Velvet Verbosity

Every day we wake up with our head in a probability cloud.  There are so many probabilities in just one day that we spend lifetimes trying to decode the best methods for choosing from an infinite array of choices.  Every choice we make collapses the probability cloud.  Remember that game show where people had to choose from one of three doors?  Remember the way contestants would agonize over their choice?  What if they chose the wrong door and lost.  Life, as some perceive it, is like that game show writ large.  Every moment becomes a choice to wring their hands over and every choice made only makes them wonder if another door would have had a better prize.  The doors available are infinite, but once you open one and walk through it, all the others disappear and are lost to you forever.  Of course, the flip side is that each door opened and walked through collapses the probability cloud behind you, but immediately presents you with a fresh one.

Every person approaches this “life as a game show” differently.  There are those who become paralyzed and never make a choice for fear of losing something.  They lose anyway.  There are those who try to break the code through religion, morality, philosophy, science, popularity, or transcendence.  It is their belief that if only they break the code, they will always choose the best door, and then the best door after that, and so on, and their lives will be an endless stepping through to pleasure, happiness, and freedom from any and all unpleasantries.  Then there are those who say, “F**k it, I’m going to win some, I’m going to lose some”, and they don’t waste any time making their choices.

Whose right?  How can we ever know when our choices are the best choices?  How can we reconcile the doors we lose?  I don’t know.  I can’t know.  So I say, “F**k it, I’m going to win some, I’m going to lose some.”   Today I woke up with my head in a cloud…a probability cloud.  Let’s see what’s behind door number one.

Hi Internet, I’m almost back.  I’m going to try to post this evening so come back soon!

Internet, I’m too swamped with broken bones and all the appointments so the 100 Words Challenge and posting will resume next week.  Stay tuned.

On the fly, but I know you’re out there waiting.  This week’s challenge is:

Openings 

Be back later with more!

Munich - Mid-day

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I’m going to apply to Bennington College for the low residency MFA in writing. Oh, I feel free!

Titanic was on television this afternoon. I don’t watch much television, but I curled up under some blankets (4 to be exact), and watched it from beginning to end, complete with annoying commercials.

Hollywood flicks just aren’t usually my bag, but sometimes, sometimes I just like the sheer enormity of these movies. And I respect Kate Winslet. And, if I’m going to watch a movie about an epic historical event, I want to be overwhelmed and swept away and sucked in.

Anyway, point is, I cry every derned time I see this movie, imagining the panic setting in and the internal struggle each person must have gone through to choose between helping others and helping themselves. Then the scene where some of the passengers just accept that they’re going to die, and they try to face it with calm and dignity. Oh, that elderly couple clutching each other in bed…makes me weep. The many many images of the water rising, and thinking about dying by drowning and how that’s right up there in the top three of “ways I don’t want to die”.

*Sniffle*

For the record, I do NOT cry over romantic comedies…ever.

This first morning of 2007 I was met with not one single new email. I thought it strange and made sure my account was working properly. After several different types of tests, I have determined that Smith had me on an automatic shut off schedule. I no longer have a Smith College email address. Woe is me.

It’s not even the hassle of setting up a new email, or sending out one gigantic bulk email to everyone with a new address that has me upset. It’s the change. It is the passing of something entirely symbolic of a time in my life that is now over.

Those who know me might mistakenly think that I am a woman who embraces, and perhaps even covets change. A quick inventory of my life would reveal many moves, many risks taken, many new paths courageously forged and a seeming willingness to leap over the edge again and again.

It is partly true. I have never been afflicted with that condition known as “fear of change”. At least not on the level that it prevents me from making new plans, or uprooting my life and everything I know in order to pursue a goal. But the whole truth is that once I am done riding the wave of change, and find myself washed up on a new shore, I lay there shivering and moaning for days. I have to grieve what is past, and I feel the need to grieve fully over every path ended.

And so, this morning when the realization hit me that I had actually been finally and completely severed from Smith as a current student, I felt the grief rise up from my belly and wrap itself loosely around my throat. I expect three days of brooding, brow-furrowing type behavior from myself before I can get both feet fully onto the next path. I wonder if I was moody and pensive in those first days after the exodus from the womb?

(Oil painting “Letting Go” by Rebecca Gottesman, can be found here)

When did America forget how to spell? I am amazed at the number of semi-professional websites out there with spelling errors in almost every sentence. Last night, after browsing a designer’s website and feeling pretty inspired and somewhat intimidated, I went to his “ideas” page. Three paragraphs chock full of spelling errors. Some that could be dismissed as typos, but others were just downright embarrassing! I felt compelled to contact him and beg him to fix the errors that, for me, detracted so strongly from any idea of professionalism I might have at first respected him for. His artistic work was pure genius!

My own children seem to think spelling is for nerds and old people (like myself apparently). In the age of internet communication, who needs correct spelling? That’s their philosophy, and sadly it echos through an entire generation.

Just take a little browse through some random blogs, or personal websites…you’ll be horrified, I’m sure.