Celestial Clockwork (or): Waiting Around for Grace, cont'd

Well, (she said, to the empty air) you can't have thought I'd forgotten, for the heart is persistent, down to its last agonized beat.

I don't know if this will make any sense. Maybe it will only make sense to the ones who need it.

I wrote the linked post quoted above back in September 2021, after a particularly haunting sort of day, the kind where absence feels as solid as presence should be, and loneliness is so sharp you can almost trace the outline of what is missing from your life. 

The title was from a song that was stuck in my head at the time, called Waiting Around for Grace, about which I'd privately mused that "Grace", aside from a desired state of being, might as well have been a dear friend you'd once arranged to meet at a certain time and place, who never arrives because she'd died long ago. (A feeling not unfamiliar to me - my best friend has been gone 20 years now.)

It was a significant day, spiritually at least, and aside from the post named above, I had continued to write and ponder on it for a long time. I'd always expected to finish this related piece called "Celestial Clockwork" when I figured out what it all meant, but 4 years later, I don't suppose I am any closer to knowing, so I guess I'm just going to post it today. 

This is what I wrote, back in 2021: 

Celestial Clockwork

 The restlessness started in mid-afternoon. It wasn't uncomfortable, exactly, but unfamiliar. Like craving food while having no appetite. 

The sense of needing something gnawed at me, though what it could be was not clear. I ran through all the possibilities in my head, all the things a person might conceivably need, but nothing came up a match. 

I went outside to where my husband sat under a tree, partly to consult him, but mostly because I couldn't stay still. "I need something, but don't know what, " I said. "Do you ever feel that way?" He looked up into the branches, thinking for a moment. 

"No, never."

Trying another tactic, I asked "well, what do you need, then?"

"Chinese food." he said.

Okay, we could do that, at least. Get the keys and go. You know how it is with these things. When you don't know what you're looking for, you might find it anywhere.

...

The restaurant seems out of place in the market plaza; the curling manes of the stone lions not in keeping with the stark façade. Like a few things I've come upon in my travels, these lions do not want to be photographed. It's simply not possible to get them both in the frame. I gave up trying long ago. What's the use of having the yin without the yang?

Inside is a darkened maze of wooden booths and bamboo screens. It's very quiet. The servers dart about soundlessly. In the center of the maze, the buffet tables are steaming. There is something slightly surreal in this, I think, the bright shimmer in the dim room. Visible heat. Strange how a sense of unreality can creep into most mundane of scenes. The transmutation of the unseen into the seen.

My husband has positioned himself at the end of one of the tables, and while I know he's just waiting for the General Tso's chicken, there's something about the sight that puts me in the mind of a chess piece awaiting the next move. In turn I position myself near the cauldrons of soup, another chess piece, if a less imposing one. In the stillness, I can feel a clock ticking both inside and outside. Above me, I notice, the ceiling is painted like the evening sky. 

Outside the restaurant it is silent. Amid the oblique geometry of the forecourt, the breeze moves in angular bursts. Pigeon feathers hover and swirl before drifting away. It's still summer, and hot, but the air has a trace of melancholy, the end of the season in a tourist town. We take our food and head home, and somehow things seem different, even though it's not clear what has changed. There is a vague sense of a far-off glimmer. Perhaps some unseen satellite ascending.

....

I don't know from astrology; I only know I like charts and glyphs. It's a comfort to me, mapping the arcane. Planets transit the houses, the moon changes its phase, a stranger on the street turns to catch your eye. Who can say what it means? I just like to think about it. 

Anyway, it helps with the restlessness, which has begun to metamorphize into an uncomfortable prickling, the feel of a cheap wool sweater on a hot day. The clock is ticking, I can feel it now that it has come into my awareness, though it must have always been there. What it is counting down to is a mystery. Perhaps some enigmatic matter of fate, which I can sense now like magnetic north or the pull of the ocean across the plain. 

