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“’It is like a firstborn son: you spend your life working for him, sacrificing everything for him, and at the moment of truth, he does just as he pleases.’”

(From “Love in the Time of Cholera” by Gabriel García Márquez)

“For life is too short to resign ourselves to reading poorly written books and sleeping with women we don’t love.”

(From “Not One Day” by Anne Garréta)

#anne garreta

“I just want something impossible, is that so much to ask?”

You are a single thirty-something.

You have a job, you live alone, and you are content, if not pleased, with these aspects of your life. The city you live in suits you very well, amply supporting your interests, offering you a variety of new experiences on a regular basis, and home to some close friends of yours.

Today is your day off. You lie in bed, although you have been awake for a while now, trying to find that foggy, in between state where you begin to relinquish control of your thoughts to your subconscious. This seems to go on for hours, but when you check your alarm clock, it hasn’t been twenty minutes.

Still lying in bed, you begin to think about your day. There are many ways you might spend your day. You have friends to eat or drink with, books to read, a bike to ride, projects to work on, hobbies to practice, interests to pursue. On some days, it feels overwhelming to think about how you might spend your time, there are so many options, but today you are at peace with the web of life at whose centre you lie. Today it will be a pleasure to let the question of What To Do hang long in the air, until an answer presents itself. And as you lie in bed, something of an answer does present itself: you would like to go on a date. Or at least, you would like to flirt with someone, have someone flirt with you. You would like that excitement. You smile knowingly to yourself, as if to say "ah ah ah, you know that is not a choice you get to make, it takes two.” But you are aware of this craving all the same. It will have to be the background music of your day, this slight wish, and you will go about your day as usual only making small adjustments to put yourself in a position to satisfy this itch. [Roll a die, and comment if the roll is odd or even. This will determine what happens next.]

#you cannot choose your adventure #you are a prisoner of fate

A Game

(... with credit mostly to the movie Chevalier, which I recommend).

The game is intended for three or more players, and is played in rounds. Each round, one player is selected to think of a mutual friend/acquaintance/etc, someone everyone in the group knows. The object of the game is to guess this person by asking the selector questions of the form “if this person was a ______, what _______ would they be?” where the blanks should be filled with whatever noun you like. For example, “if this person was a musical instrument, what musical instrument would they be?” Or article of clothing, or animal, or sex act, or flower or etc.

We were surprised how quickly we were able to correctly guess the person in question.

For larger groups where it is difficult to think of someone everyone knows, you might follow Chevalier even more closely, and limit the possible people to only those in the room.

“You should get a puppy,” he says sleepily.

“A puppy?” “Yeah. It’s not like a cat. A puppy you can take for walks around the neighbourhood, and people will stop and smile and say, ‘Oooh, look -- What’s wrong with your puppy?’” “What is wrong with my puppy?” “Worms, I think. I don’t know. You should have taken him to the vet weeks ago.” (also from Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? by Lorrie Moore)

“Remember that time you shaved your forehead? What the *fuck*, babe?”

(From Who Will Run the Frog Hospital by Lorrie Moore)