Fortune

I've been incredibly fortunate lately. There. I said it aloud. Without (total) fear.
After my decision a year ago to begin a blog where I can share my random thoughts, sponsor my own journey to becoming a 'writer', writing things that matter, at least to some, I had no idea the blogs I would encounter, myself, sometimes from a world away, and not that I found them; no, no, not at all--as do so many amazing books I read, restaurants I dine at, people I encounter--they found me.
Case in point is a blog I follow here on my page, written, courageously, self-revealingly, by a woman named K. I applaud K, and her writing. Her most recent post only confirms for me her startling originality and her writerly gift.
Another gifted blogger is named H. Her blog found me through a link of a link of a link.
She lost a little daughter last year, and I ache when I read H's posts. I don't know H. But I feel so much for her situation.
From H's blog, which I follow religiously, last week another blog, from a woman in far-off Australia, arrived another link. Full of pink-tinged photos, and extraordinary imagery. This woman, who is named S. is a professional photographer--one does not even have to read her blog and identify her professional website to recognize this is her profession. Her photos are breath-taking, second only to one attribute--her absolutely unbelievable prose, her thoughts, the raw-ness of her grief-laden blog, as she also lost a small child, and how she emanates such beauty from her sorrow is something I have never before experienced. S., in my opinion, needs to become a published writer and share this gift with the world. Not enough people have blogs to reach this site, and I fear that her writing will languish, read by only a small portion of the world, where EVERYONE could learn something from this amazing woman, mother, human.
A most recent post I read of hers stopped me cold.
It was about visting a fortune teller and being given an clue for a most devastating event, predicted years and years before said event was to occur. Even writing this it disturbs me, the concrete certainty of Fate, the cold gods, the random play, the utter hopelessness of our little planet and our little lives, all of us trying so hard to map out how things will go. When, really, if you believe in the Fates, and all of their far-reaching string-pulling, we are little more than puppets.
I said in my last post, I live every day like every one else, praying for the eventual future, hoping for it, but deep inside knowing that there is no guarantee for it, anymore than we can guarantee anything in life.
I have had friends enthrall me with stories of visiting fortune tellers and the tales they were told, and in some cases said tales did come true, with varying details, because as we can attest to, we can never truly know, truly, what lies ahead---what is waiting for us.
My own brush with fortune came about three years ago, a friend of a friend, an introspective, intellectual woman, with good emotional intelligence, read my palm. We did not know each other well, we know each other better now, as when we met our main thing in common was a mutual, dear friend, along with each possesing a disdain for society and a caustic wit, and a love of books. She took my hand to give it a quick read, at a wedding shower, one of those most fortuitous of events in itself.
For the most part, my fortune, my future, looked pretty sound. I felt re-assured, in control, that I was doing what I could to propel the ship I was given to watch into calm waters. Until she made a pronouncement about my past that rocked me a bit. She told me I had a long, strong life life; but that it had a hole in it. Meaning, that sometime (according to my palm) between the ages of 20 and 25, I had almost lost my life. I literally, inside my head, recoiled. I had to take a swallow, get my breath going, as she had hit upon something so literal that she could not have known I had to regain my composure. In August, 1998, the 23rd to be exact, I had been the victim of an armed robbery at the restaurant where I was working. It was the day before my 25th birthday. It was, in some way, a definite hole in my life--the things I believed about people that were helping me get through life were thrown off-balance and I became unhinged, for a period of time.
I always try to look at the meanings, the lessons, behind some of my posts, and in this one, I have to say, I'm not sure, but it came from somewhere. Maybe to throw out there the notion of utter chaos, in utter organization. Like the Greek myths--so random, but so perfect in the meting out of pure justice, pure karma. Not sure that life works so much like that---it seems more of this organized, "wait, I've got something for you" kind of plan, for lack of a better word, that you can rail against all you want.
My reading also mentioned a child, one that I have not yet had, and am not sure that I ever will. I've never, not really ever, been able to picture myself as a parent, as having a child of my own, to love and to bestow my legacy, however vague, upon. It is a lack of imagination, I think, spawned by fear, the fear of not getting it right, of growing up how I grew up, hating being a child, even though now I look back and realize it did not have to be that hard, that painful. I wonder if, somewhere deep in me, an old, old part of my soul, in another life, did have a child, and lost said child, resulting in him/her accompanying me, in my palm, for the journey in this life, this child-less life I lead.

It's a great great fear of mine.