This might be an unlikely claim from someone like me, but sometimes there is no point in asking why. Every so often, things just are, and you won't get anywhere pretending otherwise. I meditate for an hour, surfing relentless waves of inner itch, but all that happens is wanting to shed my body like a dry lizard skin. So, lacking any other solution, I mentally track the planets through their whorl of nebulous destiny. I don't believe for one moment that, say, Venus transiting the 7th house has an actual, physical pull on anything, but I know - the way one knows these things - that recurring patterns in the chaos are a signal. Cosmic tarot. Symbol plus placement plus synchronicity. 

It's Saturday, the 11th of September 2021, and aside from the internal ticking of the clock, there is no sound but the echo of blowing leaves.

At home, I skim the edges of the yard, looking for a place to land. It's easier to think outdoors, and there is much to ponder. The ticking of that clock, for one thing. Why do I suddenly feel as if I'm one of those number slide puzzles with the tiles slightly out of order? That I need to figure out what to shift before the clock winds down? It must have been just after 6:30 when I settled down in an out of the way corner behind the house. No one would be likely to find me there. My restless heart ached for peace, among other things. It seemed I was supposed to do something, and there is nothing worse for an aching heart than to feel there is some unknown move you should make to resolve the pain. 

I sat there in the dusty heat and tried to clear my mind. Somewhere up above I was dimly aware of planetary gears. I was conceived in September and born in June; there has always been something autumnal inside me, a wistfulness, an animal-like alertness to incipient change. I felt it keenly at the moment the clock went silent. A dust devil rose from the ground like a phantasm, present only briefly but portentous all the same. Somehow, I knew - at that moment, like a weight falling - that the first part of my life and its purpose were over. Whatever signal I had been sending like a determined firefly had gone out into the aether, and now there was nothing to do but to wait for a signal in return before moving forward to the next.

....

And that (having never become clear on her purpose) was all she wrote. 

Not that there was no more to the story, you understand - there was so much more to the story, so many layers, and loops, and walking one careful foot in front of the other down what seemed like a fateful and fated road that somehow instead came to a dead end. 

Yet, the feeling remains. The sense of absent presence, a third energy, a golden thread, an intangible field on which unseen action is meant to play out. My life has changed completely - sometimes serendipitously, sometimes forcibly pummeled into a new shape - from the way it was in 2021. But where this journey goes or why, I have even less of a clue now than I did then. 

As for Grace, I'm no longer waiting for her arrival. I accept that she isn't coming after all. Even the Chinese restaurant with the curly-maned lions is long gone, and the Texas hill country is far in the distance. I had a heart attack last year, and now my agonized old heart beats more erratically than ever.

Even so - for the moment, though - it still persists. 

The picture at the top of this post was taken as a somewhat mocking nod to that very same linked piece, outside a florist in Detroit one night in the autumn of 2023. Perhaps you can tell by my pained smile, that - despite the signage - grace was not exactly forthcoming for me at that time. 

The Mystic Eye

Still watches over me. Thank heavens.

Pluto, 29° 59'

It's the time of endings, and even the birds are restless. Footprints in the snow, walking away. I see (to my surprise, though it really shouldn't be) that I wrote this exactly 2 years ago, and this nearly 3 years ago, and wouldn't you know it's all to do again, because submission to Fate is a constant process, it doesn't matter in the slightest that you are so very tired now.

Eyes Open

"As if something out there seemed to take notice"

It's been a year since the Mothwing Collective came into the world, and our explorations of the bright side of the eerie are still going strong. To say more about what the bright eerie is, and what it means, is an ongoing project that will come in time, but for now, here (hopefully, for your pleasure) are more pictures. Never fear, our eyes are open and watching the horizon.

Spectral speculations.

"I dreamt I called you from the past."  

(And I did dream it, via some secret line from 1988 into now, and I told the story of all that happened between the times of your birth and mine, but when I woke up, I couldn't remember a word.)

Rearranging geometries and breaking invisible sightlines.

Fate hums along wires

Eyes Open

Beacon, signal, silent invisible

Lunar lucidity

Hidden turnings. 

Lens flare as Aldebaran, striding across the star map. 

More mothwingy images next post. Count on it. 

That Was The Story of My Life

I've long had the idea that we come into the world with some vague plan, a faintly drawn map with general directions marked and junctions to be met. I also have the idea that you can the take the wrong exit, or miss a turn-off and get hopelessly lost, stuck with no way back until conditions arise to get you to where you were meant to go. I know what it's like to be stuck, and I know what it's like to stumble, almost accidentally, back onto the path. 

