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Backwards | Nov 23 2002

When you turn it around, it appears even less plausible, the convergences necessary to make it happen. And yet every story, studied in reverse, leads back to where it began.

Who hasn’t traced the thing like this, saying, If you hadn’t and I hadn’t (and on down the line), I wouldn’t be holding you now?

We say, If events hadn’t conspired in our favor… It’s a conspiracy of events. They, the events, wanted it to happen. It was pre-meditated; they worked in concert.

A fear underlies this. Our lives, ruled by circumstance, by blind chance, are not our own. We are trying to steer a thing that cannot be steered.