The Reader
I was in the midst of a conundrum. I was accustomed to the answers being clear and was hopeful that a picture of my future would present itself, but every time I crunched the numbers no single alternative would emerge as the clear choice.
Fajar grew up in a crowded kampong in West Java called Bogor. Like most Javanese, he dreamed of leaving his village and worked odd jobs eventually moving to Jakarta where he began his studies as a reader and an intuitive. For the last thirteen years, he had worked exclusively as a spiritualist and a tarot reader for a clientele that stretched across South East Asia from Burma to the Philippines. Even during the pandemic, his business kept him constantly on the move between Jakarta and Bali.
We met in a quiet café in the shadows of a row of palm trees bathed in sunlight and surrounded by rice fields. He was slender and baby-faced and had a delicate way about him. He dressed casually but for his arms that were covered in bracelets and charms.
“How do you feel?” Fajar asked.
“I’m ok,” I responded. “The world is a weird place at the moment.”
“I mean how do you feel about the reading? Do you believe?”
The answers were in my head. There was nothing that the cards could divine that would overrule what I was not prepared to take on of my own volition. I was not about to lie to the reader lest I should poison the well and leave without the answers for which I was searching.
“I believe the answers to my questions are in me,” I told him frankly. “I don’t pretend that the answers are in the cards but you and I will speak and you will read the cards and I believe I will find the answers that I just can’t see right now.”
“Good,” Fajar said with a smile and a nod.
It had been almost a year since I left Vancouver in search of winter. I had made every single miscalculation possible, been wrong about what would happen with the world every step of the way, and gotten stuck or told ‘no’ more times than I ever imagined. With some help, I was able to penetrate the Eastern Wall but I could not see the path of where to go from here. My heart yearned to return to Canada, even for just a while to re-centre myself and see my family, but I could not hoist myself over the mental hurdle of acquiescing to the government-mandated hotel quarantine that I saw as a punitive tax that made no consideration for my unique situation. I had the option of returning to Europe and getting my vaccine there before returning to Canada, but it meant retracing my steps and settling back down for weeks just to see the vaccine through its stages. My third option was to hunker down in Bali and hope that Canada opened up sooner rather than later or that Indonesia started offering vaccines that were approved in Europe and North America. Life in Bali was comfortable but, with cases on the rise across the country, there was no certainty about how long that comfortable feeling would last. To stay meant committing to a nebulous future with no clear end date.
Fajar first needed to divine some aspects of my character based on my date of birth and the alignment of the stars and their trajectory through the heavens. He made an astute observation that I am happiest when I feel productive. It was his contention that I am most aligned with the universe when I feel unstuck and able to exercise my creativity.
“You are a creative person,” he said. “But it is not your job. You are happiest being creative. This is what you want from the universe and what the universe wants from you. People want something else from you. People seek you out for what you offer that is not aligned with the universe. You need to surround yourself with people who will cooperate with you and support your creativity.”
Every fibre of my reasoning screamed to see through Fajar’s initial insights as a simple ruse. I tend to scoff at others’ intuitions. I put myself into situations to invoke the calling of the sun, moon, and stars but when someone translates those messages with beads and crystals, instead of science and technology, I have a good laugh. Within a few seconds, Fajar had struck at my core concern – a concern I had been wrestling with my entire life. Every artist struggles with being seen as they see themselves because the mediums through which they express are open to interpretation. The intent of the artist can incline itself to mystery and ambiguity, the array of interpretation a work of art unto itself, but what is paramount is to be seen. As we grow, we take cues from the universe and try to gauge where we belong, how we can be of service, and how we can manifest, experience, and spread joy. I have never been able to reconcile what I see with what I hope for the world to see, but above all, I feel unseen. This asymmetry between what I see and what others see has always been my greatest source of anxiety and frustration.
I unpacked Fajar’s few words to give them deeper meaning. Pictures on cards laid upon the table spoke to a different me that was connecting with celestial forces and interpreting Fajar’s words less for what they were and more for what I could read into them. I was much being read as I was reading the reader. Within this framework, Fajar looked into the cards for the answers to my questions.
I presented my options to Fajar. He had me shuffle the deck seven times and then turned over his tarot cards into three distinct piles. He pointed to one of the piles and said it represented the choice to stay in Bali.
“Bali is not for you,” he said. “You are not in harmony here. It is clear. Indonesia is a black hole for you.”
Pointing to another pile, Fajar continued:
“These cards represent your desire to return to Canada. The cards in this pile are in conflict. This is your safe zone but you are not fulfilled and you are not in alignment with the universe.”
Fajar then pointed to the third pile and said:
“These cards represent you returning to Europe. The cards align. This suggests that Europe is best for your energy. This is where you are most aligned with what you are supposed to be doing.”
But for Fajar’s broken way of speaking English, these were clear and concise conclusions outlining my options. They took nothing into consideration but where my energy was aligned according to what the cards said about the cosmos and my place in it. The factors I had been considering were things like where was I allowed to go based on the most current covid protocols, what would the financial impact be, and how did it all fit on my mental timeline. Fajar was concerned with making an interpretation of the cards and how I might react to what they said.
