When These Things Happen

Originally written July 14, 2007

While I want to believe that sometimes events unfold as they were meant to be, you know better than that. Every step of the way we have been followed by these memories that cannot be ignored, and we are welcomed back by their ghosts. There is no point to living in the world that you created in that past tense, there is just a beginning and an end. Those stories that existed in between, they are not meant for the likes of us anymore.

When an adventure unfolds, we find ourselves reflected in its consequences elsewhere. As if we were living through another life, and in its wake we leave the expectations and doubt that so many have grown accustomed to. Sometimes, these things really happen. It is not up to me to decide what is right and what could be controlled again.

You saw yourself on a slow boat to China, crossing the ocean months before it became a reality. You watch the extended addiction unfold before yours becomes a reality. That old familiar song lowers its veil over your eyes as you make your way back from Lan Kwai Fong. You find perfection in all that will falter time after time, yet you adopt its form. The leverage you once had wouldn’t last forever, and once it was put into play you knew that it was now or never.

There is the story of the Buddhist tourist in our final hours of Hong Kong, imparting her wisdom to me as if that were her only purpose left. That Chicago was not where I was supposed to end this journey. In her story, her long goodbye to the Far East, she told the story of our long narrow bar in Dublin, on the river front across from the old toll bridge. There was the little Irishman who introduced her to the man that would become her lifelong companion. This Irishman, who neither of these tourists had met, whom she lightheartedly called her Leprechaun, disappeared into the crowd just as quickly as he had appeared. The Knightsbridge Bar. The dancing, the stage with the Irish dancers and fiddle players, the bridge, the Temple Bar district. This was my Dublin bar. I had lived this story years ago, and this tourist would walk me through my memories once again. And just as quickly as she had appeared in my life, she too was lost to the night.

These things happen for a reason, and we have always been attracted to them. They follow me; they want to know what we plan to do about it all. Can we find the reasoning behind all of our imbalances and seemingly random occurrences, can we please call this off as a coincidence? I have taken you this far, tell me these things don’t just happen. Let me believe we still matter here, give me that much.