How little we know about fate. The word itself calls forth lots of little half-baked ideas, but not a lot of information. I say this looking at a cup with a missing handle, a digital camera that takes good but unpredictable results, boxes of formatted diskettes which need to be reformatted to work right with my Amiga and a printer I have never used. The walls have holes in them and dirty shadows of previous walls. What was the fate of the print of the tree that has a hand? To live on a wall with holes in it from previous pictures, prints and shelves. Prints galore to cover the worse of the holes.

Margaret put on make up this morning and asked me what I thought about the effect. So hard to be objective when looking into the eyes of the woman who most moves me with those eyes. Hard to tear your gaze away to look at those lips, those eyebrows, the cheeks... All perfect and kind. How could I say "No deal!" on anything she might do. But then, I felt that way three times in similar bathrooms, looking at similar changes and it turned out well. What was the fate of those and them? We're one out of three, or one and two. Whatever the score I think it reinforces my way of looking at my fate: a series of events, each leading to the other, bypassing all options and ending up never ending as I melt and diffuse into the pool. And in the meantime things change. When I look at my wife I certainly see what is pointed out, but I am staring down a long branch of a awesome tree, staring at a fruit or a leaf, but never the whole tree. To do that would require I forget about the leaves, the twigs or nests. You drift in and out of focus, no doubt, to the tree. Sometimes you're close enough to smell your breath, to feel your heat. The rest of the time there's the air and the sunshine, however thin and remote.

A rule to remember is "There is no WHY." There is very little "WHAT?" and only one "WHO?" like getting a big box for your birthday, spend minutes pulling out tissue and plastic foam, to find a fascinating but useless toy. For gifts there is a WHY, but not for the giver. You give a birthday gift or a valentine or even a basket of flowers for no calendar event, and it's fairly easy for all involved to form an idea of WHY? Fate is all about WHY? At first it starts to look like WHAT? or WHATFOR? but soon it is clearly all about WHY? Why did I fall so deeply in love and manage to hold onto it, the feeling, for so long, so many years, when one of my traits which leaps to mind when glancing at my FATE has been the loss of innocence, the loss of faith, the loss of friends.... Well, it also leaps to mind that I try really hard to get better at things, including being sane. I modify WHAT is sanity, since WHAT keeps changing, being alive and all that. But the WHY is constant as in the Old Testament... Which in human terms is pretty young.... "I am that I am" or as Popeye would say, were He God, "I yam what I yam." God is a sweet potato on fire as any Zen freak will understand. And so with Fate we are slated to eat our swollen roots. Not the first time and it certainly won't be the last. Don't ask WHY? because that is just repeating yourself and THAT is a waste of WHAT.

Following the flow of water seems to work well. When wandering the woods I find my way home by following the flow of water. Of course it bodes ill if we bump our noses on the trees while wandering the woods, following the flow. So sometimes you have to step aside for some tree. The roots of that tree are also following the flow, at a much slower rate. I suppose the whole tree might be as well. If all of us left a trail of footsteps, like Billy, if even the water that I drink left a trail we could follow with our eyes back to the source, what a basket of trails there would be and us at the bottom of it all, following the flow.As obvious as pissin' on the ground after drinking a beer that you brewed yourself with local spring water, or pulling up a flower in that yard and putting it into a vase. Margaret comes along and sniffs it and says "MMMMM". Now the piss smells good, showing that everything changes and sometimes these changes seem to effect our basic nature, but our basic nature is that we are what we are. Our fate, therefore, or whatfor, just IS. Right now the differences between memories, desires and anticipations are just quite wide. I never expected to see my father bent and in pain, not with, apparently, the pain going down into the core of his basic nature. Father has become more like Grandfather Riley. Smaller than the legend, but right for the job. Irony is a hallmark of a god with a sense of humor. An atheist, like any other fundamentalist, has no fear of death.

Death, the Dark Mother, can accept your lack of fear, but never a lack of respect. One of the good rerasons to show mom some respect is dad ain't dead yet. We have already seen what the Father can bring down upon us. The flaming Belt of Justice lashed many a lesson into many a young thigh. The Dark Mother does it without laying a hand on you. Sometimes it's a look, but more often is "Looking away". Now, when she looks back at you, you recall what her basic core nature is. She is Death and She brings you down to your Fate. Thus Persephone is even more important, because she indicates the immortality of All. How like Her story is the story of Osiris and that of the Hero. Older and feminine but still sacrificing an aspect of life for an aspect of immortality. How does One live forever? By changing. Fate is change, Fate is Life, or at least alive.