WHAT IS: LUCK?

Mood: Good
Music: I Just Don't Think I'll Ever Get Over You; by Colin Hay
Drinking: Coke

I have a good luck charm. Two, actually. They are a pair of red dice. Red is a lucky color to the gypsy people, and although I am not a gypsy, they were given to me by an old gypsy woman. This is completely true in that she is of Romany heritage, and is advanced in age. Not a crone, just old. Older than me at least. At any rate, I have these two dice. I roll them every morning, and put the higher rolling one in my pocket. If they roll doubles three times in a row, I put them both in my pocket. This is a small example of a very strange habit of mine that is so OCD it belongs in a Steve Martin novella.

This chapter of Hard Underbelly is based on my life in that tiny respect. Shadow Stalker posited that the dice (die? I seriously do not know if dice is both plural and singular or what) is not very lucky, which prompted me to post this. It's a few random thoughts on luck that popped into my head earlier this week.

I would say that my dice have not lost their lucky powers. True, bad things have certainly happened to me while I was carrying them. I was hit by a car while riding my bike, but all I suffered, despite flying a few feet to land on cold pavement, was a bloody nose and some scrapped appendages. I was robbed at work recently, but then, I also wasn't shot. I like to think of them as more preventing the worst of the bad things that inevitably happen to us all. I am truly of the school that any day you can walk away from is a good day. After all, if I still have a roof over my head and food to eat at the end of the day, it couldn't have been that bad.

In other news, I recently finished reading the Hyperion Cantos again. The Hyperion Cantos is an excellent series of sci-fi novels by Dan Simmons, consisting of Hyperion, The Fall Of Hyperion, Endymion, and The Rise Of Endymion. It is probably the greatest science fiction series I've ever read. The only other contender for the title in my mind is the Majipoor series by Robert Silverberg, but it's beaten because I have consider it a fantasy series anyway, and some of his more recent entires in the series kinda fall into what I think of the Silverberg Trap, which is, no matter how much I love his writing and enjoy his books, after reading his novels I'm sometimes left with a feeling of, yeah... so what. Like maybe I missed what exactly the point of the story was in the text of it. Anyway, Hyperion Cantos = good. Also, I grabbed the new Billy Chaka novel, Kinki Lullaby by Isaac Adamson, and, as usual, I recommend it. I think my favorite of the series is probably Dreaming Pachinko, largely because of the wistful and awkward relationship between Billy and the female protagonist, who's name escapes me at present. I'm planning on reading the Princess Bride again next.

Ending Music: The Only Living Boy In New York; by Simon & Garfunkel

-----------------Over, Out--------------------

  posted by Tristan @ 4:47 PM