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.