I can’t stop myself from scoffing. “A data scientist or whatever? That’s not a passion. It’s just a job. Having dreams never killed anybody.”
“Not true,” she says. “How can you be this na?ve?”
“Well, I’d rather be na?ve than whatever it is you are. You only see things that are right in front of your face.”
“Better than seeing things that aren’t there.”
And now we’re at an impasse.
The sun hides behind a cloud and a cool breeze blows over us from across Central Park. We watch each other for a little while. She looks different out of the sunlight. I imagine I do too. She thinks I’m na?ve. More than that, she thinks I’m ridiculous.
Maybe it’s better to end things this way. Better to have a tragic and sudden end than to have a long, drawn-out one where we realize that we’re just too different, and that love alone is not enough to bind us.
I think all these things. I believe none of them.
The wind picks up again. It stirs her hair a little. I can picture it with pink tips so clearly. I would’ve liked to see it.
“YOU SHOULD GO,” I TELL HIM.
“So that’s it?” he asks.
I’m glad he’s being a jerk. It makes things easier. “Are you thinking at all about me? I wonder how Natasha’s feeling. How did she get to be an undocumented immigrant? Does she want to go live in a country she doesn’t know at all? Is she completely devastated by what’s happening to her life?”
I read guilt on his face. He takes a step toward me, but I back up.
He stops moving.
“You’re just waiting for someone to save you. Don’t want to be a doctor? Don’t be a doctor, then.”
“It’s not that simple,” he says quietly.
I narrow my eyes at him. “To quote you from five minutes ago. Here’s how you do it: You open your mouth and say what’s true. ‘Mom and Dad? I don’t want to be a doctor,’ you say. ‘I want to be a poet because I am stupid and don’t know better,’ you say.”
“You know it’s not that easy,” he says, even quieter than before.
I tug on the straps on my backpack. It’s time to go. We’re just delaying the inevitable. “You know what I hate?” I ask. “I really hate poetry.”
“Yeah, I know,” he says.
“Shut up. I hate it, but I read something once by a poet named Warsan Shire. It says that you can’t make a home out of human beings, and that someone should’ve told you that.”
I expect him to tell me that the sentiment is not true. I even want him to, but he doesn’t say anything.
“Your brother was right. There’s no place for this to go. Besides, you don’t love me, Daniel. You’re just looking for someone to save you. Save yourself.”
Area Teen Convinced That His Life Is Complete and Utter Shit
How I want her to be right. How I want not to be falling in love with her at all.
I watch her walk away, and I don’t stop her or follow her. What an absolute idiot I’ve been. I’ve been acting like some mystical, crystal-worshiping dummy. Of course this is what’s happening now. All this nonsensical talk about fate and destiny and meant-to-be.
Natasha’s right. Life is just a series of dumb decisions and indecisions and coincidences that we choose to ascribe meaning to. School cafeteria out of your favorite pastry today? It must be because the universe is trying to keep you on your diet.
Thanks, Universe!
You missed your train? Maybe the train’s going to explode in the tunnel, or Patient Zero for some horrible bird flu (waterfowl, goose, pterodactyl) is on that train, and thank goodness you weren’t on it after all.
Thanks, Universe!
No one bothers to follow up with destiny, though. The cafeteria just forgot there was another box in the back, and you got a slice of cake from your friend anyway. You fumed while waiting for another train, but one came along eventually. No one died on the train you missed. No one so much as sneezed.
We tell ourselves there are reasons for the things that happen, but we’re just telling ourselves stories. We make them up. They don’t mean anything.
FATE HAS ALWAYS BEEN the realm of the gods, though even the gods are subject to it.
In ancient Greek mythology, the Three Sisters of Fate spin out a person’s destiny within three nights of their birth. Imagine your newborn child in his nursery. It’s dark and soft and warm, somewhere between two and four a.m., one of those hours that belong exclusively to the newly born or the dying.
The first sister—Clotho—appears next to you. She’s a maiden, young and smooth. In her hands she holds a spindle, and on it she spins the threads of your child’s life.
Next to her is Lachesis, older and more matronly than her sister. In her hands, she holds the rod used to measure the thread of life. The length and destiny of your child’s life is in her hands.
Finally we have Atropos—old, haggardly. Inevitable. In her hands she holds the terrible shears she’ll use to cut the thread of your child’s life. She determines the time and manner of his or her death.
Imagine the awesome and awful sight of these three sisters pressed together, presiding over his crib, determining his future.
In modern times, the sisters have largely disappeared from the collective consciousness, but the idea of Fate hasn’t. Why do we still believe? Does it make tragedy more bearable to believe that we ourselves had no hand in it, that we couldn’t have prevented it? It was always ever thus.
Things happen for a reason, says Natasha’s mother. What she means is Fate has a Reason and, though you may not know it, there’s a certain comfort in knowing that there’s a Plan.
Natasha is different. She believes in determinism—cause and effect. One action leads to another leads to another. Your actions determine your fate. In this way she’s not unlike Daniel’s dad.
Daniel lives in the nebulous space in between. Maybe he wasn’t meant to meet Natasha today. Maybe it was random chance after all.
But.
Once they met, the rest of it, the love between them, was inevitable.
I’M NOT GOING TO LET this thing with Daniel stop me from going to the museum. This is one of my favorite areas of the city. The buildings here aren’t quite as tall as those in Midtown. It’s nice being able to see patches of uninterrupted sky.
Ten minutes later, I’m in the museum in my favorite section—the Hall of Meteorites. Most people head right through this room to the gemstone one next door, with its flashy precious and semiprecious rocks. But I like this one. I like how dark and cool and spare it is. I like that there’s hardly ever anyone here.
All around the room, vertical cases with shining spotlights display small sections of meteorites. The cases have names like Jewels from Space, Building Planets, and Origins of the Solar System.
I head right over to my favorite of all the meteorites—Ahnighito. It’s actually just a section of the much larger Cape New York meteor. Ahnighito is thirty-four tons of iron and is the largest meteorite on display in any museum. I step up to the platform that it sits on and trail my hands across it. The surface is metal-cold and pockmarked from thousands of tiny impacts. I close my eyes, let my fingers dip in and out of the divots. It’s hard to believe that this hunk of iron is from outer space. Harder still to believe that it contains the origins of the solar system. This room is my church, and standing on this platform is my pillar. Touching this rock is the closest I ever come to believing in God.
This is where I would’ve taken Daniel. I would’ve told him to write poetry about space rocks and impact craters. The sheer number of actions and reactions it’s taken to form our solar system, our galaxy, our universe, is astonishing. The number of things that had to go exactly right is overwhelming.
Compared to that, what is falling in love? A series of small coincidences that we say means everything because we want to believe that our tiny lives matter on a galactic scale. But falling in love doesn’t even begin to compare to the formation of the universe.
It’s not even close.
“Symmetries”
A Poem by Daniel Jae Ho Bae
I will
stay on my
side. And you will
stay on an-
other