I went to a bookstore today. I looked around and then eventually asked if they had the two latest Firefly books. The cute hippie-adjacent girl said they didn't have anything by the author, and then said, “You know, if it's meant to be, it'll be.” She smiled, and settled back into her, what I take to be generally chill life and work task at hand. Of course, as pleasurable a sentiment as I'm sure that is for her own life, I'm moved to disagree. Before she offered that sentiment, she said they could order it if I wanted. I'd also bet that she's heard of Amazon. I also already have the books on Kindle.
Nothing, to me, is “meant to be.” The essence of the drama and perpetual confusion in life is that things are indefinite and indeterminate. We're watching. We're watching our favorite shows, and watching the stories play out in our books. We're fictionalizing our past and present in order to cope and move past and generate “Hang in there baby!” sentiments to usher later generations along. You weren't meant to find your spouse or have your kids. You weren't meant to find a lost kitten and nurse it back to health. It wasn't written in the clouds that I was to walk out of that bookstore without hard copies.
If it was, “responsibility” wouldn't be a thing. “Justice” would be a laughable notion. “Progress” would be impossible. That is to say, all of that could also be true, and I'm flatly upside down on your God's vision for us all. Fine, but then the conversation's over, you don't get to lament either of us ending up in hell, and you've without irony robbed your savior of the reason to forgive people. That things aren't meant to be is what makes them special and worth fighting for. That things could go in more directions than you could imagine is why we continue to watch familiar themes in different worlds. Even if it's an old joke to consider which Game of Thrones characters are going to die anymore, you still don't know. Even if I know which Firefly characters have died, I still don't know what's in store for who's left.
What you don't know is what keeps you going. The fork interaction where someone you meet wisps you away. The state you find yourself in after enough new or difficult experiences. I was reading old blogs. So much of myself is still right here in what I wrote 7 or more years ago. I'm still hashing the same fights, carrying the same stress, still befuddled beyond befuddlement at how so much could go so wrong, while I otherwise seem to enjoy a regal, albeit with the loneliness of a king, life. I don't know what tomorrow brings. I don't know when I'll find myself no longer clenching my jaw. I don't know how quickly things can shift to dramatically worse or better. A car swerved into my lane today as I was coming back from the land. The driver completely ran me off the road in order for me to avoid getting hit. Her, teary-eyed and shaking, I catch up with 30 yards up the road and learn it stalled and she lost control, my initial anger immediately quashed.
It happens that quickly. That's the kind of danger and death scenarios always at play in my head. That's how I stopped getting “shocked” when one of my favorite characters dies. We're already dead. We're already living the high-stakes shootout depicted a thousand times. We're screaming out our battle cry with every painful experience and doubt, and defying the gods by continuing to exist. When you invest yourself and your experience that dramatically, you can let everyone die around you, because the larger war with death is here.
I almost got it perfectly wrong the other night. I thought I was going to write my first blog from the land, annoyed that I couldn't get moving as fast as I wanted in dropping off my TVs. I wanted to arrange and pay out the ass to do something “unnecessarily now.” And I wanted to take the indifferent posture of those around me as a deep hatred for me. I forget that it's never really personal. However selfish and insistent I think I might be, I'll never compare to the world around me. My battle, my story, has to remain that. My war is how I'm killing myself.
For all of my words over the years, it occurred to me that I've never invented one. Everything about “me” is a collection of things, abstracts, grunts and sounds handed down to me. What if I didn't have language? Who would I think I was? What if every single “why” had to manifest as a course of action in the world to find out the result? It's a trippy place to consider. How many horrible words could you use to beat yourself up with if you didn't know them? How meaningful would your relationships register if you didn't have the story superimposed over what they felt, or didn't feel, like? What direction would you head if north, west, east, and south were as arbitrary a path as how you experience wind?
The warriors would excite you. The bold and beautiful would put you under a spell. The dedicated and reliable you'd put yourself near. The curious would show you where to look. The fearful you'd try to protect and comfort. It's as simple as the envy we hold for pets in their singular focus or expectations. I create a story along the direction I want to go. Whether it's as brilliant as a classic, or perfunctory as the CW, I'm going to attract or repel the cast best suited for the narrative. This fire-breathing dragon needs to keep incinerating the dead.
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