There have been three times in my life that I've been aware of being lost, knowing there was some invisible turn I'd failed to make, leaving my existence to unspool uselessly like a film that had jumped its sprockets. The first two were distinct moments of knowing something had gone wrong, the third was a slower knowledge, a growing realization that all efforts to change my circumstance had come to naught. In each case, the sense of an unlived life haunted me, unseen but present like a prickle down my spine.

In other words, it was a lot like being under a hex, but knowing all the while that I'd somehow hexed myself. 

So it came to pass that, realizing the gravity of my situation, I decided I needed to be unhexed. At first this might seem a tall order, but it turned out to be as easy as waking in the night knowing it could be done. While I didn't have the map of my future, I did have the map of my past, so it was quite a simple matter - methodically, secretly, intentionally unwinding my life from the nodes of fate that had held me fast. (How I did it, I might tell you one day, but not yet, not yet.) As it happened, it felt natural, really; like laughter, a new memory that overtakes old sorrow, the chill of significance now pleasantly warm. No longer haunted, always half somewhere else, for those moments - the tiniest sliver of time - I had an idea of what it must be like to be normal.

Unravelling the warp and weft of my previous life, I see now how teenage dreams were only precognitions of this moment, the eerie chill merely signaling a memory that hadn't happened yet. Not without a certain melancholy do I watch the loose threads blow away, the comfortable discomfort of the familiar past. What is left behind is a path to the truly unknown, and beyond that, a future - whatever it might be - to be lived in the present tense at last. 

Click

All Is Void

Another year on the planet. Time scrolls out behind me in a seamless flow. Just moments ago, it seems, I was a child, a wild creature; beyond good and evil, beyond gender, even. Just pure existence in the fresh morning air. 

In many ways I feel no different than I did then, only that the world forces me into this shape or that shape and so little of it has to do with my true shape at all. 

Now we are here, watching the last flare up before the flame out of the old order, the one that refused to step aside to let the new take its place. The seamless flow halts for a moment, and I wonder what the shape of the new world will be. The future is a void, the story yet unwritten, but I'm old enough at last not to be afraid. 

Destinata

image source

Sometimes, no matter how much you would rather it be otherwise, the Fates are insistent that something unpleasant is in store. You can try to bargain, or plead, or witch your way out, but the Fates are having none of it. In that case - forewarned being forearmed and all that - you can hope  that it comes quickly and that things will be better when it's done.

If you are really lucky, in spite of obstinate Fate, you'll have a goddess at your shoulder to push you out of the way. To peek at the other players' cards when life seems like a game.

I'm really lucky.

Thank the Goddess.

Fata Obscura

Sorry for the recent lack of posts, but I've been busy since the Fates have decided it's time to complete the project mentioned here. I suppose they thought 7 years was more than long enough to procrastinate.

The Mysteries Of Fate, Part 2

Back in January, I posted about the twelvetide fortune-telling method in which a person writes down their dreams during the twelve days of Christmas. Some of the dreams were so wacky that it seemed impossible to make any (sane) prediction from them, but...I may have got another hit.

On December 28th, I dreamed:

"my son and I are walking down the road when we meet our new mail carrier, James "Bobo" Faye from Finding Bigfoot. He greets us very cheerfully and hands us each a copy of Reader's Digest."

This was a fun dream, but I was stymied as to any sort of meaning it might have. However, on February 11, a notice was posted that a hoard of old Fate magazines was for sale on eBay. Anyone who knows me knows how much I love Fate magazine, especially the old ones which were digest-sized. As a gift, my son bid on them and won.

I wasn't thinking at all about the Bobo dream at the time, but then suddenly it struck me: in the dream, Bobo Faye, a Bigfoot hunter, delivers to my son and me copies of a digest-sized magazine. In reality, my son buys me a load of digest-sized magazines about such things as Bigfoot, to be delivered by mail. And the name "Faye" has only one letter different from '"Fate."

