Every true New Yorker has an abusive relationship with the MTA. We all hate it, spend an exhorbitant amount of time trash-talking it, whine and scream in frustration and anger when our train fails to show up or depart on time. But despite the hate, we all use it. Rely on it. Need it. Grow fiercely defensive if anyone out-of-state trashes our subway system--we even grow defensive if another New Yorker attacks our specific, frequented line. That’s our headache, no one who doesn’t deal with it daily is allowed to say anything bad about it.

For me, it was the NQ. I took that line at least twice daily, seven days a week, for four years. I knew all of its frustrating quirks. How for a while, it wouldn’t run between Atlantic Avenue Barclays Center and Prospect Park after 9:30 pm--a misfortune I always encountered, having rehearsals until 10pm. How there was a period where it stopped running entirely at Atlantic Avenue Barclays Center, so I had to take a shuttle bus there to catch my train. How that was always the case over weekends, so I had to leave two hours early to get to make it to my gig. There was even a time where the train suddnely stopped running, no shuttles were provided, and when I asked an MTA worker if there was any way to get to my stop they said, ‘no,’ so I had to turn around and go all the way back into Manhattan, and then take the L back into Brooklyn to crash at a friend’s place.

Due to the Covid-19 virus, I left New York and was fortunate enough to return to my childhood home in Massachussetts, in a small town where nothing much happens. I’ve been back here for 10 months, still paying rent on my New York apartment in a misguided attempt to hold on to my independence. Recently, I had to come to terms with the fact that financially, I couldn’t afford to keep doing that, and officially gave my month’s notice. I do have a summer gig in New York (assuming it doesn’t get pushed back again due to the pandemic), as well as a plan to move in with my best friend in the summer. I’m not saying goodbye forever, but it’s hard to grasp that emotionally.

Weirdly, the thing I’m going to miss the most is the NQ. So much so that I almost cried about it--and I’m not a person who cries very often. It’s not that I’ll miss the headache it gave me...I won’t. But that was my train line. I knew it. I bonded with it. Most of all, there was one thing in particular that I loved about the NQ. It had to go over a bridge to get between Brooklyn and Manhattan. At night, I would get a view of the city, the pier, and the other bridge all beautifully lit up. No matter how tired I was, if I had dozed off, I instinctively woke up in time to catch that view. It meant a lot to me.

New York City is a hard place to live, and stage managing is an emotionally and mentally taxing job. The city, the noise, the pollution, the thousands of people who couldn’t care less about you...it can be soul draining. Stage managing is a high pressure, thankless job, where you’re given no artisitic say and are expected to manage a three ring circus worth of logistics. There were so many times I would question why I was there, what I was doing, if I really wanted any of it.

That view of the city at night that the NQ gave to me daily was soothing, reinvigorating, and inspiring. It reminded me of why I was there, what I was trying to accomplish, that I was living in a place where so much happened every day. A place full of millions of stories, and that it was allowing me to build my own story. That view fed my soul. Knowing that I’m saying goodbye to the NQ and that night cityscape has been the hardest thing for me...harder than saying goodbye to my first apartment and home for four years.

I’ll be moving back in the summer, I know that. But odds are it won’t be along the NQ train line. I’ll have a different set of abusive MTA headaches to get to know and bond with. My only hope is that my new trainline will at least give me a gift similar to my old one, along with the frustrations.

Thank you NQ. And Goodbye.

#NewYork #MTA #NQRW #Covid19 #Personal #Opinion #NonFiction #Reflection

All children, except one, at some point ask, “Who am I?” They all know on some level that they are human, that they are a child and that they will one day be a grown up. This latter piece of knowledge occurs to them at about two, because two is the beginning of the end. Except for Peter. Peter has no end and no clear beginning for that matter. Peter knows that he is a child, a boy to be specific, but he will never become a grown up, a feat which is really rather impossible for a human. Peter knows this, which is why Peter doesn’t ask “Who am I?” but “What am I?” What is a boy who doesn’t grow up?

