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The Wicker Chronicles: Essays, Poetry, Short Fiction
Thursday, 6 July 2006
tipping point

What are any of us capable of when we make selfish, self-serving choices? Any good person is one bad choice away from not being able to look at themselves in the mirror, and several bad choices away from looking at themselves in the mirror and seeing nothing wrong. We're all sitting several tables over from the self that most of us would never want to be, but could be.

If you wear a comfortable groove of bad choices down the center of your soul, it gets harder and harder to jump the tracks, doesn't it? You think it's easy like Sunday morning, all molasses and flow, but the tide is going out and there's an undertow...

If bad people ever decide to make good choices, do they get steadily more good? How deep is that new veneer of sweetness on their nature? Do maggots shit icing, black widows spin sugar, mosquitoes spit back their stolen blood? Do the snakes among us molt out of the slinky layers of dead skin, dung beetles slough off the crusty brown carapace, crocodile teeth cut down to the bone and expose clean, new flesh?

Can I teeter on this totter and see the pendulum swing, the parabolic track between good and evil that makes us do, makes us be? Where is the tipping point, the flash point, the crystallization point where ice spikes out across the still surface of a night-bound pond, the ignition point where a tinder-brittle forest erupts in flames?

Roll the dice, count the pips, read the leaves. The sure, solid step on the balance beam allows you to cross; hesitate or falter and you fall. Better to toss the dice and know, than spend your mayfly time clutching the unformed possibilities in your tight, sweaty palm. Better to eat the apple and spit out the seeds, leaving a trail of trees and tears, a life well-lived. Better to step through the portal, choose a path, make mistakes, tame regrets, than to spend your days and nights staring at the closed door, a stem cell wishing it was a forest, anything but itself.


Posted by blog/wicker_chronicles at 12:01 AM CDT
Updated: Thursday, 6 July 2006 2:06 PM CDT
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Sunday, 9 July 2006 - 9:09 PM CDT

Name: Wandering Willow
Home Page: http://blogs.salon.com/0003947

I have no answers to any of those questions, but would echo everything you say in the final paragraph. Good questions, though. Someday we'll "get" it, I hope.

Monday, 10 July 2006 - 2:27 PM CDT

Name: G.
Home Page: https://www.angelfire.com/blog/wicker_chronicles/esoteri


I wasn't asking the questions expecting answers; I don't think that there *are* absolute answers to some questions. But wrestling with those questions, living with them, and making room for more questions is just part of deliberate, conscious living, I think.

Thursday, 13 July 2006 - 3:56 PM CDT

Name: Danny
Home Page: http://fieldofdandelions.blogspot.com

Last night I made several, uh, mistakes. Not anything really bad, but enough to keep me awake at night wishing I had acted differently. This morning I apologized to those whom I had acted badly toward.

The apology is hard, even harder for the really bad choices, but necessary. It keeps me from "wearing the comfortable groove of bad choices down the center of my soul," as you put it. At least, I hope it does.

Thanks for another wonderful post.

Sunday, 16 July 2006 - 8:26 AM CDT

Name: susan
Home Page: http://www.visual-voice.net

wow, the last three posts ~ so glad you're back, mr. wicker!

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