The Chinese have been using this book for thousands of years. According to the introduction to my edition, it is “a particular kind of imaginative space set off for a dialogue with the gods or spirits, the creative basis of experience now called the unconscious.” Huh. Basically, you use a randomized process to draw a series of lines, and these lines give you one or two symbols called hexagrams. Traditionally, you’re supposed to use 50 yarrow stalks to come up with the lines, but I didn’t have any yarrow stalks handy so I flipped three pennies six times instead. The first hexagram I produced was Pi, or “Obstruction,” which told me that shit was hindering me, that it wasn’t really my fault, and I just had to accept it. (I’m paraphrasing.) The second hexagram, however, was the much more positive Chi Chi, or “Already Fording,” a symbol that “describes your situation in terms of an important move from one position to another.” According to the rough English translation, I should stay obstructed until it’s time to ford; or, in other words, do nothing until things get better. Now that’s the kind of advice that’ll keep you coming back to this oracle for centuries! As positive as the fortune was, I needed something a little more human. So I went to some Gypsies. STOREFRONT FORTUNE-TELLERS
Well, I’m not sure they were Gypsies, but they certainly seemed like it. Both of the psychic shops I visited were typical of storefront fortune-tellers you find all over Manhattan’s Lower East Side and probably in every crowded Western city—advertised by neon signs, filled with a mix of new-age and old-world bric-a-brac, the kinds of places where people are apparently living in the back room (in the first shop I saw a pair of sock-covered feet through an open door; in the second a man was watching a country-music awards show). The first Gypsy’s name was Sara, according to her business card, and she had cash stuffed into her massive, middle-aged cleavage. For 15 bucks, she glanced at my palms and then delivered a litany of predictions in a bored voice: I’d live until I was 80, I’d have two sons, I’d start my own business, my struggles weren’t my fault but a result of the shadow cast by others’ negative emotions, I still had a connection with the last woman I loved— “Actually,” I interrupted, “not really. It was a clean break, a mutual decision to—” “I mean, there’s a connection you have with the places you used to visit,” she added hastily. “I guess,” I said. At the end of my reading, she told me my various chakras were blocked, but if I gave her $300 for some crystals, they’d be unblocked. “Will you let me help you?” she asked in the bland voice of a salesman reciting a memorized pitch. I told her I’d think about it. The second Gypsy, amazingly, felt like even more of a scam. After taking my 55 bucks, she blithely turned over tarot cards while asking me whether common girls’ names like Jennifer and Stephanie meant anything to me (not really), and wondering aloud whether I had ever had my child aborted or undergone some trauma as a child (um, I don’t think so). When she told me I’d be a millionaire I said I didn’t really want that much money. She replied, “Everyone wants money.” I think I learned more about her than I did about my future. Like the first Gypsy, she tried to sell me mystical items for hundreds of dollars, and I wondered how these storefronts stayed in business. ONLINE PSYCHIC
When I told my photographer friend about the story I was writing, he sent me a link to a site called justanswer.com that declared, “Ask a psychic guidance question, get an answer ASAP!” I asked whether my next year would be better than my last, entered my credit-card information—and was asked to reenter my credit-card number. Even after going to Gypsies for a fortune, this was too sketchy for me. PROFESSIONAL TAROT-CARD READER
Liat Silberman, an Australian expat who reads fortunes in TriBeCa, wasn’t sketchy at all. She charges 100 bucks per reading, is often booked months in advance, and does her tarot-card deciphering in upscale cafés. She was pleasantly matter-of-fact as she laid out a “Celtic cross” arrangement of cards and told me what she saw: I was low on money, anxious and uncertain about the future, and not making enough time for friends—if I continued this way I might fall into repetitive, materialistic patterns of addiction, represented by a suitably ugly Devil card. She saw two women in my future, but—she turned over a card featuring a guy facedown with a mess of swords in his back—things weren’t going to turn out well with either of them. Either she was more psychic than the storefront Gypsies or she was way better at bullshitting. But whatever the case, as I spread out my problems before her she reminded me that I was in my 20s and everyone in their 20s feels this way when they’re trying to figure stuff out. It’s no big deal. Her advice was to have some fun, enjoy the city, grow, and adapt—the stuff I know but still need to hear again and again, because I’m an idiot—and she delivered it in the manner of that kindly, unhip aunt whom you feel comfortable discussing your drug use with. FORTUNE COOKIE
That night, I walked by my local hole-in-the wall Chinese restaurant and thought, what the hell? What’s one more fortune? After choking down an order of General Tso’s chicken, I broke open my cookie and got the message: “You are almost there.” Well, shit. Maybe there’s something to this stuff after all. I’m going to save those lucky numbers.