Discourse & Dispassion

Sometimes we get away from who we are. From what we are. Sometimes we try to reinvent ourselves, to rub away the rougher edges and clip the Irish pennants. Sometimes we are content. Just as often, we are not. But, as the saying goes, "if wishes were fishes..."

I don't get to pick. I am not given the opportunity to choose. Today I am what I am today. It should say that on my coffee mug. Instead my mug just says Krispy Kreme. In fact, Krispy Kreme looks good on the mug. The green and red add a certain authoritative orderliness to things. And makes the kitchen seem to smell better than it really does.

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Destiny knew the shadows were not her friends. Not that her friends were necessarily her friends, either. But the shadows particularly. So why, then, did they persist? Why should they call out to her when there was such apprehension and mistrust hanging in the warm, damp night air? Slithering silently around the ragamuffin edges, just beyond the lopsided cone of dim, yellowish light falling halfheartedly from the lone streetlamp. The lone, forgotten streetlamp. The one that trusted the shadows no more than she. The shadows called. The evening sighed. Destiny resisted.

How does it come to this? One does not normally seek the murk over the light, the slippery over the concrete. There must, then, be some truth to the notion that, regardless of our best intentions, in spite of our most fevered prayers and intonations, life happens. Unguided, unprincipled, unrelenting. You sit there, and life happens. You seek cover, it happens. You set into motion great plans and machinations, and life could not care one bit less. No, try as you may to escape it, life...just...happens. Still, Destiny resisted.

Destiny did not see herself as a fighter. She was not born into great struggle nor prone to resistance. She could claim no defiant high ground in any instance, great or small. High school consisted of the right jeans, shoes that accented appropriately, and homework assignments that, while not particularly inspired, were consistently turned in on time. College as a precursor to normality, a job upon graduation that paid the bills while providing a surface distraction, and little else. Adventure? You could fit it on a post card. Excitement? Yeah, just gimmee a minute. Life happens. Destiny resisted.

I have never met Destiny. The paths of the luckless are winding and ill defined. Often crossing, but seldom intersecting. However, I understand her. Or more correctly, I understand about her. Her shadows call, mine close in. Her roads have been unlighted, mine unilluminated. She resists, I fight blindly. We know who we want to be, we all do. Just as surely as we know who we are not. Who we want to be and who we are not; well, I am far from a scholar, but from where I stand, here on the periphery, who we would be and who we are not. That's who we are. Destiny knows this. Destiny resists.

Don't forget where you belong, out
Ramblin' Ed

"Stories interest me more than beliefs. I'd rather hear you regale me with tales of your travels than listen to you regale me with your dogmas." - Evelyn Rodriguez