At the moment I am in the library sneaking an illicit grape from under the table and waiting for a text from a certain relative of mine. For some reason when I meet this person she is always late; either through not remembering the time we were supposed to meet or some unforeseen calamity occurring – in this case the bus not turning up – but she didn’t text me until ten minutes after the time we were supposed to meet! With some people communication is damn-near impossible; they either don’t get your texts or their phone’s on the blink or it’s lost or stolen or the bus breaks down or they fall over and break their leg etc etc etc – but it’s always something you can’t blame them for. And so you end up extremely irritated with them but with nowhere to vent that irritation because it’s not their fault.
I can’t help thinking that some people just seem to attract trouble. And how is that? Why is that? How does it happen?
For example: in the kitchen some people seem to manage to keep delicate glasses, fine china, exquisite crockery; they use it and it survives for years. And yet in our house everything breaks. Why is that? Are we especially clumsy? I’m not aware of it, but maybe we are. Mark has had a succession of glass cafetieres like this one:
and none of them has survived more than a year. Even when we are really, consciously careful, they still break. Of course, in the old house we could just blame it on the lack of space in the kitchen, but now we can’t and still his latest one has been broken after a year. It makes you wonder whether it’s worth it, but it’s still his favourite method of delivering coffee. We’ve got one like this that works on the hob:
http://www.dhresource.com/albu_815488940_00/1.200×200.jpg
but it’s kinda slow and messy.
First world problems. Right.
OK, let’s get to something real then. I want to pose this question: how far can a person be said to be responsible for – or to attract – things that happen to them?
This is a conundrum. It’s one thing to believe in karma; it’s another to blame a person for getting run down in the street – or worse, for being abused as a child. By the same token, you would also suggest that an extremely wealthy person deserves their wealth and consequently that the poor deserve to be poor. This is of course abhorrent – and yet I can’t help thinking that there’s some nugget of truth buried deep within.
I wrote all that yesterday in the library; didn’t get around to uploading it. So, today I shall be mostly… going to Riverside Festival and thence to Andy and Lynne’s house for dinner.
Have a good day!
Kirk out
Sarada Gray 
