the slavedriver

"Necessity knows no magic formulae--they are all left to chance. If a love is to be unforgettable, fortuities must immediately start fluttering down to it like birds to Francis of Assisi's shoulders."
--from The Unbearable Lightness of Being

In even simpler terms, it really doesn't matter how we tells ourselves we should feel in the morning, or which attitude, say, a young woman of 20 years decides to take the minute she steps onto the train headed into the city, or when she leaves work still heavy in thought about all the reasons she should be upset, but strangely isn't.

No, not upset...perhaps just annoyed. Disgusted even, with that frotteur on the subway who insisted on rubbing his hard-on against my ass. When he saw I was less than pleased and perhaps even bordering on violent, he calmly stepped back out on the platform at the following stop and awaited the next train, as he should.

New York is full of freaks, and they aren't even the kinds which you have to keep your eyes open to find. Today, Union Square was plagued by the "American Vulture," a girl on stilts who wore a paper mache bird costume; on the sidewalk, her friends passed out flyers about boycotting American Eagle until the company agrees to allow its Canadian workers the right to unionize. Now I'm all about taking action and standing up for your rights, but that vulture was fucking annoying. What had begun as curiousity later turned into complete disdain as I caught the Vulture reduced from its towering heights, to a pitiful thing hugging the corner to see if any policemen were on their way.

But these things, as annoying as they are, still cannot be classified in the same category as Kundera's "fortuities." What he means are certain smells, sounds, familiar expressions on unfamiliar faces, anything that somehow pervades our unconsciousness and creates certain "motifs" in our lives. This is what I hate about affirmations and all those inspirational messages telling people that they too can change the way they feel. In reality, everything is left to chance. If I hear a certain song at a certain time of day, I will feel X emotion. If I see a backpack with a thick net of red rubber peeking out from the straps, I will feel Y, and perhaps even Z. It's a sharp, almost biting, awareness of the world--one that becomes almost dangerous when we expand our lives to a system of similes and metaphors, something which Kundera addresses later on.

My point is this: for a while, my friends have been advising that I take a few days to just mope and be sad. So I started off the day telling myself, "Okay, today is a sad day. The woman holding out her arms to her lover is no woman--she is a crucified albatross. This thing in your life may be the best thing that ever happened to you, but use the melancholy to your advantage."

Needless to say, it didn't really work out. I bought an amazing Marc Jacobs dress. I navigated the subway system and took a little time to explore. I got a large Jamba instead of the small that I payed for. Those strange fortuities which last week would have sent me deeper into myself and the past were just fortuities. Coincidences, so indicative of another dimension of beauty, became just that and nothing more.

***Ed, the title of the blog refers to you. All I wanted to do when I got home was chill on the sofa. But no, because you've already written an entry, I, in accordance with our deal, had to scrounge my brain for something meaningful to say. I love it.***