How did Margaret Atwood know my clothes dryer wasn’t working? There has been much written, in recent months, about Atwood’s “prophetic vision” and her ability to be eerily “prescient.” That’s because her book Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth was published just before the stock market free fall and mortgage meltdowns. (Before that was her timely theme of female suppression in The Handmaid’s Tale, and Oryx and Crake, her dystopian novel that collided with the SARS outbreak.)
Either Atwood was born under a lucky star or she really should be moonlighting from a shady storefront with a sign that says “Palm Readings: $25.”
All this explains why I was so interested in a recent fundraising event. Up for auction was a crystal decanter, which held five predictions for the future, written by none other than . . . Margaret Atwood. I immediately predicted I would be the highest bidder (by predicting I would not spend any money on shoes for the next three months). My prediction was right! I walked away with the decanter!
“Do I have a crystal ball?” Atwood recently asked an interviewer. Her answer was no, but I’m not so sure. After kicking off my high heels (I had predicted that my feet would be swollen by the end of the event. Right again!), I climbed into bed to read her predictions, my heart pounding as if I had just got back my LSAT scores. In my hands, after all, was something no one else had read.
Atwood’s predictions were scrolled up in orange tissue paper and tied prettily together with string inside the decanter. I carefully unravelled the five sheets of paper. “Five Areas Of Prediction,” read the title. What followed was five pages, typed single-spaced. (I worried a little. The pages had the look of crazy stalker letters.)
I read Atwood’s predictions in their entirety, savouring every word. At first, I’ll admit, I was a little disappointed. She started off by saying that for her “five areas of predictions,” she would be sticking to themes relating to energy, laundry, clothing, connections and communications, and health and religion.
Truthfully, I had been hoping more for something along the lines of “You will travel far and wide,” or “You will receive an unexpected surprise”—yes, okay, fortune-cookie kind of predictions. But this was Atwood. Not the delivery man from China House.
Still, Atwood did seem to be on to something. How was it possible, for instance, that she knew my dryer broke down three weeks ago and that, though all my clothes were still getting washed, they were all over my house hanging to dry on towel racks and staircase banisters?
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