Cooking with contretemps

Let’s play make believe.

Make believe that time could be an experiment – that if only we had the right recipes, we could plot the events of our lives, make plans without anyone laughing.

I have this pre-, self-made belief that I can make motion: that I can make anything.

But it’s based just as much on the understanding of my own limitations, on the reality that there are no instructions and that even if there were, not everything will always go according to plan. I’d do better to remind myself, too, that the always possible possibility of failure isn’t necessarily because of something I lack (unless we’re talking about luck. Anyone can severely lack that).

Sometimes (oftentimes), in anything anyone makes, there’s a contretemps: a hurdle; an inopportune, unforeseen circumstance; a happening of shit, or a “motion out of time.”

Take your pick of definition. But let me take this moment to invent an antonym.

We can try as hard as we want to make a “pourtemps”: to hedge our bets with as many opportune, advantageous, self-designed events we want; to make such good prophecies, it’s almost like we made them.

But when we most feel like we can counter one, what we’re more likely to end up with is a ‘contre.’

That or just a steaming pot of disappointment.

 

I called myself a determinist

I learned a new word today (I say ‘new,’ but I’ve probably come across it in school, and failed to remember). The word is hamartia.

Dictionary.com defines it as a tragic flaw, but from other sources I’ve read, it’s more layered than that.

Even though you can’t see me, I’m looking at you, Oedipus

Hamartia is the moment – as with Oedipus and other tragic heroes – when one must make a decision that, ultimately, will determine one’s fate–the choice that will result in either a Happily Ever After or an eye-gouging, gruesome tragedy that highschoolers will forever remember.

I doubt I’ve faced a decision so fraught with risk as poor Oedipus. At least, I’m still around to say that I haven’t.

But how can I know for sure?

What stresses me out sometimes (probably more than it should) is that, no matter how clear-headed I feel at a particular moment, when I must make a choice that carries any bit of weight, I can never feel certain in it. No matter how rational I believe I am in making a decision, no matter how long I take or how many outside opinions I measure before that final leap, I still worry – in the moment when I make that choice – that in the end I’m just jumping towards concrete.

It’s happened before. What I felt was a sound decision based on reason, not emotion, made after much introspection, not impulse, turned out to be the opposite.

I messed up.

Granted, I was not so reckless that I had to blind myself for what I’d done. But still.

I called myself a Determinist, and all I got was this lousy anxiousness.