DeAnne Smith and That Airy Fairy Stuff

You know the feeling when you’re feeling a lot of feelings, feeling kind of overwhelmed by your feelings? I had that feeling recently. The feeling was compounded by the fact that I misplaced my feelings journal, which meant that I had no official place to write about my feelings, thus making it more difficult for me to really ascertain that I was indeed feeling what I thought I was feeling. I also started feeling weird about even having a feelings journal, feeling like a grotesque, overgrown version of my 13-year-old self. But then I remembered that if I didn’t have a feelings journal, I’d have no place to put my sparkly lion stickers. That’s not a good feeling. If there’s one feeling I’m certain I’m feeling, it’s that sparkly lion stickers should always have a home.

Sorry. Where was I? I mean, aside from feeling perversely proud of the fact that 13.5% of that paragraph is comprised of the word “feelings,” thus making it among the most lesbian things you will ever see. Except, perhaps, for this tattoo of a winking beaver holding a rainbow flag (complete with unshaven hair poking through the skin).

Whenever I have a lot of feelings, which is often, I think of this sign, courtesy of our ol’ friends at the WBC:

 

The sign that I’m referring to is, of course, “God Hates Your Feelings.” I’ve spent the last half hour trying to articulate why I find it so hilarious.¹ I can’t, which I think only reinforces its comedic genius. You can’t intellectualize pure comedy, man! “God Hates Your Feelings” is a phrase right up there with “I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER?”

As a consolation for introducing you to the “God Hates Your Feelings” sign, I’ll share a tip. I’ve discovered that a well-timed “God hates your feelings” can be a wonderful tension breaker in an otherwise overly serious, deep and meaningful conversation with a friend. (“Should I go back to school? I’m so confused. I don’t know what to do.” “Whatever you do, remember: God hates your feelings.”)

So, what did I decide to do with all these feelings I was feeling? Quiz time! I:

a.) sat quietly and listened to what they were telling me
b.) went to therapy
c.) made a 45 minute appointment with someone called “Psychic Sarah”

I think we all know that the rational, healthy decision here is (c). It’s obvious that Psychic Sarah is serious and professional about what she does, as evidenced by this picture of her bike.

In addition to the bike, two things drew me to Psychic Sarah. One, her advertising postcard contains pleasing graphic design and none of the wrong fonts (i.e., comic sans, handwriting, papyrus). And perhaps more importantly, her name is Sarah. I’ve had a weakness for the name Sarah since I was seventeen and I got my first girlfriend.² Here’s another tip for you: if you can’t remember someone’s name, and she is between the ages of 25 to 35, guess “Sarah.” You will be right more often than not.

What I was hoping for from Psychic Sarah was a mystical encounter that would blow my mind and solve my life.³ What I got from Psychic Sarah was something slightly different.

Before we began, Psychic Sarah asked me to meditate with her. I did. Sitting there in her dimly lit room, my nostrils filled with incense, I realized that I didn’t feel at all uncomfortable meditating with her, which in turn immediately made me feel very uncomfortable. What kind of person doesn’t feel at least a little uncomfortable meditating face-to-face with a stranger that’s about to read her tarot cards? I’ll answer that for you: a crazy person. Am I becoming a crazy person? Well, thanks to the fact that I travel a lot and have an inordinate amount of dietary restrictions, I know that I have already become the kind of person who eats on the bus. More specifically, I’ve become a woman who eats tuna on the bus. To be perfectly honest, I’ve become a woman in her thirties who eats tuna from a can on the bus. That’s me. That is who I am. Now I can add that I am also a woman who meditates with her psychic. If only I knew how to knit sweaters for cats.

God damn it, where is my feelings journal when I need it?

Psychic Sarah said I was entering a very magical time. “Magical, but grounded,” she said. “The important thing is that it’s grounded. I’m not into that airy-fairy stuff.” Maybe that should have been reassuring but it wasn’t. Hearing that your psychic, the woman wearing a crystal necklace and reading your tarot cards, isn’t “into that airy-fairy stuff” is kind of like hearing that your physician doesn’t “get down with that medical mumbo jumbo.” It’s weird.

I think Psychic Sarah was right, though. Two days after we met– just two days!– where should I find myself? Smack dab in the middle of a human pyramid with eight other lesbians.

If that’s not magical but grounded, I don’t know what is. Now, I just need Psychic Sarah to tell me where my feelings journal is, and I’ll be all set.

How about you guys? Let’s hear tales of your other-worldly experiences.

¹ I think it has something to do with the nebulous nature of all of those terms: god, hate, feelings. Crammed together like that, open to all kinds of interpretation, it’s like a Dada-ist poem. It was the same way when I first saw the “God Hates Fags” protest signs. I didn’t understand them at first. There were about ten glorious, innocent seconds when I read one of those signs and thought, “Wow…those are some really passionate anti-smokers. I didn’t know that Christians cared so much about lung health.”

² At the risk of sounding crazy, I won’t tell you that the first three girls I ever kissed were all named Sarah. Or that almost a third of my sexual partners have been named Sarah. So what?

³  For the record, “a mystical encounter that will blow my mind and solve my life” is also what I’m looking for in oral sex.

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DeAnne

I care a lot about my hair. Unrelatedly, I say short, funny things at www.twitter.com/DeAnne_Smith.

DeAnne has written 22 articles for us.

