The Happenstance Casebook

Hello, there! You have stumbled upon something unusual in this corner of the internet, and I do bid you welcome. 

Imagine I am ushering you over the threshold from a dark, stormy night into a small library with shelves so high they disappear into the gloom. A couple of plushy chairs await, the fire roars, and there is hot cocoa to warm you. Or something stronger, if that is your proclivity.

There is no need to rush into things – the night is endless here.

As we settle in, I sense that this will be a strange experience for everyone involved. 

Are we about to embark on a love story? A grand mystery? Or perhaps a quest – one that will transport us through time as we shelter from the wind and the exploding stars.

We’re just going to have to see.

There are three things you should know before we begin. 

First, we’ve crossed paths at a perplexing intersection. I don’t know about you, but I’m coming off a year that seemed to evaporate from under me. As my friend A. recently shared in a flu-cracked voice over coffee, it was one of those years that requires not a review, but an autopsy. I heartily agreed.

As my dear husband S. would point out, this is a tad dramatic and not altogether accurate. He has a gift for seeing the truth with a greater directness and optimism than I. It’s part of why I keep him around. He would frown at me and point at the undeniable evidence scattered around us that suggests we made great strides. So maybe it’s more accurate to cast last year as an unnaturally relentless tornado that has deposited me somewhere substantially new.

Second, you could say that by nature I'm not the most reliable of narrators. My life is one long flight of fancy fuelled by mixed metaphors. For example, this whole project was instigated by an unsettling dream about doors I had two months ago. I’ll go into that later, but suffice it to say that I learned two things from it: 

1. Life is dangerously short – so short that we must pursue the things we love with a sense of urgency. I can only have so many years disappear in a poof of smoke before it begins to dawn on me that, as Sam Roberts sagely sings, life is passing me by. 

2. Life is also dangerously long – so long that I can fall under a spell of stress and fretting, driven by a misguided belief that I must accomplish everything this very second when in reality, I have space to breathe and live and create. The combination of shortness and longness, I think we can agree, can be a disaster.

(Part of this publication will be me trying to shed light on this impossible problem once and for all. But I digress.)

Third, this is a new and vulnerable undertaking for me. I wear the title “writer” with some fragility, despite the fact that writing is all I’ve ever done. I am a writer by trade and spend my days writing useful things for other people. I am the author of an unpublished novel called Obstacles on the Road to Perfection and the almost-author of a near-complete novel called Pilgrymage. With those not yet available to the public, I haven’t shared writing I feel truly reflects me. Until that dreamy day arrives, this is it, friends!

This very morning, I texted another character in this story, my good friend M. 

I have swept my proverbial desk of debris to make way for this year, I announced.

To which he responded: And much metaphorical clatter ensued as similes and analogies fell to the hypothetical ground.

I can’t think of a more appropriate way to start us off. So dry off, get comfortable, and let us dive enthusiastically down the rabbit hole.

Thanks for tuning in! If you’re new here and want to read more, you can access the full Happenstance Casebook publication below.