Aging is a natural cyclical process that defines life. A boy who isn’t following that process can’t be considered fully alive; at the very least he couldn’t be considered human, except that in my opinion, Peter’s desires, personality flaws and internal struggles, make him very human. The longer Peter is with Wendy, the more self-actualizing and human he seems to become. For instance, after Peter has spent some time with Wendy, they and the Lost Boys go to the mermaid’s lagoon and the pirates attack. Peter demonstrates care for someone that isn’t just himself, with no clear selfish motive. Peter’s wounded and he and Wendy are about to drown, a kite appears and he says, “It lifted Michael off the ground, why should it not carry you?” Wendy argues with him, attempting to get him to go instead, but he replies, “And you are a Lady; never…Goodbye, Wendy” (85). Peter has no selfish motive to save Wendy; he just cares about her. Saving Wendy would, without a miracle, cost him his life. Up until that point Peter had been using Wendy as a mother figure. When he had first brought her to Neverland and she nearly died because of Tootles, Peter’s first desire had been to walk away and leave her there and never go back (57). Once he had discovered that she was actually alive, he “was begging Wendy to get better quickly so he could show her the mermaids” (57). He wants to ignore the problem and walk away like she was no one important, and once he knows she’s alive, he has a purely selfish and self centered reason for her to get better. At the lagoon there is no self-centered motivation. Even if Wendy survives, she could no longer be his mother because he’d be dead. Had Peter left Wendy on the rock, he could have more adventures and just find another mother. But Peter won’t do that because he’s not the only one he cares about anymore. Peter’s world has expanded beyond just himself. He has grown, the same way babies and very young kids do, from being the only one that matters in the world to caring about someone else—meaning he has gotten closer to being a real human.

While Peter wants to be his own person and does begin the process of growing into a real human, he is always forced to reset into a symbol because of the way those outside of his path view him. Aside from the Darling women, to everyone Peter is simply a character of legend or the inhabitant of the dream realm. Mrs. Darling remembers a childhood story of “a Peter Pan who was said to live with the fairies. There were odd stories about him, as that when children died he went part of the way with them, so that they should not be frightened” (8). In Mrs. Darling’s childhood, Peter was believed to be some form of Grimm Reaper, or more accurately Chiron, a guide through death. Having a guide to the afterlife is a common archetype in many different mythologies. Mrs. Darling and those in her childhood believed Peter to be this archetype and symbol. However, the meaning of Peter as a symbol has changed as time’s gone by. When Mrs. Darling first saw Peter in her dream, “He did not alarm her, for she thought she had seen him before in the faces of many women who have no children” (10). The narrator expands upon Mrs. Darling’s observation by adding, “if you or I or Wendy had been there we should have seen that he was very like Mrs. Darling’s kiss” (10), making it clear that Peter is now a symbol of protected love of which women are unable to let go. This is problematic for Peter because everyone else’s perception of him pulls him back from his strive towards humanity and self actualization, striping him of his fourth dimensionality, and turning him into the two dimensional archetype that they have in their heads. Even worse for Peter, he can’t get out of everyone else’s archetypal idea of him because his own adamant desire to remain a boy and refusal to grow up simply reinforces his symbolic constitution in the minds of others.

Adding another problem to the poor Peter streak, the Darling women, the one’s he seeks out to be his mothers, are the biggest perpetrators of trapping Peter in a cycle. Once Wendy has Jane and lets Jane go with Peter, the narrator outlines how “Jane is now a common grown-up, with a daughter called Margaret…Peter comes for Margaret and takes her to Neverland…When Margaret grows up she will have a daughter, who is to be Peter’s mother in turn; and so it will go on” (159). Peter’s interaction with the Darling women makes it impossible for him to fully become human. As we saw earlier, the longer he spends with Wendy, the more of a real human he becomes, but when she leaves him and grows up she destroys all the growth and progress he has made in his time with her. She, like everyone else, reduces him to a symbol, a vague memory of her first time being in love. When she’s all grown up and Peter comes back to take her, “Something inside her was crying ‘Woman, woman, let go of me’” (155). She had trapped Peter inside her, keeping him at the same place he was when they were children, and when she’s finally able to let him go, he’s been stuck in the same place for so long without the help to move forward that the only thing he knows how to do is reset to the way it was before. And then the whole process is repeated with Jane, then Margaret, then Margaret’s daughter, and the rest of the Darling women that come to follow. The process sticks Peter in a catch 22 because he needs a mother (the Darling women) to achieve his desire of growing into a real self actualizing human, but to do this he needs them to remain a child and stay with him, which they aren’t willing to do, so they leave him and he defaults back to two dimensionality.

