Under the desk with Helen

Helen draws herself


Sunday, September 17, 2006

First bird just chirped. Now several are chirping, unless it is the same one, whistling and chirping. The early bird. O that may be a second one, it had a different music in its chirp. It’s funny to think of him, all soft and sleepy in his nest, opening his eyes, and letting out these chirps because dawn is breaking. It’s fun to think of all the birds I see in my yard all day, snoozing happily in their nests right now, all soft and warm in this very cool September morning.

There must be a lot of nests because there are a lot of birds in my yard. But maybe families sleep together and keep each other warm. All the birds are still in their nests, none has made appearance yet. In my home too both dogs and man sleep, I am only one awake.

Helen made a glorious video and put it on internet so all could see it. She had given a class in palmistry two years ago. Helen is a palmist, she reads palms, she has done this for 40 years, her mom was palmist before her, she learned it from her mom, altho she has studied the literature on it.

Back in NYC Helen had worked for Yeshiva University as their computer person. This meant students who wanted to learn how to go on computer and work it came to Helen. She was my computer teacher, she taught me how to go on computer, so I can attest to what a great teacher Helen is. She has talent for teaching and talent for computer. I am on computer now because of Helen.

She moved from the Bronx to Maui in Hawaii 7 years ago when her son was 8 years old, and I am sure at first she tried to find the same job she had had in NYC. Then after that, when she could not, she tried to find work as free-lance computer teacher. She would come to anyone’s house and teach them, as she had come to my apartment in lower Manhattan and taught me. But no one responded to these ads either.

Instead what happened is she began to read people’s palms as she always had. And a woman hired her to come to her party and read the palms there. Helen was a huge success. They say water helps psychic abilities, and Helen was now in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and maybe being in Maui instead of New York City helped too.

Because her palm readings were on much higher level, she surprised herself. People lined up to get their palms read. And then one thing led to another, and Helen had clientele. And she advertises her services and has thriving business. I think when she was getting started she put a sign up in front of supermarket and read palms there. And of course the more she does it the better she gets. So now Helen is superlative palm reader.

Two years ago she gave a little class in palmistry, and she asked her friend to video it so she could see herself as a teacher. And she found the video so interesting, that when she began to put photos up on her web page, she realized she would be able to put up her video, that she could share it. But it would require editing.

It was one of those plans which take a long time to put in operation. You decide you want to do it, and then you never get around to doing it. And the whole time you are not getting around to doing it, you are busy hating yourself for not doing what you said you would do. You assume because you are not getting around to doing it now, you will never do it, and you hate yourself for never doing it. Which is totally unfair. Because sometime down the line you will do it, but that is the one thing you never realize, so you beat yourself up instead.

But eventually the time did come when she decided to do it now. So then she had to find the video, and that is always a problem because you have no idea where it is. But she found the video and began to edit it. She discovered she could not use the whole video, there were parts in it which embarrassed her, and a lot of it was her bending over reading someone’s palm. But she discovered that the introduction she gave before it began, her story of how palmistry came into being, what palmistry is and its history and its meaning, her 6 minute introduction, was perfect. People might enjoy seeing Helen telling that story, and hearing her insights and understandings of its deeper meaning.

So she edited that and put it up on her web page. But she was too shy to show it to anyone, she thought "maybe I look foolish." So she called her friend Wendy back in NYC and asked her to look at it.

And Wendy said “it’s wonderful Helen, go share it with everyone.”

And so Helen gave the link to friends, and then to her family. And a woman in Maui who recently moved there, who gives workshops on women and spirituality, offered to make a trade. “If you read my palm Helen, I will link to your video on my email list, I have an email list which goes out to thousands.” And so the trade was made.

So last week I got the email with the link and then phone call from Helen saying “watch it Anne.”

But I had no idea where the speakers for my computer were. They used to be on my desk, but now they were no longer on my desk. I assumed I must have put them away somewhere. And I said “tomorrow I will look for them,” and Helen said “press the link to the video, at least you will be able to see me.”

But when I pressed the link nothing showed. Helen called again the next day, and when nothing showed again the next day, something came on saying if I download adobe flash reader I will be able to see it. So I downloaded it, but again nothing showed. So I assumed I had computer problems, and Helen was so heart broken.

But the next day I pressed Helen’s link again, and this time the whole video showed, but there was no sound, but it was so thrilling for me to see my friend Helen. That was exciting. I looked all over for my speakers, and eventually I found them, they had fallen off behind my desk, and the wires seemed to be still plugged in. Because when I pressed the “on” button, a green light went on, showing me it was on, but no matter what I did I could not get sound.

When Helen called I told her I loved the video picture but I could not get sound. And she had me try to play a song to see if sound worked for anything. And when the song didn’t play, she said “the problem is your speakers, Walmart sells them for 30 dollars, you need new speakers.”

Then I got email from her saying she will send me the 30 dollars so I can buy new speakers. And I thought “Walmart is too far away, Office Depot is right on way to swim pool, I will use her 30 towards the speakers and pay the rest out of my own money.” And I planned to call them to ask how much they cost. That was yesterday. All day long I was planning to call and ask how much they cost.

Then in the evening while Bill was watching our team, the Arizona Wildcats, play Steve Austin in our stadium in Tucson, a big and very important game, Helen called and said “I am writing out the check now, what is your house address?”

