VENTURING into somewhere like the MindBodySpirit Festival is bound to set off new age rage.
It’s not just that I’m agnostically skeptical of things that cannot be proven; it’s that my experience in the field so far – just in the course of this blog – has been something of a holistocaust:
* My reiki healer breaking and entering into my no-go zone
* My tealeaf reader unacceptably changing the subject to Princess Diana
* Being pinned to the table during acupuncture
* Getting cupped within an inch of my life
…And at Frankston’s Psychic ’n’ Parma night I was told I’d wind up hitting rock bottom and running drugs for bikies. Peruse the ‘cosmic shit’ category of this blog for more woeful incidences.
So, wandering around the Melbourne Exhibition and Convention Centre, taking in stands on aura photography and Christocentric light over the gentle strains of acoustic guitar, I feel that old rage start to boil over.
Sure, there’s the odd, slightly adorable flake who, if not communicating with angels, is at least communicating their own desperate need to do so, but everyone else just seems so… smooth.
They’re not crackpots, but crooks, quacks and snake oil salesmen. They appraise you in a fraction of a second, assign you to a drawer and whip out the relevant patter. Their motives border on criminal.
I pick a stand.
While the Chinese have long read faces to identify problems in a person’s constitution (kidneys around the eyes, heart around the nose…), the face reading stand I visit analyses your features on a more spiritual level.
“It’s not fortune telling,” Abby tells me as she slides my chair in close by pulling on my hands, until our faces are a foot apart. “I just tell you where you are at in life by reading the shape of your face.”
I would have thought genes come into play regarding both the shape of my face and the state of my life right now, but I’ll suspend my disbelief from the nearest hat stand for 10 minutes ($25).
To begin, Abby pops her eyes in mock-astonishment and mimics a huge pointy chin by pulling both her hands out into a V in front of her. I’ll let this go on account of English not being her first language. She says I’m sticking my chin out defiantly, which means I force my way through life – and other people had better get out of the way. I can be interpreted as manipulative, but I’m holding my motives inside – hence my sunken cheeks. The left side of my face, she appraises, is particularly sunken – and that’s my feminine side, representing creativity and sensuality, which are being thwarted. My jaw is tense and so is my body:
“Look how tensely you are sitting in this chair right now!”
Throughout, Abby beams – quite winningly – as though we’re sharing a private joke, although it feels like I’m the butt of it. Then she peers at me and wheels back in satisfaction. “You have one eye bigger than the other!”
She’s about to elaborate, so I jump in and point out this is the result of a head injury one exuberant night, back when nights were still exuberant.
“But everything happens for a reason,” she scolds. Then: “Why would it affect that eye?”
“Because I landed on it.”
She shakes her head and smiles beatifically.
Time’s up.
Keeper? Truth be told, I’d pay $25 for someone to stroke my face for ten minutes regardless of the insults that may come with it.
Hey man, now you're really living 
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