Peter desires both to remain a child forever but also to become a real human child instead of remaining a symbol in the minds of others. To accomplish this Peter needs a mother. As long as one is in the care of their mother, they are looked upon as a child. The symbol of adulthood is moving away from the parent’s house and leaving their care to become more self-sufficient and self-actualizing. If Peter always has a mother taking care of him, he will always be viewed as a kid. However, this mother needs to be a child as well. Thinking about it from a logical standpoint, if a child who has an adult mother grows into an adult, then maybe a child who has a child mother grows into a child. From an emotional standpoint, kids can see and interact with Peter, he’s not just a symbol to them, they’re willing to see him in the fourth dimension of which he craves to be a part. Most of all, kids can play by the rules of pretend in a way that adults can’t. The narrator describes, “The difference between him and the other boys at such a time was that they knew it was make-believe, while to him make-believe and true were the exact same thing” (59). Only a child would be able to interact with a child who sees pretend and reality as the same, and only a child would be able to make that child see that they’re not the same at all. Later, Peter, scared, asks Wendy, “It is only make-believe, isn’t it, that I am their father?” (94). His line drawing of the difference between make-believe and reality is another step for him towards becoming a real human child. Only a child could have made him realize that. Peter can only get the help and mothering he needs from a girl, not a woman, but he is the only one who follows the pattern of not growing up, so his mother has to leave him before he’s fully hit the point he needs to hit in order to be real.

The other part of the question that is Peter Pan, is that he needs people around him to define himself. Yes, time doesn’t affect Peter, but Peter is in a perpetual race against time to answer his riddle before someone leaves him again. Peter seldom “had dreams, and they were more painful than the dreams of other boys. For hours he could not be separated from these dreams, though he wailed piteously in them. They had to do, I think, with the riddle of his existence” (115). The narrator only mentions these dreams when Peter has been left alone, and the only time Peter actually has one of these dreams is when he knows for certain that everyone is definitely leaving him. As everyone is returning to London on the pirate ship, Peter “fell asleep by the side of the Long Tom. He had one of his dreams that night, and cried in his sleep for a long time, and Wendy held him tight” (138). Peter has dreams about the riddle of his existence when the people he surrounds himself with leave him. He defines himself by the people he is surrounded by. He knows he’s a child because he knew that he wasn’t Hook, and Hook was a grown-up. He knows that he is a boy because he is with other boys. He knows that he is their leader because they look up to him. But he kills Hook, his boys are going back to the real world, and the one who defined him the most, his mother, is going back with them. She’s taking all of the definitions he’s compiled of him with her and locking them up inside her, rendering them out of his grasp. He only has the time it takes him to bring them back to London for him to figure out who and what he is before having all of the layers he’s built up, stripped away from him. There is a belief that not knowing is the worst feeling in the world. This feeling must be even more intense when the thing you don’t know is what you are. Without the others presence by which to define himself, all he has to go on is the two dimensional archetype that everyone else knows him to be.

This is the most sense I can make out of Peter’s riddle. It’s less of an answer and more of filling out what that riddle is, a bit more clearly. There are so many aspects to the problem that I don’t believe the question is anymore answerable than “what is the meaning of life?” Trying to work through this has made me question the use of people as symbols and whether that is dangerous to the person. The problem with symbols is that they reduce a person to only one thing. Martin Luther King Jr. being used as just a symbol of equality is equally as dehumanizing as using Beyoncé as just a sex symbol. How psychologically damaging is it to know that people only see you as an idea and nothing else?

