Twisted Fates

Fucking poignant.

That's how my friend described a moment this morning, as he sat gazing out at acres of natural beauty while life, as he's known it, anyway, unravels. He said it without even a hint of irony, though I suppose I could be wrong about that, since the message arrived by text. 

He's more serious these days than he used to be, back when we were in high school and we were convinced we -- and everybody around us -- were invincible. Substitute ridiculous for poignant, for starters, and that's how we were, back then. 

"Fucking poignant" has stuck with me since this morning, as I knew it would. I told him right off the bat I was stealing it. As I trudged through the realities of my day, I came back to the phrase several times. I imagined the perfect confluence of great joy and overwhelming sadness that had overcome my friend, caused him to pair up such incongruous words. 

He sent me a picture. It was dawn there, where he was, but it could have been dusk (had I not known better). The time when night and day intersect, the push and pull of light against dark. If I had to label the picture, I would have chosen "serenity." Or maybe, come to think of it, "fucking poignant." 

While I'm pilfering phrases, I'll work on the next thing he said --something about pondering the difference between fate and destiny. He's way ahead of me on that one. I've never really given it much thought, though my gut tells me if I had to choose, I'd go with destiny. At least I might have a fighting chance at shaping it. I wonder if that's what my friend was thinking, that he had arrived at this place not because of some malevolent twist of fate but because he had unwittingly prepared himself for it. This confluence of great joy and overwhelming sadness, of night and daylight, of being at once the shaper and the observer of ones own destiny. Whether you like it or not. Fucking poignant. Weirdly serene.