It might seem silly, but it really does seem to combine the elements of what was basically a nonsensical dream.

The one problem, as far as the twelvetide fortune-telling method goes, is that this should have happened in April, not February.

Oh well, I'm not complaining. I'll be off to read my magazines now.

The Girl With Hearts On Her Pockets

Last night's dream was an unsettling one. Not a nightmare really, but unnerving somehow. I am still unsure what it means.

A winter storm was coming, a blizzard the likes of which we'd never seen. It hadn't arrived yet, but everyone was warned to be prepared. I was at home, alone. Where everyone else had gone I've no idea - it didn't seem to matter. You know how it is in dreams.

I looked around - the house was dark, and not warm, but the walls were sturdy and I figured I'd be all right if I chose to stay. At the same time, I'd had an offer - who knows how it came - from a group pf hippies who had set up a tent site on the edge of town. They were nice tents - more like yurts, really, specially insulated and heated - in which to ride out the storm.  There were 200 tents, the hippies said, and they had one for me if I wanted it.

I was doubtful at first. I didn't even know these people, and maybe it was best to keep to myself, but the hippies convinced me it was better not to be alone, especially in a storm like this.

The tents were set up in a field below mission hill, all of them bright white. All the people were dressed in white as well, although there was no obvious reason for this. It occurred to me that when the snow came we'd all be camouflaged, invisible to any predatory eye, though whether this was intentional or not, there is no way to know.

I was shown to my tent, which was indeed very nice, and put on my warm white clothes. I then went out to wander among the people in the field. All of them were strangers, and as usual I was feeling shy. Starting conversations has never been my strong point.

After making a few nodding acquaintances, I was surprised to be introduced to someone I already knew, a woman named Lori.

Stop. Wait a moment. You'll have to bear with me because here I must digress. It's not enough to just say Lori. There is a whole tale behind Lori. Well, for me, there is a tale behind Lori. For her, I do not figure into her story much, if at all.

It's the curse of being the one who remembers.

I met Lori in second grade. Probably I don't even have to describe her, because there is a Lori in every school, every class, most likely. Think back to your own schoolroom, or your children's schoolroom, and you'll see.

These days they call such girls "natural leaders" or somesuch, but to me at age 7, it was an ineffable power, a mysterious ability to control the social order simply by existing. Well, being the prettiest girl with the best grades and the nicest clothes helped, but even if I could see some of the mechanism, I couldn't see all of it. Whatever quality it was she had, I didn't have it, and I knew it.

This fascinated me.

I don't recall envying her so fiercely at first, but soon it was gnawing at my very soul. The searing pain of comparing oneself to others and coming up short.

Our characters were very different, Lori and I, but being a child I tended to see this in simple material terms. The school took a dim view of classism, but not so my family. 'Her parents are rich," my brother said, bluntly. "You can never be like her."

The type of things Lori owned that I could never have - her snoopy watch, satin jacket, spotless Keds and ribbon barrettes among them - took on even greater significance after that. And then there was the thing that I envied most of all, the point around which all my envy had begun to coalesce...her Luv It jeans.

Luv Its were the skinny, straight-legged jeans worn by the popular girls in school. Usually they had puffy satin appliques on the pockets, in all sorts of designs: hearts, stars, peaches, lipstick, ice cream sundaes like the ad above. Sometimes the less popular girls would wear cheap knock-offs but you could always tell. That little Luv It tag (with the red heart with a bite out of it) conferred great social capital in that time and place.

Having spent spent many hours sitting at my desk behind Lori's, staring at the row of satin hearts on her pocket, it was clear to me that I needed whatever power those jeans could manifest. If there was no way to swap myself out and live another person's life, it seemed the jeans might be the next best thing.

My mother nearly did a spit-take when I told her how much they cost. "24 dollars!" she shouted, appalled. "you must be crazy." It was the same conversation many unpopular girls were having that year.

I did eventually get a pair of Luv Its, though I'd have to wait until the Christmas I was 9. They had 4 stars on each pocket, like so:

I adored them, don't get me wrong, but the moment I put them on, I understood that I would only ever be an impostor. The jeans did not confer Lori-ness. I was still just a nobody wearing Lori's jeans.

