a wish, waved the insense around and then placed it in a sandbox-looking structure infront of the alters.