Interesting Times

Once, well, because somehow I was getting paid for it, I was at a ra-ra propaganda rally where some cat in a suit and sterilized organs stood up and said he wanted to give a Chinese blessing; may you live in interesting times. I must have been quite out of my mind, because my hand shot into the air before the last words faded from hearing. He seemed excited someone wanted to speak to him so early on.

"It's a curse, Sir," I said, recalling the way I had been told that little saying. "It basically means you hope one's life is filled with chaos and strife. Kind of a hateful way to start things, don't you think?"

And, after the ra-ra propaganda rally I had to talk to an overseer. It didn't matter if I was right, or, at the very least, honest, I had embarrassed the cat in the suit with sterilized organs in front of everyone, and that was uncalled for. Courtly and corporate intrigue politics made manifest.

It also served as reminder of another reason I'm often the quiet one. Someone I knew once said when I did speak, my words were those of ambrosia and acid. By uttering a sentence, apparently, once or twice, I've drove others to migraines, although that's hardly my fault. Another aspect, a flaw, I admit, are the occasions of what another friend would call alligator mouth being unable to cover hummingbird ass. I like to think I've gotten better at that as I've grown older, but I still sometimes slip.

In the small hours between late night and early mourning when my mother died, I was driving to the house that now only belonged to my father. I had no tea with me, only water, but the demons came anyway. In those dark moments, heading into the badlands, I had a lot of time to ruminate.

"I cast my lot to the winds of chaos," I said to the shadows. "This is the only sane course of action. Roll the fucking bones."

I don't think I've ever lived in boring times, despite what a few critics who weren't getting their way might say. Still, these days, these last few weeks, leading up to a month, fit more into what a cat in a suit thought was a blessing and I was told was a curse. Of course, blessing and curse are just different sides of the same cosmic coin, thus balance is maintained.

My father moves as the Gregorian calendar sheds its metaphoric and metaphysical skin. There has been a fair amount of chaos to the whole affair. Even stress, something I take such great pains to avoid, I find sometimes trying to seep into my zen and put me off my fresh-fried lobster.

It seems pretty well a given I'm getting the other one of the Grumpy Old Men, a black tri, named Whistler. Even now, I try to figure out where, in a five-hundred eighty-five square foot house-only fifteen more square feet than the Temple of the Jinn, back in the city-I'm going to make room for another dog. Of course, I'll make it work, because it is the right thing to do. Still, it's a few days and a roll of the bones before I know for certain. My sister and Whitie might take Whistler instead.

I might also start receiving a substantial amount of paper just for being a beautiful and unique snowflake and not get fucking laughed at when I describe myself as such...

Mei fei tsu. This is a time of transition, and, as I learned, once, quite painfully, those times are never easy. I suppose if they were, it would be kind of boring and the lesson would be missed. A time of transition is never really good or bad, persey, although, in that context, good and bad are monkey-made concepts anyway. Times of transition are, however, rather interesting. Of course, whether or not those interesting times are a blessing or a curse is all up to flip of a cosmic coin and roll of the bones.