Faux Fu

Tuesday, December 08, 2020

Luck. Good and Bad.

Luck: "a force that brings good fortune or adversity." 

Right. Luck. Good or Bad. You know, it's like a God with two Faces, or maybe it's two Gods: Lucky & Unlucky. Luck (either flavor), works in mysterious ways. It is so mysterious that, just like God, you are not really sure whether it even exists or not. If it does exist, if it works like a God, it seems to be a bit indifferent, or ambivalent, or capricious to all things human. Luck is definitely inscrutable, unreliable. Luck likes to Fuck with people.

We can pray, we can beseech, we can (contrary to Jim Morrison of the Doors), petition, but Luck seems to do what Luck will do. Sometimes we live under a Lucky Star, everything just breaks our way, and  sometimes we are Snakebit, plum Out of Luck, nothing works.

Being Lucky is sort of a magical, enlightened, sainted state. Being Unlucky is a plague, a blight, a curse, a sorry, good for nothing state.

There is also a middle state, maybe we'd call it "stupidly, muddling thru;" a state where you aren't either lucky or unlucky, you're just breathing.

And of course, we take Luck personally. Hard not to. Luck may be a blind, impersonal force, but it's hard not to live and die on the Island of Luck. Blessed or Doomed. Choose your island. Yikes.

You Hope to be Lucky (in a good way).  But it doesn't seem like something you can cultivate, or work for, or earn. Now that seems unfair. But I mean, shite, add it to the list of unfair things...

"There is no substitute for luck." - Uncle Zip, from M. John Harrison's novel "Light."

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