the magic of not knowing

I have always been interested in divination. I think it started as an interest in history, and learning about folk magic, the witch trials, or spiritualism. My Appalachian grandparents practiced some mild craft, like my grandpa using sticks to find underground water and I think a lost ring once? Or my grandmother “buying” my brother’s warts. (They disappeared days later and never returned! We still don’t know how that worked!) I would read about young colonial girls dropping apple peels into water to see if it formed the first letter of her love’s name, counting crows to determine if your household would soon know grief, gazing into mirrors or glass to see prophecies forming in dark shapes. I tried all of them with varying success. I will admit that a night of teenage fun with my friends, a chant we found online, and some pendulums we made with yarn and whatever cheap rings we wore correctly predicted my spouse, even though I was dating and utterly smitten with someone else at the time. The pendulum said I would not marry my boyfriend. Shattered and defiant, I had hovered the pendulum over my now spouse’s image in the yearbook as a joke; he was merely an acquaintance that I had little in common with. The other girls and I shrieked and cackled in disbelief as it made the sign for '“yes”. Well, over 20 years of happy marriage later, the joke’s on me.

I have spent these years chasing that high. I hate surprises and try to prepare for any eventuality. I think of all possible outcomes. Knowledge is power and foreknowledge is a superpower. I’ve had some flashes of psychic clarity here and there, but nothing consistent. Cards or runes or tea or just me, I haven’t discovered a method that takes me to the other realm whenever I want. I am left surprised and unprepared like everyone else. And even worse my predictions have been heartbreakingly wrong. For a time I had nightmare after vivid nightmare that my dog was killed or stolen. I was beside myself with anxiety and became paranoid that it would happen during an upcoming cross country road trip. Meanwhile my dog was fine, and it was my cat, who I thought would be perfectly safe with a trusted sitter, passed suddenly from an undetected heart condition while we were away.

Recently, thinking over everything I thought would happen that never did, everything I wanted to happen that never came to be, everything I wanted to happen that I later wish hadn’t, things that happened that I never saw coming in any universe, I realized I don’t really want to know anymore. Worrying about something has never prevented it. Wishing for something has never made it come true. As an artist and visual thinker, and as a person too curious for her own good, I cannot resist the draw of the cards or crystal balls forever, but I accept I won’t find what I’m looking for there. What can I do but play the hand that I’m dealt? I wake up every morning and wonder what’s next. Coffee, of course. After that, who knows.