The Cookie's the Thing

"Your current plans will be successful." - Fortune cookie, December 11, 2007

The fortune cookie digests in my stomach but never in my mind. The omniscient message haunts me for hours and eventually it is like an ointment that I start applying in unnecessary places. But certainly, Cookie, you are not suggesting the whole catalog of my plans will succeed. How could you possibly know that? You live in an air tight baggy! Have you been talking to my Horoscope?

I check my long list of plans Santa-style, trying to eliminate the mundane plans whose success is not immediately thrilling. I show no mercy to my plans to buy new socks, write overdue papers, clean the bathroom, limit purchase of new records, lose weight, finish the audio documentaries I started this summer, research graduate programs, go to the dentist, adopt a more feminine style of dress, write a brilliant and compelling memoir.

What remains of the list is a bald landscape which resembles the set of a Beckett play. Even my little list shaving drama contains elements of the existential, the plot unfolding like a chronicle of girl's search for purpose and subconscious desire. The girl wakes in a paused chair which creaks to punctuate the anagnorisis. The discovery echoes through her naked heart and rides out on the warm stream of her exhale.

This play sucks. I set the delicate fortune on my desk and though it is surrounded by paper mountains of unpaid bills, rough drafts and letters from home, it dominates the territory. It is the butterfly that has emerged from the cookie cocoon, powerfully beautiful and fresh with the wisdom of metamorphosis. The pattern of the fortune's tiny black letters has changed, too. I have released the mystery encased in ink by peeling plans from my list and simplifying the plot. I plan to fall in love.