liadnan

Just as Cairo Martyr did. (Many points to anyone who recognises the reference without googling.)

I've been vaguely toying with a post about free will, determinism, and seizing the day for a while now, on and off, but it always came out incoherent and, frankly, pretentious bollocks. I meant to write about how I become genuinely angry when people (such as my mother) take horoscopes or the prophecies of Nostradamus or the general idea of a knowable pre-determined fate even semi-seriously, and then vaguely wander via theology and my really very superficial grasp of quantum physics (if one allows for the sake of argument the existence of an omnipresent and omniscient god, who is both within the universe and time and yet not constrained by it, and who is therefore there at all times observing within Schrodinger's box, what does that do to the whole sort of general mishmash, and can we stop Dan Simmmons writing another science fiction novel about it before I do?) to the way I gamble with my life.

Not ordinary gambling. Well, a bit on horses, and cards as well sometimes. But real gambling. I can say with complete honesty that my current career is a massive gamble taken one morning when I awoke with a monumental hangover in my cold room in Oxford, in early 1999, after a drunken evening with a friend who suggested I might be good at it. And the dice haven't stopped rolling yet on that one, so it's all his fault.

I do this kind of thing because, semi-consciously and occasionally in recent weeks for obvious reasons, quite explicitly and consciously, I remember that what talents I have, and the place I grew up and my friends and family and education, and everything that goes to make me "me" are in the end a fairly random hand of cards, and that I don't know whether I'll live through tomorrow, so why not risk it all in the hope of making something of it? Maybe it'll pay out, maybe not, but at least I tried while I could. Not because anything's written, despite this -I have less than ten years, apparently-, but precisely because I don't believe it's written, or at least, not written in a script anyone can read. Tomorrow some bonkers zealot may get into my tube carriage. Or they may miss it because someone held up the lift at the last minute. So, I tell myself from time to time, get on with living for today while you can, and don't miss things because you were scared of it all going wrong. (Which includes making sure you're a decent human being today, because you might not have the chance to do so tomorrow just as much it does pure hedonism.) Obviously this can have the unhelpful result of finding difficulty in paying the second installment of your income tax when you find that in fact you have somehow made it through to that grim day, but you can't have everything.

Or so I thought. But, you see, I'm not going to Paris.

Perhaps I should expand. I was supposed to be meeting some of the usual suspects for a drink this evening. But before I did so I went for a late afternoon/early evening amble with Frankie round Oxford Street winding up at the Cork and Bottle, and as a result of missed phone calls and the like I didn't manage to meet them until one of them rang, their voice slightly slurred, while I was in Sainsburys around 9

"Hello," they said. "We've decided to go to Paris on the Eurostar tonight. Would you like to come?"

And I thought for a moment, just a moment, because, tonight, I do actually have the cash in my bank account. All those bills don't fall due for another week yet, and who knows whether any of us will make it that far?

And then I said "No", and agreed to meet at Waterloo to collect keys so I can feed the cats instead. Heigh ho. Sometimes you have to give seizing the day a miss. And after all, who else was going to feed the cats?

ETA: Turns out they didn't go in the end. Ah well.