The Magpie Diary: Jan. 5, 2024.

Image via.

“Why not end here, without answers?
Aren’t there chance meetings in every life that don’t play out,
stories that seem meant to remain ghostly, as faint and fleeting
as the reflection of a face on the window of a bus?”

-Stuart Dybek

This sentiment has been a prevalent motif in the past few years of my life: not everything resolves to a fine point. True in relationships, true in business, true in the occasionally wounding ways of the world, true in the unending complexity and contradictoriness of people. But I was thinking of this especially when I ran into an acquaintance dining out by chance at the same restaurant as Mr. Magpie and I last week. We exchanged pleasantries, caught up on how the holidays went, and then she grabbed my hand and told me that she’d had a terrible fluke accident where she’d tripped down the steps in her home and punctured a lung. She hadn’t realized the severity of the incident until hours later, when, still in pain, she found herself unable to breathe, and immediately went to the hospital, where she subsequently spent the days leading up to Christmas while her husband attempted to keep the magic of Christmas alive on his own for their four children. We joked about men wrapping gifts, the pomp and circumstance of the entire holiday, how much there is to do — and then I told her, somewhat tentatively, as we aren’t close friends:

“I had a freak accident, too, a few years ago. I tripped on a rug in my apartment while pregnant with my son and split my head open. I ended up needed ten stitches right down the center of my forehead. I don’t know if you’re like me, but I spiraled for awhile about this. I kept thinking, What does it mean? Is the universe telling me something? Did I deserve this? And, I just want you to know, that sometimes random bad things happen. They just just happen. And they’re not your fault or a sign from the universe except for maybe a gentle nudge to slow down.”

I don’t know how much of this she took on board; I could see she was still in those early, tender days after something disruptive happens where you’re just wanting to reacclimate, move on from the piquancy, resume the normal. (About a year ago, I was catching up with a high school classmate who’d also succumbed to a weird incident — a stray hockey puck struck her while at a Caps game and she ended up needing multiple stitches across her scalp! I saw her just after the incident, and could tell she was still shaken up about it, still in that early phase of processing and desperately wanting to put it all behind her.)

So I don’t know if I helped either of those women in any immediate sense, but I want to put this energy out into the world because back when I was navel gazing and wringing my hands over my own incident, groping for guilt, or puzzling over what my comeuppance meant, a Magpie reader wrote me to say:

“Sometimes bad things just happen.”

And I fought militantly against that phrase. I’m by nature drawn to plotting the asterisms. I have been trained, rigorously, in both college and graduate school English programs, to track the patterns in order to derive meaning from a text. I want to believe that everything happens for a reason. And as a Catholic I am a consequentialist, more or less in constant company with guilt.

But I think sometimes these fluke accidents do just happen, and we can’t permit ourselves to attach too much meaning to them, or we begin to lose faith in the goodness of the world, and we harden our hearts. One of the big adjustments to adult life is acknowledging the fair world fallacy — that bad things happen to good people, and vice versa — and finding ways to not let this beat out the good news of the world.

Does this fit neatly with my broader belief that everything happens in its own time, and that what’s meant for you will not miss you? Absolutely not. The puzzle pieces refuse to nest. But maybe life is this way, you know? Maybe I can keep the “everything happens for a reason” sentiment up on the marquee but still permit a few side showings in which the opposite is true: that some things mean nothing, or are not worth the time and energy of assigning them meaning.

Not everything is going to resolve perfectly. (“Why not end here, without answers?”) We are not living out a math problem; we are in the wilderness of lived experience. Just last week, I was reading Mary Oliver’s Rules of the Dance, which is a fairly rigorous review of poetic scansion, meter, form, etc. She makes the point multiple times that there are rules, but that there are also ambiguities in those rules, and that two different scholars might scan the same poem in slightly different and yet legitimate ways. And what’s more, they might change their readings over time. Somehow this reassured me in the most granular way. We are going to change, and our interpretations of the rules will change, and that’s OK, because what we’re after in the end is just a life well and fully and artfully lived. Everything in service of that core, that giving center.

Sunday Shopping Poetry.

The following content may contain affiliate links. If you make a purchase through the links below, I may receive compensation.

Mansur Gavriel has a mini version of my most-worn bucket bag in a great versatile color. And this is a great look for less for my own green bigger sized one. // Dolce Vita is my favorite less expensive footwear brand, and it has some of the cutest shoes for spring — love these platform mesh beauties and these fun eyelet sneaks. // Great sale happening at J. Crew – includes the brushed cashmere pullover we all love and this $36 sherpa half-zip; a great look for less for my Varley Roselle. // Spectacular resortwear here and here. And I’m smitten with these sandals. // Gorgeous wallet for the new year. // A great look for less for a piece that is typically $1000. // Pore-shrinking serum. // Dorsey restock on some best-sellers, including these statement earrings and these fabulous everyday leverback ones. // Restock of this best-selling cashmere hoodie!