Barrie, J. M., and Anne McCaffrey. Peter Pan. Modern Library Pbk. ed. New York:

Modern Library, 2004. Print.

#PeterPan #Essay #SelfActualization #Literature

Nothing never goes wrong. I'm a stage manager and my entire work exsistance is comprised of problems that I have ten seconds at least, fifteen minutes at most, to fix a problem that is happening live in front of an audience.

Many people don't know what a stage manager does. Simply put our job is to do anything and everything logistical to make the show happen. Scheduling rehearsals, taking notes on everyones movements, set/props needed, lighting and sound information, making sure actors are getting breaks, being the middle man between actors and directors, calling cues during the show. All that and more fall under our list of responsibilites. Things always go wrong and it's our job to fix it.

One time I was stagemanaging Shakespear's Twelfth Night. The director had decided she wanted a live band on stage for the production. I was on headset with the conductor to cue him for when music was coming up, but on our final show, his headset died. He had a cue coming up and I had fifteen seconds to come up with a solution. I signaled to him to watch my hand and visually cued him like that for three fourths of the show. One of my assistants tracked down and changed the batteries in his set and got it up and running for the last quarter of the show. They didn't miss a single cue that day and no one knew anything had gone wrong.

Elira sat staring at the steering wheel, trying to control her uneven breathing. Her shaking hands felt clammy and she couldn’t seem to calm her heart rate. Why’d he have to do that? The car started to cave in around her, compressing the space until the air was unbreathable. Elira clawed at the door unseeingly, shoving it open and tumbling on to the ground in her desperate attempt to free herself from the shrinking space.

The gas station pavement scraped her knees and hands but she stayed in that position, pressing one finger harder into the ground at a time, noting how each felt in detail. It was a grounding technique, one to try and divert her mind from the panicked spiral it was on. It wasn’t working though, because as she looked at her hands, she could see the ghost of a diamond ring choking the finger next to her left pinky. She tried to blink the hallucination away but every time her eyes closed, all she could see was him down on one knee, on lookers joyously filming on their phones. Elira sat back and leaned against the car, looking out at the highway.

“Why’d he have to do that?” It had started as a normal date, not particularly unique to any other date they had been on in the past seven years. Which wasn’t to say that their dates weren’t interesting or fun, it was just that there had been nothing to indicate his intention. They had gone to explore an allegedly haunted house, went out for food and then gone to a park to walk around. The meal wasn’t exceptionally nice or expensive. The park wasn’t exceptionally beautiful. They had all been pleasant, but nothing that would have led her to believe he was going to try anything unusual. Like proposing.

His face had crumpled when she had abruptly turned on her heel and took off running. She had seen it in her peripheral vision and his expression stabbed through her repeatedly.

“Why’d you have to do that? I love you. I love you so much,” she muttered, gently banging her head against the car door. “So why’d you have to try to push me into a promise I can’t keep?”

That was the heart of her problem. Marriage was a promise she couldn’t keep. She was uncomfortable and scared of it’s permanence. There was no exit in marriage, no where to run. Elira had been with him for seven years, and as far as she was concerned, she wanted it to stay that way.

However, above anything else, she valued her freedom. She loved her right to choose her life and exercised it in every opportunity she had. She never missed a chance to vote. In college she never declared a major, taking any classes that caught her interest. The longest she had stayed in one job was four years, most of the time leaving after one or two years. Her work was never bad, she just decided that if she felt the need for a change, she would act on it.

Despite this, Elira wasn't flighty. While she valued her freedom, her right to choose, and had a craving for adventure, those traits never stopped her from staying in one place, at one job, or with one person. So long as she felt she had the ability to pick up and run away, she was satisfied. She didn't need to act on it but it gave her peace of mind to know that there was always an exit.

