look ma, i wrote a fairy tale

we may learn from life a little
how to look men in the eye
how to make a great martini
how to tell the perfect lie


back in olden days, in the old country, when i a wee thing was being dragged around outdoor markets by my grandmother - perhaps i should have taken a moment to talk to the gypsy women.
of course, i wasn't actually allowed to. gypsies, as per common knowledge, would take your money and put a hex on you. make you grow up ugly. especially if you looked them in the eye.

but maybe i should have anyway. spited all superstition and just walked up to one while my granny was haggling with the tomato vendor. i should have given her some spare change and let her hold my hand and talk to me in her odd tongue, a mix of slavic and romani, as she told my fortune. perhaps, even at seven, i could have made out the meaning of what she was saying. perhaps the story would have gone something like this:

" you will not always be this shy. you will not always be scared of people. you will lose all that you now think defines you, and travel to a cold land where people drink unboiled milk without fear of disease. your skin will go pale like the midnight sun in this land, and you will try to forget your roots and change your name. you will grow up without a god, surrounded by much love but little guidance, and you will run wild when the opportunity presents itself, and you will never look back.

" as a young woman, you will travel once more to a faraway land - a strange place where even elegant folk wear sneakers, and look to tv instead of books to provide meaningful commentary on their lives. you will hate it there, for a while. but then you'll meet people who turn your life around. you will want nothing more than to be on stage. you will invest all of you into this place, eventually, and with this will come many sacrifices: you won't see your family for years. you will not be able to be near your mother when she gets sick. you will not attend your parents' graduations, nor they yours. and you will wonder, forever, if you've made the right decisions. if your passion was worth it.

" you will fall in love with the wrong people, at the wrong times, and you'll act foolishly. you will break and think you're beyond repair, but this will never be true. you will know and understand both the pain and the value of leaving things behind, and this will be your triumph in life and also perhaps your tragedy. "

...i wish i knew how her story would go on from here. or do i? i certainly wouldn't have wanted to hear all the things she's said up to this point, back then. or i wouldn't have believed them. not a one of them. same difference.

can knowledge of future events help shape them? change them? does fate exist? and other such cliched questions. at best, we can perhaps manage an educated guess as to the short-term course of our lives, although looking at my past - it's one big mishmash of unpredictability. i wonder, i wonder, i wonder. i'm having a 'what if' kind of day. the good kind, not the bad kind... but still.

well, no matter what. i mean, no matter what. i'm still trapped in the fluid, yet finite confines of the now, and there is no gypsy lady to tell stories of my future, whether or not i actually want to hear them. thank fuck. isn't the excuse for doing things that seem ridiculous in hindsight always that they made perfect sense at the time??


though I've gained a little insight
lost my heart and sold my soul
i am still a rank beginner
when it comes to self control

(poetry excerpts from fran landesman, of course.)