Patterns

A long time ago, somebody pushed a button hard, having known exactly what my buttons are, and told me that I'm always going to be a drifter, that I'll always "bounce from job, to job, friends to friends," and that I'll "never have a career."

In some ways that is true, though if a career is code for "fulfillment," than at least I feel as if I've had that for the majority of my life, though it comes from writing, which I've been doing ever since I learned how to write, thus making assertions like "You'll never have a career" roll off me, though naturally at the time those words were spoken I wanted to jump off the nearest cliff. Because I believed them.

.... Now, I know that's not true. I am a writer that does other stuff, and I do not desire to be an SVP of sales, just to sell enough to get by, and have health insurance, and time to write. I'm going to defer to lyrics from a favorite song, sung by an endearing Japanese guy because the original version's embedding was disabled by request. Typical.


"Patterns" by Simon and Garfunkel

The night sets softly
With the hush of falling leaves,
Casting shivering shadows
On the houses through the trees,
And the light from a street lamp
Paints a pattern on my wall,
Like the pieces of a puzzle
Or a child's uneven scrawl.

Up a narrow flight of stairs
In a narrow little room,
As I lie upon my bed
In the early evening gloom.
Impaled on my wall
My eyes can dimly see
The pattern of my life
And the puzzle that is me.

From the moment of my birth
To the instant of my death,
There are patterns I must follow
Just as I must breathe each breath.
Like a rat in a maze
The path before me lies,
And the pattern never alters
Until the rat dies.

And the pattern still remains
On the wall where darkness fell,
And it's fitting that it should,
For in darkness I must dwell.
Like the color of my skin,
Or the day that I grow old,
My life is made of patterns
That can scarcely be controlled