Lo and Behold

Some humorist once wrote "I'm so frazzled the only thing holding me together is static electricity."

Well, for me, it's either that, or the Black Arts.

Gee Wiz.

Almost the witching hour and I am wide awake. Maybe I shouldn't have napped when I got home from work around 8:30 p.m. But I was so tired the bed might as well have been enchanted. However, I came to around midnight and now Mr. Sandman eludes me.

I really should be sleeping. Three long consecutive days of more shooting ahead, and I'm helming the first two days. And while we have no lead talent yet for the first day's shoot - aside from the thousand-and-one other curses that often bedevil production - I am oddly unperturbed.

Must be that old black magic again.

Speaking of magic, do you believe in prescience?  The FreeDictionary defines it as :


prescience [ˈprɛsɪəns]

n

knowledge of events before they take place; foreknowledge

Now I don't need prescience to know that this is an odd segue, but - indulge me.

The other night I received news that made me cackle like the Wicked Witch of the West. It had something to do with some unfinished business - literally and figuratively - that I had predicted would soon meet its long-overdue demise. And lo and behold - the very fates themselves seem to have conspired to make my prophecy come true. So much so that a friend in the know actually texted me this afternoon to say how uncannily I had called it.

Ironically, the latest manifestation of its impending doom was the polar opposite of what I had been wishing for, but nevertheless, the end of the entire wretched enterprise is definitely near. I don't really care if the thing ends with a whimper or a bang, as long as it ends.

Die, damn you, and STAY dead.

It's a long and arduous tale which I might tell someday, but suffice it to say that it's not unlike Elphaba and the Ozians. No good deed goes unpunished, indeed, and my parting words a year ago, almost to the day, were these: "I will not actively seek to bring you harm. But having said that, neither will I lift a finger to help you. You are on your own, and on your own I know you have more than enough to self-destruct."

Well, mark my words, my pretty - and your little dog, too.

"Did you put a hex on it?" asked my incredulous friend.

Being neither witch nor warlock, I replied "No. But you know I've been cursing it to the high heavens for a good while now and if the heavens have finally heard me, then call it a hex if you will."

Our thoughts and our words can be powerful things, and I genuinely believe that if they are strong enough, they can take on a life of their own.

Even fleeting thoughts - like the one I had just this afternoon en route to a location check. An otherwise uneventful drive interrupted by a thought out of nowhere, as I rode half-asleep, about how I would like to add a certain yellow sports car to my hoard.

Yellow, brick road. 'Nuff said.

And rounding the corner, there it was, lo and behold. The selfsame sexy yellow number I had spotted in February along the same road. I didn't have time to stop the first time around, and resolved to go back for the vehicle the following week, but by then it was gone. I circled the area for a couple of weeks more after that, but the car had vanished. I had taken the route again many times since, and had not encountered it anymore.

Until today.

And this time around I ordered the driver to stop.

Whether I'll actually secure the thing is inconsequential now. What was striking was how I had just been thinking about it - and so impassively, at that, in contrast to the dark seething passion with which I thought about that other enterprise above - and just around the bend, my thoughts literally were made real.

Now I am no Cassandra, and if Apollo were to taunt me with a dark gift, prophecy would probably not be it. I'd rather be able to read people's minds anyway than predict their futures, but I suppose they're one of a piece. What seems to be arcane may very well turn out to be something mundane - I daresay even scientific. We pick up cues all the time - from speech and gestures, behavior and other intangibles. That's nothing but naturalistic observation. And causality doesn't require wizardry. Putting two-and-two together isn't paranoia, it's arithmetic. So combining cues and signs into a coherent, plausible, and probable outcome is child's play to those who've had lots of practice.

It applies to pretty much all areas of human affairs: love, work, life. Which is why we sometimes say we could see things coming a mile away. It's but perspective, literally and figuratively. I once read somewhere that clairvoyancy can be compared to seeing two trains on a single track coming from opposite directions, but concealed from each other by a hill round the bend. On ground level, you won't be able to tell that they will collide. But take the perspective from the air, and you can literally see what's going to happen next.

Is that why inspiration and its cousin, divination, seem to come when our thoughts are floating?

And speaking of floating, lookee, lookee, lookee here. Earlier this evening, as I was sitting on the throne, my thoughts idly turned to my general taste in men*, and I considered ruminating about it in a blog post.

Well, lo and behold.

*Let me qualify that. I've had guys of all shapes and sizes, but just for sex, I find that I prefer the less-conventionally attractive. It's not unique; plenty of us have that inexplicable "er" fetish.


But my lovers - meaning people I actually have meaningful moments with long after the joys of sex have gone - have all been uniformly goodlooking. And by "uniform" I mean they seem to fall into a particular physical mold. Coincidence? Let's see what loose thoughts turn up.