...

After changing schools, I didn't see Lori again until we took driver's ed together the year we were 15. By then, Lori was busy doing the sort of things that upper-middle class girls do to prepare for the future. Rainbow Girls, Junior League, twirling lessons - you know the drill. By that time, I was modelling for a punk rock hair salon, so it was obvious to anyone with eyes that we were on different life paths. Lori would chair committees and be president of the PTA, and I would be...god only knew.

But still. I remember standing outside the temp trailer, listening to her talk about Days Of Our Lives when a sort of shudder went through me. All that potential, all of that golden light, channeled into being perfectly, sensibly and competently dull.

Perhaps that's too harsh. I'm sure people who do such things get something out of it, that there must be some worthy achievement there. It's just that I've never understood it. Garden clubs, museum boards and the like always seem to be filled with well-dressed ladies with manicured, venomous claws. But then, since that elementary school experience, social maneuvering has always left me cold.

Anyway, it does seem Lori's life has turned out just as she planned. I haven't seen her in years, but one hears things, you know. Married with 2.5 children and dog. A lovely home in a tony suburb. President of the parish council and indeed, the PTA.

So you can imagine she was the last person I'd expect to turn up among a bunch of hippies in my dream. Dream? Oh, yes, that dream I was telling you about....

I shook the now grown-up Lori's hand and said "I don't know if you remember me." She said, "oh, of course I do" and I replied "well, we have known each other since the age of 7."

Just then, though, my hand began to bleed, ghastly red dripping all over our clean white clothes. I apologized, although I couldn't quite explain it. "It's no problem" Lori was saying, but by then I had noticed that the blood had run into the lines of my palm - the left palm, the lines that mark the potential with which you were born.

That's when I woke up.

...

I still don't know what it means, though the blood in my fate lines is a probably a clue. But it seems awfully late in the day to mourn something that I never was. I've long ago given up the poisonous  envy that marred my childhood, if that was the point.Then again, perhaps I'd suddenly become stigmatic, which would mean something else entirely. And just what was Lori doing there, anyway? Unless the dream was saying that the storm we were waiting for would come for us all, junior leaguers and hippies alike.

It remains to be seen. I'm keeping my eyes open.

*It would be disingenuous to say I never had any of the things in the link above. I did manage to accumulate many of those kinds of things but it was later, after my teachers started saying I looked like Brooke Shields and suddenly out of nowhere I had some value.

The Mysteries Of Fate (And Other Publications)

While coming to the uneasy realization that I did not fit in with my peers and was indeed the proverbial square peg in a round hole, it made sense that I would draw closer to my cousins. We at least understood each other, and visits with them were always an adventure

It was in March of the year I was 11 that my sea-side cousin came up to Grandmother's house for Spring Break, toting a bagful of old Fate magazines. Her friends' hippie parents, she said, had stacks of them, and had given her these to keep. These were digest-sized magazines, printed on newsprint stock, full of (as stated on the cover) True Reports Of The Strange And Unknown.

These true reports might never live up to skeptical scrutiny, full of anecdotal evidence and personal accounts  as they were, but that was not a worry to me. As far as I was concerned, this was news from from the world of strange phenomena by people who'd wandered the territory, either by accident or design. The sense of wonderment that ran through the articles was very appealing as something that seemed - as near as I could observe - to be missing from the ordinary world.

Which isn't to say I was too credulous. Even today I only believe 50% of what I read, and which 50% is always liable to change. It didn't matter so much if it was objectively true, since perception is a funny thing. It was more that someone believed it to be true, and was willing to share their thoughts with the rest of us. The reader could decide for themselves. Also, the columns on Cryptozoology, UFOs and parapsychology provided a more detached view of things.

That said, one of the best parts of Fate were the ads.

 

Many proclaimed secret knowledge or hidden truths, to see into your future or past, or to bring good fortune. Many seemed to communicate with the (endlessly fascinating) language of signs and symbols.

This was satisfying to an unconscious mind devoid of spoken language but hungry for meaning. It made sense, too, because the invisible world was in so many ways beyond description. Words just end up in a tangle. A symbol gets right to the heart of the matter, the thing you know without being able to say how you know.

