Luck and Love

It was Lent season, Fat Tuesday came before Ash Wednesday.
On Fat tuesday, there is a special cake made called the King Cake and figure of baby Jesus is put into the cake. Whoever uncovers the figure when they take a piece are supposed to have the luck for the year.
I cut into the whole cake (previously uncut) and in the very first piece saw the tiny plastic legs of the baby sticking out and therefore picked out the figure and am the owner of all luck for 2010.
This surprising show of luck comes in the (almost) heels of me winning the lucky draw at the Holiday Party in december 09 (I think of it as Christmas still).

This leads me to think on a bigger picture question. So far in my life, all my problems have been little and I have had zero short term/small sized luck.
Upside being that whenever there was potential for me to be in deep muck (about twice) I've had a miraclous smooth sailing when the way emerges out of nowhere (which I call good karma and grace of god) that everyone is happy with.
But now that I am sinking into pretty deep muck (best way to describe it without getting explicit) and do need a helping hand into all that is great and good, I am getting this small installments of luck which do make for immediate gratification but have no impact on the overall quality of my life.
That has me worried.

This is the oft heard puzzle/joke/question - if you had a choice between small payouts peppered more frequently through time (with an unstated addendum of you being left to your own devices for any crap that you might get subjected to) or substantial bonuses that come between larger periods of small difficulties (that are well within your limits of tolerance/being able to overcome it)
what would you rather pick?
It seems to greedy to expect to have both short term and long term luck, so we will leave that option out of the pick.

I passed get another made up day that causes a lot of unnecessary grief among my peers in this country with stereotypical company of my own self.
Let another few years go by and the stereotype would be for me to start collecting cats and treating them like people;I am a cat person (but also jell well with dogs, cattle, birds...other species) and proclivity to a conclusion that seems both foregone and dreadful is not pleasant to consider.
To amuse myself on this Hallmark (the company) day, I resorted to watching and reading like I do for the rest of the thankfully ordinary days.
Valentine's Day (the movie) was predictably bland and lifeless. My pattern for picking the one guy as a hawt one and him inevitably being a gay character...continues.
But on the reading front, happily, I am rediscovering my taste for poetry.
Due to my natural pull towards anything celt (I must have been scots-irish in some previous birth), I randomly started reading Robert Burns (To quote "Better off Ted"-Irish drink too much and write overly depressing poetry)a few weeks ago and felt great resonance to his take on life/love in "Thine am I, my faithful fair" (which I always remember wrongly as Thine I am)-
What is life when wanting Love?
Night without a morning:
Love's the cloudless summer sun,
Nature gay adorning.
In poetry, Love is always associated with sunshine and warmth and Depression (or sadness) with darkness and cold. Scientists have shown links between night owl teenagers (who I used to be before I became a night owl adult)who rise late and miss the sunshine being less effective and happy.
I guess either poets had a scientific observation or that its just common instinctive sense of what goes together.
But getting back to the quote above, I liked the imagery evoked. I am in no hurry to get back to Sylvia Plath (Daddy was dark!) because I would like to not get to that place (like ever).
My 'embrace the inner darkness' phase is gone or atleast waning so I don't want to encourage anything that will increase its potency. I mostly want it gone because the people I interact with (not at professional capacity) are clueless to deal with the likes of me in the full throes of delirious joy from acceptance of my inner demons.
Its predictably disturbing to them. I might as well go goth all the way for the kind of unease I inspire in them even in a faceless interface like a text chat.