But before I gave her my house address, we discussed my speakers. I told her how the green light is on so it is connected, and I assume when they fell down in back of desk for whole year that dust and dog hair etc must have gotten into them and ruined them.

Helen said “maybe it is attached to wrong outlet in your computer, maybe you have it attached to microphone.”

I said “but I listened to something last year, and no one has changed the connection since then, Bill had connected them for me then.”

Helen said the green light going on when I press “on” simply means the speakers are attached to electricity, that electricity is flowing into them, it doesn’t mean it is attached to the computer, and why don’t I look.

I said “but it is dark now Helen, and my desk light is so small, I can’t see anything.”

And she said “do you have a flashlight?” and I said “yes we do.”

So I said “Bill is the technician, I don’t know how to do anything, I will ask him to come in during the commercial of the football game and see if the wire from the speaker is attached to the computer in the right place.”

So I went in and asked Bill. And he said "it is too dark, he will do it next morning."

And I said “what about with a flashlight?”

And he said “I don’t want to crawl under your desk with a flashlight now, I am watching the game, I will do it next morning.”

So Helen said “why don’t you do it then, Anne.”

So I asked Bill “where is the flashlight?”

And he turned it on for me because flashlights are no longer the same as when I was little girl. And he got the flashlight and turned it on for me, and he said “I don’t know why you want to do it now, it is so messy behind your desk, it is dark, there are so many cords there, you will break your computer and it is not my fault.”

I told Helen what he said but neither of us were daunted by it. Once I had had a problem with something and called the technician, I no longer remember what it was. The technician was a woman. And at first when she told me what to do, I said “wait let me get my husband, he is the technician, I don’t know how to do anything.” But either Bill was not available or I had a brainstorm. I changed my mind. I said “maybe I can do it, I am so used to thinking he can do everything and I can’t do anything, but maybe I can do it, you tell me what to do.”

And she said, “there you go, you can do it, I’ll help you, you can do it.” She had so much confidence in me that I got confidence and I followed her instructions and I did it.

And I remembered that when Helen said “why don’t you do it Anne.”

And I got so excited, everyone likes a challenge, a project; it is fun and exciting, an adventure.

I reported to Helen “there are 3 wires going out of my speaker.”

And she said “one goes to the computer, that is the one we have to find.”

I crawled under my desk and saw the 3 wires coming from it, and saw that one went into the little hole in back of computer cabinet leading to computer. Then Helen tried to explain to me the right place in computer where it should be.

And I said “wait, the first thing is for me to find that small white cord, because when I took the computer out, there was no small white cord attached to it.”

I took the little flashlight and sure enough there was a little white cord just dangling, not attached to anything. Eureka! Maybe that explained why I wasn’t getting any sound. So then Helen tried to explain the place it should go in. And there were the 3 little holes next to each other at the bottom with 3 different colors next to them. And Helen said “we will just try all of them, and see which one works.”

So I plugged it into the middle one. And Helen said “see if the song I sent you on email comes on.” And we both looked on our computers to try to find that email so we could find the link to the song.

And Helen said “here it is, scroll up in your email,” and she gave me the date and topic. It was under another email Helen had written me in response to a story I wrote.

So I clicked on the link to the song, and “Music Match” came on. I had downloaded “Music Match” when Helen had tried to see if I got any sound when I did the song.

And then instantly the song began to play. I heard it, it had “happy birthday” in it. Helen heard it too. “Great!” she said, “now x out of it.”

I was going to look for the email where she sent me link to her video, but I remembered I had saved it on “favorites,” it had been so much fun to see Helen and I wanted to show Bill. So I clicked on “favorites” and there it was. And I clicked it on, and instantly there was Helen, I could see her and there was Helen talking I could hear her, it was so exciting.

And then we both got very quiet and listened to Helen and watched her on our computers while I was on the phone. It was much better than watching Helen with no sound. With no sound, even tho it was thrilling to see Helen, because there was no content to what she was doing, the gestures she was making, all I did was make observations like “maybe Helen should be wearing lipstick.” Her voice was extremely lovely. I had never heard Helen talk in that lovely voice before, and every word she said was fascinating.

I know nothing about palmistry. I had no idea it would be so interesting to learn its history. The ancients had studied it, but it was the French who gave us modern palmistry. Apparently after the French revolution, interest in all these things was awakening. All the lore of the ancients, and a French man had studied all the ancient texts on palmistry and written a text now so it could be shared. People had not known that each fingerprint was different, but the Chinese potters used their fingerprint as signature, they knew it. And then Scotland Yard decided to investigate if it were true, and fingerprinted all their prisoners and discovered it was true. No two fingerprints are the same. And there are two kinds of palmistry, one does the palm and one does the fingertips.

Of course listening to all this interesting information, via Helen’s lovely voice, captivated my mind, and I wasn’t so focused on watching her face as I was when I had no sound. It just all came together as a package for me. And her expressions took on meaning when she was expressing ideas she was communicating.

Without mind the video was lifeless and pointless, with mind expressed, it was tremendously rich alive thrilling experience. Two opposite universes really. Without mind all that mattered was whether Helen should have worn lipstick or not. With mind, it was rich glowing experience of the whole of Helen’s being. Contact with a tremendous mind, fully alive fully creative, the source of creativity itself.