False Documents - Laurie Anderson

A while ago

I went to see a palm reader

And the odd thing about the reading

Was that everything she told me was totally wrong

She said I loved airplanes

That my mother's name was Hillary

And that I'd been born in Seattle

But she seemed so sure of all this information

That I began to feel like I'd been walking around

With these false documents permanently tattooed to my hands

It was very noisy in the parlor

Members of her family kept running in and out

They were speaking a high clicking kind of language

Sounded a lot like Arabic

Lots of books and magazines in Arabic were strewn around

Suddenly it occurred to me

That maybe it was a translation problem

Maybe she was reading my hand right to left

Instead of left to right

So thinking of mirrors

I gave her my other hand

And then she put her hand out

And we sat there for a while

In what I thought was some kind of participatory ritual

Until finally I realized

That her hand was out

Because she was waiting for money