All a Lot of Oysters

I’ve found myself ruminating an inordinate amount on the concept of predestination. Do we make our own fates, or is every decision chosen and finalized by some cosmic force far greater than ourselves? After a great deal of thought on the matter, I can say the following with quite a lot of conviction:

I don’t have a clue.

All that I have figured out is that everything happens for a reason; whether or not we have any say in the matter is still highly suspect. Let me expand on this rather ambiguous claim with a story of the weekend. . .

Saturday was an extended panic. Scurrying here, running there, and yet I never managed to leave my apartment. This sort of sedentary alacrity can be used to define my life since late August; lots of personal affairs from all over the globe, each jockeying for priority, every one seemingly of dire importance. I spend moments on the phone and hours in my living room working out the kinks in my psyche with the always-wonderful Jessica Stein, and it all cumulates in a final not-so-reassuring mantra of “everything’s going to turn out fine.” It’s not, but the phrase was just a stopgap measure to get through the day and into the next. I make plans to attend a theater party later that night, but as the hour rolls around I begin to get sick. Very sick. I know that staying at the party in this condition would be ill-advised, not to mention no fun at all, so I give my apologies to the hostess and begin the walk home. A funny thing, though: instead of backtracking, cutting across one of Los Angeles’ larger avenues in order to get home quicker, I take the long route, taking the extra few minutes to walk along a well-lit boulevard. Of course, at this time of night the whole stretch is deserted, but it’s a bit more comforting to keep on a route where I can see more than six inches in front of myself.

I get so used to walking through this deserted Los Angeles that it’s a shock when I see people again. To be more precise, it’s a shock when I run headlong into Natalie Murphy, Manhattan’s favorite Irish stunner and newly-minted Angeleno. I see her first, as always, but the moment I’m visible to her she lets out a gasp and embraces me. To the usual confounded annoyance of her boyfriend and the same group of always-around friends, we talk for a short while. To the outside world it’s nothing much, but to me it’s the sort of audio comfort-food which starts to bring me back. In the middle of a miserable experience like that night, one’s got to be reminded that not everything is terrible, and that it’ll stay that way as long as there are people who know and who care. There’s no way to tell her everything that’s bothering me, and there’s no way to fix it all out there on the sidewalk, but it’s a good beginning.

“Call Me!”

I turn away and walk to the quad just in time to see a young man do a swan dive into a six-inch-deep reflecting pool. It gives me a great idea for a new story.

Neither of these events would have happened if I hadn’t left that party early. Did I choose to leave that party early, or was that decision made for me? Couldn’t tell you. All I know is that both of those events sent the wheels into motion, and stopped me from going to bed a miserable wreck. They happened for a reason, and a reason is all I can really ask for nowadays. Life’s too complicated for answers.