A Story.

I Know a boy with a hole in the pocket of his coat and – -- steady yourself now --– I didn’'t fix it. Can you imagine?!?!? My letting a boy I Know walk around with a hole in his pocket, undoubtedly losing change and cigarettes and important bits of paper covered in secret codes? It would be akin to me sending my man off to battle with torn sandal straps. Unspeakably sinful horrible horrible betrayal of loyalty.

Oh, it'’s not that I didn'’t *want* to fix that hole in his pocket. I was *mad* to fix that hole in his pocket. I found myself two, three, five, ten times called to that hole in the pocket of his coat. In such moments it is as if I find the perfect recollection of the Elder Eddas. And the memory it shrieks from my DNA? The secret of the universe and godly wisdom encoded into my oh so human genome? “"Fix that hole in his pocket, fix that hole in his pocket, fix that hole in his pocket.” " And thus would I become as one with God.

It would have been a matter of three minutes work. Done quietly and without fuss and without announcement or knowledge.

And I did not. And would you know why? ::shrug:: Simply because I did not. Called and called and called to that hole in his pocket and never once did my body move. And people like to think there are choices, always choices, but it always comes down to whether or not you find yourself moving, doesn'’t it?

And so two, three, five, ten times I found myself just breathing. Breathing. Breathing. I breathed so much I almost had a tantric experience all on my own. (Which I suppose was the reward for not moving. ::winks::)

As to the ‘"actual"’ why’s of my not moving: ::waving hand dismissively:: that’'s a matter of mundane discussion, isn’'t it? The boy would not have appreciated it in the right spirit or the boy perhaps would have appreciated it not at all or perhaps the boy would have even *resented* it. Or the boy and I are never in the same context and so that moment hours, days, months later when he stuck his hand in the pocket of his coat and found it fixed, he would have seen all in visions of reality that would not have matched my own. Oh, he would have called me a Sweet Thing, and perhaps kissed me between my eyes. But, he would have seen me though a filter that would have obscured me entirely. Because – -- if we must talk of the mundane -- in hindsight, I find I now believe he has he seen me that way all along.

I do not remember thinking about it conciously. Never once did I *decide*. But I suppose it was such thoughts, and more thoughts, and less thoughts, running through my head while I sat there and smoked and drank wine and admired his mouth and breathed, that kept my hands idle.

But it was when he left for battle, with that hole in his pocket finally out of my reach for good, unfixed and hazardous still, that I realized the simple answer, the simple feeling, was that the boy I Know was only a boy I know.

And that is how the illusion of "‘choice’" becomes a matter of never having had one.

And with stories do we forever add and subtract import to and from events. Forever do we make nothing of everything and everything of nothing. But you, who know the spirit of your blood, will know that this story required exactly this many words and not one more or one less.