Spirals

When we say something feels right, what do we mean? After burning my eyes on the word-covered pages of "Atlas Shrugged," finishing the epic love poem about Capitalism around 12:30 a.m. this morning, I understand much of the hype surrounding Ayn Rand. She put into words what many hold true who produce goods and services through their minds and bodies. But she would never say something feels right. Either it is right or it is wrong.

In the same way, I meet people or even just glance at strangers and know immediately whether they're right or wrong in their actions toward me. The only time I admit I'm wrong about what I know occurs when I look at someone who appears to look straight at me, and as I'm quickly determining that person's existence in relation to mine and come to a conclusion, I then realize that person was looking through me -- out into space, so to speak -- or at a person directly behind me.

How many people have we looked at, put into our mental circle of friends without hesitation, and then seen them walk away, forever out of our lives? Let's grab a cliché here and ask, "How many leaves lie on the forest floor?" While mobile phone adverts want us to pay for an electronic circle of friends, we spend our lives spinning through spirals of friends, known and unknown. Spirals that lock and unlock like strings of DNA, the touch of two spirals sparking new connections and friendships that will exist in the briefest of moments, a smile between two strangers passing by each other in an airport terminal, an embrace with a person offering free hugs on a busy street corner, a kiss on the cheek by a doting aunt, holding hands while conducting business in Saudi Arabia, sleeping huddled together in a tent with fellow hikers in the wilds of Alaska, introducing your lover to your ex who has become your best friend...

During my most recent lunchtime habit, I will turn on the television and tune in a movie I hadn't seen, for the time it takes to eat my food and let it get digested. Today's entertaining celluloid presentation is called in English, "Ginger and Cinnamon," or, "Dillo con parole mie," in the original Italian title. The script writer, Stefania Montorsi, also played the main character, Stefania, a 30-year old aunt who takes her 15-year old niece to a Greek island for vacation. I don't know anything about Stefania the person but I have met people like Stefania the movie character. In fact, while I watched the movie, I remembered a former girlfriend named Sarah, a woman born 13 years earlier than me, who regaled me with her views on philosophy while enjoying the poems I'd written to perfectly imperfect Greek goddesses like her. We met by chance in a computer class a lifetime ago. Through her, I met my next girlfriend, Frances, who also happened to be Sarah's best friend at the time, and I also made a new sports buddy -- you know, a guy who'll join you in whatever convenient sport you can find to let loose and enjoy some relaxing physical competition -- Sarah's soon-to-be ex-husband, Mike. All while staying friends with Sarah. Live and let live. Share and share alike. Of course, Mike didn't know I was involved with Sarah while she was divorcing him and Sarah didn't know I was involved with Frances after Sarah and I had decided to become friends. I never lied. I just didn't volunteer the information until after I was asked. I leave my life to chance at times -- I was willing to let my new relationships get discovered before I disclosed them. After Mike asked me if I had "been with" Sarah, he then told me, as he was sinking a shot in a game of HORSE, he would have killed me had he known that Sarah and I had "locked lips," as he said, while he was still married to her. Sarah didn't know what to say about my relationship with Frances. She never thought of Frances, me and her as the "three of us" anymore, although she agreed we all practiced the same form of philosophy. She laughed that she had introduced Frances to me and not the other way around. She inspired me to write the story, "Thus Spoke Sarah Through Straw," my Nietzschean tribute to her, based on a poem I had written her about Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophy in, "Thus Spoke Zarathustra."

I basked in the glow of the memory of Sarah as the movie ended, and walked out of the living room to the master bedroom to eliminate today's waste as well as the undigested remnants of fried pieces of chicken soaked in habanero sauce from yesterday's afternoon meal at Beauregard's with my wife. [Call it crude but all I can say about yesterday's endorphin rush is that it'll get you coming and going, if you know what I mean!] I grabbed a book to read in the bathroom since I'd just finished Matheson's short story collection, "I Am Legend," yesterday (I should review that book one day but I'll say my favorite story is...actually, no, I won't say my favorite, although "Funeral" was downright hilarious). One of the books I'd bought at Unclaimed Baggage ended up on the bottom of my "To Read" stash and I had forgotten about it. As I glanced at the books, I reached to the bottom and pulled out "The Unbearable Lightness of Being," and started reading about Nietzsche. Which spiral connected Sarah to that novel? Who knows and who cares? I don't have to feel anything to know it's right. Rand would be proud -- she completely understood the spirals that connect our lives and inspire us to create something new and useful -- now, if I could just produce something tradable in the process. ;^)

How about this? How long will "green" technology remain a popular investment if the price of oil and gold drop quickly? What would make oil and gold drop quickly? An election of the head of a major political entity? Strange movements by legislative bodies to protect mortgage houses for their foreign friends. Perhaps. Or perhaps not. In the lag of time between now and such an occurrence, can the Halliburtons of the world, no matter how much dark contempt they hoist on their shoulders, bring a little sunshine into one's financial holdings? After all, the fun-to-love stocks like Apple just don't seem reliable enough to hold their own on a short-term basis. Don't ask me, I'm not a betting man. I don't gamble. I invest for the long-term. I don't buy stocks because they feel good. I buy them because they're right. In other words, I want a planet my great-grandnieces and nephews can live on, no matter what spirals they find themselves enjoying. Green is always gold, if you know where to look.