The Domino Effect

I used to love playing with dominos as a kid.  Not the game itself, but the set them up, standing an inch apart, creating a swirl of designs, trails, spirals, branches from her to there.  And after an hour of prep, I’d flick that first one, and down they all go.  As they were fated to fall.  At least that’s the hope. 

 

Every morning I marvel at the domino effects all around me.  I see it all the time.  The guy that holds the subway door for his buddy, thus preventing the train from leaving for 10 more seconds.  But that mere 10 seconds then affects everyone on that train.  How many people is that?  100?  200?  More?  And then they all go out about their day.  Each 10 seconds later due to that subway ride.  One man could be late for an important interview, and is hit by a car upon leaving.  Another could miss his connecting subway, and miss his flight, but meets his next wife. 

 

It’s all magical and insane if you try to think about it too hard.  I used to try and peer into the complexities of just such a fate engine.  Every time I tried to book a flight, I’d become racked with anxiety, trying to decide on an 8:30 or a 9:30, weighing in traffic as well as the kind of people who would choose the later flight and possibly want to hook up with me in the airplane bathroom.  I would become racked with indecision, wondering if by choosing a later flight I could avoid a death sentence that would be guaranteed if I took the earlier flight.  This made travel for nearly impossible for me for a few months, until I just sucked it up and started looking for clues in the numbers.  Yes, I may be a little insane.  I’m a writer though, so give me a break. 

 

This morning, I had a particularly pleasant run-in.  I got to the intersection of 54^th and 8^th Avenue, and across the street was an insanely handsome chap.  Roughly six foot, dark hair, groomed beard, sunglasses, adorable smile.  He was wearing a light blue Keystone Light t-shirt and khaki shorts.  He smiled at me from across the traffic and for a second I was wondering if he smiling at me.  He was.  Once the light turned, we walked toward one another, exchanging big smiles, and then passing.  I stopped across the street and looked back.  After a few extra feet, he gave me a look back, smiled, and kept walking. 

 

You’re going to say, this kind of stuff happens all the time.  And you’re right.  But this wasn’t a regular morning for me. 

 

Firstly, the sun woke me up, overheating my face, three minutes before my alarm went off.  I got up, went about my morning routine, but ended up watching a full episode of an hour-long DVR’ed show (rather than half, as I usually do in the mornings).  I showered, dressed, and rather than go to 125^th street for the express train, I stopped at the dry cleaners to get a new pair of pants hemmed.  I took the local from 116^th, and got out at Columbus Circle.  It was a particularly nice day and I had to drop off a sample at a clinic (intestinal problems again, yay!).  Afterward, I finally resumed my usual walk to work, but paused at Dunkin Donuts.  This is a maybe 4 times a year type occasion for me, where I just decide, “Hey, I deserve something disgustingly delicious.”  So I got a glazed, walked out, and met my prince. 

 

That’s a lot of dominos that have to fall JUST RIGHT in order for he and I to cross paths.  Think about it.  An extra ten seconds somewhere here or there, and we wouldn’t have exchanged smiles.  Had I taken a left instead of a right, or skipped my donut, no look-back.  All those dominos had to be standing just right, pointing in just the right direction, needing just that perfect amount of force.  And then click click click click click click they all start falling into place. 

 

Is it fate?  Predestination?  Magical randomness?  Who knows.  Think about it too hard and you’ll either drive yourself neurotic or get a headache.

 

But I just got to work, sat down, ate my donut, and put up a MISSED CONNECTION on Craigslist.  Maybe he’ll answer, maybe he won’t.  But who knows, this guy could be my future husband.  Or best friend.  Or worst enemy.  His position in my life, if any, has yet to be revealed—at least to me.  But I enjoy thinking about all the steps that had to fall into place for me to be rewarded with a kind smile from a handsome gent. 

 

Good morning.  -r 

A PLAGUE OF STORIES

I live in America.  The great U.S. of A.  A land of great wealth and benefits.  A land of excess.  A land that has forgotten what moderation means.  And why moderate our intake of anything when we can have it all? 

 

Or at least that’s the idea. 

 

I went home to Texas last month, and I went into a grocery store.  It was daunting to see aisle after aisle of dozens of choices of soy sauce.  To see an entire aisle devoted to the simple choice of breakfast cereal.  It made me immediately miss Manhattan and its tiny bodegas.  And it got me thinking.  America has forgotten what its like to struggle to have just a little of something.  Instead we have a lot of everything.  And we all work our asses off to buy into the philosophy of MORE IS MORE. 