Fajar explained that we were currently at the front of a seven-year cycle and it was within that timeframe that the energy of the cards represented. The universe speaks through the cards and they are never wrong. Where we succeed or fail is in aligning our vision with that of the universe and, in that gap, there is room for error to trickle through. The reading of the cards was vague and broad though aligned with the distant dreams I slept upon at night.
“Who knows what the future holds?” Fajar continued. “Maybe someday Bali will be a good place for you and will align with your energy. It is the same with Canada. What is clear is that the cards say that for this stage of your life, during this cycle, you are most aligned in Europe.”
I had trouble adjusting to life in Bali. It was safe to stay that my body had not fully recovered from the delayed flight out of Istanbul, the 11 hours in the air, or the five days in the quarantine hotel in Jakarta. But what had continually tripped up my wires was the amazing run that my hometown hockey team, the Montreal Canadiens, were on. They had defied expectations and, soon after arriving in Bali, were set to compete in the Stanley Cup final against the heavily favoured reigning champion Tampa Bay Lightning. Throughout my travels in Europe, the games were being played at inconvenient hours but, in Indonesia, the time difference between Bali and North America meant that I could stream the games as they came on in the morning. I found it impossible to map things out in my mind or make plans because my energies were fixated on the outcome of the seven-game series between Montreal and Tampa. The Canadiens had not qualified for the Stanley Cup finals since 1993. It was odd to get tripped up by something so superficial but the Canadiens getting this far was something for which I had been waiting for 28 years. Year after year and season after season I was left with crushing disappointment but now we were so close to the ultimate prize that it was impossible to not hop back on the bandwagon and get swept up in it.
Because of the all-consuming nature of the series, I asked Fajar what it could mean to hinge my decision on the outcome of the Stanley Cup final. I explained the situation using as few details as possible and asked him straight up who would win the series.
He laid two sets of two cards out on the table and said:
“The cards do not necessarily predict the future, but what they say is that one team – not your team – is very strong. They are stronger than your team. Your team, the cards say that maybe they are riding on good fortune. The arc of the strong team is straight up and the path of your team goes up and down. The only things I know about ice hockey I know from the movie the Mighty Ducks. But I know that in ice hockey the goalie is a very important player and the cards say that the goalie for the strong team will make the difference.”
I reassured Fajar that I would not be using his reading of the cards to lay any bets especially since his reading meant betting against my hopes. What I wanted to know was whether it was a good idea or a bad idea to allow the outcome of the series to affect my decision of what to do. He drew a card from the deck and placed it between the two sets of two cards – the Queen of Chalices. He laughed.
“What does it mean?” I asked.
“Well, it can mean a lot of things,” he replied. “In this case, what I see is that it doesn’t matter what the outcome is or what your decision is. You are lucky in this case. What the cards say is that for your energy and your alignment, it is not important what happens or what you decide. What matters is that you commit to whatever that decision is. If you commit to the decision, you will be in harmony, you will be aligned with the universe, you will be productive.”
I knew all along what a Stanley Cup win for the Montreal Canadiens would do to my decision-making. Knowing that the cup was coming back to Canada would change everything. Some of my favourite memories of Canada revolve around the Montreal Canadiens. Whether it was scoring great tickets off a scalper outside of the stadium on a whim, or getting the lads together for the season opener, hockey was what kept winters moving forward into spring. Even if the pretext for being social had little to do with hockey, the game would be on somewhere in the background. I have perhaps too many memories of drunken evenings rooting for an obscure third-liner to score a goal because our table had his number on display and we would get free shots if he scored; and I have too few memories of the times that my brother and I still had space in our days, and lived at close enough a distance, to huddle around the TV together to cheer and propel our Glorieux onto the next round. It is difficult to think of anything I have wanted for as long as for the Stanley Cup to return to Canada and to Montreal.
Years of disappointment prepare you for more disappointment but every step closer you get to your goal the more hopeful you become. In a year where nothing ever seemed under my control, to decide upon surrendering to the outcome of a sporting event seemed fitting. Sometimes there is no perfect solution and all we are left with is to submit to the will of the universe and either rejoice or curse our stars. I would undoubtedly return to both Europe and Canada someday and I was grateful to have those options open to me even if I could not separate them on my own. I thanked Fajar and paid him for his service.
There was a lot to think about on the ride home. My mind was racing the whole of the way through Canggu and by the time I returned to the villa my head was a mess. Fajar had upheld his end of the exchange and I now had the answers I was looking for. The difficult part was accepting them into my heart. I went for a swim in the pool and stared up into the clouds as the afternoon breezes brushed through the palms. I prepared a light evening meal and retreated into the quiet of my bungalow soon after sunset with a restless mind. I was left only with outcomes that I could either delight in or suffer with. Whatever the result, the story of me was in the hands of a set of athletes on skates for whom I would expend the last reserves of my mental energy to support their championship hopes and dreams, and upon whose history my own life would be inextricably intertwined. After a restless night, I emerged from my bungalow and prepared my morning coffee. I set up my computer by the television and sat back in my bean bag on the floor as the sound of Quebecois commentary echoed through the villa. A thousand distant memories of the hope with which every season started came swooning into my heart and called out to the guiding hand of the universe. With my hand on my heart, I channelled every word of the reader and every clue in those cards laid upon the table and whispered my prayer into the ether. Go Habs, go!