It All Depends

We all have them. We all have those infinitesimal moments when if the event had gone another way, everything in our life — and that means everything — would be different. In his poem “The Red Wheelbarrow,” William Carlos Williams uses the phrase “so much depends.” Although as an English major I had undoubtedly studied the poem, it took on new meaning for me when a friend used the phrase “so much depends.” Her cancer was in remission at the time, or at least was manageable. I had asked her, “Are you in pain?” She answered, “No. So much depends…” and went on to recite the poem word for word. Her point was: whether I am in pain or not matters. So much depends on that. She added that one reading of the poem suggested that it refers to a child hovering between life and death. The poet was a doctor.

So much depends between this and that, between being here or somewhere else, between saying one thing or another, between seeing that oncoming truck before you turn or not.

The King James Version has it as “in the twinkling of an eye.”

So I never forgot my dear friend’s lesson, even though we went our separate ways.

I can readily draw up my own list of personal turning points balanced on the edge of a razor blade. I am told I started life that way, as a preemie. (Today, with advances in medicine and technology my entry into the world would be unremarkable.)

Family lore has me being nearly run over by my father in the backyard when I was five or six. Unbeknownst to my dad as he was backing up, I decided to bolt out of the car. Where did I go? Why? We will never know. My dad assumed the worst. My brother ran up the steps to tell Mom, “Dad ran over Paul!”

I was fine.

Somehow.

Whenever the story was retold at the dinner table, Dad would say, “Took ten years off my life.”

And who is to say otherwise?

Some moments get lost in the tides of time, as if they are less significant with the passage of days, months, and years.

The concussive wind of a Manhattan taxicab zooming by as I daydreamed and nearly drifted off the curb.  

Falling asleep at the wheel only to be awakened by the tires rumbling on a rough surface.

Decades ago, driving drunk and not remembering it.

Which illustrates the interactive nature of this utter powerlessness. In other words, others are inescapably involved in our seemingly random, remote choices.

Turning blue, choking on meat, only to find the Heimlich maneuver my wife of that time employed didn’t work — until she said “stop fighting me.”

In a blog post years ago, I coined an amusing term for this phenomenon:

or - chasm - n. The immeasurable distance between one choice and another.

I labeled it a noun, but these infinite moments fraught with fruition or finality have their own grammar. They are gerunds and participles and most of all infinitives.

They bear the indelible signature of choice and mystery.

These moments are the “Either/Or” of Soren Kierkegaard, "The Road Not Taken" of Robert Frost.

Name these nano-pinpricks as you see fit: choice, destiny, fate, will, coincidence, providence, or Providence.

You have yours; I have mine.

Attention must be paid.

now is the season

It is the season of bloom, and each species, each flower, each tree, each blade of grass or weed, does so in its naturally ordained time. The irises are out, bobbing their heads. The irises, with their curvilinear lushness of bloom, their varieties of dark or pale purple, yellows, whites, ivories, even in the wild along the canal banks. I see the same time of ripeness for peonies, phlox, and endless incarnations I know not by name. Now is the season of bloom and blossom, at least for these, in their appointed time.

Which makes me speculate and wonder a bit, about the human metaphor, my own included.

It Is written, Or Is It?

Two weeks ago last Saturday -- oh, who cares when it was. Does it matter? So, I'm standing by the doorway inside Chipotle (which nearly everyone pronounces as if it were spelled Chipoltee), on Marshall Street, in Syracuse. I'm observing people accessible and visible on the sidewalk, easily seen through the big plate-glass window comprising the store's facade as they busily stream by. I see this bearded fellow walk by, wearing a Boston Red Sox wool cap. Wait. We both catch each other's eye. Wait. Hold it there a sec. There's that expression "double take." Or, as Merriam-Webster.com puts it:

"a delayed reaction to a surprising or significant situation after an initial failure to notice anything unusual"

Merriam-Webster says the first known use in English was in 1930.

In 2012, we both did a double take. Just like on TV or in the movies.

Stopped in our pedestrian, quotidian tracks.

We each did a take, then stopped, then did another take, maybe even a third and a fourth take.

Then I opened the door and advanced outside.

"Dan?"

"Paul?"

"Paul?"

"Dan?"

We laughed. But, knowing Dan, he was not totally surprised. Knowing me, I was not totally surprised. Yes, we were in Syracuse, but Dan lives in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. We see each other maybe once a year, maybe once every few years. We've gone stretches of hardly having any contact for -- what? -- a decade? So, the coolest thing is we were surprised but not surprised. Dan, knowing me, and vice versa, admits of such providential possibilities. And vice versa. (There's an expression: vice versa. Why isn't there an expression "virtue versa"?)

In the movie "Lawrence of Arabia," if I recall correctly, Lawrence says to one of the Arab tribal leaders: "It is written." Wait. Wouldn't it make more sense if someone said it to T.E. Lawrence? "It is written." By whom? And is it? If I remember the movie correctly, Lawrence ends up thinking nothing is written.

For reasons I find hard to explain, the phrase "it is written" resonates with me more readily than "it is God's will" or "God has a plan for us" or "God has a plan for me." And yet. Why? One sounds more mystical? Or mysterious? Or more respectful of free will? Can't explain that.

And yet.

So, was this written? Or pure coincidence?

And does it matter?

Why?

Or why not?

A Simple Twist of Fate

This will be hard to explain, but I'll try. I solipsistically did a Yahoo search of my real name (not my nom de plumage). Results? 2,000 hits, most inaccurate in their attribution, which I find amusing. Around hit number 700, there was a link for a poetry magazine I had long ago forgotten. The link apparently provides digital archives (or maybe just an index) of all the issues of the magazine, going back over 40 years. My name shows up, on an endlessly long and unreadable litany of names, many of them literary lights, right next to a former poet laureate of the United States, side by side, as if we are rubbing elbows, literarily and metaphorically speaking. (I actually met the guy about 18 months ago at an event, and he signed a book of his poems that a friend had sent me as a gift. You already know I am a shameless name-dropper, but not as bad as my brother, methinks. Isn't it a sign of neurotic low self-esteem?) I had something published in the magazine in 1967, the datastream tells me. A poem. A vague memory tells me that contributors had to pay to get into this poetry press's anthology. I would probably cringe now at what I wrote, but I'm still curious. Then, after my name, the website reports that the celebrated poet published something in the magazine in 2006, if I'm reading the streaming run-on river of data correctly. Earlier in the stream is the maiden name of my son's new bride. Sheeeesh! What next? The date, hour, and minute of my death? On the surface, none of this is the least bit noteworthy or remarkable. It is so obvious: We all have K at the outset of our last names. A simple-enough explanation. So what? you say. Big deal. But it all struck me as eerily coincidental, even providential. It creeped me out, as if it was fore-ordained that these connections should occur. It reminded me of the saying "Coincidence is God's way of remaining anonymous." But if I allow that the connections and their discovery may've been providential, why did it scare me? Is my faith that shallow? And, after all, are the connections more alphabetical than coincidental? Are they more alphanumerical than providential? Or is it all a modern personal message of the Alpha and the Omega? And, if so, how do I decode it?

Photo by Matej "Dedek" Batha; at least, I surmise as much.