Winning and Losing

Sometimes winning is losing and losing is winning.  You never can tell how things will turn out.  What we want most is probably not what we should want, and the things we fear can turn out to be much better.  But sometimes losing is just losing, and, it seems, more often than winning is winning.  I've asked hundreds of people if they think there is more good or evil in the universe, more happiness or unhappiness.  The sensible thing to say would be that they are even, and I give that as an option, too.  But overwhelmingly people choose the negatives.  That, evidently, is the human predicament, the human experience.  A hostile universe. 

I look at winners for whom winning is winning, and I feel many things.  In my experience, they are usually people who followed the rules, paid attention to the old saws, and stuck pretty closely to traditional values.  They were not the kind to fight against the hierarchies.  They accepted them and worked their ways up.  Are they free?  Are they happy?  Who the hell knows?  They look it.  Of course they have their sufferings, too, but they also have the old wisdom and beliefs that have evolved over generations.  I think there is something in that. 

I came from a generation who believed in The One Big Deal.  One deal, one score, and then we'd be set.  I've always liked the idea of John Huston.  He didn't seem to give a shit.  He went broke many times pissing away money like it was water.  And then, miraculously, he'd make it back.  He admired Hemingway and wanted to live like that, but there was a fundamental difference between them.  Hemingway was conservative, counting his pennies and the pennies of his wives, too.  He was more of a banker than a gambler.  Huston had none of that.  He was capable of putting it all on the next roll of the dice. 

If I've made mistakes ("if?!"), one is that I've tried to live by anomalies.  Many of us must.  I would point to the fellow who worked hard and saved his money and on the day of his retirement found he was dying or lost it all to a market crash or. . . or. . . or. . . .  And so I saved nothing, spending it all on "living."  And, of course, there was always the One Big Deal to believe in.  In truth, I lived more than most people are willing to accept.  I can see it in the eyes when I tell them things that have happened, things that I have done.  They don't believe it.  They think I exaggerate or make it up completely.  Fortunately, I have friends who know it is true, for they have lives such lives, too, but telling them is like telling a bus driver about an exciting drive.  When it all comes down to bad hips and knees and rotten livers and weekly trips to the doctor, what will I wish?  I think now that I must begin to save money for the future.  Funny, for I don't have time to save enough. 

I've been thinking about this for a while, but meeting the girl with the tattoos has me articulating it to myself (and inarticulately to you).  She wanted those tattoos.  They would make her happy.  Unafraid, she put them together piece by piece.  What now?  I could see something in her eyes. 

I've many new circumstances in my life that present me with challenges.  Perhaps we all do.  These are crazy times.  But many of mine are personal and individualized, so I am thinking without doing so, that constant churning of ideas just below the surface of the consciousness as the mind works out the pieces of the puzzle.  Often now, I am here and not here.  Many things need sorting out. 

But that is what makes a story, isn't it?  It is all the material of a life waiting to be sorted and ordered, just waiting to be worked out.  Or so it seems.