YOUR FUTURE
Tell me. Do you know of a fortune telling scheme which depends on reading wood grain? Is there such a specialized school of skulduggery?
There must be. Certainly, after all these years of looking at the unending variety of grains in wooden surfaces, mankind must have found that he could see pictures, figures, demons, signs and omens of all sorts therein - in every convoluted whorl, every tangled twist and turn, jiggle or flaw - something to be used to reveal what is about to happen for someone who wants to believe it can do so and who has a few loose dollars handy.
Right now in relatively down times, when employed and income are critical and old jobs are being modified, mutated or shipped overseas, might be as good as any time too open up a shop, which will, in this case, of course, be called a “studio” where one can give authentic wood grain readings concerning the future - for a fee. A few discarded boards from the local lumber yard and you are in business! Every squiggle, properly interpreted by skillful spokesmen, can help keep the shekels pouring to the family coffers, and I don' t think you will have much trouble building a vocabulary and script which clients will accept and believe. After all, they still fall for the tea leaf, glass ball and cards routines, and this one is so closely identified with everyone. From that moment on, they can even read their own futures in any piece of polished wood every time they see a piece of wood - a table, chair, bench,. bar, bar stool, bedstead or old, wooden nickels
Arthur Brisbane, who used to write a page of market prognostications quite successfully for the old Hearst newspapers has been quoted as having said, when asked how he predicted the markets so accurately, that he had only one rule. When the market was up he warned people they were going down, when the prices were down, he rejoiced with them on the theme of prices going upward! People felt he was never wrong. That' s a firm foundation and the sort of thing you can build with a good wood-grain counseling service. You too, can be a sharp market voice in wood futures.
Start right away. Open your modest “studio” in a rapid-traffic area. Offer readings in pine, oak, cherry, walnut , mahogany and oriental teak specialties, if you wish, but get started soon. Make this the wave of your future! Then, when business is booming... and then, a short time later, when doing such readings demands too much your valuable time, franchise the whole thing worldwide and exile yourself to luxuries on the tropical island of your fortune teller's choice!
The desktop before me, as I type, has an interesting grain – a large, lake-like pattern of wavy ovals, washing outward in concentric circles, as if I had taken your suggestion that I was to go jump in the very center of the lake!
A. L.M. March 22, 2003 [c513wds]
