Fate's Twinkly Toes

My mom taught me how to waltz and do the polka when I was a little kid.  She always loved to dance.  There's something magical about it: the whirling joy of your body spinning, letting the music take you on an entirely voluntary ride.  Giving yourself up to it.  Music, or at least great music, becomes somehow sentient and alive, playing your emotions and heart rate in much the same way as its musicians play their instruments.  One could even call it a sort of possession, a lilting, graceful control that everything in you hears as well as feels. 

I think Fate is like music: all twinkly-toed and whimsical, headbanging moshpit, or moody serenade.  Whatever the tune, we all dance to it.  I believe that Fate is what we make it, and if we follow the right path, dig ourselves out of any pit we've become stranded in, whatever is needed will be opened up to us.  I also believe that shit just happens.  There's no reason, in my jumbled head, why Fate and our own free will can't coincide.  We can waltz together or step on each other's toes, but the music will go on regardless.

This year has been a monumental one for me.  I moved back to my beloved New York after four years in limbo, and everyone here has welcomed me with open arms.  I've met a kindred spirit, a real one, twenty one years my junior, and it's like looking in a mirror to the past.  I wish, with all my heart, that this person finds their fate and grabs hold with both hands.  I stumbled and fucked up my own path so much when I was their age, it's taken a decade to clear away the brambles and see the road again.  But the path is always there, thank heaven, whether we dumb humans wander off it or not.  There's always a guidepost wherever we end up, pointing the way back.  All we have to do is unbend and look at it.  I've reconnected with a very dear friend from my past, I've met people who seem like angels, I've found a home among the most beloved people in the world to me.  All of this is Fate; all of this is my own doing.  It's like the old saying about clinging to a rock in a raging river, getting half-drowned and bludgeoned by debris, when all you have to do is let go and the river will carry you safely to shore.  For years, I refused to listen to the music, to hear what was best for myself...to dance at all.  Everything was grey, miserable, in mourning, and even my great optimism and sense of humor began to crack under the weight.  But I've finally cleaned up my mess, put on my dancing shoes, stepped out on the dance floor and began to waltz.  With Myself.  With Life.  With Fate.  And wonder of wonders, it seems there's a beautiful tune playing right now and we're waltzing along to it.  I've let go.