His expression flashed through her mind again, piercing every vital organ. With a wave of pain, she banged her head against the car door one last time.

"Idiot...I can't just leave him like that," she murmured softly, eyes clenched shut as his face swam hazily in her mind’s eye. Pulling herself up and into the car, she tried to mentally prepare herself for what she was going to say to him.

He was sitting in the spot she had run from, staring blankly at the ring he had tried and failed to give her. She sighed and approached slowly, as if he were a frightened animal. Stopping when she stood in front of him, she waited for him to acknowledge her first. It didn't take long.

"You really are a sadist, you know that? Why'd you bother coming back?" His voice was quiet but there was a biting hard edge in it.

"You deserve better than being left behind like that. At the very least, I owe you an explanation."

"I don't want to hear a list of reasons why I'm not good enough for you, Eli."

"You're not going to hear one." She took the ring from his hand, examining it pensively. Even just holding it, she could feel the weight shackling her place, robbing her of the choice to run. She took a deep breath, trying to force herself to be calm.

"We've been together for seven years," she began, "and as far as I'm concerned, right now, in this moment, I want to be with you forever."

"Then what's the problem?"

"The problem is that that's right now. People and feelings change. I can't promise that I'll feel that way forever and I don't want to make a promise I can't keep."

"We're already staying together for so long, what difference does it make whether I call you my girlfriend or my wife?"

"The difference is one of those has an exit and the other doesn't."

"They both have exits. There's always divorce."

"A divorce is a long messy life changing process. It's easier to breakup than to get divorced."

"But it is an exit th--"

"Are you really trying to argue that because I could always divorce you, marrying you is ok," She snapped, frustrated at his lack of understanding. With a deep breath, she again turned her attention to the ring in her hand.

"No one should enter into a marriage saying 'it's ok, I can always get divorced.' That's not fair to the other person. The point of a marriage is that it's permanent until it really can't be anymore. There isn't an expectation of permanence in a relationship. There's an understanding that either person could back out," she said, placing the ring in it's box and closing the lid with a snap.

"So you're saying you see a future where we're not together anymore?" His voice had gotten quiet again, seeped in hurt, anger, and frustration.

"No I don't. But it is a possibility so isn't it better to leave room for it?" She watched one of his hands clench into a fist at his side while the other reached out and took the ring box from her.

"Why? Why do you always need an escape route for everything?"

"For peace of mind. It's too claustrophobic and suffocating if there isn't one. Isn't it enough that I love you? Why can't we just be happy together knowing that?"

"No! It's not enough cause I never know when that's going to change. This," he waved the ring box in front of her, "this is my peace of mind. This tells me that I'm not going to wake up in the morning and you'll be gone. This tells me that you're not going to just take off running somewhere!"

"Just because I wear that doesn't mean that my feelings don't change! Or yours either for that matter!"

They were both yelling, tears blurring their vision. He took a deep breath and she saw the anger melt away leaving only pleading desperation.

"Please, Eli. I love you so much. Can't you just promise me that you'll stay with me? Please."

The way he was looking at her rendered her incapable of speech. The tears were burning her eyes. She loved him and wanted to be with him forever. She felt herself almost begin to say so.

"I--" but she knew there was no such thing.

"I--" and she never made promises she couldn't keep. Yet, there he stood with his pleading eyes and as she looked at them, she second guessed herself. Maybe she could keep this promise. The weight of the words she considered saying wrapped heavily around her wrists and ankles, chaining her in place.

"I pr--" the world closed in around her, pushing against her so she couldn't breathe. Her exit route was shrinking and the fear she felt seeing that made her choke on her words. She couldn't trap herself in that shrinking space with no exits.

Elira took off running, leaving him behind in a trail of tears, uneven breathing and unfinished promises.

