Cottage Cheese and Cheetos

Today's post could just as easily been titled 'Random Thoughts of a Very Full Week', but I just liked the one I chose more. And that is, after all, what choices are all about. Our individual journeys are all about the choices we adopt. Most times, we make a choice; other times, choices are made for us, or at least offered to us. In either situation, we each, individually, agree to the choice we make and make it our own, stand in it. And sometimes, our choices involve things that just don't seem to fit together. So here goes, fasten your seatbelts.

Life is full of choices. Mine are found in a myriad of places. An empty pyrat rum bottle full of scrolls. A future fish bowl filled with shared desires. An empty water jug filled with sand, pebbles and seashells. A bulletin board full of dreams, past, present and future. A house that no longer holds space for me. A computer filled with unwritten pages. My list is endless, has no inside or outside, and is filled with urgency and patience. Our choices are all we are given. They come without directions, and their consequences are unforeseeable, like spiders and geometry. Our webs may realize as boxes or orbs, circles or pyramids; even in moebius strips and torus, but where those webs will extend to is unknown. They are full of gifts and punishments, beginnings and ends, and possibility-filled journeys. They are held together with only spit and time; tenuous, and vulnerable to the winds of change. Oh sure, there are signposts along the way, rites of passage, but they only serve to show us where we are at the moment; never how to get to the next one. We try to make sense of the unpredictability of life, but that is an impossible task, harder than pissing in the wind on a moving freight train. And, I believe, that the frustration resultant from our inability to go with the flow, is our single greatest source of despair.

Over the last few weeks, choices were made everywhere, and in completely illogical, non-linear ways, affected my life irrevocably. A young man, who I didn't know, chose to end his own life. I don't know why, never will. But I do know it was his choice. A meteorologist chose to name a tropical storm Gustav, and set it careening toward the gulf coast. The most beautiful woman in the world chose to paint sticks. My brother and sister-in-law chose to say their final goodbye to their dog. And I. I chose the name, Morveren, for a landlocked mermaid. There is great sadness, and great joy in all of these choices, and their consequences will unfold for years to come. Initially, there was grief and rage and confusion, solace and quietude and clarity. I do not possess enough wisdom to tell you where it will all lead. I can only chronicle the things I have chosen to hold onto.

The woman saw her son become a man right before her eyes. Painted sticks became a bouquet of cherished memories. Tears were kissed away lovingly. The young man was dead, but gifts, great gifts that he chose, for all I know, were given everywhere. Cats and mermaids can now call each other by name, and sleep together in the sun. And I think the Mississippi veered slightly to the west.

My love and I chose a play day of cottage cheese and cheetos. We played with witches and pirates, walked in the oceans waters, and honored a friend by eating fried clams and scallops at Kelly's in Revere. All the other good things are hers and mine. No one else's. But there is a lesson here. Be sure to eat your cottage cheese early, and hold on tight to that bag of cheetos, or the seagulls might pirate the whole bag.

Who am I kidding? Lesson, schmesson. Do whatever you want. It's your choice. But, thanks in advance for all the good things that might come my way. Thank you, thank you, thank you.