Visions of Fate

Stephen Kuusisto in Planet of the Blind muses upon fate and gives it a vibrant texture.

Fate it seems is made of thorns and blossoms and bones. As Corky [the guide dog] flings leaves and growls with satisfaction I contemplate gloom. The future is indifferent to emotion: events unfold with or without our melancholy or optimism. But there must be sufficient reason for optimism, and for the sentiment that we can craft our potential lives.

Sufficient but not necessary. We in this view of fate are cast back upon our resources. This is good and necessarily so.

He writes earlier in the book:

We are, all of us, ecstatic creatures, capable of joyous mercy to the self and to others.

To begin to think of mercy as a sentiment, it certainly helps to describe it as joyous. A very wise place from which to begin to craft our potential.


And so for day 415
01.02.2008