Growing up in a small town afforded me many things; safety, close family and friends, and access to nature. What it did not provide was a well-developed world view. Trips to the “big city” were kept on a strict 9-to-5 schedule; either you go with your parents or you take the train in at 9am and then are safely back on board and headed home before sunset.

The new traveller is a timid creature: My first few trips abroad included organized tours or educational excursions. When I finally began to venture out on my own, I had a desperate need to plan every second down to the last detail, and still had a general distrust of foreign places and populations. This continued right up until the moment I strapped on a backpack, bailed out of an academic exchange to the UK, grabbed an adventurous friend and hit the road. Living as nomads we followed the tracks that criss cross the continent and took everyone’s advice at face value.

By the time we got to Budapest I had a deep appreciation for the term “by the seat of your pants”. I was fighting against common sense and what my parents had taught me to do. Some late blooming adolescent rebellion? Perhaps, but eschewing these traditional routes of travel is how we ended up in the palm reader’s den.

• • •

Half a block around the corner and down an alleyway stood the palm reader’s brother’s bookstore. He was a purveyor of the common, popular, hard-to-find, and banned. Basically, if you wanted it, he could provide. He had purchased the space thirty-two years ago and had promptly begun to fill it with books.

“Don’t trust strangers”, we were taught, and definitely don’t follow them down alleyways and into locked bookstores. Yet, with a probable overconfidence the buddy system falsely affords, myself and my backpacking buddy followed this man, a soft spoken street vendor in clothes ten years out-of-date, down the alley and up the two cement steps to the door of his brother’s bookshop.

Stepping into the store, he pulled out two chairs and an overturned milk crate. We sat as he settled himself on the crate and offered his upturned palm to my friend and motioned for her to do the same. Complying, he cradled her hand in his two and met her eyes: “When is your birthday?”

Stop second guessing yourself. You allow too many people to influence your mind after you make a decision.

-the Palm Reader

I don’t - I didn’t - believe in the supernatural or horoscopes or seers. I was even skeptical about chiropractitioners. Rooted in Hinduism and Astrology, palm reading originated and was developed in the far East and had crossed land and time with nomadic people, gypsies, and went against all the logic and reason I had been taught. It’s teachings were essentially word of mouth, passed down through the generations of this man’s family. How could the shape or lines of our hands provide a total stranger insight into our lives and beings? It was feeling a little too Eat, Pray, Love for me. But my friend was at a crossroads in her life and wanted to see what someone else had to say about an uncertain future. I went for the cheap thrill and to say I had gotten my palm read; something bogus but fun, a story.

Taking her right hand in his - a practice we later learned reflects the outer person, the objective self, and deals with the future - the palm reader followed the lines of her hand with his thumb, explaining each detail along the way. After twenty minutes of insight into my friend’s love life, her interactions with others, her fears and dreams of her future, we were decidedly shocked.

He nodded, closed his eyes for a moment and swiveled to face me. I laid my hand in his and realized I had been waiting, palm open, for quite some time. “And when is your birthday?”

“December 23rd”. He nodded and closed his eyes, asking if I had a freckle on my stomach. I nodded, right below my belly button. “This is a manifestation of past indiscretions,” and when I looked at him quizzically he clarified, “from a past life.” He went on to tell me about this past life (a decidedly shocking past filled with wealth and cheating spouses, I won’t say it didn’t thrill me), and then to delve into present.

“Stop second guessing yourself. You allow too many people to influence your mind after you make a decision.”

I nodded sagely. So true.

“You are a planner. So take the time to plan and acknowledge the steps you want to take. But then implement and do it. Tell few people of your plans for life or career. You know what is best for you”.

It is impossible to describe the feeling you get upon leaving an encounter like that. One where all of your past experiences and lessons are screaming for you to find the tell in this man’s system, yet, I left feeling a little confused, changed, and definitely astounded. Was the palm reader actually psychic? Can a fortune ever be truly told? I can’t answer that. What I can say is I left with a feeling that I was doing the right thing. The right thing for me. Selfish - perhaps - but I like to think that, psychic or not, the palm reader’s words will be a self fulfilling prophecy - a reminder to myself of a time when I was living just for me. And that’s a pretty unique moment.