Essay

Fate

I don’t believe in fate.

The human brain has a remarkable ability to draw patterns. We think thousands of thoughts each day, experience countless bits of stimuli. A flash of red out of the corner of your eye, the faint odor of cut grass, and our brains are whisked away to childhood and our first bicycle and spending summers riding it to our friend Jeff’s house, and swapping Hardy Boys books, and fifty-cent cans of orange soda, and Jeff’s dad who got a new job that summer at…was it Aberdeen Proving Ground? And it all passes through your head in microseconds. And then later, when someone mentions having studied at Aberdeen, we think, “wow, Aberdeen keeps coming up; what a coincidence!” But it could just as easily have been a colleague wheeling a red bike up the stairs, or meeting someone named Jeff, or any of a million other things that are marginally related to any of the million other thoughts we have during a day.

I don’t believe in fate.

The last night in London. Walking home after dinner, not wanting to take the same route back to the hotel. We turn down a random street. Neither of us knows the name if it beforehand. But we know we’re near the University. And we think that this is the part of Bloomsbury that the trusty guide says is known for all its media types. Another turn, another random street. And there it stands. It’s the Jeremy Bentham pub. I had told Caroline about it just that morning. We really must go, she said.

I don’t believe in fate.

Humans are storytelling animals. It seems like such a simple truth, but it is one that has stuck with me since my first semester of graduate school. I didn’t agree with much that Alasdair MacIntyre had to say, but that part is certainly true. We make sense of our lives through the telling of stories. We pick out details because they are relevant to our story. The color of the shirt Caroline wore on our first date (something inhabiting the part of the spectrum between hot pink and a dusky rose) didn’t play any real role in the world. It is a random event, one of a million details available to an impartial observer that night. But it is part of my story – important because I have made it important.

I don’t believe in fate.

It’s 2006. I’m a young academic. Or so I still told myself, though in truth 34 isn’t really young, however much you might be trying to relive your 20s. I’m in London for the weekend at the tail end of a summer research trip to Wales. I’m sitting in the Bentham, not yet realizing that my remaining days as an academic could be counted on one hand. Soon I’ll be setting out on a new adventure. A new city. A new career. Then another new career. Then another. But that’s all in the future. For now, I’m a young academic. One with the better part of a book manuscript tucked away on a laptop back in a tiny hotel room.

I don’t believe in fate.

We have lots of different names for fate. We wrap it up in apocryphal stories about a dissident Jew and sprinkle in some letters from a misogynist Pharisee and tell ourselves that it’s part of A Plan. Or we tell ourselves that it’s really all just language and that the world around us is merely a construct of human invention. Or we strap on the pocket protector and say that it’s all collapsing wavefronts and observers. And maybe one of those is right. Perhaps there really is Truth and maybe we have found it. Or maybe we’re just making up stories as we go along. Seeing patterns in random events because that’s what we do. Because that’s what keeps us from despairing in the face of a universe that doesn’t give a fuck about our story. Because we just are the stories of our own lives, and stories need narratives.

I don’t believe in fate.

The Bentham is pretty unremarkable. Cramped downstairs. Upstairs slightly roomier, with a fireplace that could be cheery were it but filled with a fire, and rows of empty liquor bottles on shelves testament to days when the pub’s occupants were interested in more than just a simple pint. The ale selection is decidedly unremarkable. The burgeoning beer snob in me wants to remark that the Guinness is not quite as good as it was in Dublin last year, though what remains of the small-town kid whose first beer wasn’t until college whispers that I can’t really tell a difference. I sit in my chair, content in the knowledge that I can afford a second round without worrying about whether that will mean having to skip breakfast before my flight tomorrow.

I don’t believe in fate.

It’s unsurprising that we all ended up here. Bloomsbury. Books and scholars and history and a trace – just a trace – of Bohemia. Perfect for those drawn to academia. But also perfect for media types – especially new media types. Just an evening at the pub for the fellows who worked around the corner. And a stroll down yet another street in Bloomsbury for us. We hit nearly every block in the neighborhood. A perfectly unremarkable set of events. The sort of thing that happens every single day in cities across the world.

