so she went to see an old, russian woman....

and the woman saw things.....
not particularly pleasant things....
in the cards...
and there was gold everywhere....
and she began to cry....
big wet tears of anguish and long time suffering.......
floodgates of tears, in fact...
there were ENORMOUS CANDLES
 in the corner of the gold laden room....
waiting to be lit....
it seemed, oddly, that the candles were somehow ALIVE....
that they were smiling sardonically...
hard to explain really....
you had to have been there.....
and there was a platter of apples....
green and red and yellow.....
each had a ribbon of gold lame tied around it.....
like a present.....
she knew,
 sitting there in deep contemplation ,
that she had turned a very significant corner....