I look to the future, and I'm willing to cheat. Though I was raised as rationally as my household's religion would allow, I've long had a fascination with the mystic. The idea that one could divine new truths from carefully scrutinized, seemingly unrelated evidence always seemed perfectly scientific to me, if not actually, y'know, divine. I've always been interested in how to see what is still partially hidden, which (almost by definition) has on occasion led me to examine things occult.

I wasn't shaving yet when first I began to explore the murkier paths. A girlfriend returned from New Orleans with some tourist-grade fortunetelling cards. For some reason she ceded them to me, and started asking me questions. (We were that young - she was willing to believe I could do anything.)

Can't recall the specifics of what happened then, but they were freaky lucky, and soon she was telling her friends, and then I was telling for them. I recall examining cards as they fell wrongly, looking into one of the friends' deep brown eyes, and telling her with every sincerity that she would "get what she wanted, but not exactly the way she wanted it." (Again: we were that young.) Within hours, she tracked me down, with a twenty minute speech about how true it all was, and how she was so glad she'd been prepared. Well hell, I thought, being young: let's have a longer look at this sort of thing.

Astrology, I believe, was next. It was rather cumbersome at the time - charts, tables, plotting points, all with pencil and paper. I stuck with that long enough to see how many planets I had piled up together in Scorpio, realize what an astounding indication this (and everything else) was of incompatibility with the aforementioned girlfriend, and moved the hell on to the next thing. All and all, it was accurate enough.

Graphology, I think, was always best to me. First, the detailed analysis of pen strokes my senior year of high school was vital in learning to sign my own hall passes. Also, my favorite teacher took an interest, and allowed me to bend her ear with details for hours, even securing writing samples for me. I remember only one line of my snap analysis: "This person is either drastically depressed or left handed." Slant of the words, of course, but she laughed hysterically for some time. The sample turned out to have been from my previous year's English teacher... so yeah, maybe both.

It was some time before I realized that I always got the best results with all these predictive techniques when a woman was involved, and began developing theories as to why. Things along the lines of incentives, motivations, attunement to cues and likelihoods... I dunno. I do know, for example, that the lady who responded to my over-the-shoulder critique of her signature with a full analysis of my own was the liveliest bar conversation I'd had in years. There's just an energy there, something about speaking with meaning, truth, and beauty to a woman. If ever I will be at my best, that's the time.

I still occasionally research these things, when nights are long and cold. I may, through these researches, have finally turned up the ideal medium for my future efforts. I say this having reflected on all these years, all these divinations that have brought light to things concealed, all the reasons why it works in the way that it works. I am resolved to study this field, ancient yet new to me, as opportunity and inclinations permit. It just feels good to me, just feels right.

Rumpology, I think, has always been the ultimate end of my efforts.