Last year Blonde and Brunette were in the Costa Brava region of Spain and kept intending to go to the Cap Roig Botanic Gardens but somehow never quite made it there.
When we began to plan a return trip to the region this year the person with whom we were arranging a home exchange mentioned the annual music festival held at the gardens. Brunette began feverishly plotting an excursion to the Botanic Gardens. As Brunette did her research she discovered that the opening night singer for the festival was going to be Sir Elton John. Although she had enjoyed perhaps two of his songs in another century she became completely obsessed with getting tickets to the concert .
She contacted random strangers on Facebook, got Blonde to embarrass herself asking people for inappropriate and unobtainable favors and in general could not be dissuaded from her search.
We were told that it is illegal to sell concert tickets in Spain for more than the face value of the ticket. However, apparently some enterprising types have developed schemes where they sell a ticket and a pencil for which they paid, for example, 350 euros for the ticket and are “including the pencil” for the price of 1,600 euros but the ticket is at “face value”. Brunette, who can get huffy about paying a couple euros for a bottle of water ,was soon proposing that we consider paying over 1,000 euros for two tickets. Although notoriously financially reckless, Blonde was having none of it.
Brunette harkened back to the days a few years ago when a book called “The Secret” promised that if you really focused on something it would manifest. If that’s true then why are we both still short and George Clooney hasn’t appeared in either of our beds?
But we focused on conjuring up tickets to see Elton John. Some promising conjuring signs began to occur. We went to visit the Botanic Gardens and tried to walk into where the workers were setting up the stage and bleachers. We were told to leave and had the gates locked behind us.
That same night in Spain we were watching music videos on TV. Blonde said she’d like to hear a song by Of Monsters and Men. The next song was by Of Monsters and Men. OK, a coincidence.
Then a discussion ensued as to how astoundingly unattractive, yet oddly appealing, Steven Tyler is. The next movie video was Aerosmith and prominently featured Steven Tyler. Brunette was convinced that Blonde had the whole conjuring thing going on.
Brunette had also read about “ley lines” which supposedly exist in Spain. Wikipedia quite justifiably describes ley lines as basically hocus pocus. “New Age occultists claim ley lines are sources of power or energy. According to Robert T. Carroll, there is no evidence for this belief save the usual subjective certainty based on uncontrolled observations by untutored devotees. Nevertheless, advocates claim that the alleged energy may be related to magnetic fields. None of this has been scientifically verified.”
Brunette, who is a massive skeptic re anything new age, decided we must be near a ley line and her psychic energy was somehow connecting with it. Completely plausible (to a Scientologist).
On the following day Blonde received a completely unexpected and rather odd email from a childhood friend from the last century. This was not someone Blonde had contacted since childhood – for some good reasons. The individual’s first name is Alton.
He had gotten Blonde’s email from his brother John who had “LinkedIn” with Blonde a while back. Alton. John.
Brunette knew we were on the verge of free tickets to see Elton John.
Blonde was instructed to focus strongly on conjuring up free Elton John tickets. She tried – sort of.
Then Brunette went onto Facebook and saw a notice that Elton John had cancelled his appearance at the Cap Roig festival due to appendicitis! Somehow this unfortunate event was also linked to Blonde’s psychic abilities – mostly to a misdirection of them or perhaps over-zealous application (this is still not clear).
Brunette most likely played a role in this also as she had repeatedly declined Alton’s brother John’s nightly efforts to get Brunette to elope. In one of our generations most enduring and romantic love stories, for several nights in a row John had gotten a ladder and put it up outside our travel trailer window. Below is a reenactment of the sign. (He spelled Brunette’s first name wrong which was a serious mistake.)
Brunette had no interest in John and basically scorned the signs. Around night #3 our mild mannered father told John that it’d been enough with the signs and the elopement requests ended. Let’s not pretend this couldn’t have interfered with Elton John’s appearance at the music festival. The first cut is the deepest, etc.
Elton, not Alton, John had clearly eloped with a better choice than Brunette and in the end the only commonality is that Brunette doesn’t have her appendix and Elton John will soon be without his.
The moral of this story is that a lot of random, unrelated stuff happens and people attempt to give it meaning. However, it’s unlikely to get you concert tickets and even if it did, the concert might be cancelled because you wasted your psychic energy on such a lame brained pursuit.
More likely there isn’t a moral to this story.