I Am the Master of my Fate -- NOT!

"Alas, by the time Fate caught up with my life, Chance had it all planned."



"How helpless are the whims of Fate before the stratagems of Chance."



On a windswept hill
by a billowing sea,
my destiny sits
and waits for me.



"Be the master of your fate, be the captain of your soul, but do not hesitate, should the chance befall you, to be the slave of your heart."



"There are couples a matchmaker would match every time -- and couples who, for no rhyme or reason, rhyme."



I saw by the duck pond an elderly couple
throwing crumbs on the water,
close against each other,
thinking each other's thoughts,
casting each other's shadow,
and I wondered -- which had been the great love
and which the acquired taste that became an addiction.



"In the life we might have lived, the years never pass. On the person we might have been, time never leaves its mark. How different would seem our might-have-beens if we could picture them as would-be-nows.



Under every full moon
I recall a lagoon
where a mandolin played,
and memories stir
of the dreamers we were
and the plans that we made.



"Only in the playworld of a child's imagination is there a reason for everything."



"On days when I crave order in my life, I drop in on the playworld of my child."



"Anything we tell our kids about life is a placemarker until they figure it out for themselves."



"Life is a handful of irreversible decisions, none, with the grace of God and the diligence of our parents, made before age 18."



"No one ever decided to have kids based on a feasibility study."



"What is the fire in our belly but the eternal flame of a thousand ancestors."



"It is a curious thing, this world of my perception -- how I stand always at its center, and yet it pays me absolutely no mind."



Dear Bishop Berkeley:
If the world existed
But in my invention,
Wouldn't it pay me
More attention?


~~ Robert Brault