Past Lives

I've always taken a bemused interest in the occult, thanks to a mother who had a steady parade of geomancers, fortune-tellers, and manghihilots of all stripes traipsing through our home and pointing out where all the bad feng shui was coming from (all right, all right, they were coming from the black dwarfs festering in that open old well under the living room floor! The one my dad steadfastly refuses to tear up.) To be fair, they were consistent, to the point that I could mimic the next geomancer and point to where the invisible old lady was (in the patio), where the impakto lived (in the big mango tree underneath the water tower) and where the white dwarfs held court (near the grotto) - much to my mother's consternation.

Anyway, I ran across one of those internet tests where they tell you your past life. With nothing better to do, I inputted the required data and these are my results:

Your past life diagnosis: I don't know how you feel about it, but you were female in your last earthly incarnation.You were born somewhere in the territory of modern Thailand around the year 900. Your profession was that of a monk (nun), bee-keeper or lone gunman.

Your brief psychological profile in your past life:Inquisitive, inventive, you liked to get to the very bottom of things and to rummage in books. Talent for drama, natural born actor.

The lesson that your last past life brought to your present incarnation:There is an invisible connection between the material and the spiritual world. Your lesson is to search, find and use this magical bridge.

Do you remember now?


Ahhh...no, I don't. It HAS been several lifetimes ago, you know? But "Verrrrryyyy interesting", as a camp spy movie villain would say. I had a Chinese client, a very nice lady who was heavily into reincarnation and all that past-life jazz, and she had taken my birthdate and consulted a very thick book to determine who I was before I was who I am today. She did say I was a woman in one past life, but not in Thailand and certainly not some heat-packing, bee-keeping nun.

I was a beautiful (a quality so important in any life) 16th century Italian (Venetian, Venetian, say I was Venetian!) gold-digging femme fatale (is there any other kind?) who forsook her friends in favor of fortune (okay, I want Angelina Jolie in the role, stat!). I suppose the "talent for drama, natural born actor" aspect in the internet readout would've been very useful for slithering, scheming, sexy me at that point. So would the "inquisitive, inventive, wants to get to the bottom of things and rummage in books" part, although that sounds eerily like my accountant - especially the "inventive" part. She also said that in another past life, I used to be the father to my other client and her husband, who used to be siblings, in turn. Hmmm...as their former father, I don't think I want to get into the incestuous ramifications of my ex-progeny's decision to get married in THIS lifetime, soooooooooooo..........

...........back to gold-digging me. It's interesting to note that my supposed lesson is to discover that invisible, magical bridge between the material world and the spiritual world. In a previous post, I had railed about how work had taken over my life, and how my relentless pursuit of money (let's not kid ourselves; I don't knock myself out for the sake of art) has turned me into a horrible friend and a terrible son. So maybe they've actually got something here.

Oh, an invisible, magical bridge! It reminds me of the one Sarah Palin built to go nowhere. But since we're trying to learn life lessons here and avoid getting reborn as, oh I dunno, Paris Hilton's crabs, I'll be a good boy and say it reminds me of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, where Indy literally had to take a "leap of faith" over a gaping chasm to land on an invisible bridge. Since my eyesight is already bad, I guess I'm just gonna have to grope for that bridge before I can cross it. Still, I'll find it...yes, I'll find it. If I search until I dieeeeeeeeeeeeeeee (na na na, ya ya ya ya ya, na na na, na na na ya ya)

But until then, I guess I'll be living in a material world, for I was a material...

...a material...

...a material girl!