Fate, Karma and/or the hand of God

I was driving to work yesterday morning, which is not an unusual thing. The route I take involves making a left turn onto a side street, also not an unusual thing. This particular morning, I had come to the intersection and was ready to make a left. This was a four-way intersection, in this case with an oncoming car, a white SUV. Coming up to the intersection, I looked and saw that I had plenty of time to go through the intersection before the SUV came too close to make the turn safe. The kind of thing most of us do a thousand times and don't give it a second thought. So I went through the intersection, and nothing happened. The SUV continued towards the intersection, and I headed down the side street towards the parking lot I use. However, there was a car behind me, a tan Honda coupe of some type. By the time I had made the turn, the SUV was far too close for a car to cross in front of it. Yet the Honda behind me went anyway. I found this out first by the screech, horns and crunching sound behind me. Oh crap, I thought, a car crash. The Honda had pretty much the entire front end torn off. The SUV had hit it at an angle and apparently slid off sideways- the result was that it rolled over and was now lying on the roof. None of this happened to me- I was completely unaffected by the accident, but stopped and called the police. Luckily, a fire truck was only a block or so away. I know I didn't cause that accident; I could not possibly have made the driver of that Honda try to get through the intersection. But still, if I had left for work earlier or later that morning, things would have been different. One event led to everything that happened afterwards. But then, logically, everything else that anyone else did or did not do that morning also affected the outcome. It's the Butterfly Effect- a butterfly flaps its wings in Peking and the result is a hurricane in Florida. The butterfly could not have known all the consequences of its actions. And for every butterfly that did flap its wings, there might just as easily have been a butterfly that did not. No one event, I think, determines an outcome, but that same one event can tip the outcome one way or the other. I found there is really no such thing as pure chaos, but rather a web of complexity. However, this web is so dense and interrelated, no man or machine has the sheer calculating power to sort it out beyond a few moments in time in any real-world application.

The Salesman, Part 1

Born to be a

god among salesman

working the skinny tie

Got to

drag myself back to Now

Door to door

the world unreal in neutrality,

endless green Dodge on

the freeways of 1950's midwest-

Nationwide he rolls, five AM

over black ribbon shining,

How far until the

next city, next gas station, the

Next Big Score? The

Space Age lurches forward

But the next day...

"Frop" refers to the hallucinogenic substance that popular cult icon J.R. "Bob" Dobbs smokes in his pipe. Refer to www.subgenius.com for the complete origins of "Bob" and the Sub Geniuses. These people are not normal, but you have to admire the level of commitment involved here. These folks really do seem serious. Plus, good for a few laughs.
In other news, we finally managed to close on the house in Enfield, and are in the laborious process of painting and cleaning. My dear wife, bless her, has a few days off, and along with her sister was over there all day cleaning. I was at work dealing with the usual Friday afternoon circus. I'd rather be cleaning. When you clean up one mess, it doesn't turn into twelve more. But life goes on, does it not? Considering the fact that I'm where I am, it still surprises me. I know only I am responsible for the decisions I make, the good and the bad, but when I think about all the years, it's really pretty amazing. So many things have happened, and so many more are no doubt going to happen.

In the Old Pub

She smiled, a

quick dark feral grin

A nimbus of darkness seemed to cling

around the

shoulder-length black hair,

eyes green as

the sea,

lips that could just as

easily be red with blood-

No longer noticing

how the seats next to me

are empty-

Perhaps they

were afraid I would eat them

"Your brother

mentioned it to me;

He thinks our

families may have been...

intertwined

many years ago.

I offered to

buy her a drink

Before I even

Knew her name

The Enormous Hammer of Skull-Splitting Mirth

Well, it looks like everything worked out in the end- we'll be closing on a house in Enfield at the middle of this month, and I'll get to work painting and cleaning the place up. We're all set with everything except the mortgage company's appraisal, but that shouldn't be a big deal. In other world news, things go on pretty much as they always have. It's going to be a breath of fresh air to do work on the house, as my job requires lots of mental work, but not a lot of getting up and moving around, which tends to be a grind. But that's better than not working- did that too at one point- the hours were good, but the pay was lousy.
I just came across an interesting quote from Henry Rollins, the crazy-looking brick outhouse of a performance artist, also lead man for Black Flag and the Rollins band- I'm a big fan of both-
"The average is the borderline that keeps mere men in their place. Those who step over the line are heroes by the very act. Go."
Though I'm not sure I agree 100%, I think to a large extent he's right. You can go in two directions, but we can try to go beyond and do more. It's inspiring to think that the potential for greatness exists in all of us, even though I'll admit that I don't always use all eight cylinders in day to day life. But there is always that kind of highest ideal for me- thinking Man, guided by reason and compassion, building the world he wants around him.

Bodhidharma's Twilight Crossing- Zen Poem #8

There hangs a

bamboo moon over the

mountains- they say

Old Man Bodhidharma came

from India to China

on

the back of a tiger- silent

Illumination, royal and stately progress neither

hurried nor slow,

though

they appear to exist, they

are empty, the

Sages laugh-

At us, at you, at me; let's

laugh together- no holiness,

No "I have no idea!"

when faced with the world.