Woke up this morning with dew on my beard and a crow perched on my knee. Always a good omen. Crow means change, unless it means trouble, but I flipped a bottle cap and it landed logo-side up, so change it is.
Did my morning trash fire meditation behind the Shell station. Fire spoke in burps and flickers. I focused on the flame and let my mind empty like a broken vending machine. Clarity washed over me like the smell of hot dogs from a distance. A thought bubbled up: “Harry, it’s time.”
So I took to the alley behind Morty’s Deli and cracked open the Oracle Can — a dented Campbell’s bean can I’ve had since ‘02. Burnished by time, charred at the base. The perfect vessel for insight. I poured in a splash of rainwater, three cigarette butts, and the shell of a peanut I found in a lucky sock last month. Swirled it counter-clockwise and peered in.
The stars said: Find the door that doesn’t belong. Knock once, wait, knock thrice, hum in C-sharp.
I packed up my bindle (Crowley the crow took the high perch), grabbed my walking stick (carved from a mop handle during the 2011 bus strike), and hit the streets. Passed the old bus depot — the bricks there hum with memory. A tune drifted in on the breeze — sounded like Hozier, weirdly — and I followed it, ‘cause the universe hums what it needs you to hear.
By noon I’d knocked on six doors. Got a sandwich at the third and a lecture at the fifth. The seventh wasn’t a door at all, it was a billboard, but I knocked anyway. Sometimes the message comes in misdirection.
Just when I was about to call it and settle in behind the bowling alley (which has excellent Wi-Fi from the donut shop next door), I saw it. A little green door, halfway buried in ivy, with a mailbox that read simply: Welcome. No number. No path. Not even a lock.
Knocked once. Waited. Knocked thrice. Hummed a C-sharp. The door creaked open just enough for the smell of old books and soup to drift out.
Didn’t go in. Not yet. You don’t enter a home when the Can hasn’t confirmed. That’s hobo rule #17.
So tonight I camp beneath the moon, trash fire crackling, Crowley preening on a fence post, and the little green door just a whisper away. Tomorrow, I’ll consult the Can again.
The stars are lining up, I can feel it in my left knee. That’s my weather knee. But tonight, it twitches with destiny.
Stay warm, stay weird,
— Hobo Harry, Seer of the Scraps
P.S. Sagittarius: Don’t ignore the shoelace you find on Tuesday. It ain’t just a shoelace.