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Jan. 27th, 2008 03:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tylikI don't believe in destiny.
I'm trying to pull together a lot of distinct but related things for this post, but maybe that's the best place to start. I don't think there's a single future. I don't think anyone is planning it all out for us -- even in a fault tolerant 'some of us might not go along with the plans' sort of way, where there are a lot of futures. I don't believe in past lives, either, but I'll get back to that in a little bit.
I do believe, to the extent I believe in anything, in ripples, patterns, and currents. Everything touches on everything else. There isn't some kind of dead space around us, where we can do different things without it making other changes. And everything around us pushes against us, shaping us, shaping the stuff we do. We decide, everyone decides, and things happen, but those things are some kind of integral over everything, decisions, chance, the whole bit. Sometimes you're caught up in a current. If it's going in a direction you like, you can ride it, and take advantage of that momentum. Or you can swim upstream, which can really suck if it's a strong current, because really, we're pretty small and all kinds of things are bigger than we are. Sometimes swimming upstream just means that you get carried along with that current infinitesimally more slowly than you would have had you been riding it. Oh, and always looking backwards, rather than forwards. Some people live their whole lives like that. Current or no current.
Maybe sometimes you can just kind of step aside, get out of traffic, and let things go on without you. Oh, hey, that one kind of helps me tell this story. That's kind of what I thought I was doing when I moved away from Seattle. Not just getting out of traffic, more like getting off of one road, and out of one set of interactions, and heading down a different route. Because I was starting to think I could see all the currents converging, or something like that. All these forces coming together, and if I wasn't careful I was going to end up smack in the middle of it, and while I've never really wanted not to live in interesting times, that kind of convergence scares me. If there are patterns, and currents then there should also be navigation, right?
I'm being vague, aren't I? Part of it is that I absolutely hate to sound like some kind of New Age flake. And part of it is that I don't talk about this kind of stuff much, so I mostly just have my own internal shorthand, not a proper vocabulary for talking to other people. Do you ever just get hit by a random sense of significance? I mean, like you are sitting in your optometrist's office, reading an article about, I don't know, maybe the textile trade in Bali, and you suddenly just know that something about this is going to have a lasting impact on your life. Maybe you're company will send you to Bali. Maybe you'll meet someone at a party from Bali, and they'll be important. Maybe it will turn out that it's the perfect case study for the sociology dissertation that's been languishing ever since you got a real job. Whatever. What I mean is the knowing. Don't get me wrong. I don't believe in this stuff. I just try to navigate it, y'know?
It's when the significant things start to stack that I really start paying attention. Like, first you read about something that is just way too cool, and figure you have to find out more about it. It calls to you, though at first in a nice, straightforward sort of way. And then when you do, it turns out that there are people in the city where you live who are working on it, and it's one of the few places in the world where you can actually get involved. And so you meet them, and not only do you get along, it's like you're meeting a bunch of old best friends, people who you should almost be able to remember. And maybe other random things about your life turn out to fill in holes in what they're doing, too. You get the idea?
That's kind of part of the reason I don't believe in past lives. I mean, aside from the generally not bothering to believe in much of anything. My whole life I've seen things. More often than not not particularly useful things - I'll be grumbling to myself about the cold and wishing I brought along a hat, and then suddenly I'll remember walking up a rocky dirt path in that wet but not quite frozen kind of weather, that awful kind of cold rain that is worse than any kind of snow I've run into, with my hands shoved into the sleeves of a ragged old sweater and my nobbly socks soaked through my shoes, hoping that the sheep weren't much more interested in wandering than I am and... And nothing, really. Is it a memory? Is it my memory? Not this body, I'm pretty sure. Is it something that I just kind of read as it drifted by? This has been my whole life, you have to understand. Sometimes they made sense. Sometimes I even remembered things before they happened (which is also generally a lot less useful than it's cracked up to be, but not entirely useless). But once I got past that angsty period in my teens I decided that I was more interested in having a life than in chasing after shadows. I don't ignore them, that would just be stupid. But I try not to obsess.
So anyhow, I met this group of people... yeah, that was a not-so-random example, except that I really can't tell you the details. (Nothing whatsoever to do with textiles or Bali, at least as far as I know, though.) And it's scary when you meet someone who is old enough to be your parent and yet occasionally something looks out of your eyes at them as they were when they were a child, and loves them and wants to gently scold them for their mistakes and then kiss their hurts and make them better. Not all bad-scary, of course. Scary, though, and confusing. And sometimes, talking about history, you'll remember beings somewhere you've never been, and spending years of your (their?) life dreaming about being somewhere else you've never been, and that was when they were pretty young, and I don't remember any of the rest so it's not like I know if they ever got there. If they exist anywhere outside of my mind. The library, though, with the centuries of manuscripts in the shadowed rooms and outside the light through the windows... I don't ask myself any more if its real. Not unless I can think of some useful way of testing it, y'know? Some people think I went into science to get away from this all, but that's really not it. It's not like studying O Chem keeps the ghosts away. It just helps me hold on to a kind of compass.
