More Than Irony

There is something on my mind and it’s more than irony.

Cases in point: (1) I had to coerce cab drivers at Charles DeGaul aeroport in Paris because none of them wanted to take a fare to Chantilly. It was out of the way; they wanted to go in to Paris where they at least had the opportunity to continue driving fares. If they took me to Chantilly, there was a good chance that they would have to dead-head back to the airport.

One night I finally got an unwilling driver to take me home. He was a cherubic looking fellow, a little nervous but friendly enough. He was about 50 years old, a bit overweight, spoke no English, and had a scented bob hanging from his rearview mirror. I got in the cab first, this was the ploy, and then told him the address, 10 Avenue deMontmorency, Chantilly. He balked but I was already inside along with my suitcase and briefcase. So he shrugged, put it in gear and off we went.

The most direct route was through the Foret du Ermononville, a two lane black top highway with a good surface. I took it to work oftentimes and went well over the speed limit, as did everyone else who drove that road. Not my little cabbie, he did the speed limit without fail, yielded at every roundabout and proceeded most carefully. I was amused at how closely he followed the traffic regulations. This kind of behavior was rare among Paris cabbies.

We got to Chantilly, and he continued to do the speed limit all the way through town; I directed him to my apartment and the final approach was an unlit side street that went through the neighborhood. Well, at the intersection before Ave deM he slid through without giving a car on the right the right of way. In France, the general rule is priorite’ a droite and the car was a police car. They followed him the last 100 yards to my apartment entrance. I got out of the cab and went in. They got out of their car and busted the cabbie. He was so fixated on obeying the traffic regulations and yet he got busted.

(2) My cousin followed the Mulitsch family men and became a police officer. He is my age and we had a lot of fun growing up together. He was in our wedding and the home movies of him getting his dinner are still a source of laughter. He rapidly pointed out the several things he wanted from the serving line, put his hand on his hip and held out his plate; hubris of which to be proud. As a policeman he was terrific as well. He has a great sense of humor but it’s like the vinyl coating on a steel bar and you know it when he talks to you. He was and is successful in the war against crime.

One afternoon in the mid- sixties, he came by the house on Oriole Avenue and introduced us to his bride to be, a beautiful and sensitive young lady. She and he married and soon enough they had a nice young son; they were off to a great start. Well, he was a policeman and you’ve seen enough police TV to know that it’s dangerous. She had this terrible feeling that one day she would get a call saying he’d been killed on the job. I mean it was a serious problem for her. It became so serious that they decided to split up; she just couldn’t take the pressure. She finally remarried after a long time and started a new life with a new husband. One night she got a call; he’d been shot in an altercation with others and killed. My cousin, on the other hand, is still doing just fine.

(3) The Courier-Journal newspaper published a story about a young store owner/operator in the Old Louisville section of the city. He was being held up at gunpoint when the robber fired the gun and killed him. As it turns out, and the story is just a sketchy as my account of it, he was from the Middle East, came to Louisville with his wife and son to get away from the violence.

In all of these, and I’m sure you can think of more examples, the people were trying so hard to avoid some set of circumstances and yet that set of circumstances came about anyway. It is almost as if there was nothing they could do to avoid it. They all made conscious decisions to avoid catastrophe and yet the catastrophe occurred. One has to ask the question, is it fate or is it that such a strong impression is made that personae work in subtle ways to fulfill it? In other words, it is possible that the extreme aversion to having something happen makes such a deep impression on personae in the being that they work to arrange for it to happen just as we would hope they would work to bring about something desirable.

Personally I don’t believe in fate, preordination, or kismet, or any other name you may give it. It seems that a strong desire can be impressed on the being for s.t. and then the mechanism sets about achieving that by hook or by crook. There have been some notable impressions in my experience, to wit: membership in the Hampton Yacht Club, inclusion in the ranks of the management of NNS, and competing at the Horse Park. I could bore you with about a hundred more but the bottom line is we get what we want and be careful what you want. It seems that the mechanism makes no distinction of what is good or bad for one; it simply gets whatever is strongly enough impressed on it.

The nature of the being is such that some personae are working right now to fulfill some impressed desire and whichever personae are figuratively on the bridge of our ship at sea here may not even be aware of what is happening to fulfill said impression. Furthermore, there could be many impressions upon which work is being done by some of the hundreds of personae that make up this being and often it is only through hindsight that we become aware of the fulfillment.