We Will Call It Fate

I don’t want to write. In this cacophony of sound and online content. I have nothing to add. Do you? Can you make sense of this world? Because I’ve been observing it from a distance for a while now, perhaps even forever, and can’t quite figure out what to say. Raise a painted cardboard sign on two flimsy wooden sticks in protest? Again? Ensure everyone will read my unmistakably correct anti-genocidal sentiments? Again? Still? Say, once more: Could we remove all people who are irredeemably lost in the abyss of a dark triad personality disorder from positions of power? Please? Could we just get them away from the steering wheel of our collective fate?

I hold the steering wheel of my own life and keep turning left towards the forest. The tree as a mentor in rooted perseverance. A witness to time and time and time again. Still, swaying in the wind. An attitude of interdependent acceptance. Here we stand. Here comes a cloud. Here comes a storm. Here comes the sun, like an old familiar song.

I’ve been breaking glass with a disturbing frequency lately. As if haunted by some sharp soprano siren inaudible to the human ear. Exploding tea glasses left and right. She’s either singing: Watch out, or: Pay attention, or: Keep increasing your energetic frequency, further, louder, bolder, still. Make your presence known – have a consequence! But then, maybe it’s just gravity in collaboration with an unfortunate lack of grace. One, two, three, four glasses shattered across the room in freak accidents. French press filled to the brim with boiling water and tea leaves? One fell swoop: Détruit! All bare feet on the glittering floor. A moment of silence. An exit strategy. Where is the nearest pair of slippers? Before attending to the damage done, some flimsy slippers to navigate the suddenly perilous landscape.

We cannot bypass these inconvenient and unignorable facts exposed like razor sharp shards emerging all around us, rapidly closing in.

All the while, in some defiant opposition to destruction, life continues coursing through the pulsating veins in my body. I adjust the steering wheel of my life and greet you on my doorstep, repeatedly, wool socks in Birkenstock safety wear. You push the steering wheel of your bicycle into the bike rack, all drenched in spring rain, smiling. I extend my left hand. You undo yourself from layers of soaked fabric before both arms fold me into a warm embrace. Determined and unafraid.

We will call it fate, someday, somewhere down the line, once we’ve found the safe words to make such audacious claims out loud. When the risk of sounding insane, or exposing our fragile hearts in the perilous landscape of human affection, too soon, leans comfortably against the soft structures of consistency… Though, this we know; the insurance of time passing nullifies all courageous speech. (In de luwte van de tijd, is het al veel te laat voor heldenmoed. Onthoudt dat goed…) Luckily we are brave enough to act upon a shared desire, silently unfolding as natural law, indifferent to the slow construction of linguistic scaffolding. There’s nothing I could have possibly done differently to find you. But, my god, what took you so long?

If I accept this fate, will I accept the fate of our time, unraveling? When all is said and come undone, and we did all we could – will we wring out the water weight of time from our drenched clothes, and reach both arms to find one another, featherlight and smiling?

Have you noticed that soprano siren piercing through the ether? Here comes the shattered glass, here march our fragile feet, here comes system collapse, here is my heart, still beating.

I hold my flimsy cardboard sign in the stormy winds of change: Arms are for hugging. End the genocide. Oh, and, fascism? The sirens sing. Let it shatter in an unrelenting tour de force of gravity and grace.

Get notified when we post something new by subscribing to Metaphysical Mulch. Make sure to confirm your subscription in your inbox.