My sis and poet/blogger sent me some Pablo Neruda poems yesterday. She is well versed in espaniol (writing, reading and speaking) and enjoys spanish language movies and songs.
I recently saw "Like Water For Chocolate" (subtitles!) and I didn't like it at all [interestingly, the lead made king cake in the movie]. Magical realism doesn't go well with me which is also why I was left with a bad taste in the mouth after completing "Mistress of spices".
Spanish literature seems strewn with that keyword ('magical realism'...not 'mistress' you dirty dirty thing you). I didn't like 'Love at the time of cholera' but did like 'One hundred years of solitude'. So I approach Neruda with the mindset(its unfair but I am a bad bad girl) that I will probably not find the resonance I feel when I read (say)"Passionate Shepard to his love".
I mean, C'mon - "Come live with me and be my love and all the pleasures we will prove." what beats that? [mind turns to mush and subject starts drooling]. That one hits the spot every time.
Ol Shakesy is pretty good too. I read his poem on Aphrodite called "Venus and Adonis" that interestingly gave a backstory to why love is also so much pain; she apparently curses after Adonis dies (foolishly, not heeding her words...[men!!!])-
'Since thou art dead, lo, here I prophesy:
Sorrow on love hereafter shall attend:
It shall be waited on with jealousy,
Find sweet beginning, but unsavoury end,
Ne'er settled equally, but high or low,
That all love's pleasure shall not match his woe.

'It shall be fickle, false and full of fraud,
Bud and be blasted in a breathing-while;
The bottom poison, and the top o'erstraw'd
With sweets that shall the truest sight beguile:
The strongest body shall it make most weak,
Strike the wise dumb and teach the fool to speak.

'It shall be sparing and too full of riot,
Teaching decrepit age to tread the measures;
The staring ruffian shall it keep in quiet,
Pluck down the rich, enrich the poor with treasures;
It shall be raging-mad and silly-mild,
Make the young old, the old become a child.

'It shall suspect where is no cause of fear;
It shall not fear where it should most mistrust;
It shall be merciful and too severe,
And most deceiving when it seems most just;
Perverse it shall be where it shows most toward,
Put fear to valour, courage to the coward.

'It shall be cause of war and dire events,
And set dissension 'twixt the son and sire;
Subject and servile to all discontents,
As dry combustious matter is to fire:
Sith in his prime Death doth my love destroy,
They that love best their loves shall not enjoy.'

How very true...huh? Pretty Awesome!!!
You'd think for someone who likes his work and who's thinking around the theme of V day, I would put in a good word for the seminal 'Romeo and Juliet'.
But fat chance my dear...I remember reading out passionate lines from that very play to Jay and B in the library, while all 3 of us were bubbling in mirth. Yes, we are the kind of people who laugh when Juliet looks at the dead body of her love and chides him for not leaving her any poison.
Judge away. Play was well written and everything, I just find young love comical; they were 15 yrs old for gods sake! at that age we were worried about school and exams...not comparing anyone to a freaking summer's day.The more intense or earnest they got, the more funny it was (is?) to us.
Think a line from Valentines Day sums it up best - Young Love...so impractical.
Back then, in school, my taste in poetry ran more into the intensely religious William Blake stuff and the other extreme...the very wonderful, light tone of Ogden Nash's poetic take on everything from going to the dentist to mosquitoes.

Coming back to the V theme, I am listening in a loop for weeks together to the song Cosmic Love by Florence and the Machine. It has very dark lyrics on the subject of feelings for a lover that attracts me-
"The Sun, The Moon, They have all been blown out
You've left me in the dark
No dawn, no day, I'm always in this twilight;
In the shadows of your heart."

and also - " So darkness I became"
Ladies, this is a must when you are trying to accept your rage against a one who is senselessly dropping laundry around the house (for you to pick up, presumably) when all you want to do is love him, having given up practically your entire life.
Guys, you will not like it. But if you do, let me know...you might be worth knowing (or going by my pattern - gay; but still worth knowing)

In all, I am thankful for the little luck, presence of love and support (regardless of lack of the cupidy, red colored, heart shaped kind) and the abundance of knowledge and creative art (learning & expressing) for me to feast on for the rest of my life.
These are my joys and I am truly grateful to have them.

Also On 23rd Feb...I went to the taping of the show that comes on night after night (yet not called the nightly show) and blurted inadvertently loud words of love to the host and he returned the words sweetly (and made up pretty much the entire 28 yrs that I have spent not saying anything romantic). Thankfully those are my lovely memories and were not shot on camera or broadcast.

I am definitely the lucky one :)
Rain