I’ve watched a lot of animes and Fruits Basket and Naruto will always have a very deep place in my heart. I’m currently on a Naruto kick so it’s hard to focus on writing this, but nothing can compete with my love for Yu Yu Hakasho. It’s an anime I have watched in full over nine times, and every single time it changes the way I think.

Yu Yu Hakasho follows the adventures of delinquent eighth grader, Yusuke Urameshi, and his strange party of enemies turned friends, as detective of the spirit world. There are several reasons I love the show: complex characters and relationships, interesting story lines, well woven comedy, and the most attention catching opening scene I’ve seen in any anime. But, with the exception of the last point, pleanty of other shows can boast of those as well, so here’s what really sets it apart. It’s very real. Yu Yu Hakasho is a shonen anime. It’s a fighting show, but the fights are real. Yusuke is a street fighter. Consistantly, his fighting style throughout the show remains as such---eratic, unpredictable, and unrefined. In fights, characters get injured, and their injuries carry over into the next fight. You watch them have to factor that into their battle and fight around it. You see them use nothing but willpower to keep standing and using their minds to come up with a tactic to win.

That realness doesn’t just apply to the fights, but to the characters themselves. Every character exsits in shades of gray. Nothing is black and white, same as real life. Yusuke is the most gray hero I’ve ever seen. He isn’t noble, kind, hardworking, or smart. If it weren’t for his humor and quick wit, he’d be straight up unlikable. But through the lengths he’ll go to protect his friends, he grows to a degree that, by the end of the series, you could almost think of him as noble. And that’s true for all of the characters in the show. All of them begin as someone atypical for the role of hero, and yet, they grow throughout the series in a way that’s not only very believable but also leaves no doubt in your mind that they deserve the title of hero. In fact, every arch of the series does it’s best to remind you that the world is not black and white, nothing is simple, and everything is gray.

And while Naruto has given me my favorite conception of energy or aura, and Fruits Basket showed me what true absolute kindness and acceptance looks like, nothing has given me a better concept of the world than Yu Yu Hakasho. People can change and grow, there’s more to a person than what they outwardly show, no one is fully “good” or “bad,” true power is that used to protect others, everyone has a back story. All of that came from Yu Yu Hakasho, and I wouldn’t be able to go through life without that.

Why did she never seem to get to where she was supposed to go? Seven looked up at the building in front of her and rubbed her eyes tiredly.

“So much for the job interview,” she muttered dryly. Seven was frequently late and often lost. She had long ago given up trying to fight it. Whenever she would try to turn around and head to her intended destination, or leave two hours early to be on time, she still always wound up back where she started or late. She started towards the building knowing that the reason why she was there would soon become apparent.

Just as she had taken her first step into the street, she was forced to jump back as a silver, used, 1997 Honda Civic with the front bumper duct taped on, sped by.

”---gonna get an eviction notice,” she caught the deep voiced driver saying as she dodged the near death experience.

“This is why we look both ways when we cross the street,” Seven muttered to herself, crossing the street with more care this time. It was a habit that she developed early on, and while it garnered strange looks from those around her, she didn’t seem to care. She would vent her frustrations at minor inconveniences to the air or debate both sides of her argument. For one, she found that it saved time. But more than that, she knew that when you say something out loud, it becomes real, woven into the universe’s coding. She never held back from whispering ideas into the void, knowing that now, the idea would find or implant itself into the head of the person who could actualize it. Looking both ways before crossing the street would tickle at the back of every pedestrian’s mind today.

Five feet from the door, a crumpled up blue paper dropped in her path. Seven looked up, figuring someone must have thrown it out from an open window. “At least recycle it! This is why global warming is a thing,” she said darkly, picking up the paper before proceeding to the door, intent on finding a recycling bin.

“You here for the audition?” The building’s receptionist asked, nodding to the blue paper in Seven’s hand. Seven looked at the paper for the first time noticing the words, “GUITARIST WANTED” along with a badly drawn graphic and some other information.

“It certainly seems that way,” Seven said with a friendly smile.

“Top floor,” the receptionist said with a bored grunt. With a friendly nod, Seven headed off down the hallway.

