I’ve heard it said that luck may be a matter of perspective, that the lucky are folks who at best, are those that recognize an opportunity. Ty Frank (half of the duo that writes under James S.A. Corey) introduced me to the idea of a “luck field” - that not just the person who has it can be lucky, but to be in that person’s proximity can also bring them luck. During the author Q&A, he and the other half of James S.A. Corey, Daniel Abraham, talked about their personal instances of the luck field, or lack thereof.

On reflection, despite some serious traumas, misadventures, and mishaps that might have ended me up dead or in jail, I figured I must have a luck field. It feels also pretty unlikely given the past couple years, but my luck is one that accepts the things I could not change (cancer), and the fortune of every step offering the better of circumstances… considering.

In 2004, Jon had moved to Seattle after less than a year in Boulder, CO at an MFA writing program. He was doing some consulting work, but mostly living off of savings and working on a novel. Within a few months of being here (and the longer story for another time), he was driving himself to Harborview with a stab wound in his chest that landed a quarter inch from his heart. A few months after that, I would arrive, by train, in Seattle with no job, no home, five parcels and a place to crash at a mutual friends’ house for a month.

We who had cheated death, who had our share of misadventures and seats at the periphery of the full display of humanity in all its gross and wonderful forms, occasionally wandering into the flames to feel the heat, to see if we’d get burned, ended up together creating our own mundane successes. I think there was something about the two of us together that made him more pragmatic and responsible.

I only recently started to consider that.

It’s Tuesday evening, and opening up my laptop feels like stepping halfway through a doorway to the porch on a spring evening. Uncanny, foot on the edge, long shadows of twilight purple blues with the distant orange glow on the horizon. Always beautiful and new, and familiar and strange. How can sitting in a room so familiar feel like twilight whispering?

Walking through my house today, I felt like I was preparing for a visitor. I saw the rooms, the clutter, my to-do list with a silent tally of what was Jon’s in order to figure out how much, if any, was mine. I stared at my bedroom walls, I searched for linens to redress my bed, I ordered wall paint samples.

I took out some recycling, walking up back to my house I realized, in a bit of horror, that I am a grown up. Maybe a sell out? Jon would argue such feelings were questions of authenticity which was bullshit. Your ‘authentic’ self can change, and be no less authentic. I know that I’m still settling into my skin these days. You can think of the new tattoos as sigils to keep me contained.

Maybe it’s my AuDHD talking, but I keep coming back to, in all things, don’t assume and don’t hide, ask questions if you want to know the answer, and accept answers graciously. I’m going through rehabilitation with no guidebook. I’ve found my brain at work to be unrecognizable mush, so I’m going through some serious mentoring.

I’ve backed off of some of my "social" outings I started the year with, and hope to ease back in. I need to find more of my people, which seems incredibly niche when I start to understand my special interests and who and how they align with others. Artists, music-adjacent, book readers, researchers-for-fun, leftists, lovers of humans if not also grossly disappointed with them. Pragmatic risk-takers, travelers, communicators, writers, co-conspirators - a simple list, really. To find them though, I'm not compromising my sleep, my alcohol-free lifestyle, or going to places I don't want to go on a regular basis. And definitely can't mess with when my kids might need me, or what I need to do to keep my job.

How did I end up the responsible one?

It didn’t hurt so bad today. The memories that came to me, that come to me now are sweet. I get teary, but my heart isn’t breaking. Maybe it’s getting my tattoo work done. Maybe it’s how I’m working through these moments. Things have been hard at work, but in this economy I got to make it work until it doesn’t.

I ended up, somehow, a responsible person.

The symbiosis of partnership, I have only very recently realized, meant that some of the tasks of life, though I became proficient at most of them, I still relied on Jon’s mind, to the end. Those folks out there, building LLM agents to argue with them, because their friends find them annoying to argue with? Fools. I compromised precarious adventures for stability, and got a bonus of challenge and argument, support, and resources.

This week, I miss his friendship. He was generous and forgiving of friends, in ways I didn’t always agree with. I’m sure he would have said the same for me, we just had different limits. The hard part of being his friend was he was unpleasant to disagree with, at times. The best part was when he was on your side, building you up, or making a connection on your behalf.

I can think of these things, and it doesn’t hurt as much. Not as much as last week.

This past weekend, I saw ‘A Body to Live In,’ a documentary about Fakir Musafar, at Northwest Film Forum. Going to this show was a no-brainer, except for the fact that this film would be one Jon would have been very enthusiastic to go with me. “Fakir Musafar? Northwest Film Forum?” I might have texted him in the middle of the day. He would, no doubt, reply with a ‼️ on the bubble, and immediately something like “When?” and “Yes.”

As I said to the Gen Z cashiers at Trader Joe’s (when they asked if I had fun plans for the weekend), if you have visible body/face piercings (as did one cashier) and are able to work at Trader Joe’s, Fakir Musafar played a part in pushing body modification from the sideshow to through the spiritual/ecstatic, to the mainstream. (Remind me sometime to tell the story of some carnies I met on a Greyhound bus to Reno, somewhere around Wyoming.)

There was an empty seat next to me. Most of the folks in the small theatre came in pairs. The Q&A with the director had been cancelled due to flight cancellation, so my initial hope of a more quasi-social evening faded. The gasps, whimpers, and even sobs in the theater, though? This is why we engage with art as a community.

I expected it to be harder to be there without Jon. Talking about an experience after sharing it was one of my favorite things. Dinner before the event? Meh. Dinner after? That’s where the magic happens. Talking into the night about what just happened, the new ideas spawned, things remembered? Connecting all the pieces into a larger systemic understanding of the world? There’s the joy.

Jon and I both came out of similar thought-lineages. The communities we shared or were adjacent to overlapped enough that we had a common lexicon. Though I didn’t have a chance to mingle with the other folks in that theatre, it was reassuring to know that by the end of the film, I knew there were more people out there who I could share a conversational understanding of this niche thing.

Surviving this long is a gift for those of us who live in or are drawn to the margins. Luck is what we got, when everything else is sideways. And we find each other, some how, and our fields can sometimes offer shelter. Surviving is luck, because we didn’t have to survive. For all the calamity endured, it’s every breath that comes after, no matter how broken we are. A happy life isn’t lucky. Survival is.