Life Force

Chickadee little infant family walking through the superstore tonight. "That’s kind of nice," I tell Kari-Ann. "In order to have a family, I think you have to entertain the possibility of hope," I continue, "and I think that’s a beautiful thing." Kari asks me if I’m ever going to have kids. I don’t think so, I tell her.

It’s kind of weird, but I feel absolutely no urge to perpetuate life. I feel many urges, but that is not one of them. Some guy on television last night explaining the life force to me. "You have beat out millions of sperm to get here," he says, "and so you mine as well celebrate that victory." I think about all this as I’m standing outside today, the mud-encrusted grit of the ground and snow turning my hair into icy tendrils. "Life force," I think facetiously. He’s right, though. It’s just some arbitrary propulsion on the pinball machine which has lead me to this specific spot, at this point in time. I explain this same epiphany to AL in the Taco Bell parking lot last week. "I was getting coffee in a MacDonald’s resturant the other day," I told him, "and I was completely horrified by the life form inside. And it’s just so random that I’m here, on this side of the counter, when I could have just as easily been standing on the other side, serving you coffee" (a probability which is actually not too far off, given my recent employment situation or the startling lack thereof). But it’s true that people have their sense of social equality all mixed up.

I hope a little bit for the family I see tonight. The little girl with the bulbous eyes, and her brother. That they entertain the "life force". And I hope a little bit, I think, for me, too.