it's a psychic thing. you wouldn't understand.

Msaims, I thought I'd heard roosters bring luck. I'm glad you confirmed it, but alarmed about the male energy, lol! This is chick time for me and Mira!

Speaking of chick time ... not really. Just couldn't think of a good transition, ha ha. But seriously folks, I went to a psychic today. He calls himself an intuitionist, the new hot word for psychic. Getting my own personal psychic is something I've been meaning to do, but I'd never gotten around to it because I'm A) skeptical, and B) judgmental. A is self-explanatory, but what I mean by B is that if you tell me you've got the power to see into my life, I fully expect you to have your own act together. It's hard for me to take you completely seriously if you're over 50 and living with your mother, like the guy I saw today. (Though he had his reasons, and see what I mean? I'm passing judgment. If my mother were alive I'd probably be begging to move in with her right now. Okay. No I wouldn't.)

Anyhow, this psychic is what Mister Stevens calls a Fafrican. That's an African-American who has taken on an African name and adopted elements of African culture, a fake African. I was a Fafrican for about two years in the early 90s, when black people were going around wearing Africa medallions and saying "It's a Black thing. You wouldn't understand." I didn't change my name or anything, never having felt it my right to do so seeing as my momma gave it to me, but I did sport me a medallion and a black Bart T-shirt. I felt ever so smartly attired during my Black History classes. (Come to think of it, I bought the black Bart tee here in Houston. For some reason I actually still have it.) Spike Lee's Malcolm X came out and we all wanted to represent the Motherland.

A few years later I started studying different kinds of spirituality, and though my Fafrican phase was fading, I wanted to feel more connected to African culture, so I looked into the Yoruba religion. I found it is not a religion for the lazy, with its 400-plus orishas, deities that govern the head, surplus of ritual, and mandatory learning of West African history -- and of another language, for cryin' out loud. (The woman who first locked my hair went through initiation to become a Yoruba priestess while I knew her. She'd had a gorgeous head of locks but had to cut them off and shave her head as an initiate. I greatly admired this, and mostly wished she could've stuck the beautiful, thick hair she cut on my head.) I got a lot farther with Buddhism, because there's pretty much the Buddha, so that worked better for me (see lazy comment above).

I brought all this up because my psychic unearthed these old memories. He's a Yoruba priest, though I didn't know that going in.

Tomorrow I'll tell you guys how I wound up on his doorstep, and some things he told me. How I got there is the better story.