47 Comments

  2. “Am I becoming a crazy person? Well, thanks to the fact that I travel a lot and have an inordinate amount of dietary restrictions, I know that I have already become the kind of person who eats on the bus. More specifically, I’ve become a woman who eats tuna on the bus. To be perfectly honest, I’ve become a woman in her thirties who eats tuna from a can on the bus.”

    deanne smith you just made me laugh my shorts off. in some cultures we’re now married.

  3. i’m sorry about your feelings journal. i misplaced my vibrator last week, and i haven’t been sleeping correctly.

    • misplaced vibrator? haven’t been sleeping correctly? hm..perhaps ’tis time for an x-ray situation. apparently this stuff happens all the time & ends up on “bizzare x-ray stories” on the science channel.

    • The correlation made me giggle.

      Still, that sucks. Also, maybe, you need to clean your room?

      • yup. idk. SOMETIMES I’M LIKE IN THE MIRROR AND GO “WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU” like a parent that loves their kid but JESUS.

  4. This is too embarassing to reveal to anybody but the whole of Autostraddle, but an older and wiser fellow Sapphist gave me a tarot reading-slash-Lesbian sociology 101-session right back when I started dating and getting active in the LGBTQ community.

    I know, I know, confirmation bias, but it was sort of scarily prescient, and it may or may not have influenced how I went forward, for the good.

  5. What are your feelings on ‘Sara’?

    My mom, in her 40s was once accused of eating canned cat food but she swears it was a can of tuna. (To eat at her job.)

    I foresee a similar future for you. I’m sorry.

  6. tuna on the bus? REally? really? i just…i mean… i have no words yet so many feelings about that

    • That almost makes me glad my (terrible) local transit system doesn’t let people eat on the bus. There are about a thousand worse odors I’ve encountered on the bus, but imagining the scent of tuna added to the heady mixture of that drunk guy who hasn’t washed urinating on himself at 4 in the afternoon, the transient person going up and down the aisle asking everyone for change, the lingering odor of sweat and waste that permeates almost every bus, and the 17 straight frat bros who shower in Axe….yikes.

      On second thought, whatever, add the tuna. I don’t think it would make that much of a difference.

  7. Sorry. I had to read this one aloud. Fantastic. :D

    Also, can I be part of the pyramid?

  10. This is all very, very good. I, too, would love to be part of the pyramid. I have feelings, but no journal – which may be why I am also feeling that I’m becoming one of those crazy people. I don’t ride the bus, thank goodness. Thanks for this. I needed it!!

  11. Probably, I need a feelings journal. Also, thank you for reminding me that you’re never too old for shiny stickers. I need to go shopping now. :)

  13. “One, her advertising postcard contains pleasing graphic design and none of the wrong fonts (i.e., comic sans, handwriting, papyrus)”

    This is so key.

  14. DEANNE YOU ARE RANKED 3RD BEST COMEDIAN IN MONTREAL via the montreal mirror’s best of 2011, congrats!

  15. DEANNE SMITH WAS IN MY VICINITY OF NEWTOWN AND I WAS NOT INFORMED? preposterous.

    )`:

  16. Tarot cards are what got me out of the closet. I had my friend read my cards, but I didn’t tell her what I was asking. I just shuffled them and thought “What do I need to do to fall in love?” And she spread out the cards and basically said, sweetie, you’re big gaymo. The cards do not lie. Date girls already. Whether that was her or the cards, talking, the message was what I needed. I am so much happier, now that I’m not afraid to feel my feelings.

  17. “For the record, “a mystical encounter that will blow my mind and solve my life” is also what I’m looking for in oral sex.”

    *sigh* …aren’t we all?

  19. I wouldn’t worry about eating tuna on a bus, DeAnne. Back when I lived in civilization, I used to take the bus to and from campus every day and there are much crazier people on the bus than you. When you start bringing multiple course dinners on the bus (yes, this happened more than once!), then you can start worrying!

  20. I’ve never had my tarot cards read, but according to a random dream intepretation book my friend has, all my dreams mean I’m gay….because I wasn’t already acutely aware. Thanks, subconscious.

  21. 13.2%, but who’s counting.

    The one and only time I went to a Tarot card reader I was with my mom. I don’t even remember what she said about me, but she told my mom that one of her children would cause her “great emotional trauma in the Spring”. This was awkward cause 50% of “her children” was sitting RIGHT there.

    I wonder if I came out that April just to keep Madam Olga’s statistics up.

  25. My mom’s friend did a tarot reading for me once. She told me I was going to be famous. I think she just thought that was what I wanted to hear for some reason. It freaked me out. I don’t want to be famous.

    Anyway, I love your articles!

  26. I wish I didn’t look like such a doof in that pyramid picture. T_T My wife looks 100% better than me!

    Also, the only time I’ve had my tarot cards read was at my high school graduation party, and the lady told me I was “drawn to the East Coast” and that there was something wrong with my heart. The latter is not and has never been true, and while I live on the east coast of Australia, I don’t think that’s what she meant…

    • You look fine Dina.

      It was scary being so high up. Felt like being on top of a mass of quivering jelly everyone was so wobbly.

      Yay for not dying!

  27. You should write a book called “An Abundance of Sarahs”. It’ll be like a more comedic lesbian take on “An Abundance of Katherines” (by John Green).

  28. I am pretty certain I know the super excited blonde girl on the right of that picture, but I have only been to Australia once in my entire life. Happy blonde girl, how do I know you?!?

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