Word: psychics
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Getting off the elevator on the sixth floor, I followed the scent of incense around the corner and discovered that I was at the right apartment. Pausing a bit to gather myself--after all, it was not every day that I visited a psychic fair--I tiptoed nervously down the hall and entered a sunlit living room where several very normal-looking people were standing around dressed in very normal-looking clothing...
...middle-aged woman with a crystal hanging around her neck politely asked me to look around and let her know if I wanted to sign up for a psychic reading. For only $12, I could have my aura read and my fortune told. I hesitated for a moment and a man from behind me spoke up to ask for a reading. I turned to see a Schwarznegger look-alike decked out in Adidas gym gear with a walkman on his hip asking if he could have a reading done...
...kidding," I thought. He looked like he had just finished his daily lift at the gym and was on his way home to a pasta dinner. I decided that if he could do it, I certainly could. I stepped up after him and chose a psychic reader named Steve from a collage of hand-drawn posters advertising each reader's special focus...
Hearsay can bring psychic benefits to speaker and listener alike. A case in point is the false teacup story about President Nixon, which Kapferer says was spread by the official Chinese press. Instead of challenging the President, so the story goes, authorities arranged to have a performing magician pull the cup out of Nixon's briefcase and replace it with a cheap imitation. Kapferer thinks this rumor offered folk wisdom on how to deal with foreigners. "It showed the essential traits of the image the Chinese have of themselves," he explains, "the final victory of the resourceful Chinese over...
...deep instinct for the urban demotic, with its links to the police blotter, the tabloid and the B movie. With money earned by doing Vogue fashion spreads in France, he made a picture-taking trip to New York in 1954, equipped with both the expatriate's eye for its psychic stresses and the native's complicity in them. Without resorting to the bizarre, he got the profoundly unsettled, the unearthly demeanor of sidewalk crowds, the implacability of children at play...