Karma Diem

"I can't believe you put yourself at risk like that," she said. "And me too. I didn't know if I was going to get murdered."

"I know," I said. "I really wasn't thinking. But he looked harmless enough."

She looked at me. "What the hell does harmless look like?"

"That," I said, "is a good question. But anyway. No harm no foul. Maybe," I tendered, "this is connected to why I seem to have such good karma."

If one chooses to believe in karma, one doesn't take it lightly. I don't believe in it, exactly, not anymore than I do in astrology. My rational engineering mind sees a mechanical universe as quite complete. Yet my human mind is always matching patterns and filling in spaces and abstracting new versions of reality, just as human brains have done for millennia, and I am quite able to see accuracy in astrological descriptions based on irrelevant data, or causative links where there should be none, whether or not I actually believe in them.

She'd come over late in the evening to share space with me while I got some things done. But the day caught up with her and she wound up in a sleeping ball that I saw no reason to awaken. Eventually I did too, all the lights on, Pandora streaming various stringed adagios, clothes mostly still on or abandoned at random. The hours ticked by quietly until POK POK POK went the knocker on my door.

It was four something but I had to go look. Who knows, could be a child looking in dire emergency for her mother, or a policeman warning of car fires. But no, it was a young black man with a look of confusion, even fear. I watched through the peephole awhile, hoping he would leave, but he knocked again, and suddenly I felt as though it was impolite to watch and not respond. I couldn't imagine any danger, of course, because anyone knocking on a door at that hour should expect above all a loaded pistol. People who put themselves at obvious risk do not seem so much like risks to me. So I opened the door.

"Steve? Is Steve here?"

"Wrong house, pard."

His face fell. He looked disappointed. He stopped himself going back down the stairs to ask if he could use a phone. He looked reluctant to ask, and then launched into a slurred explanation I couldn't follow, obviously high on some damn thing or other, while flashing a cell phone about that apparently didn't work. His story had something to do with a woman on a bicycle and some guy's house he was supposed to go to, and that his phone was freaking out. I could see the screen flashing dimly. And, well, I'm a puppy rescuer at heart: I couldn't just close the door.

As it happened I had a micro USB cord handy that reached around the door. I was able to maintain situational awareness and a defensive posture while attempting to power up his phone. But it didn't work. So I grabbed mine (again, because it was in reach without my having to lose contol of the half-closed door) and asked him if he knew the number. He did, and I punched it in and turned on the speaker. It rang a bunch: no answer. I killed it after six or seven rings.

"Looks like you're having something of a misadventure," I said. "Good luck." He took his cue and went on down the stairs. My house guest, who initially assumed I was talking to the police, looked at me as though I was insane and, when back in a warm dozing position, made the observation recorded above.

Strewth, she had the right of it. There is no reason to open the door at that hour for anyone not in uniform or bleeding. But, well. As I said, this good luck that others observe in me -- my wife was the first, twenty eight years ago, and there have been others -- surely has to come from somewhere. Can there not be a link between how you treat the universe and how it in turn treats you? I told her about the time I went downtown about thirty years ago to pick my roommate up from the jailhouse and wound up giving some half-wacked black guy who'd just gotten out a free ride halfway to South Sac, my only thanks being a repetitive, "You're a cool guy! You're a cool guy!" It seems sometimes I just do stupid things, and so far, not a one has actually turned out stupidly.

I'll never try to push it. The universe owes me nothing. There will never be any reward for doing good things, and if I ever expect there will, you might as well lock me in a church with all the other delusionals and set it on fire. But I like trusting the universe and the people in it, and lately I've been learning how much trust I still had to learn, and I have been learning it. So the only useful lesson from this unexpected interaction was just the reinforcement to keep on keeping on, and to seize the goodness in the day.