A few days later, he returned. Stopping me in front of the herbal tinctures, he started talking rapidly, intensely about who I was, based on his astrological findings. He wasn't any kind of astrologer you'd imagine: he was thin, gravely voiced, and smelled like cigarette smoke. Face worn and rough, like he'd worked hard and was tired. A typical rural Texan. I stood there listening for the better part of an hour, not saying anything. Just nodding my head. I didn't think much of astrology back then, but the shit he was saying hit hard. He was talking about my rage, my pain, my anger. Things no one in my life understood, least of all me.   

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At the end, he told me I was meant to be a great healer someday -- at the time, it was not something I could believe. I asked him, "Why are you doing this?" 

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I'll never forget the answer. He made a tense, electric gesture, zig-zagging his finger to the sky. His eyes were flashing when he said, "Because I want to fly the fuck up out of here."

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Then he left abruptly. I went to the front of the store and watched as he backed away in his loud, grumbling old pick up truck. You could smell the exhaust through the glass. Never saw him again. That night I went home and wrote down everything I could remember. Years later, once I had learned astrology myself, I could see what he saw, I could read what he read. I was amazed.

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Fast forward 15 years. One day I was walking down a New York City street. I had certainly not become a great healer, or anything great at all. I was as lost as ever, just older. Suddenly a bright faced Indian man was coming towards me on the sidewalk, calling out my name. My steps slowed -- how did this man know my name?

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By this time in my life, I'd become a proper New Yorker. I ignored all cat calls, barking, and implorations by default. But this guy was different. It was as if I loved him right away, so earnest, so daisy-faced, grinning widely in a pink polo shirt. And he knew me, apparently -- or at least my name. Once he had my attention, he asked me to think of a color, a number, and a flower, and to hold these three things in my mind. Then he guessed them: "Yellow 7 Rose." My heart started to pound, but I just stared. He grinned and said, "Okay, then we'll do it again." And he did. He guessed the second round just as quickly and accurately as the first. This time his reply to my stunned face was, "Will you sit and talk with me a bit?" And I did.

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We sat on a stoop in the Village for at least an hour. Turns out he was an astrologer, too, but an intuitive one: he didn't need my birth data to know where all the planets had been on the morning I was born. He sat there telling me things I knew about myself, but had forgotten. Things about my soul-self, not my local space-time self who was still stumble-bumbling through life. As I had with that first astrologer, I mostly just sat and listened. Sometimes he would stop to quiz me as if I were a child (though he was younger than me). "Where is god?" is one I remember. ("In me," was the answer he was seeking.)

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When I became skeptical of this strange demonstration, and started being cagey and evasive -- but playfully, laughing at myself and at him -- he sat back, smiling, squinting in the sun, and said, "I like this you." He poined a finger at me. "This is the real you."

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And it was, I could feel that it was. I was being a Jester. I've never been able to take deeply spiritual moments very seriously. Being a jester is my spirituality because the Jester forms a part of my spirit. And it felt really good to be seen.

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Eventually I decided I would also ask this guy just why, exactly, he was doing this. This time my strange angel answered, "You are only one. But if I help this one, I help many."

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When we parted ways at the intersection, he turned back halfway through the crosswalk and shouted,"Repeat this to yourself: I was born in the right place. I was born in the right body. I was born at the right time."

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I laughed. He had spoken the antidote mantra for my entire life's suffering.

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It's been many times now that my friends from the Other Side have spoken to me through a Stranger, but it was soon after this second experience that I first conceived the idea for the Existential Detective Agency. I had had a difficult adolescence and young adulthood, feeling painfully at odds with the culture and religion around me, with its bizarre ideas about gender and sexuality. In search of One Great Healing Concept, I'd spent my entire adult life studying archetypal systems: Ayurveda, Hinduism, Chinese 5 Element theory, i Ching, astrology, Meyers-Briggs, flower essences, you name it. I studied Jungian archetypes and dream analysis at the C.G. Jung Foundation in NYC, and underwent Jungian analysis during an intense two years of wild, lucid dreaming. Eventually I was full of party tricks -- I could do tarot readings, palm readings, and Chinese face readings. My Brooklyn apartment was bursting with hundreds of books on every esoteric subject imaginable.

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It finally occurred to me I should do something with the synthesis of all that I've learned. I want to reach others like me -- dark minds, lost minds, stuck minds -- I want to dive so deep that I almost touch Death. I want to peer into the other side and come back laughing. I am, after all, the Jester. 

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If you're a lost soul or a hopeless soul -- if you think you don't fit or belong -- if you feel unloved, neglected, rejected, and heartsore -- you've come to the right place. I've been all those places, too. But I've also been to the Other Side and now I can tell you this: your hopelessness, your nihilism, your cynicism -- these are symptoms of disconnection from your Authentic Self. Your Authentic Self belongs to a Tribe. I'm here to help you find the connection you've been missing so you can live the one life you've been given.

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"Enjoy yourself, it's later than you think.

Enjoy yourself, while you're still in the pink.

The years go back as quickly as you wink

Enjoy yourself, enjoy yourself, it's later than you think."

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Angel

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