"The Universe Is Full of Traps..."

"I lie awake; I've gone to ground. I'm watching porn in my hotel dressing gown." - Zero Seven

"Dip him in the river who loves water." - William Blake

It's so hard to tell, sometimes, just how I'm doing. On one level, I feel happy. On another, I am anxious. I am trying not to care how things go, because I have sort of come to terms with the fact that I am exceedingly unlikely to be able to get what I want in this situation, and that it's got nothing to do with not being pretty enough or charming enough or XYZ enough. It's got very little to do with me, at all, I think. It just is the way it is.

Like life, in that way. One of the hardest things to learn, it seems to me, is that no matter how much we want life to be a certain way, it persists in being the way it is. Unpredictable. Unwrangleable. Unknowable.

We may know, in theory, that that is actually part of the point. We may even feel that one of our chief goals is to learn to surf the unknown, to allow the wave to go where it wills us, to ride the crest and balance on that uncertainty, poised and at peace.

But, if I may quote Papa Matrix for a moment, there's a difference between knowing the path and walking the path.

Oh, such a difference. I am halfway there, I think. I am half at ease and half anxious. Half accepting what comes, and half wanting to wrench it all into place with my own two hands. Knit knit knit knit knit. If I just keep thrashing these pointed sticks back and forth in my hands, maybe, like the Fates, I can shape the design of events to my liking. Yeah, right.

Note: The title of this post is a verbatim line from a documentary that's on TV right now. Who writes these things?