Retrocausality And You

When I gaze into the gypsy's crystal ball, I see my past, not my future. And no tall, dark stranger appears, just someone short and bald instead. And it is me. What's my old self doing trapped inside this occult sphere? 

I'm at the The Gare de Lyon, September 2012, ordering a ticket in phrasebook French, and neither the ticket nor my terrible accent will get me very far. The weather in Paris is even cloudier than the crystal ball, so I've decided to head south. Monte Carlo or bust, or something like that. And there I am in the scrying glass, plodding around the platform with a load of luggage.

The gypsy had a face like Moses on magic mushrooms when I first crossed her palm with silver. But reacting to this non-event in her crystal ball she seems as bored as Pharaoh's dyspeptic aunt trimming her own toenails. There's no mystery, no drama, not much of anything happening at all, except me on the train, trying to force my oversized suitcase into an overhead bin.

I can sympathize with the fortune teller. After all, she expected to disclose to me epiphanies of a deeply personal nature, only to get stuck watching my Euro vacation slideshow: "Here I am again in the buffet car, ordering my third cafe au lait of the morning. And this is one of me later on, asking the train's conductor for directions to the second-class carriage's toilette." 

And now I recall, it was back then, in that very train toilette, that I beheld a phantom image of my future self while staring into the mirror bolted to the compartment wall. My face, thirteen years older but zero years wiser. 'Don't forget to wash your hands,' my future lips had mouthed back at me. 'The hand towels are below the sink in that metal container.'

And so they were. But did I really need to be told this by a spectral vision? Apparently, the future self is father of the former self, if only on the most banal and mundane terms. Bathroom etiquette reminders are fine, but hardly as relevant to me as do-or-die information affecting the ongoing unfolding of my existence. Dante was blessed with a visit from Virgil; all I get is the equivalent of a handwritten sign in a restaurant's employee restroom. 

People in magazines and books receive all kinds of valuable communications from whatever clairvoyant they visit. Messages from beyond the veil about money, health, potential danger and other vital human interests. All I get is a constant reminder to wash my hands, as if I'm trapped in a paranormal hygiene loop, my fingers dripping with messy ectoplasmic sauce. It's like being haunted by the ghost of a headless Miss Manners, or Jacob Marley dragging chains of all the bacteria he failed to scrub away in life.

The irony, of course, is that for all their portentous pointing at hot water taps, never once has one of my anachronistic apparitions explained how to operate a public bathroom's plastic soap dispenser thing. Now, the divine revelation of how those stupid contraptions work would be a truly sublime demonstration of unbelievable psychic power.

'Perhaps consulting the Tarot will tell you more?' the gypsy proposed as I prepared to leave her caravan. Yeah, maybe: a card depicting my younger self as The Fool, sitting in his bath tub surrounded by rubber ducks, reaching for a bottle of cheap shampoo. Thanks, but no thanks. I already know the future that card foretells, and examining it now won't prevent male pattern baldness.

 

What Can You Hear

It's becoming increasingly clear that the Music of the Spheres was composed for the banjo; that angels play bongo drums instead of harps; that the sound of heavenly choirs is just the chintzy ringtone from an anonymous burner phone.

I've always thought Orpheus was tone-deaf. It's just that ancient melodies were so plinkety-plonkety discordant that nobody back then ever suspected the truth. Virgil can say what he likes, but this is clearly the real reason why Eurydice returned to the underworld: she preferred the relative peace and quiet of Hades to her husband's endless cacophony. 

Frankly, we'd all be better off sitting in silence than listening to the caterwaul of the world. There's always the song of the wind; the natural rhythm of the rain; the symphonic sweep of the sunrise and sunset's great aria; even an October day's mellow concerto for tuba and trombone. 

Well, we could enjoy those consolations if the wind's song wasn't stifled by the sonic boom of rockets and guns, if the rain's rhythm wasn't washed away with the staccato spittle of TV's talking heads, if the sunrise and sunset's operettas weren't silenced by thick blankets of brown smog; if October's brass band hadn't already been told to put a sock in it by the consumer scream of industrial Halloween.

Personally, I try to avoid the mournful echo of my own disenchantment by listening to recordings of the past captured on audio cassette. I've been slowly soundproofing the Memory Palace where I live so the belligerent bellowing of nowadays can't be heard. That and noise canceling headphones are pretty useful modern tools.

What Would Keats Think?

The first of October's leaves fall in a flurry of gold, forming a carpet of crisp Krugerrands; a pumpkin-lined path lit by a low sun leading towards Hallowe'en. Well, at least that's what the leaves do in an unemployed poet's mind. The putrefying truth is very different.

Actually, their fall is more like the slow drip of dirty brown water from a rusty tap into a broken sink, its drain long since blocked by a shapeless mass of slimy human hair and soap scum. But we lyricists must keep the Autumnal myth alive in this so-called 'Spooky Season' of frauds and hollow fruitlessness.

Alas, Johnny Appleseed now orders online from the comfort of his climate-controlled condominium. 'Made in China, our new indoor apple orchard provides enough apples to bake fifteen ersatz apple pies or ferment fifty gallons of apple cider vinegar. Your choice, it's a free country after all.' Johnny chooses to do the pies. Unfortunately only one is Instagram worthy so the rest go in the garbage. 

Indian summer and I'm loitering at the edge of an ornamental pond, as aimless as the breeze buffeted ripples on its surface, when the gloomy face of an ancient carp appears in a gap between two leathery green lilies. His big rubbery lips open and close soundlessly, as if he's trying to mouth fishy secrets to me without being overheard by those migrating birds. If only he could speak in sign-language with his pectoral fins, I might learn a thing or two about survival as a bottom feeder.

Meanwhile, cute Miss Cranberry's garden is full of inflatable phantoms and plastic skeletons covered with silly string DayGlo cobwebs. Three weeks before the kids emerge to collect their buckets of candy and her house is already haunted by crass commercial decorations. All the parents are worried that it will rain on the neighborhood Hallowe'en parade again this year. Even in Spooky Season, there is nothing scarier than Mother Nature's weather whims.

And so, at sunset, I watch the first leaf fall into my front yard. Did it jump or was it pushed? It seems concerned that none of its friends have followed it down. But I suppose we're all somewhat confused nowadays. Autumnal mist has turned into dense fog and we'll need to replace our jack-o-lanterns with real flashlights to see where we're going.