It seemed to us (while we sprawled on grandmother's floor among the pile of magazines) that the part of you without language was the part of you that perceived the Unseen. The part of you that just knew. That's what they called it in Grandmother's family, "knowing". It was no more complicated than that, really. To try describe it in words just confused matters.

Despite the appealing nature of these ads, I never had the urge to order anything. I was a do-it-yourselfer by nature. Learning about a subject was all well and good, but where was the fun in having it all done for you? I was content to ponder such subjects, but several of my cousins independently decided to take it to the next level.

There was an ad that had appeared, not in Fate, but in the back of  many other publications. It was for The Magic Power of Witchcraft, by Gavin and Yvonne Frost.

My recent Catholic schooling, with its emphasis on the dangers of the spiritual world, had made actually buying a book on witchcraft a bridge too far for me. Besides, I couldn't imagine how I'd explain such a thing to my mother when it arrived in the mail. The promises made in the ad didn't necessarily appeal to me, anyway -  spying on people's antics behind closed doors and the power to crush my enemies weren't my sort of bag. My cousins, however, had no such compunctions, and ordered away. The book even came with an amulet - that was pretty cool.

This state of affairs probably leads to a couple of questions, such as - why would buying a book on witchcraft be so much worse than the fortune telling, second sight and casual spell casting that already existed in the family? I suppose it was the ritual content, for one thing. These family quirks could be seen as "natural" or even "god-given" gifts that needed very little training to achieve - most of it was a matter of intent and grabbing the right signal from the ether, or whatever it was. No need to invoke any spirits, or anything like that. 

I don't necessarily feel this way today, mind you - I don't have any problems with such books or rituals when used wisely (though I do believe some of the books are booby-trapped - not necessarily the one mentioned above, but some of them are). Even so, I'm still not a big ritual person. For me, it's the simpler, the better in most cases. 

Secondly -  the question might be asked, does witchcraft work? Short answer: hell, yes, it does. If things were already weird before the actual practice of ritual magic came into it, things became really, really weird afterwards. Incredibly, flagrantly weird. There were reports of ghost lights and apparitions. Tales of levitation at inopportune times. Visions of the future appearing in bowls of ink. The night hag of sleep paralysis began to visit, and we experienced shared dreams. Some of us had to cover our mirrors, as things that shouldn't be seen there had begun to turn up. This is to say nothing of the mysterious aura (for lack of a better word) that began to develop around one of the cousins and her entire house. We had become weirdness incarnate. 

I suppose the moral of this story is that it's never a good idea to let a group of untrained pubescents practice ritual magic. It probably opened some doors to things we were not ready to handle. But it worked, all right. It still works, for good or ill. In the aftermath, some of us tried to put these things aside, or sought other forms of spirituality or faith, but it was not easy, or even very successful. It's like trying to disown your eye color, or the talent you inherited from your old auntie.

Today, so many in the family  - whether we consider ourselves practicing "witches" or are affiliated with a religion or not - can still feel the crackle of magic in the air if there's a working going down, or feel a spell or hex that's been thrown at us like sticky glue.We know how to listen to the invisible world with one certain part of our attention while keeping the rest occupied. We also know that we shouldn't think about it too hard, or want it too much, because otherwise it will run. These are things we know in our bones.

We can hide it (some of us better than others) under a guise of normality, because we know these things have no place in in the ordinary world. But underneath we know. We've had to embrace our inner weirdness.

I've come to think that the title of the magazine was accurate. Some things are fated. Ultimately, there really is no escaping your true nature.

Orange Is My Lucky Color

I had bought the vintage orange turtleneck over at St. John's Bargain Box some time before. Maybe a month, or a few months, there's no way to remember now. The sweater was one of those thin, ribby ones from the mid-60's, in pristine condition, and I was glad to have it. Things were pretty gloomy then and I needed some color in my life.

This is the prologue. Well, the prologue before the prologue.

...