Anyhow, so I met these people and then I ran away. It's not like I knew what was coming. It's not like I knew if what I was seeing was specific to my role, so that it would fall apart and scatter if I left, or if I was seeing something bigger than me that would sweep me along if I didn't get out of the way. Or sweep me along anyway. Leaving wasn't, isn't, supposed to be forever, either. But it was getting so full, so tight in Seattle, and when I left it was like I could breathe again.
And then the bad stuff happened. And this is completely not making sense, except to a few of you, and I'm sorry, but if I can't tell you about the rest of it, then I really, really can't tell you the details about this. Part of me isn't surprised. And part of me thinks that I should have stayed, kind of a survivor guilt, I guess, though no one is dead yet. (But I wonder if that's where it has to go? Can this be mended without that? I would volunteer, even, if that would really fix it, but I'm pretty sure that's not a part I get to choose.)
And it's not over yet. It's just not. I don't know if things will continue to spiral outward, until I too am pulled under, or if maybe I'll be caught in the next wave, spiralling back in. Somedays, I wonder if part of the pattern of leaving means that I get to help put things back together, and be part of What Comes Next. Which sounds kind of cheerful, but it's scary too. Trust me on that one.
I'm sorry. Sorry to those of you for whom this isn't going to make any sense, and many times more sorry for the few of you to whom it might, if you're reading this. Sorry I'm not there. Sorry I'm not implicated, but safely and blamelessly (ha!) living out in the midwest. I can't say it had to be this way. I made choices. I didn't know what they meant, but I'm pretty sure I could've made different choices. If everything were completely different, then everything would be completely different, right?
I don't know what is coming. It's not that kind of useful, really -- I can do timing, sometimes, or get a sense of which way to turn, what things to pay attention to. (Maybe. I'm not ruling out delusion, mind.) Even if I end up back in the middle of things, I don't know if I'll be riding the current, or just another leaf, carried along. But it's not done with me, and I'm not done with you.
And I love you. Those who are hurt and those who have done harm, and maybe most particularly those who are both. Which I think is all of us, in the long run. I love you all.
I'm trying to pull together a lot of distinct but related things for this post, but maybe that's the best place to start. I don't think there's a single future. I don't think anyone is planning it all out for us -- even in a fault tolerant 'some of us might not go along with the plans' sort of way, where there are a lot of futures. I don't believe in past lives, either, but I'll get back to that in a little bit.
I do believe, to the extent I believe in anything, in ripples, patterns, and currents. Everything touches on everything else. There isn't some kind of dead space around us, where we can do different things without it making other changes. And everything around us pushes against us, shaping us, shaping the stuff we do. We decide, everyone decides, and things happen, but those things are some kind of integral over everything, decisions, chance, the whole bit. Sometimes you're caught up in a current. If it's going in a direction you like, you can ride it, and take advantage of that momentum. Or you can swim upstream, which can really suck if it's a strong current, because really, we're pretty small and all kinds of things are bigger than we are. Sometimes swimming upstream just means that you get carried along with that current infinitesimally more slowly than you would have had you been riding it. Oh, and always looking backwards, rather than forwards. Some people live their whole lives like that. Current or no current.
Maybe sometimes you can just kind of step aside, get out of traffic, and let things go on without you. Oh, hey, that one kind of helps me tell this story. That's kind of what I thought I was doing when I moved away from Seattle. Not just getting out of traffic, more like getting off of one road, and out of one set of interactions, and heading down a different route. Because I was starting to think I could see all the currents converging, or something like that. All these forces coming together, and if I wasn't careful I was going to end up smack in the middle of it, and while I've never really wanted not to live in interesting times, that kind of convergence scares me. If there are patterns, and currents then there should also be navigation, right?
I'm being vague, aren't I? Part of it is that I absolutely hate to sound like some kind of New Age flake. And part of it is that I don't talk about this kind of stuff much, so I mostly just have my own internal shorthand, not a proper vocabulary for talking to other people. Do you ever just get hit by a random sense of significance? I mean, like you are sitting in your optometrist's office, reading an article about, I don't know, maybe the textile trade in Bali, and you suddenly just know that something about this is going to have a lasting impact on your life. Maybe you're company will send you to Bali. Maybe you'll meet someone at a party from Bali, and they'll be important. Maybe it will turn out that it's the perfect case study for the sociology dissertation that's been languishing ever since you got a real job. Whatever. What I mean is the knowing. Don't get me wrong. I don't believe in this stuff. I just try to navigate it, y'know?
