Follow-up to Cassandra

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Yesterday I wrote about meeting Ms. Cassandra there by the Scientology center.  Aside from the obvious gift of having someone other than a streetperson listen to me, there was something else:  I'd asked the Universe for cigarettes earlier.  As in...how does this thing work, O Mysterious Cosmic One?  Gimme some cigarettes, for starters.

Such a small thing to ask of the Universe.  And there it was, courtesy of Cassandra, the Prophetess no one believes.  How appropriate!  She functions as the Messenger (in Greek angelos) and I chalk it all up to the Great God Coincidence. She waltzes up out of nowhere, announces her presence, delivers the goods (cigarettes w/o asking) then seals the deal with a name like Cassandra.  Clearly the Cosmos has a helluva sense of humor.  Cassandra, indeed.  And of course I didn't believe.  

The other day I wanted a bicycling helmet.  Couple of days ago stopped to rest at a bridge and down below, in the drift and detrius, lay a helmet.  I made my way down the treacherous slope, retrieved it, cleaned it up and as I write am wearing the derned thing.  And...coincidence, of course.

The day of the triathlon I was at the finishing line cheering on the stalwarts when I noticed each of them got a dandy little water bottle.  I instantly wanted one, of course, and looked around for an abandoned one but couldn't find nary a one.  Then yesterday I came across the same kind of bottle with a slightly different design.  Picked it up, took it with me.  Coincidence again, naturally.

All of which proves nothing, I know, except that the Great God Coincidence is working overtime to produce some pretty cheap little communications.  Yet the other day when Chris was telling me "How It Works," he also said that when he found that twenty on the bus after giving away his last dollar bill that he "knew" that God was real.  Of course I wanted to believe all that, but my Skeptic is alive and well, and has a soapbox and megaphone.
 
How desperately we weave our interpretations to our own specifications, our own designs.  A Navajo blanket of signs and symbols we have constructed ourselves.  Yet I am as guilty as anyone else.

I was expecting a McDonald's gift card today plus a bit of cash.  Didn't come.  So I have another day until the cornucopia is open for business.

Two Latino workers were leaning up against the side of a building they were working on, their butts firmly planted on the sidewalk.  I told them about my getting a ticket for sitting the exact same way they were.  They were, of course, incredulous.  For real that happened?

Here's what's going on with the cops here:  they tend to apply the law very strictly when it comes to the homeless.  No wiggle-room, so to speak.  If a homeless person is sitting on the sidewalk, ticket him/her.  They've even begun shutting the Pedestrian Bridge down at ten pm, claiming it's part of the park.

Once a homeless person gets hit with a big bucks offense (open container, for example, $300) the tendency will be for him to move on down the road as it will be some heavy community service.

I move through the day without having come across herb.  Clear-eyed, so to speak.  The grit and dust of the street rises up to meet me, and I ride through a cloud of unmet expectations, unwarranted anxieties, and misplaced happy endings to frog meets princess narratives.

Creeper was creeping along the street when I saw him out of the cornice of my eye, yelled out his name, and he came ambling over, all full of woe regarding Courtney.  He became all bent out of shape when he saw her kiss a girl (I mean, dude, like I don't go for that kinda shit, ya know, Elijah?) and so the relationship that was so magical ten or so days ago has snarled into a Gordian Knot of incompatibilities.  Life goes on as they each go their separate ways.

He walked off and a few minutes later I saw him chatting up a morbidly obese young lady.  Not a Courtney, mind you, but perhaps all will be well.

So long as she doesn't kiss girls.

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Peace.