wyrd but not...

I have been trying to find a word to describe this concept I have come to believe in but can't seem to locate the word. I thought that the old English word "wyrd" might do it but it's not right because that's more about time than it is about what I'm thinking of, which is people.

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Wyrd is a lot like karma in that it's about about how past events affect the future, but wyrd is seen in relation to the three Germanic goddesses of life and death (time), the Norns, who have control of such things. Wyrd can also be about how the future can affect the past but is all about being unstoppable--fated.

Karma stretches across lifetimes and states that the actions, good or evil one does in one lifetime will affect what happens in the next. My understanding, albeit a bastardized oversimplified Western one, says that if you're a really bad human is in this life a la Hitler, you're going to come back as a louse in the next one. And if you're really good, you're going to go up the scale of consciousness until you hit nirvana and never have to be reborn again. Whether that is totally correct, I'm not at all sure but that's what I've been lead to believe.

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No, what I'm thinking of is maybe closer to the idea of soul mate but not in the sexual/romantic sense. I'm talking about the people we encounter in our lives and what they come to mean to us.

This is what I think:

1. There is such a thing as reincarnation and that certain souls are born again and again with one another because they must learn various lessons from each other.

2. Not every soul lives every life with a kindred soul and that in different lives, the souls may take different roles with one another. Lovers, parent to child, enemies, neighbors, friends, co-workers, mere acquaintances.

3. Sometimes, souls recognize one another from life to life. Not that I could go up to you and say, "Hey, remember me from the gold rush or the Battle of Gettysburg or the building of the pyramids at Giza."* But that I could meet you and feel a connection--or a repulsion.

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What made me think of this was reading a friend's blog about his adopted father's birthday. His mother wrote that his father fell in love with him (they first saw one another when my friend was 18 months old) the first time he saw him and never thought of him as anything but his son, regardless of his bloodline.

That to me is that kind of connection.

I felt that kind of loving connection when I met my friend. I've felt that connection when I've met other people too. I've always felt a very deep connection to my niece and nephew. I've felt it for my closest friends and my family. (I felt it for friends and lovers who have broken my heart as well; I must have broken theirs in another life.)

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And I've felt the opposite too. It's a hard thing to say because I don't want to admit that I could so thoroughly and immediately dislike someone, but I felt that way about a guy I was in graduate school with.

At first, I thought it was simply jealousy. He was from the East Coast and has gone to Yale and had the arrogant asshole act down perfect. The professor in our research methods class loved him and our writing workshop instructor thought he walked on water. He had had several well-known literary critics at Yale as professors including Harold Bloom. I thought our RM prof would have an orgasm right there in class. And he was a classic suck-up, always posturing and praising the profs and making little inside comments. ICK! I supposed that's how things works at a hyper-competitive place like Yale but, come on, this was Cleveland State.

But then something odd happened.

We went over a variety of different poetry in the class and the prof often had us read aloud. He asked Hugh to read a section of Beowulf (probably because he he knew Mr. Yale would have had Anglo-Saxon as a class there....)

Hugh read the lines aloud and, while I could not really understand it per se, I knew somehow that his accent was wrong. He was reading it with a German accent. It was too guttural, too harsh.

And it frightened me--practically scared the shit out of me!!

What the hell was going on?

Why did I want to dive under the table?

Why was I sure something awful was going to happen to me?

And he was going to do it?

Goosebumps rolled up my arms and back. Muscles tensed all over my body and my eyes teared up.

Was it the words? Was it the accent? Was it him?

I'd listened to Beowulf before, translated it, read it. There shouldn't have been anything about the story to frighten me. I wasn't that familiar with German. Didn't really care for the language really but didn't necessarily hate it. But I certainly didn't like his voice or seeing him speak something that sounded like it.

The class ended and I left as quickly as I could. Not sure at all at what had happened but sure intuitively that it had something to do with why I felt as I did (and do) about him.

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He finished grad school long before I did. He was there for two years on an assistantship. I was going part time, one or two classes at a time while working full time and quit after four years out of sheer exhaustion and overwork.

He went on to publish a novel or two. The first one was called Everything's Impressive and was, of course, set at Yale. I have a signed copy that I had another student get for me. I think it was supposed to be another Bright Lights, Big City or Less Than Zero but it never got off the ground. (And I never read it to know if it was any good.)

I did, however, read the back cover bio. And found I should have been ashamed of myself for making stereotypical assumptions. I assumed because he went to Yale, he came from a wealthy East Coast family--his family name is Kennedy after all--but he came from a poorer background than I did--was a scholarship student and probably acted so arrogant as a shield to hide his insecurities (or I'm just giving him some humanity because of my own guilt at disliking him so still.)

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But none of what I know of his current life circumstances explains the instant dislike or the "weird" experience during the Beowulf recitation?

Our word weird is derived from the old English word wyrd although the meaning of weird has wandered away from the meaning of wyrd. But there is something inexplicable about both of them just as there is about that instant attraction and revulsion we feel sometimes for a person.

Pinky knows you've felt it too... admit it.



* Seems everyone I ever met who believes in reincarnation and was willing to ramble on about it was sure they had once been Egyptian royalty. Hell, if I was ever Egyptian I was probably one of the slaves squished between the stone blocks of the pyramids!