“You want me in a band now? I mean, that’s fine but you better come up with something good cause I don’t know how to play anything,” she whispered, addressing her comment to the Universe at large. She wasn’t expecting a verbal answer nor was she particularly worried. The Universe wanted her here for a reason and it would make sure she was equipped to handle the situation. It was just different and unexpected, but then again, when wasn’t it? She stopped short in front of the elevator, glaring at the “out of order, please use stairs” sign taped to the door.

“I hate stairs,” she muttered under her breath, before starting up the seven flights.

Sweaty and out of breath, she finally reached the seventh floor landing. Victoriously, she tugged at the door handle only to find it stop short, completely stuck. Trying again with similar results, she leaned against the door, breathing heavily and glaring out at nothing.

“So much for joining a band,” she muttered viciously, throwing the blue paper against the wall. The flyer ricocheted off, rolling to a stop in front of the only other door on the landing. The “roof access” door, which Seven noticed, was slightly ajar. Picking up the flyer she continued up the stairs.

The roof was much brighter than it had been in the stairwell and Seven found herself squinting in the shock of light, doubled over, more out of breath than she had been before. Despite that, she still managed to make out the young man standing on the edge of the roof, looking at her wide eyed.

“Hold up...before you jump...just...let me catch...my breath,” she heaved out, hands on her knees. She really didn’t like stairs. The young man, she noted, was now looking at her like she’d grown another head. Not an unusual look for Seven to receive. Finally, able to breathe somewhat normally, she straightened, mildly amused that the young man had waited for her.

“Who the hell are you?”

“Seven.”

“Like the number? That’s your name?”

“Yup. And I was teased mercilessly for it in elementary school.”

The man wasn’t sure how to respond to this so he opted not to. He looked back out over the ledge, still ready to jump but feeling weird about doing it with another person there.

“You know, all things being equal, you should tell me your name now.” Seven said.

“Why bother? It’s not like it matters.”

“Names are important. Or would you rather I just call you dark-blonde guy?”

“It’s Ian.” He sighed, frustrated at her presence.

“Nice to meet you Ian. I think you dropped this,” she said, coming up next to him and offering him the flyer.

“You know, you should really recycle that if you don’t want it anymore.” He looked at her like she had just announced that she’d been inside Area 51, not taking the blue paper held out to him and remaining quiet.

“You know, I missed a job interview today.” Seven sighed as she eyed the building she was fairly certain she was supposed to be at for her interview.

“What, up and decided last minute to pursue your dream in music?” Ian asked bitterly.

“Nope. I don’t know how to play anything. I just sorta ended up here. Guess it’s where the Universe wanted me, today.”

“What planet are you from?”

“This one. You?” She responded with such seriousness that Ian honestly wasn’t sure if she was joking or not. Again, unsure of how to answer, he remained silent. Seven had a lot of patience for life’s random twists and turns, but far less for people, and was growing annoyed by Ian’s silence and inaction.

“Oh for god sakes, if you’re gonna jump, jump. If not than get off the ledge and talk to me.” Seven snapped.

“Excuse me, what? Are you insane! You want me to jump in front of you?”

“No. I don’t want you to jump at all. And seeing as how you haven’t yet and don’t want to while I’m here, I don’t think you really want to either. So quit doing that dumb thing where you pretend you don’t have feelings and tell me why you’re up here.”

Ian was certain that no professional would have recommended such a tactic, but, oddly enough, for him, in this one particular scenario, he found it working. He didn’t step off the ledge but he found himself wanting to talk.

“I put my life into music. I practiced guitar until my fingers bled and I loved every minute of it. I’m really good. I knew I was. I knew I could make a living at it. And my best friend, part of a real money earning band, holds auditions for a guitarist. I knew I was good enough. I’m better than their last guy. And he knows how good I am. He’s been there with me for ever. Encouraged me the whole time. He’s the one who told me to audition. And then he tells me I don’t fit the style of the band. He knows how I play---why’d he even bother telling me to audition? He was supposed to help me. Look out for me. What garbage! People only look out for themselves. And if my own friend won’t take me, no one will. What’s the point?”