 

That’s why we anyone who can afford a basic cable package has a couple of hundred channels, each overwhelming stacked with TV show after TV show.  Program after program of stories.  And if you have the movie channels?  If you have HD channels?  If you have satellite channels form around the world?  Shit.  You could watch TV every hour of every day of every year for the rest of your life and never bump into the same episode twice.  Or maybe you could.  But you wouldn’t notice.  You’d be brain dead. 

 

I read an article some years ago that said your mind was less active while it watched TV then while it slept.  Not surprising really.  TV is an escape from life.  It’s an escape from your story, as you get to step into the fictionalized story of someone else.  Unless you’re watching reality TV, in which case you’re watching something “real.”  I add the quotation marks because it isn’t real.  You aren’t feeling or smelling or tasting or truly experiencing what the other person is (though give it time, and I’m sure we’ll have telepathic satellites beaming reality contestants every emotion into our brains).  What we’re getting is flashes of a story.  We’re being spoon-fed the story of a struggle, be it one of survival on an island, or a race around the world, or simple trying to be a good mom, or a battle against the mental disability which causes people to hoard everything they buy.  Whatever it is, it is simply a story.  A story of life.  A story of trying to overcome.  Quite simply, it’s something we can all relate to. 

 

But we forget—it’s just a story.  And it isn’t ours. 

 

We are surrounded by stories in America.  TV.  Movies.  Books.  Magazines.  Comics.  Hell, even music.  Each tells a story, be it on the radio morning show, or be it on prime time TV.  We have our weeklies and our monthlies and our dailies.  Story after story after story.  A bombardment of fiction and nonfiction and fictionalized reality—all of it a kind of controlled retelling of a story.  We get facets and inches and pieces and parts, but we never really get the whole story.  We are told stories about bad guys and good guys about husbands who cheated on their wives who we’ve all come to love in her movies, but what happens is we end up marginalizing the people.  We put them in a box and we slap a label on it.  But no person is ever one single thing. 

 

We are all of us a massive creature of dichotomy and ambiguity and confusion.  We are chemically destined to be irrational and insane creatures.  We try so hard to not be animals, but by definition we are just that.  Animals.  But our society and our community are turning us into animals addicted to stories. 

 

You’re wondering if this is a bad thing?  Hmmm.  I don’t know.  I don’t want to pass a moral judgment here, but for me personally, yeah, I think any kind of addiction is a bad thing. 

 

Yeah, I love stories.  For fuck’s sake, I’m a writer.  I like to create stories day in and day out.  My day job is as a comic book editor.  So by day and by night, by my salaried position and my freelance gigs, I am in the business of creating stories.  It isn’t stories I have the problem with, but the immediate excess of them. 

 

One hundred years ago, there were no TV’s.  People read novels, and I’m guessing here, but those were hard to come by.  You lived your own life, your own story.  And you were exposed to the stories of those around you.  But the ego had less to pray on.  There was envy and upset, there was love and sadness, and there was happiness.  But mostly, life was a struggle to live as best you could.  This is something that hasn’t changed in hundreds if not thousands of years.  Then fifty years ago, people had radio.  And some, but certainly not all, began getting TV’s.  but even then, it was limited programming.  But now?  Now…  well, I’ve already been over what it’s like now. 

 

So why is this bad?  Because people are forgetting to live their lives.  They are living for stories.   And because of so much of our life being focused on stories, we begin to create stories all around us.  We tell ourselves we aren’t rich enough or cool enough or in shape enough.  We become so involved with the images that are portrayed in these stories that we lose the substance that life is meant to be made of. 

 

Or maybe I’m wrong.  Maybe this is what we’re supposed to do.  I don’t know.  It just seems a little too much sometimes.  For me personally, I think I need a good break from stories.  I don’t mind creating my own, but I think a little less stories for a while could do me some good.  And not just the stories on my TV or on the big screen, but the stories in my head.  That I’m not good enough or rich enough or cool enough.  Because those?  Those are just stories in my head that aren’t real.  It’s an illusion.  No more real than MTV’s Real World.  They’re just ideas.  It’s just the ego playing tricks on me. 

 

You have to go by what you feel.  Not what that voice in your head tells you, but that thought behind the voice.  Your instinct.  Your gut.  Your spirit. 

 

Sometimes we forget there’s that whole other layer within us, just beneath the surface.  Because of all these stories, we forget that there’s more to this world than we can see on the TV or in a set of abs. 

 

Man, am I preachy in the mornings.  I should go back to bed.  Xoxo, r