To be obsolete
There's a coin-operated fortune teller in the Helsinki train station. It's a big man's face on a white plastic plate fashioned after a Greek oracle. You stick your hand inside its mouth and it'll read your fortune.
It's very dirty and worn out. Every once in a while it spits and crackles a recording trying to entice passers-by to step right up and have their palm read. The voice in the recording is mechanical and is accompanied by a background of soft static.
I've never seen anyone use the fortune teller. Perhaps people are discouraged by the warning that if your intentions are not pure, the oracle will bite your hand off. Or then maybe people just don't want to touch the thing, let alone stick their hands in its mouth.
Sometimes I wonder though. What is it like to forever call out to the thousands of people that walk by every day without even turning their head. Forever promising a glimpse of something that no one believes in any more. To be dirty and worn-out and forgotten. To be invisible. To be obsolete.
---