Ian suddenly found the prospect of jumping more appealing again, but he glanced over at Seven to see if she understood that he had no place left to go. What he had put his life into was failing him and his friend he had put his faith in, had turned his back on him. However, it appeared that Seven not only did not understand but, in fact, found this to be the dumbest thing she ever heard.

“So this wasn’t the gig for you. So what?”

“So there is no gig for me! That was it! Even my own supposedly best friend won’t have me in his band! I had faith in him--that he would pull through for me and--”

“And that’s the problem. You shouldn’t put faith in people or yourself. People make mistakes and are accident-prone. Putting faith in people is only gonna result in breaking you at your core. Faith is for the intangible.”

“What, like the Universe?” Ian sneered.

“Yeah. Or God. Or Other Powers. Or even Music. Those things are concepts. Ideas. An idea doesn’t make mistakes, it just gives you something to guide you.”

“I did put my faith in music.”

“No, you put your faith in yourself---in your talent. And you’re a person. You make mistakes and you fail, and that makes you lose faith in yourself and look where you are now. If you really put your faith in Music, you’d know there’s always another gig. You’d listen to the melodies you’re playing and let them lead you to where they want to go, instead of trying to insert yourself into them and control them.”

Ian was almost frightened by how much comfort her words gave him and how much sense this insane woman made. Although, one thing didn’t sit well with him.

“So you’re saying I should never trust myself or others again and just follow an abstract idea?”

“Hey now, trust is not the same thing as faith. Of course you should trust yourself the most and others within the degree that they’ve earned it. Trust’s built for people. It’s given based on how much it’s deserved, lost based on how big the screw up was, and gained back based on how well the patch up worked. Faith is whole hearted and fragile, and much closer to the core of your being. Once it’s broken, so are you. So don’t go carelessly placing it in things that are flawed by nature.”

Ian stepped down off the ledge and looked out at the city below, cracking a wry smile.

“I carelessly placed my faith and now I’m broken. So what’s the point then? All that’s left is to jump.”

Seven shook her head a little looking out as well.

“I don’t know that there is a point. But just because something’s broken doesn’t mean you can’t glue it back together.”

“You’re contradicting yourself.”

“So does life.” Seven responded carelessly.

Ian almost laughed, feeling strangely light.

“Ok, for the sake of argument, let’s say you’re right. Faith is fragile and I broke it and wanna glue it back together. What’s the glue?”

The question apparently threw Seven off.

“How should I know? Um...willpower? Clarity...Something like that. I never really thought about it, figure it out yourself.”

Ian glanced down at the wrinkled blue paper Seven still held in her hand. He took the flyer from her and smoothed it out a little. Having returned the flyer to him, Seven pushed away from the ledge, walking towards the stairs.

“So I should recycle this, right?” He called from behind her with a dry smile.

“Yup!” Seven laughed, giving a small wave before disappearing down the steps.

”...Have faith in the Music, huh? Guess I’ve got some listening to do.” Ian murmured softly to himself before looking out at the city again, humming quietly.

***

Seven got out of the taxi in front of where she should have been from the beginning, fully intending to apologize for missing her interview and beg for a second chance. She raced to the building, but stopped short at the sound of a vaguely familiar deep voice.

“They hired me on the spot! They were so impressed with my interview and since the other candidate was a no-show, I got the job! I don’t have to worry about eviction anymore! The Lord really does provide!”

She watched with interest as the man talking on the phone walked by her and got into a used, silver, 1997 Honda Civic with the front bumper duct taped on. Seven smiled softly, looking up a little.

“Alright, you’re forgiven for the eight flights of stairs,” she said into the void.

Seven never seemed to get to where she should be, but she always ended up at where she needed to go.

#Fate #Faith #Holistic #TheUniverse #Fiction #ShortStory