Tag Archives: massage

Sneerting

By Posted in Life Tagged , , , , , , , , 8 Comments

I walked past the shop and read the notices. One read: Tarot, Crystals, Essential Oils. I snorted.

Another notice read: Chakra Foot Reflexology. Another snort.

Then I saw Aromatouch Massage, Psychic Readings, Spirit Healings.

All this was too much for me. I sneerted. Sneerting was a skill that came to me at precisely that instant – when I felt the need to both snort and sneer.
I was nearly around the corner when I sighted the words, Divine Bhakti.

I found myself snortless, without a sneer.

Divine! Bhakti! What does that mean, I wondered?

Abruptly my curiosity conquered my meanness and opened my mind.

So I went inside.
I asked the jolly lady, Are you Ms Bhakti?

She laughed – a contralto earthquake: No. Bhakti is Sanskrit.

She asked me who I was.

I said: Howard. I am a writer.
The jolly lady attended patiently to my many questions.

After a while she asked me: Why do you ask?

I am old. I have passed nearly threescore and ten years with my eyes and my mind open to the world, looking for understanding. I saw your notices and I realised

I understood not a word. I understood too – since you have a shop, you presumably pay rent, and you like to eat – that you must have customers; that they recognise

your services and value them; and they pay good money in return.

Another big gurgle, a smile that wobbled its way across her happy features.
I asked about Tarot. I learned it rhymes with arrow not carrot.

My informant said, I used to do a lot of Readings. Not so much now. We had a wonderfully gifted reader here in the shop earlier today.

I asked about the spirit.

The spirits come to me from the earth. They rise, I feel their light, their white light, they come up from below and pass through me and above. They will come to all who are open

and they will teach what you need to learn. You will learn what you want to learn.

Please tell me of crystals.

When I speak with the crystals they bring healing.

Do you use words? Do they answer in words?

I use words. The crystals answer in understanding and I express this to the seeker in words.

Which crystals are the correct ones?

All crystals bring healing.

How did you learn so many arts, such ancient knowledge? Who was your master? Your guru? It must have taken many years…

The lady looked at me vacantly as if to say, What’s your question.

Then: My grandmother was a Tarot Master…

My mother was a healer, ‘though it took me some decades to learn this.

And Tarot was taught to the West at the dawn of the twentieth century by an American named Crowley. He was a witch.
A witch!

Can this knowledge be used for harm or falsehood?

Huge volley of laughing: Anything can be used by crooks for deceit and harm. But the healing will come to one who seeks it.

How can an ignorant person – such as I am – know which is true?

When you enter the place of healing, it will feel right or wrong. If you feel you do not want to be there, turn around and leave.
It was closing time. I thanked the lady and together we put away her furniture. I thanked her again and as I left I told her I might write of our conversation and put it up on my blog.

Warm smile, soft shake of my hand: Thank you. That would be nice.

No Sexual Massage in Yangon

By Posted in Life, Travel Tagged , , , , , , , , 4 Comments

When I visited Yangon a couple of years ago I enjoyed a number of curious, memorable and stimulating experiences. Among these I recall the vivid sight of a mouthful of ragged teeth swimming in blood-red betel juice. I saw lovely women and lovelier children with cheeks daubed in discs of a caked pink, ochreous pigment. I ran in a huge mid-city park where I was alone, save for thirty men scything a small patch of pedicured grass of brilliant green, and lovers on park benches, enfolded in each others’ arms in the slow ballet of discreet half-satisfaction. I saw women and men banquetting at kerbsides on evil-smelling fishes, I read an English language newspaper from cover to cover, in which grown up writers and editors repeated children’s stories for grownup readers. (These stories, simply told and endlessly retold, announced that the government was very pleased with itself and if we had any further questions we should read the account of the Press Release on page three, which announced how pleased the government was with its plans to change nothing.)

I rode in taxis that had been young when I reached puberty and which still functioned – but only just. I recognised my own physiology mirrored in these noisy, puffing, sluggish vehicles. At the airport I was met by unsmiling men wearing military and paramilitary uniforms that would be laughable in comic opera. Under the hard eyes of these protectors of the public order young female Immigration Clerks checked my passport for twenty solemn minutes before passing me down a chain of clerks similarly trained in solemnity. The solemnity training is impressive, achieving as it does the extinguishing of the endemic native joy that radiates from the Yangonese. In a shop I saw a longhi. I always wanted a longhi and when I went to purchase one, eight young women, so feminine, so, so slim, all stepped forward to fit me. I went to a hairdressing salon where some hair was cut and someone sold someone else a massive bag of rice, while all the staff – including the person cutting the hairs around my throat – watched a lengthy and particularly violent show on TV.

I saw and enjoyed many things in Yangon but I never bought, received, contemplated, witnessed or wished for sexual massage in Yangon. I did, however, post an innocent blog report on my visit to the hairdresser.

Ever since that post my blog has been visited by readers from around the world, googling key words ‘Sexual Massage Yangon.’ I have innocently discovered the secret to a massive blog following. In posting this I expect to redouble that following. Fame and Greatness beckon.