A few short comments before I begin.
Publishing my story sketches for the world to see…what am I thinking? Writers, artists, musicians, performers they’re supposed to wow, amuse, bedazzle, entrance, captivate, mortify, elicit powerful emotions in you with the finished product, not with the crap that comes before.
There. I laid it all out on the floor. All those thoughts that keep my flimsy attempts at writing on pieces of paper and out of this space that has gone through so many incarnations in the past year. The problem is, I lose those pieces of paper before ever polishing them into the treasures I hope they’ll become.
Fuck it. This blog is a for rough drafts anyway. Read as you will, think about how crappy they all are, and watch as I forget about some and start polishing others. Here goes nothing.
“We cannot know the future of course, but we can see possibilities. And, we can reason out the probably outcomes of our actions.”
The woman took a sip, then held the glass of red wine up to the incandescent bulb hanging down from the ceiling. The wine was not thick and the light peering through at her was distorted, dimmed, twisted as she swirled the liquid gently. Rubies danced against her white skin.
“Will that be the only prophecy tonight?” The girl sitting across the table from her giggled. She had her own glass, and it had been emptied one too many times that evening.
“If, for example, I tipped this wine glass on its side, what would you expect to happen?” The girl looked perplexed. As if challenging her, the woman began to tip the wine glass onto its side. “The wine will spill, of course,” the woman laughed, but kept tipping the glass until the wine was teetering on the edge. “You can predict the future in a way by drawing logical conclusions based on the information obtained through your senses.” The woman’s hand was steady as she spoke. “And, you can cause certain outcomes by acting upon the information given to you. Put you glass beneath mine.”
The girl did as she was told. “What you have just done was to act upon the information obtained by your eyes to prevent the most probable outcome.” The woman let some of the wine spill into the girl’s glass. “The probability of the wine spilling onto the table was changed from 99% to 1% by your action. You predicted the future and changed it.”
“Actually, you’re the one who changed the future,” the girl laughed as she pulled her glass back.
“Sayuri-chan, don’t interrupt. I’m not finished. This is, what, your fifth time visiting my cafe?”
“Sixth, if you count the few minutes I was in here the first time. And, if I drink any more wine, it will be the third time I pass out here.”
“Weak! But as I was saying, probability and possibility. What if you had the wherewithal to notice what causes the improbable instead of just the probable? What if you chose to see what common sense would say is so improbable as to be impossible?”
The girl tilted her head in thought for a moment. Her eyes followed the flow of the woman’s long black hair down as it rested on her chest. “I’d say you were a bit loony.”
“True!” the woman laughed. “But, if you can see and calculate probability, you can also change it by taking action.” In her eagerness, the woman leaned further into the table. The girl watched the tips of the woman’s hair brush against the surface. Suddenly, she brought her eyes up. The woman was tipping the wine glass again. The remainder of the wine, a mouthful, rested on the inside edge of the glass.
The woman smiled, looked up into the girl’s eyes, and tipped the glass upside down. Quickly, she brought it upright and drained the last mouthful of wine. She placed the wine glass on the coffee table, and leaned back into the sofa. She crossed her left leg over her right slowly, placed one long, slender left arm on her knee, and one long, slender right arm across the back of the sofa. And she smiled. Satisfied.
