Random [F]acts

The Greeks had it down so very long ago.  Life is full of choices, but you aren't given the flexibility to choose anything at all.  Life is more like a multiple choice test.  Choosing "none of the above" is sometimes an option, but only sometimes.  I used to think we were the product of our choices, so if I am standing next to a manhole cover that explodes and cuts me in two, it was my choices, all of them, that led me to my ultimate fate.  

I wasn't reading the Greek tragedians closely enough.  The fall of the hero is about the choices they make but also random twists of fate.  For the Greeks, these weren't random acts but were the will of the interfering Gods.  We must throw in a character's flaw, however.  You know, something like hubris.  And so, like Oedipus, we must suffer our fates.  

Choices.  Some things can seem so inconsequential at the moment but come back to haunt you down the timeline.  

I chose to post today's photo as a gif.  Bad choice.  It is driving me crazy blinking at the top of the page as I try to write.  It seemed like a good idea at the time, I guess.  It took me a long while to make it because I had forgotten how and had to look it up then struggle through all the steps.  After that, I can't just trash it, can I?  

It was terrible, so I just did.  I trashed it.  I had a choice to make.  We'll see where it leads.  You know, the whole Butterfly Effect theory.  

I've thought much about the choices I have made in my life lately.  I've been bitching and moaning and complaining here for a long while, I know, but by and large in life, given the choices I didn't make, I've been lucky.  Maybe lucky in some things and not in others, of course, but my life could have gone a much worse way.  I think I walked through life wearing a blindfold and was just fortunate not to fall into any of the many open pits that dotted the highway.  

But in retrospect, I could have done things much differently.  Hindsight and all that.  

I've not been lucky with cards or dice or roulette wheels.  I am still not sure about love.  I'm trying to think about the women I've loved as a conglomerate right now.  I've never really done that before.  Most of them got married.  Most stayed married and had children.  One got divorced.  One never married.  One was married before me but never married again.  All were well educated and successful.  I sure can pick 'em.  

I just can't keep 'em.  And since I am the common denominator. . . .

It is funny that I think of them but cannot imagine them ever thinking of me, or if they do, their thinking is pretty much, "Oh, man. . . that was a close call."  They've all done better, even the one who never got married.  

Ho!

O.K.  That was random.  I was going to write about yesterday's disappointments, but that is just another bore.  

I've not been able to focus lately, and I'm wondering if it isn't due to all the stupefiers I am taking at night.  Surely.  But I can't go cold turkey.  The shock to my system would be too great.  However I do it, there are sure to be sleepless nights.  

The Wreck of the Vespa--should I take responsibility or was it just a random act?  I was told not to buy a motorcycle.  I chose to be on that road at just that time.  Did everything in my life lead me to that one particular place and time?  Did someone appeal to the gods to effect my fate?  Was it simply punishment for having a certain character flaw?  

It is more fun to think about such things in the abstract rather than to apply it to your own existence.  

Selavy.  Selah.  

O.K.  Stop me if you have heard this one before.