divination conducted with common umbrellas

Captain Crunch taught me the value of energy crystals before I was introduced to the idea by that woman from the desert. Exactly one cent. A circle had been printed on the back of the cereal box, along with instructions to tape a penny to the end of a bit of string, to ask a yes or no question and hold the string above the circle as steady as you please, and to watch as the penny began to swing up and down the vertical axis on the circular target--this for yes--or back and forth along the horizontal--for no--or else a circular pattern--indicating uncertainty.

She feathered her hair in the style of the time, at the length of her shoulders, and would later get a permanent that never seemed to suit her, this around the time that she began cooking without salt. It may be no accident that I can only love a woman who pours salt into the pot with recklessness abandon. When I remember that desert woman, she always has her hippie hair, down to her knees, and drives a maroon 1979 Mustang. The recollections are grainy, slightly overexposed, without sound. She inexplicably hated my sister, and so I hated her with a fierceness I could never quite understand at the time. She was usually very kind to me. Confusions of this sort remained hidden and yet obvious; resembling the erections I begged myself not to take with me off the school bus in the mornings (those pleas having produced varying degrees of success).

In Denver, she took me aside quietly and showed me how to use the energy of a crystal to commune with the universe. The captain loomed large, and I said so. This proves nothing, she insisted. Why, I asked, would the universe give a shit about whether or not I'm going to find my keys before the end of the day? Still, interesting exercise in discovering what you wish the answer would be.

An umbrella placed tip-down on the pavement at a right angle will fall in some supposedly random direction. Your instructions are to follow the umbrella's direction until you have reached some kind of destination. In this way you will discover where you truly wanted to be. Or else you will get very wet.

When I decided to come to Japan, I had no notion of the place, no credentials or foreseeable method of achieving the goal, no idea why I had made the decision at all, but I was nothing but certain of myself. I bought a camera and a dictionary. The rest, I knew, would come.