I don’t believe in fate.

Caroline leaves for a moment – even Guinness is rented, not purchased. A moment to reflect on the life I once had. The conversation at the next table turns – as these after-work drinks often do – to the job. I’m half listening. I hear random snippets of conversation: “JavaScript” and “can’t code for shit” and “still compiling.” Another moment to think about the life I have now. I see Caroline across the room. Our eyes meet. She smiles.

And just for a minute, I believe in fate.

Nostalgia

No one ever wanted to take the Sunday 3 – 6 shift in the writing center at Hampden-Sydney. Or at least they didn’t way back in the early ’90s when I was there. That was the time for curing the Saturday night hangover — usually by consuming a bit of the hair of the dog while watching the late game. (Because back in the day, there wasn’t any of this Sunday Night Football business. Primetime football was for Mondays, dammit. The way God intended. Or at least the way that God would have intended if She could be bothered to care about grownups playing games on an obscure planet in the corner of a tiny galaxy. Or if She existed in the first place. But I digress. Also, get off my lawn Sunday Night Football.)

Anyway, no one ever wanted that 3 – 6 shift. As a sophomore, I got stuck with it. What with Hampden-Sydney’s tradition of letting people choose things by class, and freshmen being excluded from working at the writing center, it was bottom-of-the-barrel for sophomores. So there I was, first semester sophomore year, in the writing center at 3 every Sunday.

Turned out, though, it wasn’t so bad. No one ever came in for help. I saw a bare handful of people that first semester (see above re: beer and football.) Occasionally my roommate John would come by to “shoot the shit,” a phrase that I probably haven’t heard since those days. But mostly it’d just be me, a handful of Mac Classic II computers and a 3.5″ floppy disk with MacWrite II (color screens and no boot disk FTW!), and three hours of enforced study time. Or, later on, the internet. Or, back then, the Internet — still capitalized, and pre-GUI.

Those Sunday evenings ended up being one of the highlights of the week. A time to reflect on the week gone by, maybe do a bit of work (less often than I should have, and certainly less often than I’d do if I had the whole thing to do over.) Or, more often, lounging on the (really awful) couch with a (usually even awfuller) SF novel. At 6 (or a little later depending on the novel), I’d walk across the courtyard to the dining hall. Sunday dinner was always social — in my circle, anyway. We would gather around our table and discuss our respective weekends. Sometimes that meant reliving the parties we’d all attended together anyway. Others it meant catching up after the Great Away Football Game Weekend Diaspora, hearing what everyone had done.

I most remember those evenings — just three of them over the course of my entire H-SC career, when I would walk out of the writing center and discover that it was totally dark at 6 p.m. It would take me just a moment to remember where I was and what was happening. The time had changed. Fall was officially here. Midterms were just around the corner, and then a final sprint to Thanksgiving and the end of the semester. The blazer would feel downright comfortable at the last few remaining football games. Soon they might even have to turn the heat on in the dorms. Fall had arrived in full, and I would take just a moment — but, like with the studying, not quite as long as I should have, or as I would if I had it to do over again — to soak in my surroundings and to think to myself, there isn’t anyplace quite as nice as Hampden-Sydney in the fall.

Welcome back fall. It’s good to see you again.

A New Home

Dear blog,

By now you may have discovered that things seem rather empty around here. My closet is empty, the good dishes are all packed, and the bookshelves are bare. There’s no easy way to say this, so I’ll just come right out with it: I’ve found someone else.

After months of friendly flirting and occasional heavy petting, I’ve decided to move in with Catallarchy. Don’t get me wrong here. The problem is not you; it’s me. I’ve grown in a new direction, and I need some room to explore. Catallarchy is perfect for me. It’s just that it’s got such a big…audience…one that fulfills me in ways that you just can’t. I just don’t feel like I can really develop here. You understand, don’t you?

I’m sure that you’ll find someone else soon. You’re a great blog, and we’ve really had some wonderful times together. Maybe we can still be friends. Who knows: maybe I’ll even write to you from time to time.

In the meantime, farewell, my blog. I could never have gotten to this point without you. I’ll always treasure our time together.

Your friend,
Joe