Apparently, I’m concerned about money.
“The coins just keep showing up,” my tarot card reader on the Venice Beach boardwalk muttered as she revealed the cards I chose with my left hand. (Note: You can never use your right hand to pick cards. It’s something to do with your brain and the logical side and the creative side or something.) Her long pink fingernails flicked over the edge of each card as she nodded and agreed with each assessment the cards revealed.
“Yes, you’re very, very anxious about money, and it seems like these concerns are closely tied in with … your family?” She looks to me waiting for an answer. Isn’t she supposed to know this?
“Well, um, my parents pay for my education,” I say.
“Ah, yes. That’s it.” She clucks her tongue and shakes her head. “Girl, I come from a women’s studies perspective, see, and I believe that we, as women, and I mean women, got to just do our own thing, be independent, you hear? These cards are telling me that you’ve got to take some control of your life otherwise you’ll just keep worrying trying to be that nice little daughter. You’re not a daughter anymore! You’re a f***ing woman!”
I nod, weakly. It seems rude to disagree, especially with someone who has just dropped an “f” bomb when speaking from the psychic world.
My psychic’s advice, however, seems like the advice that the whole Venice boardwalk could scream if it could: “Be independent, you hear?”
Venice Beach is only about a 45-minute bus ride away from campus (via line 1 or line 2 of the Santa Monica Big Blue Bus), but it seems like Los Angeles’s own Santa Cruz or Berkeley, with a stretch of shops offering henna tattoos, glass-blown pipes (“ONLY for tobacco use.” Sure.), and cheap anti-government T-shirts. Independence and breaking away from the establishment are what the character of Venice really is, encouraging a city known for its concern with appearance and glamour to hang loose a little bit and, well, fight the power.
Of course, it’d be easy to limit Venice Beach to a new age paradise, but when you look beyond the boardwalk with the street performers and hippie ideals, there still lies that great landmark of Southern California: the seemingly endless beach where everyone ultimately flocks. If you look around, you’ll see that the people who frequent Venice are not just nostalgic for the 1960s and are not just Hollywood bikini models. They are normal people simply looking for a place where they, too, can rest their busy, highway-driving minds and enjoy a funnel cake or, heck, if you’re so inclined, a big bowl of jicama.
Walking to the beach must be one of the most soothing activities possible at Venice, and it was the perfect place to watch children squealing as they avoid getting splashed by the crawling ocean waves, older couples with their stomachs unabashedly bare holding hands, and surfer teens clutching boards under their arms looking for the next wave to catch. I savored the salty smell of ocean air for as long as possible before giving in to the next temptation: consuming a taco al pastor (which means it was pork prepared “shepherd style” in a really spicy coating) and sipping on freshly squeezed watermelon juice while seated on one of Venice’s grassy knolls. Perfect.
My tarot card reader read my fortune for the rest of the year and, mercifully, I will not experience any deaths or any great hardships, aside from a temptation with “an artistic young man ““ maybe a writer like you!” sometime in December.
“I like your life,” she declared putting her hands in her lap, flipping her short blonde hair (completely unnatural, of course). “You know, I really do. You seem very open. Are you Buddhist?”
I shake my head, a little bewildered but a little flattered, too. No one has ever mistaken me for a Buddhist and, quite frankly, I’m pleased that I can fit into a place and seem like someone who could be a part of this landscape that’s all about openness: open ocean, open sand, open streets, open minds. For a congested city, Venice reflects a necessary escape, a place to extend the summer for the rest of the year and relax.
“Just don’t worry so much,” my reader told me. “You’re a very mature 20-year-old. That UCLA really does you wonders, you hear? I like your life.”
I smile. At times like this, so do I.
If you would love funnel cake and/or jicama, e-mail Cohn at jcohn@media.ucla.edu.