The first time I came to Victoria, it was unexpected. It hadn't been part of the day's plan. What had happened was, my mother had gone to visit my aunt and uncle near Houston, and I'd ridden along. Mostly because I liked my aunt and uncle, but also because I needed a distraction. A friend of mine had killed himself that week, and everything looked grim. Since three hours in a car with mother is not something to be undertaken lightly, I had the Sunday edition of the Austin American-Statesman on my lap. The front page told the story of my late friend's shattered hopes and broken dreams. That was the ostensible reason I had the paper. The real reason  was because I was searching the job and apartment listings. 

I can't remember exactly when I'd come to the conclusion that my life had veered off the right path, but it was a distinct, uneasy feeling I couldn't shake. Things kept going wrong, badly wrong, and I felt there was a turn in life I should have taken but hadn't. It would have been simpler if I'd known where I should've been instead, but it wasn't clear at all. Hours spent trundling between work and my therapist's office only seemed to kill time. Holing up in my apartment brought no relief. The best solution I could think of was to find my way back to Austin. I wasn't sure if that was the right place to be, but it was better than where I was. I'd received my acceptance letter from the university there, so the day I ended up in Victoria, I'd been in the midst of planning my escape to somewhere altogether different.

The house of my aunt and uncle was a place of happy memories. Once upon a time, I'd romped with my cousins, playing Star Wars and having flashlight battles in the fog. But time moves on, and my cousins had grown up and moved away. We did get to hear a lot about them that visit - auntie not being one to hold back about her kids. Nancy, she said, was going to college in Victoria, and worked at the radio station on weekends. In fact, she called from the station every Sunday evening around 6, if we wanted to wait around to talk to her. 6 o'clock was a little late, considering we had such a long drive back, but auntie said that Nancy would be so disappointed if she'd missed us. Whether that was true or not, mom said we'd wait a short while longer.

Here is a point I don't like to ponder too frequently: had we left before the call came that evening, would the rest of my life have been completely different? Had Nancy not said "There's too much to tell you over the phone, is there any way you can come here?" what would have happened? There are so many ways it could have gone wrong. If my aunt's insistence that it was "just a simple drive" to Victoria had not won out over mom's protests, or if I had not had enough money for bus fare home, if it came to that...what would my future have been instead? 

But we did end up driving to Victoria that evening, through the seemingly endless rice fields, with mom bitching all the way. We drove in from the east side of town, by Rio Grande street. We searched for the address Nancy had given over the phone, which I had written down as North Star instead of N. Star. We took a wrong turn and drove through streets milling with hobos, while mom shouted that she was going to turn around and go straight home. We did find the radio station eventually though, right as dusk was beginning to fall. 

This is the part where I say, I told you all that to tell you this: 

The moment I stepped out onto the cracked pavement, I knew - by some strange miracle - I'd made it back to the path. The disquieting sense of wrongness was gone. In some deep, ineffable way, I knew this. For reasons that were beyond me then, this confusing, creepy, backwater town was the place I was supposed to have been all along. Things had been so hard for such a long time. I breathed a literal sigh of relief.

Nancy popped out of a side door, waving cheerily. She ran to the car and pulled me across the parking lot, yelling over her shoulder for mom not to worry, I'd get home somehow. We rushed into the building, moving fast because she has to get back to the DJ booth before the end of the song. At that point, I already know - in that same ineffable way - that life is different now. The story that came before is over. Everything has changed.

I didn't move to Victoria right away, of course. That first visit I only stayed a few days. We had a lovely time, my cousin and me. A constant stream of friends flowed through her apartment, her phone rang off the hook. We bought cherry vanilla cokes at Sonic and drove for miles. We had ridiculous adventures, like breaking into an abandoned farmhouse and being chased by bees. At night, in the cool dimness of her bedroom, we'd lay out her Russian Gypsy cards and tell each others fortunes. It was just like old times. But I did have some vestiges of a life in my hometown, and I had to get back to it. 

At home, things seemed wronger than ever. My job was becoming a problem. My friends were unsupportive. My apartment was haunted. My granola-and-Dan Fogelberg-loving boyfriend turned out to be a dud, though really that shouldn't have been a surprise. There was a constant drumbeat behind everything that said "this can't work, this doesn't work, this can't work..." Even my therapist thought I should get the hell out of town. I fled back to Victoria often that summer, when I was tired of swimming against the tide. Things were so much easier there. When mom scuttled my Pell Grant for UT because she didn't approve of higher education and my former stalker appeared down the street, it seemed I had many more reasons to go than to stay.

