fate and why she wants to kick me in the ankle

bunnyface, the way
you say "waterfire" makes my
heart go all puffy.




happy happy birthday to my very best beloved little white rabbit. may you be livin' large tonight no matter how old you are, rolling in bootylicious babes and high-class whiskey, flopping like a fish in a big ol' puddle of love. and may your girl, however far away she is and however much i hate her and wish you would trade up, have nothing but you on her mind.

i have this problem where i can't stop believing in fate. it's a problem because i can't make up my mind as to precisely what i believe about it. mostly i think of fate as a sort of suffragette faerie godmother, you know, she has what's best for you in the back of her pick-up, but she's not going to give it to you until you walk over to the car, that sort of thing. you definitely have to think pretty hard about everything you do and make what you genuinely believe is the only right decision. she's not out to get you, she just wants to know that you're willing to step up.

and mostly she takes pretty good care of me. but after a while it makes me nervous, you know, too many things that just seem to have lined themselves up all pretty and perfect, and i guess i start looking for a way to assert the smidgen of authority that i still insist on having, which usually leads directly to my fucking everything all up. i know exactly where i need to be at such and such a time for everything i'll ever be to fall plop into my waiting lap--and then i go somewhere else. and now every time i watch the princess and the warrior i spend two days choking down bitterness like a handful of slow-melting tylenol nestled under my tongue, because i know that that could have been my story if only i'd been stronger, if only i hadn't wavered.... as it is, i merely spend the better part of my waking hours wanting to fall eye-first onto a sharp corner.

oh well. my error, my collection of errors, and so i carry them. you would think that with it being a belief system that i developed on my own i wouldn't balk at it so frequently. i can explain to my satisfaction a vast number of happenings, but my own behavior is not yet one of them.

there are people who believe vehemently that there is a space they are meant to occupy, and there are people who just try to settle comfortably into whatever space they find themselves in. i can't decide which method is best when you're talking about the resulting general state of mind. what if you find yourself suddenly sitting in that ideal space and then realize that it happens to be somebody else's sofa, and they're kind of hinting that maybe you should start thinking about getting up off of it? what if you learn how to be content with whatever comes and that prevents you from pursuing some exquisite, incomparable bliss that could have easily been yours? i say to myself all the time that your life can't help but come together if you put your faith in what you feel, your reactions to things, the tiny changes in you that only you can perceive. but in order for that to be a consistently guiding force you have to find a way to make sure the changes occur in some place not tainted by conscious thought while still being aware enough of them in real time to be able to consciously analyze them. this, i believe, requires that you achieve a near-total state of zen existentialism, and the current state of society makes that a laughably implausible goal. but what, then, deny all your impressions, shrug them off as miniature delusions, tricks of the light? and how do you not forever wonder what might have been different if...

damned if i know. and i can't understand why it tends to be easier for me to believe that i cheated myself out of my own blue heaven than to think i was wrong about it being mine in the first place. i would sleep better, i think, i would sleep more, if i could bend the other way.

but i can't. so maybe that's the proof beginning and end. and if it's not, i'll see it at least as a hint. it's an inexplicable comfort to think of fate standing off in a corner somewhere shaking her head and calling me a ninny under her breath. at least she knows i start out with good intentions.

i really am trying, i promise i am.

don't forget me.