Uneasy, Greasy, Queasy

Oh I just come from the Land of the Sun;
From a war that must be won in the name of Truth... -- Love Vigilantes, Iron & Wine

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Perhaps not as greasy as I had been the previous two days, I stepped from my car into the chilly, damp night air. The rain that had fallen all day left a gentle residue on everything: the gravel parking lot, the buildings, the still green grass, the cars, the breeze itself. Every moment or so, a lazy rain drop plummeted from the dark reaches above me, as if having awoken late for an appointment -- the rabbit trying to keep his schedule.

While I can't be exactly clear about the events of the days before my sickness, I feel able to say that not all is well with the World of Men. Though, you probably already knew that. It isn't hard to see, with the death of innocents occurring mindlessly every day, the wishy-washy weather, the political state of things... Saddam Hussein was hanged by his own country last Friday, the 29th of December. All the prophecies of 2006 being a Year of years; while I felt the same for it, I felt that perhaps something was keeping it all back, under wraps, and this was it. The last blow to a weakening humanity was the death of Saddam.

As I stepped across the damp mulch of the landscaped areas outside the coffee house, the lyrics "It starts out easy: somethin' simple, somethin' sleezy, somethin' creepin' past the edge of reserve" quietly sounded beneath my breath. The unsettling smell of muddy guano cut the song from advancing like a hammer to a piano. A few more steps, and I glanced casually up to the row of open windows that looked out upon the patio. Quickly I looked away: the picture of an underage red-headed boy moving in to snog an equally juvenile female didn't leave much to the imagination, gracefully raised my nausea up to a new level, and pleasantly burned itself onto the retina of my mind. I opened the door and stepped inside.

The choices that we make are something we cannot easily undo. After all, time moves in one direction for humans, regardless of the fact that we have been chosen by God as His beloved creatures. In the end, I'm not sure I can say, honestly, where I had been intending to go with this, but I do know that I'm thinking. I'm thinking about the things I do. I'm thinking about the consequences every choice has. The direction each move takes me is one I cannot easily undo, if at all. No one can, and this is not what I am suggesting. Perhaps, I am merely saying that even while we have our great studies of History and the like, Man, as a whole, has been too careless to truly avoid its repetition of mistakes to make for a better future. Or, is that part of God's infinite power? He told us that nothing that is under the sun is new; what has been will be again. Is it inescapable? Destiny?

I don't know that I can say I believe in Destiny, for Destiny's sake. I do know that I have a choice -- that I was given a way out. What happens is my decision, and my call; the path I take cannot easily be undone, if at all, remember? Then again, when we get to the end of our lives, each of our own lives, can we look back and say that everything that happened to us was the result of our own actions? Or was it Destiny for us to live the way we did? I think we can do better. I think we can be something greater. That is a destiny to bow our heads to. His Destiny. We spend our lives avoiding it. So much for so called fatalists who think we cannot avoid it, but in the end, their mentality is completely against true Destiny.

Clutching my warm drink in both my hands, I took a sip and sighed as I walked out the door and back to my car. The moisture in the air, the scattered drops of rain, the cool breeze -- they all spoke to me like something fresh. After having been sick and stuck in a house all day long, maybe you notice these things. Still, things looked clean; refreshed. Happy.