It's when the significant things start to stack that I really start paying attention. Like, first you read about something that is just way too cool, and figure you have to find out more about it. It calls to you, though at first in a nice, straightforward sort of way. And then when you do, it turns out that there are people in the city where you live who are working on it, and it's one of the few places in the world where you can actually get involved. And so you meet them, and not only do you get along, it's like you're meeting a bunch of old best friends, people who you should almost be able to remember. And maybe other random things about your life turn out to fill in holes in what they're doing, too. You get the idea?
That's kind of part of the reason I don't believe in past lives. I mean, aside from the generally not bothering to believe in much of anything. My whole life I've seen things. More often than not not particularly useful things - I'll be grumbling to myself about the cold and wishing I brought along a hat, and then suddenly I'll remember walking up a rocky dirt path in that wet but not quite frozen kind of weather, that awful kind of cold rain that is worse than any kind of snow I've run into, with my hands shoved into the sleeves of a ragged old sweater and my nobbly socks soaked through my shoes, hoping that the sheep weren't much more interested in wandering than I am and... And nothing, really. Is it a memory? Is it my memory? Not this body, I'm pretty sure. Is it something that I just kind of read as it drifted by? This has been my whole life, you have to understand. Sometimes they made sense. Sometimes I even remembered things before they happened (which is also generally a lot less useful than it's cracked up to be, but not entirely useless). But once I got past that angsty period in my teens I decided that I was more interested in having a life than in chasing after shadows. I don't ignore them, that would just be stupid. But I try not to obsess.
So anyhow, I met this group of people... yeah, that was a not-so-random example, except that I really can't tell you the details. (Nothing whatsoever to do with textiles or Bali, at least as far as I know, though.) And it's scary when you meet someone who is old enough to be your parent and yet occasionally something looks out of your eyes at them as they were when they were a child, and loves them and wants to gently scold them for their mistakes and then kiss their hurts and make them better. Not all bad-scary, of course. Scary, though, and confusing. And sometimes, talking about history, you'll remember beings somewhere you've never been, and spending years of your (their?) life dreaming about being somewhere else you've never been, and that was when they were pretty young, and I don't remember any of the rest so it's not like I know if they ever got there. If they exist anywhere outside of my mind. The library, though, with the centuries of manuscripts in the shadowed rooms and outside the light through the windows... I don't ask myself any more if its real. Not unless I can think of some useful way of testing it, y'know? Some people think I went into science to get away from this all, but that's really not it. It's not like studying O Chem keeps the ghosts away. It just helps me hold on to a kind of compass.
Anyhow, so I met these people and then I ran away. It's not like I knew what was coming. It's not like I knew if what I was seeing was specific to my role, so that it would fall apart and scatter if I left, or if I was seeing something bigger than me that would sweep me along if I didn't get out of the way. Or sweep me along anyway. Leaving wasn't, isn't, supposed to be forever, either. But it was getting so full, so tight in Seattle, and when I left it was like I could breathe again.
And then the bad stuff happened. And this is completely not making sense, except to a few of you, and I'm sorry, but if I can't tell you about the rest of it, then I really, really can't tell you the details about this. Part of me isn't surprised. And part of me thinks that I should have stayed, kind of a survivor guilt, I guess, though no one is dead yet. (But I wonder if that's where it has to go? Can this be mended without that? I would volunteer, even, if that would really fix it, but I'm pretty sure that's not a part I get to choose.)
And it's not over yet. It's just not. I don't know if things will continue to spiral outward, until I too am pulled under, or if maybe I'll be caught in the next wave, spiralling back in. Somedays, I wonder if part of the pattern of leaving means that I get to help put things back together, and be part of What Comes Next. Which sounds kind of cheerful, but it's scary too. Trust me on that one.
I'm sorry. Sorry to those of you for whom this isn't going to make any sense, and many times more sorry for the few of you to whom it might, if you're reading this. Sorry I'm not there. Sorry I'm not implicated, but safely and blamelessly (ha!) living out in the midwest. I can't say it had to be this way. I made choices. I didn't know what they meant, but I'm pretty sure I could've made different choices. If everything were completely different, then everything would be completely different, right?
I don't know what is coming. It's not that kind of useful, really -- I can do timing, sometimes, or get a sense of which way to turn, what things to pay attention to. (Maybe. I'm not ruling out delusion, mind.) Even if I end up back in the middle of things, I don't know if I'll be riding the current, or just another leaf, carried along. But it's not done with me, and I'm not done with you.
And I love you. Those who are hurt and those who have done harm, and maybe most particularly those who are both. Which I think is all of us, in the long run. I love you all.