This is the prologue.

...

After the fall semester had started in September, Nancy and her friends had begun a new routine. Once a week after class, they'd all go to her place to study, except it was actually a party. This is what Nancy had told me over the phone. I had missed the first of these events and had gone home again before the second. Consequently, I was in my own bed asleep that Wednesday night - it must have been Wednesday, even though memory insists it was Thursday.-  if the weather data for that year is at all correct, it was in the wee hours of  September 14th, when I awoke to find Nancy standing over my bed. 

It had been a warm summer night when I'd gone to sleep, but an early cold front had blown in, and gusts of wind were howling as Nancy stood over me calling my name. As Nancy lived three hours away and as far as I knew, I'd locked my doors, this was startling. Also, she was dressed like a cheerleader. I screamed. Since (as she explained later) Nancy thought I must be screaming at the apartment ghost which she figured was standing behind her, she also screamed. We screamed until we were brought up short by the sight of her  friend Jason, who wandered into my bedroom wondering what the hell was wrong with us. That's when I realized they had just got bored after the party and had driven up in the middle of the night to bring me back with them.

I changed into some warmer clothes and threw some things into a bag. The orange turtleneck must have been one of them, though I can't recall choosing it now. I zipped the bag, locked the door and ran out into the windy night. That wouldn't be the last time I saw that apartment, but almost. We got into the car - fast, because of the cold - and drove back to Victoria before sunrise.

If that was the 14th, there are three days in this story left to fill. I only remember some things with certainty; how the next day was grey and chilly, and we cut our shopping trip short because of it. That we hung out at the Froth 'n Java drinking cappuccinos. I sat in on a class or two and we borrowed someone's copy of Pulp Fiction. We made repeated trips to Sonic. We must have hung out with friends - they were always around - Jeff, Jason, Ben, Lisa and more than a few Richards. The only one I hadn't met was Nick

Everyone talked about Nick. He was the funniest guy they knew. He was a genius. He was sophisticated. He was older and almost finished with his master's degree. He knew a lot about politics and once tried to replace a newspaper graphic of  Ronald Reagan's brain with a picture of a walnut. I'd almost met him the first night I'd come to Victoria, since he and Nancy usually went for coffee after work on Sundays. He hadn't called that night, though, and since then I always seemed to miss him by moments. He'd begun to seem like a mythical creature to me, often rumored but never seen, so the night of September 17th was a little exciting. I'd woken up from a late nap to find a note from Nancy saying that we were going to meet Nick at Denny's after she got off work. 

It was exciting, but a little worrying, too. I had the impression that Nick didn't suffer fools gladly, and I wasn't convinced that I wasn't a fool. I had a bowl of Campbell's vegetable soup and watched Star Wars while I nervously contemplated my ignorance. I also contemplated my wardrobe. I was again grateful for the orange turtleneck. It was the only item of clothing I owned that might not draw the disdain of some educated  genius smart ass.

...

At Denny's, Nancy and I ordered coffee and french fries while we waited for Nick. He got off work later than Nancy, and it was already after 1 AM when Nancy's eyes brightened and she said, "there he is!" The door hissed behind me and I turned to look, but I only made out a vague shape before I turned back. A terrible heat had suffused my body and I realized I was blushing all over. Oh, the humiliation! Nick had made his way to the table with his cup of coffee by the time I had the nerve to look at him. To my surprise, I saw he was blushing, too. 

He sat down at the table and surveyed his lack of silverware  My future husband spoke to me for the first time, these immortal words:

"can I use your spoon? I don't have syphilis." 

 ....

That was 20 years ago tonight, and since then, no one can tell me there is no such thing as love at first sight, or that Fate doesn't step in to conspire in your favor. We tell our kids not to mock the holy sanctuary of Denny's, for if it weren't for Denny's and Fate, they would not exist. 

But I can't help but think the orange turtleneck had something to do with it. Ever since then, orange has been my lucky color.